"How To Take Your Brand To Hollywood"
"How To Take Your Brand To Hollywood"
by George Le Burn and Matt Bacak
Matt:
And.. uh.. I just wanted to make sure that we could be in conversation. And.. Um.. so everybody that’s on the call right now, I just want to welcome you for being on here. We’re gonna have fun tonight. Actually, I am going to be recording this. So this is gonna.. we’re gonna have a good time. And if you guys don’t know George, you’re gonna get to know him. And, um… just kinda.. before we get started, I’ll tell you that uh, I was just at a Mark Victor Hansen event, not too long ago… a Mark Victor Hansen speaking event, and George had a booth right next to where we were. And it’s very, very interesting. Him and I have a lot of stuff in common. A lot more than we even knew at the seminar. And George and I started talking about technical things. Actually, he has.. he had a booth and he has a product called “Destination Hollywood”, and I thought it was absolutely just something that was very interesting. And he’s got this great theme. It say’s “Hollywood’s ready for you. But are you ready for Hollywood?”. And, he’s an insider. And he really is … about Hollywood stuff. And I’ll tell you, a lot of his background; it’s very, very interesting. He’ll probably go into it a little bit later. But it’s very interesting, too, because you know how when you meet somebody, you kinda like, George and I kind of, like we talked, and went out to lunch a couple of times. We’d really not get into personal stuff much; we’d kind of talk more about business. Well, later on, like a week later, after this event, George and I started talking. He says, “Oh yeah, I’m from Ohio.” So I said “Oh that’s very interesting that you’re from Ohio. I’m from Ohio too. Where are you from?”
And he said, I think you said “Youngstown”. And I said “Well, where are you really from?” coz that’s what we usually use. He said, “I’m from Warren”. I said “Where are you really from?”. And he is from my rival.. well, one of the towns right down the road from where I grew up. So it’s very interesting. And now his mother lives where I live. And it’s very interesting how people meet. And Um.. not only that….
George:
And you should tell them that – how small a town that is..(…Laughs..)
Matt:
(…Laughs..) I know it is.. It’s a …
George:
How likely is that? It’s very UNLIKELY that that would happen.
Matt:
Yeah, that’s very true. And then even the likelihood.. and then we start talking too, because you went to school at University of… oh you went to Miami, Ohio.
George:
Miami, Ohio. Yeah.
Matt:
And a lot of my friends from college went to Miami, Ohio. Just so you guys know this too. I just think it’s amazing at how small a world it is. Not only are we from a small town, that’s very close, but his parents live there. I’m gonna be there 4th of July. He’s gonna be there 4th of July. But here’s another funny thing too. Um.. I mentioned “Oh you’re from Miami, Ohio. Well that’s my Alpha chapter of my fraternity.” And he said.. Well, I asked him if he was in a fraternity. He said – “Yeah, I am. I’m a Sigma Chi.” And I said “ In hoc brother. I’m Sigma Chi too.” So we have a lot of stuff in common. But we’re gonna have fun tonight. And another thing that we both have in common is this. And this is what you guys are all gonna get the benefit of. We both have… Um.. How would I say it? Big.. Both of us have something very unique. And it’s the fact that we both conceive things in people, and be able to find people and take them to the next level.
And George has got something… now George does it with…. I’ve done it with Hollywood people.. and George has with Hollywood people…and people in Hollywood and things like that. But, no, I’ve done it with people regarding, um, you know, wealth-building.. in the wealth-building area, regarding self-development. Now George, George, really, you have done a lot of stuff. You have done a lot of work with Matt Daemon, Ben Affleck, Chris Moore… You’ve done some with Dick Clark… Dick Clark Productions. You have also done.... I believe you also said you have done things with Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Monroe.. and Chicken Soup for the Soul. And I think…and haven’t you done stuff with the Academy Awards and a bunch of awards like that too?
George:
Yeah. I can give everybody a little bit of background about me. I worked in the entertainment industry for about 20 years. And, you know, some of the shows I’ve worked on. I have worked on The Academy Awards, The Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, written daytime TV for Dick Clarke. I used to work on “30-Something” for ABC. I have written and directed features that have aired on HBO, TNT and CINEMAX. I did work on “Project Greenlight” with MIRAMAX Television, and Matt and Ben. And recently, last December, sold a new pilot for a new television show to the Discovery Channel. And I was also the C.E.O. of a media and communications company recently had 239 licenses to the biggest media reps in the world including DISNEY, Jim Hansen, Ozzy Osborne.. and Chicken Soup is one of our licenses. We were in with FOX Cable…The FOX Family Channel.. the NBA… and quite a few different brands. And you know, also the Marilyn Monroe Estate. So, um, I’ve had you know the lucky opportunity to have worked in that business and it’s a lot of fun.
At the same time, I’ve.. I’ve.. you know really wanted to.. kind of… I guess work on the other side of my brain,. You know the business side.. the non-creative side. And I have gone to Law School and I have my law degree and I also sit on the Advisory Board, for the School of Business at UT, which is one of the top ten business schools in the country.
And I have served as Senior Management on several of the high profile companies. So I’ve kind of done the creative side and the corporate side of both.
Matt:
Yeah. And you have a lot to offer to every listener that’s listening right now, too. And besides that… so.. Um. Let’s kinda get started. You know.. how?.. If there’s a couple of things you want to get started on… what would it be right now?
George:
Well, I guess it’s kind of irrelevant for people to know how I kind of came to be in this space. So I’ll take a minute and kind of explain that. As I said a second ago, when I was the C.E.O. of VAUX4, Chicken Soup was kind of our license source, and you know, I got to know Jack and Mark. And after that relationship kinda grew, they hired me to be a consultant for them to help them on a couple of levels. One was to find alternative channels of distribution for their books. And another was to really help them kind of increase their branding, and kind of revitalize it. The brand had been kind of diluted, because they started doing really, too many books. It’s more like a magazine now than a book line, as you know with two of them coming out a month. It was just too much.
And I also spent quite a bit of time helping them on the online side with their back end and helping them find tools, and software solutions to help them with their data-mining and modeling and work with their relational database. And after that Mark brought in Robert Allen and I started consulting for Robert Allen. And then Mark decided, well, you know, you’ve got so much knowledge to offer, and I know he was very gracious to say so, but he said, you know, you should be speaking. And then Janet Swyzer and then later, some of the other folks, David Cooper, were like “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”. You know, so…. Janet was the one who got me to create “Destination Hollywood” because she felt that so many authors and speakers, which was the majority of Mark’s audience, are interested in ultimately. Maybe someday getting into Hollywood, whether it’s just selling a story idea which could later turn into a cable show or network show or feature film. Or. You know, maybe they see themselves as the next Dr.Phil or Oprah. And, you know, how do they kind of fast-track themselves into doing that. So, I decided to create that product and let’s see, last fall, and I think that one of the things that really kind of convinced me, was last March I was in Megabook. And I was just there as a V.I.P. and Mark said, “Hey, just show up and talk to people.” So I said “Okay.” And I met a guy, for any of you that were there, named Vorhees Cruz. And Vorhees is in the Health and Fitness market. And it’s a really overcrowded market, as you all know. And he found a niche for himself by talking about emotional eating. His hook is that it doesn’t matter what kind of exercise program you’re on, or what kind of food you eat or don’t eat. You’re not gonna lose any weight if you don’t conquer your emotional eating. And I totally bought that set, you know concept. And, long story short, we got to know each other a little bit. And I said, you know,”You need a TV show and I took his materials and I went to the Discovery Channel and I actually didn’t even take him with me. I did it just with his stuff, and I sold them on the idea. And they bought a pilot and now we’ve got a television show on the Discovery Channel that will come out either later this year, or early next…next year.
So that really convinced me that, hey I can really help some people, and have fun at the same time. And debuted the Destination Hollywood product, and it really kind of took of, and that led me to meeting with some of the clients that bought the product to create this other branding retreat that I call “Building a Convergent Media Brand”….
Matt:
So when you say “Building a Convergent Media Brand”, what do you mean by that?
George:
Well, convergence is kind of an overused word right now. It means a lot of different things to different people. A convergent project, like “Project Greenlight”, was in my mind, the first convergent media project ever. It was working online, television, film all at the same time. It wasn’t linear, like, you and I wrote a book, Matt, and we wrote Jaws 3, and two years from now they decide to make a movie out of it. You now, that’s a completely linear process. This is using multiple forms of media all at the same time to create a project.
And so when I take that concept of a media project into a branding situation, I think that it’s important that people learn how to build a convergent media brand. And so, I mean, don’t just be author, don’t just be a speaker. How can you be on radio, on television? Whether it’s your own show, or you ‘re a guest, doesn’t matter. But you know, have your presence on those two media platforms be in publishing, be doing public speaking, be doing seminars, be doing your own publicity. And have those six spokes, basically, revolve around the hub, or the center of your business which is the online media platform.
And um.. so I just basically, hand invited these twelve people and we went out…
Matt:
So you’re saying its kind of like multiple strings of PR…(laughs..)
George:
(..Laughs..) Yeah. Well, you know, I’ve got a good example of that. I really believe in teaching people how to develop personality brands, and not product brands. First, personality brands… have the products and services that you create underneath your personality brand. And that’s a big mistake that Jack and Mark did.
Matt:
Now why don’t you, can you kind of explain a little bit more. What do you mean by ‘personality brand’?
George:
Well, most people, you know, that are outside this circle, that attend Mark’s events, have never heard of Mark or Jack. I was in the Senior Vice President of 20th Century Fox’s office about three weeks, a couple of days before I left for Atlanta where I met ...(…beep..)And we just were talking, blah..blah… blah.. and I just happened to say something about Chicken Soup. What I said first was, “And oh Mark Victor Hansen…” And she said, “Oh, who’s that?” And I said, “Oh you know, the Chicken Soup guy!” And she said “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.”. She actually had two Chicken Soup books on her shelf in her office and she didn’t know his name.
Matt:
Hmmm.
George:
And so basically they are known as the “Chicken Soup guys”. They are not known by their individual names. And kind of a further example of that is, Kim Kerberger is Jack’s sister. Now, no one knows who she is. But she has the distinction of being the No. 1 non-fiction teen-author in the world. And she’s sold 20 million books.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
So I started managing her career for a year and the same kind of thing. When I first came on with her, she had a new book out with Scholastic. So she was expanding her publishing, not just with Chicken Soup and ATI as her publisher, but she had a new deal with Scholastic. And they were gonna debut the book and spend $10,000 to fly her to New York, and put her up in a fancy hotel, and basically there was going to be 30 people, 30 young girls at their Manhattan anchor store. And that was the extent of them spending the $10,000. And I told her, I said – get them to give us the money, and I’m gonna do something with that. And I had never done publicity before. And I went right out and cold-called producers in 8 of the top 10 markets in the country and successfully booked her on every single one of those markets. You know, Good Morning Dallas, LA, NBCLA, San Diego, Chicago, you know, on and on, San Antonio. And not only did I book her on television in those markets, I, instead of having a book-signing with 30 people, or 50 people, I booked her in a high-school with 3-4000 kids, and we sold books in the back of the room. And then I got the T.V. show to show up at the book signing event to film it, so that the next day when she showed up on the television show, they could roll B-roll of the day before and just make a big deal out of it. So Suddenly she is in front of millions and millions of people, and it was for free. I mean, she wasn’t even paying a publicist to do that for her.
And then we went to Discovery, and we went to Discovery Health and I pitched them, and they bought of on doing a pilot with her. And we went to Clear Channel Communications, which is the largest media conglomeration in the world, and then sold them on the idea of having a syndicated radio show for her. And then she met Joe Ralph from Revolution Studios that produces all these big, 100-million $ movies, and all of a sudden she’s got a movie in development. Suddenly she went from just being an author, and obviously, a lot of book sales, but not a well-known author, to gaining media attention in every vertical.
Matt:
Hmmm.
George:
And so now, again, we’re building again what’s called a “Convergent Media brand” for her. Does that make sense?
Matt:
Yeah – makes a lot of sense. So let me ask you a question. When I was if I’m sitting here, thinking you know what – I want to be the next Dr.Phil. I want to be the next Oprah. I want to publish my own book. Or I want to have my own radio show. You know what – I want to have my own infomercial. Do you have anything that you can give to someone that’s sitting there thinking something like that? Do you have anything you could tell them? Or some advice?
George:
Absolutely. And you know – there’s a little bit of a different answer there. And you know if somebody would really wants to be a brand like that that would be on television in Hollywood, you know, there’s a different strategy that they would have to go after to execute on that. And we teach those in the Destination Hollywood Program. And for somebody that isn’t necessarily going to have a National T.V. show, but wants to have a brand like Tony Robbins, that’s what we are focusing on in the Retreat. And teaching them how to go that route.
Matt:
So – okay.
George:
And, you know, maybe I should kind of talk about some of the stuff we really go through in the Retreat, Matt, and really how far back we roll with people all into the formations of their company.
Matt:
Lemme .. right! Well lemme ask you one question. You said okay, somebody says, okay, you know what, I want to be the next Tony Robbins. And you’ll help them take them there. To that point? In a sense?
George:
Well. I’m absolutely teaching them what tools they need and what they need to do that. And whether we work at that at the retreat or after the retreat or something like that is kind of a case-by-case basis. You know, but as I mentioned with Voorhees, I got it. You know, I knew, I didn’t have to be sold on him. I knew he was going to be a big name.
Matt:
Mmm hmmm…
George:
And – you know – this is a guy that Oprah came after – to put him on her show. He didn’t solicit that. He’s been on Oprah three times. The producer came looking for him.
Matt:
Right….
George:
I mean this is the guy.. he was able to build 3 million customers online all by himself.
Matt:
Wow…
George:
…Before he did anything offline. And so you know – a case-by-case basis on how far we take it. But absolutely going to teach people the tools, you know like specifically, like in a Hollywood situation. Who is the buyer? Who do you talk to to buy your television show idea? And once you know and identify who that is – how do you set up what is called a pitch-meeting with that person, in order to go out and actually try to sell them something. Whether it’s you as the host of a T.V. show or if it’s just an idea you have for a T.V. show. You’ve got the next hot reality show idea…We teach you how to set up those pitch meetings with the right buyers. And then, we’re teaching you how to pitch. Because there is a real art form to pitching your story and being a storyteller. A lot of people don’t have that innately, and they need some media training. And it’s far different from being a public speaker, in what you need to know to be a persuasive storyteller and pitch-artist. So those are just a couple of quick samples of some tools that we’re teaching people to get further.
Matt:
Right.. Wow! That’s amazing! So you keep on mentioning this program. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
George:
The Convergent Media Retreat – or the actual Hollywood Program?
Matt:
No – the Media Retreat.
George:
Well, the Media Retreat…
Matt:
That’s the one you keep on referring to right? Correct?
George:
Well, I guess there’s two. There’s the Destination Hollywood Program, which is really the ins-and-outs of Hollywood.
Matt:
Mmm hmm.
George:
And then the Convergent Branding Retreat is again for someone who wants to have a nationally recognized brand, but is not necessarily related with Hollywood.
Matt:
Mm..
George:
So again – Tony Robbins – you know is a Nationally recognized brand, but is not related to Hollywood. Oprah and Dr.Phil are related to Hollywood.
Matt:
Right.
George:
Martha Stewart is a Nationally recognized brand, but you know, she.. She … has the T.V. media everything. But the Convergent Media retreat, we really start from the basics. Like what kind of company to form. As an example of that – some people ran off and they form an S-Corporation, because it is really easy. And they figure that part of their plan is gonna be that they’re gonna have to raise some money. You know, so they want to raise half-a-million dollars coz they need it for branding, and you know, they need to produce so many books, because they don’t have any cash to do it on their own. So they want to go out after some investors. Well, if they owned an S-Corporation, and they want any kind of companies to invest in them they just kind of shot themselves in the foot, because it’s illegal for another corporation to invest in an S-Corporation. They would have need to form either an LLC or an S-Corp.. sorry – a C-Corporation.
Matt:
Mmm.
George:
So there’s some simple kind of basic corporation structure that we talk about. We talk about liability. We talk about Corporate Mechanics. And then we start getting into branding. About defining your brand. What’s your brand identity statement? You know, what kind of niche are you operating in? You know who is your audience and your market? And what’s your positioning statement within that market?
Matt:
Mmm hmm..
George:
And we talk about how many media platforms are relevant to your brand. You know, does your brand, work, you know, on all of them.. Television…radio…speaking… seminars…etc..etc. Or are you more limited? And hopefully you’ve got something that can be shown, you know, distributed on all media platforms. And we continue with the branding, and really teaching you how to create an emotional …(..beep..).. and how people will get attached to you and your brand. And how to make yourself an expert in people. Most folks are not going to have an expertise that’s all on their own. You know, they’re gonna be in a market where there are a lot of other people that do what they do. And so, that being the case – how are you going to differentiate yourself from other folks to get noticed. And so you know we teach you some techniques on how to learn to stand out. And then we go into product development and and/or service development. You know Chicken Soup is a brand that has not only products with the book. I helped them develop a distance-learning program online, so that people can come and go any day of the week and sign up for a six-week course on parenting. And that’s a great example because a few of these guys went out and created a program this one time. We developed the technology to run it. And now it’s like this passive revenue stream, where they get enough people to do about $10,000 a month, month-in month-out. And they never have to touch it. There’s really not… they’ve outsourced the customer service to that and it doesn’t really tie up any of their company immediate resources, yet they are generating a bunch o revenue from it. Now they’re talking about doing another half-a-dozen courses. So maybe they can generate $50-60,000 a month, every single month in income.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
So, you know – we really go in-depth into what people should be doing with their products and services. And then we continue on into identity. You know, what does your logo look like? What does your collateral look like? What does your business card look like? You know all this stuff is really important. What does your website look like? You know, what’s the look and feel of that – it’s gotta be consistent. And people remember things. And if you don’t really brand yourself right, those little things that are subtle will take away from your credibility. A lot of people really can damage themselves that way.
Matt:
Could you give us a tip or two – that you could kind of put out there? Like a tip or two that we could use? Regarding branding ourselves?
George:
Yeah – you know one thing that everybody should stay away from is, this is basically something simple, but it’s really true, there’s a big thing that any of you out there that have an AOL address, or a YAHOO address or any kind of free e-mail address, and yet you’re an expert and want to be taken seriously and want people to spend money with you, is very counterproductive. This doesn’t seem professional when people have AOL addresses or yahoo addresses, or HOTMAIL. You’ve gotta have an address that’s tied to your domain, hopefully, again you’re working on doing your personality brand, so you’re using your name – prominently for a URL. Or maybe company that – and under that – like I have GeorgeLebrun.com, but I also have ConvergentBranding.com and some other websites. But you wanna make sure that you have a website that’s gonna help promote your personality brand.
Matt:
Well lemme ask you – you keep on saying personality brand….
George:
Well – your logo on your business card, you wanna use heavy stock, you don’t want to use crap paper.
Matt:
(…Laughs…)
George:
You want to have an interesting logo. I’d rather have a logo that somebody hates – but it’s so distinct they’ll remember it. Even if they can’t stand it they are never gonna forget it. Because people remember you if they love or hate it. And that’s a lot better than just having some kind of basic, you know, business card that you’re handing out.
So even – as I say, even down to something as simple as a business card, it’s really, really important that it’s something that’s gonna kind of mark you and identify you to people.
Matt:
Right. Well, I wanna kind of go back a little bit, for one reason. You keep on saying personality brand, over.. another one.. what was the other one? Product brand? You said there’s two kinds that people focus on – either personality brand or product brand.
George:
Right.
Matt:
Why do you say personality brand over product brand? What’s the reason behind that?
George:
Well, again Chicken Soup book sales are off more than 50% right now. And you know traditionally for the past ten years that’s how Mark and Jack made their living. They’ve made millions of dollars, don’t get me wrong. But you know, now they still have a lot of work-life. It’s not like they are ready to retire and now the brand is really diminishing. And these guys don’t have brand names. It’s a very small circle of people that go to their conferences. It’s not even on the radar-screen compared to how many people are in the country.
So again I have never seen Tony Robbins speak. I have never been to a Tony Robbins event. But if Tony Robbins was on the call right now and I heard him speak, I could recognize his voice.
Matt:
Yeah.
George:
And most…most Americans could do that. And it’s not me. And even though I haven’t paid money or spent money with him, he is a household brand name. And whatever he creates, you know, can reside underneath that. So if you’ve got a product that you launch and it really doesn’t fly very well, and everything about you is tied to that, then, you know, again – you’ve kind of shot yourself in the foot, because that’s the way people are going to remember you. Or more importantly, not remember you. So if you’ve got a personality brand on top and you create a product that does so-so, you can kinda like exit it without really having any damage to your brand. And even when a product does well, you know, every product has a shelf life. And so when that product is ready to go, then you’re gonna be able to introduce something new. But again, you’re personality brand remains consistent and strong.
Matt:
Thank you very much for that distinction. I appreciate it.
George:
Hopefully that makes sense to everybody.
Matt:
Yeah – that makes perfect sense to me. And I bet it makes perfect sense to the listeners right now. Um – so I kind of took you of path. You were talking a little bit… you gave a couple of tips, regarding branding themselves, and stuff like that, and I want to get you back there. So I’m going to take you back to where you were.(..Laughs..).
George:
Well, you know, again, I was going through some of the stuff too, that we do in the retreat. And, you know, I guess one other comment I want to make Matt, is it’s really important, you know, most people in the audience out there probably create a type of.., you know, they’re creative thinkers, they are creating books, they are writing programs and products, and Um…most likely they think, you know, one way. They are not doing right brain, left brain. And it’s really important that people do understand that. No matter what you do, what your expertise is, whatever your brand is, you’re running a business. And you’ve gotta think like a businessman. So it’s ..it’s…it’s…critical that you’re thinking about all these aspects, other than just like, okay I gotta finish my book. You know. You know… I’ve gotta get this book to the publisher.
Matt:
So what you’re saying is, it’s not a hobby anymore..(Laughs..).
George:
Pardon me.
Matt:
It’s not a hobby, it’s a business. And run it that way.
George:
Yeah, and just because you’ve finished the book, it doesn’t mean anybody’s going to buy it.
Matt:
..(…Laughs..) Yeah.
George:
I mean, again, if you and I create the greatest product in the world, if nobody knows about it from the consumer side, well, we didn’t make any money!
Matt:
Mmm hmm.
George:
Right?
Matt:
Right!
George:
So, how do we let everybody KNOW that we’ve GOT the greatest product in the world? And, you know, how are you networking? You know, have you done the right kind of marketing strategy? Have you done your relationship marketing? Have you…. uh…
Matt:
Hold on! You just said something interesting. I never heard that word before. You said ‘Relationship Marketing’ … what do you mean by that?
George:
Well, er, ‘Relationship Marketing’ is sometimes called one-to-one marketing. It’s something that is very important on the web. When you and I walk into the Virgin Megastore tomorrow, we buy a CD and walk back out again. If we come back in the next day, nobody knows us… we just walked in and bought another… you know. ..it just…er… one-to-the-masses, you know, shotgun marketing, you know.
Matt:
Mmm hmm.
George:
And online, Amazon is probably the best example, where if I buy a book, and I come back in, they know who I am. Not only do they know who I am, but they’ve got agents embossed that are going to recommend books, or different titles that I might be interested in. They are trying to mass-customize their marketing and do ‘Relationship Marketing’, to make me feel like I’m important to them. You know, if you go to a really good hotel, er.. usually the doorman…. even if you’re there for a day, they memorize your name. It’s a really strange thing. The Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, I rarely stay there, “Good Afternoon Mr. Lebraun”, you know, they know who I am, they remember me. Everybody… everybody in the hotel knows your name. It’s just something they do. But, we all… everybody wants to feel special.
Matt:
Yeah.
George:
And, so when people do that, it makes you feel special. And you know, automatically you’re gonna have some loyalty or affinity to that hotel. And I might stay there instead of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Same thing, you know, with your folks, if you can ‘Relationship Market’ with your customers, on or offline, and you know, hopefully both, and/or possibly mass-customize some of your products to your customers, your gonna have a lot longer LTV, or life-time-value with those customers.
Matt:
Mmm. Wow! You gave me some amazing nuggets! That’s…Thank you very much for that! Thank you! So let’s kind of head back to your talking… I mean let’s get a little bit back to you were talking a little bit about the…Um… actually this, your workshop. The data that you have with you. Can you kinda go a little bit more into that?
George:
Sure, you know, again, it’s two-and-a-half days and I like I started to say, we spend time on the formation, the branding, the products. And the business aspects of how do you fulfill those products once you are doing a good job of selling them. And then, you know, we’re really digging into each one of the media platforms separately; you know, television, radio. Um, you know, in radio, do you wanna try and sell and have your own syndicated radio show like Howard Stern? Do you want to have your own radio show, in just one market? I have a client that she has had a radio show in Boston for two years. Most people don’t understand that you can go into a radio market and buy your own airtime. You can buy your way on the radio. You can have a weekly or daily radio show depending on how much money you’ve got. She spends $350 a week to do a one-hour show every Saturday morning in Boston. Now that’s a great station, because she’s found that, she is a financial planner, and that is basically, the Um… business radio station. Anything to do with finance, stocks, investments, you know, that’s their audience. So that’s the right home for her. She’s found the right home. And she pays them $350 per week. Yet she is able to sell the advertising in that hour to other people to offset the $350 that she spends just to pay for the airtime. So basically she’s on the air for free.
Matt:
Right…
George:
And you know, she’s building her brand, and she’s selling her products, and it’s not costing her a dime. You know, it’s not like, hey, I need $500,000 to get myself on TV. You know, she can get on a very powerful media platform with basically, you know, no money down.
Matt:
Hmmm.
George:
And again, we continue through the rest of the different media platforms, public speaking, and seminars, and again, publicity. Like I was talking about with Kim Kerberger, we’ll teach you how to go out and do that for yourself. And, you know, even if you are gonna have a book signing, and you’ve got your first book, or you work with folks like “Wake up and live the life you live… love” with Steven E., and those guys set up a book signing for you. And instead of just showing up at that book signing, you know, and signing a few books for some people, you should have placed ads in the paper to drive more traffic to that. You should have called the radio stations and the television stations to say that you’re going to be in town. And try to succinctly pitch them on what it is you do and what it is you’ve got, and an interesting way to get them to try to book you a guest on the show. You should also be telling people, you know, what is your next project after the, you know, “Wake Up” book. And what are you working on next. And then, you know, whether your talking to someone at the book signing, or on a radio show as a guest, or a T.V. show as a guest, every one of those media platforms you’re on should be driving those customers back to your website, to basically get them in a newsletter or E-Zine, and get them in your database so that you can start marketing to them. Targeting your marketing to them.
Matt:
Mmmm.
George:
So we…we…we…hit an awful lot of different things, Matt. And basically, the goal is that when you leave there, it’s not…. you don’t leave just motivated. You’ve left with a lot of Action Plan items, all the dots are really connected in what you’ve really got to do with yourself. Let me dig into the web for another example, and we start talking about your website is broken down into your front-end, your middle-ware tools and your back-end, we’ve explained to people that what they previously thought that some web-master could solve all their online needs, is a 100% incorrect. And a web-master is nothing more than a graphic artist who, you know, creates things on the web. He’s not, you know, going to create your content, Um, hopefully he knows about UI and navigation. But basically that’s all he’s gonna help you with. He’s not gonna do anything with your relational database in the back-end, he’s not gonna be, you know, a database programmer, and he is not going to be able to teach you…um…….how to data-mine and data-model, to get those customers back, and how to up-sell them and do all the other important things you’ve got to do. And people need to understand all of those aspects of even just the online part of the business. So, again, when people leave they really have an Action Plan of how to like, move forward, and really, you know, take their brand to the next level.
Matt:
Mmm….. That’s awesome. You know, one other thing… we were talking a little bit earlier, and um.. you know.. you’ve got… I mean, even …like … now.. I was thinking…..talking a little bit earlier, and you said not only do you have this, but do you have some kind of ongoing support regarding that too?
George:
You mean after the Retreat?
Matt:
Yeah.
George:
Um.. yeah… basically.. um.. yeah… again we do the Retreat By Invitation Only.. so, if you are kind of picked to go, we really try to create the right dynamic of people. That’s really important. So…Um…. If you do go and it works out… Um… you can be invited to join what’s called the “Convergent Group” which is kinda like the ongoing teleseminar group. But again – I do that maybe a little bit differently than most people. You know – we’re not just talking about ideas, or concepts or things that we talk about at the Retreat. These… we’re going after specific things that folks have already been working on. So, I’m giving them, basically, you know, deadlines and assignments, and if they don’t really bring back those deliverables to me, you know, if they were supposed to have a website up by a certain date, and this and that, then we really drop them, because we really want a highly motivated group of people that are out there executing on their business plans and their Action Plans and , you know, really out there to build a business and to drive revenue and not just people that want to talk about it, or talk around it.
Matt:
Hmm.
George:
So we try to come up with a highly, highly motivated group of people.
Matt:
Right. And Uh.. can….let’s kind of go to the beginning of that. I mean.. we keep on mentioning this. But let’s go a little more in depth about what you’re talking about. Now you have….is there an opportunity for some people on the call? I know it’s not for everybody. And I think you’re pretty clear on that. But can you kind of say what you’re talking about here? Like, a little more in depth?
George:
Well, basically, you know, for anybody who is interested in the “Destination Hollywood “ Program, as an author, or just a person, that they think they’ve got an idea that they’d like to try to sell into Hollywood, Um… they can just purchase that program. It’s a 4-Audio CD programs and a Manual that comes with it. And it also comes with a follow-up one-on-one call with that. That we… we… you know, we talk about your strategy and if there’s something I didn’t cover on the program, and you want me to, then we talk about that. I listen to who you are, what you’ve got going on. If it’s an idea that I’m really behind and I take some stock in, I may decide to work on it with you together and produce it for you. Like I did with Voorhees Cruz. Or, I might just say, you know what, you need to talk to this agent, or you need to talk to this producer, or you need to talk to this friend of mine, who runs.. you know, MIRAMAX Films. And I might network them with somebody. And so that’s the Hollywood product. If you’re interested in the Retreat, if folks are… really think that, you know, they wanna really learn how to build their brand and run their business, Um…. they should e-mail me at mailto:George@GeorgeLebrun.com. And Lebrun is spelled L-E-.. B like Boy, R-U-N, like Nancy. George@GeorgeLebrun.com , and sometimes I kind of speak one-on-one, so that, you know again, I can see what it is you’re doing, trying to work on, and figure out if the Retreat is really something that can benefit you. Because, again.. I don’t just let people sign up. I don’t want to take people’s money that aren’t gonna benefit from it. And again, even if, I figure out that somebody’s not really “coachable”, then I don’t want them to come either. I don’t want to kind of, wreck the dynamic of all the other people that are there with, kind of the right mind-set. So we are kind of picky about who comes to it.
Matt:
Yeah. You know, I think we talked… I think it was you…. We talked about it a little bit, but you know, one thing, I was an amateur boxer for a while, and actually I was… I Um. ended up going out and I found… what I did was… I said you know what, one of these days, I wanna become a Golden-Gloves State Champion. And I ended up doing that. But what I did was, I found a coach, I found somebody that actually did it themselves, and had already been there. And I went to him and I said,”Listen, I want you to take me there.” He actually interviewed me. It was very interesting, ‘coz what you’re talking about kinda reminds me of my days when I wanted to box. He interviewed me and he said, “Look, I can…”. He ended up saying, you know, asking me questions. Did you ever take Karate? Did you ever do this? Did you ever do that? And I.. I answered all of my questions, and he said, “Okay, I’ll take you”. And the reason he knew that is ‘coz he knew he could shape and mold me into the person that I needed to become. And uh.. that I had the attitude in order to go there. And I think that’s what you’re talking about , and that’s what…
George:
Yeah. Definitely. I think that’s a really good analogy. You now, it takes more than a check-book, you know. This isn’t how I make my living. You know, this is something new for me, in terms of approaching people. I mean, I’ve been in business for myself forever and you know, doing it, on a pretty large scale. And, you know, if you’re working in the Entertainment industry, it’s a pretty lucrative field to be in. So.. Um. I’m really looking to work with people that, you know, again, it’s not the check that they have, but the aptitude, the drive, and the…the desire to really do something with themselves.
And Um…. You know, the people that come, can be somebody who’s just getting started to, you know, again, I’ve got folks that are… you know, I’ve got one signed in whose got a brand new book with Riley’s, you know, so she’s with a big house, to you know, people who have been on Oprah, on Diane Sawyer, on Good Morning America, you know, and .. you know and done something to establish their brand. And yet, honestly, those folks, Matt, have seemed to me to make more mistakes. The people that are further along seem to be the hardest people to work with, not the easiest, because, yeah, the train’s already left the station. The stuff that they’ve done wrong, is kind of , hard to, you know, backtrack on. And Um… interesting story, I think is a client I have. You know, she was a guest on a radio show, and, you know, she…. She did really well. She had 80,000 people come to her website, after the radio show.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
And so she must have said something good on the show, right? But then 80,000 people came to the website, 14 people signed up for her newsletter and not a single person bought anything.
Matt:
That’s a bad product…..
George:
And she had enough products on that website to look like a college-catalogue.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something’s wrong, you know. If 80,000 people come to your website and nobody buys anything, you need to change something. But she had it in her mind that she hadn’t done anything wrong, and, you know, and, you know, I’ve been on Good Morning America, and you haven’t and so …it was just tough to coach her, and so I stopped. Because I wasn’t just going to take her money for the sake of taking her money, if she really wasn’t gonna, you know, heed any of the advice, and again, you know, that was just kind of a no-brainer. Everybody understood that something had to change there.
Matt:
Yeah.
George:
So again, like your boxing coach, you really wanna, you know, find people with that right attitude and aptitude, and have the desire, drive to work with.
Matt:
Yeah. You know, and that’s….
George:
You probably do that in your own practice?
Matt:
Well, I actually do. And another thing, you know, even, it was interesting, coz, and I am kinda gonna… and this is a different analogy but the same thing I’m talking about. Boxing. But even like, people that actually… if you hadn’t a year in Karate before, he wouldn’t actually let them in there, because they held their feet wrong. And he would always tell me, he goes, “Look, you’re… when you walk in here and you’ve never done this before, you’re…you’re….actually,… you’re actually perfect. I’ve just got to chip away and create you to become the greatest.” And we ended up doing that. I’ll tell you guys, I mean, we’re talking about, you have two choices in life, you can grow arithmetically, or you can grow exponentially. And that’s one thing that I’ve found, when you build a great foundation. And when you build a great foundation, you find somebody that… that actually has what you’re….you know, has what can take you to the next level. What you want to do is you want to go to them and work with them because the reason being is because if you don’t, you’re gonna grow arithmetically. But if you find somebody that’s where you wanna be, taking people where you wanna go, I’ll tell you what, you will grow exponentially. And things will start happening. It’s your shortcut to success. And I’m like a lotta people say, well, there’s no shortcut to success. In a sense, yes there is! You find the people that have actually done it and have actually done it before with other people, and…and get on their coat-tails, ‘coz they’ll take you there again.
George:
Yeah. Absolutely. I agree with you, Matt. I mean why would I wanna have to make all my own mistakes when I can learn from somebody who already made them, and not spend an extra year, or whatever the time-table is, you know, learning from those mistakes, that they did, when I can… or… doing this myself… when I can learn from what they did and not repeat them.
Matt:
Yeah. Yeah… you know what I mean. I mean there’s a, there’s the easy way or the hard way. And I’ve nagged my head on a lot of doors and a lo of walls.
George:
Right.
Matt:
You know. So. So it sounds like…. is there any… I’d like to say we’ve been through….. actually gone through… a lot so far. Um is there anything you’d like to just like, say and share with somebody. Maybe there’s something on your heart or something like that, regarding building your brand and things like that, that you really want the listeners to know about.
George:
Well , like I say, I… I.. I.. really want people to take to heart the idea that, again they’re not just creating a product and it’s gonna just launch itself into oblivion. I know that… a lot of these guys… say hey, you know once you put your website out there you’re gonna make $50,000 a month the next day. It’s just not gonna happen. You really have to put as many things in the right place for yourself as you can. You know, really have your ducks lined up in a row so that, you know, if it’s…. You know, I don’t believe in luck. I believe in creating the right opportunity and being ready for when that opportunity happens by having everything aligned as best you can. And it takes a lot of knowledge to do that. There’s nothing more frustrating, you know, than if I have a problem with a plumbing, and I just open up a phone book and look for a plumber, you know, and you know I’m just kind of pointing my finger at an ad. You know there’s no real science behind it, and I hate that feeling as a consumer, where I don’t have any kind of control or knowledge of who I’m looking for to help. I’m just hoping, you know, that it’s not just some guy that’s gonna screw me to death, you know, on the bill. And you know it’s the same thing, when you’re trying to build your brand, you really need to have a clear understanding, of the resources, and the types of people that you need, to help you get where you wanna go.
Whether it’s getting on T.V., getting on the radio, Um…. doing your collateral… who’s the printer or the main publisher that you need to work with to get your book out there? Who’s the copywriter you need to work with? The Editor? You know, there’s so many pieces in making this work for you, no matter what your expertise is, that you’ve gotta figure out, you know, who’s the team that you’re gonna work with. And I hope that people can kind of stop, and step back and really think about it from that perspective instead of just, again, “Hey, I’ve gotta get my book out. Once I get my book out, everything is going to be okay. I’m gonna, you know, that product, you know, or whatever it is, is gonna just, you know, be the ultimate answer for all… all their problems and needs.” And it’s not gonna be just that one step. There are a lot of steps along the path of being really truly successful.
Matt:
Yeah. You know – you said something and it’s very interesting. I just did a call earlier with a guy named Drew Miles. And we were talking about it. And he does things regarding tax-strategies and how to save money to protect your assets. And cull out the secrets of the rich. But, when we were talking, He said something that you just said , that was very… it was… and I’d have to say beginning rich… and he says getting rich is a team sport. And you just said it too. You’ve gotta build the right team, in order to be successful. The same thing, no matter what you wanna do, in your business. This is a team sport. I actually had somebody that called me today, and they asked me if.. they wanted …er …they wanted to work for me. And I turned them down, and I said “Listen, I’m sorry but you don’t fit the….”, like he wanted…”You don’t fit the position on my team.” And I see.. when I look at my business the way that I look at my business has been going, I mean, my business has been skyrocketing. Quite honestly. I could tell you two years ago, when I banged my head on the wall and didn’t listen to it. Now I’ve found some great advisors and some great people that have really taken me to the next level.
And then I finally..put…put…together…am putting together a great team. Even George, you today. I got a phone call from a lady that found out about me from a radio show. I did a radio show with Entrepreneur magazine. And, you know, g… they called me and said “Hey, I know… can you help me.” And I said, “Look, I’ve got a great person that can actually answer your questions.” And I called you up, and you were able to answer her question in a matter of seconds. With answers I couldn’t have. You know, I really… that’s what it is… that’s what it is like to have a great team. I mean put great people around you that have answers, and you like “Exactly. Here’s how.. here’s how you can do it.” Because you know, you did it before. And you’ve been through it. And you’re like “Oh, exactly… this is the whole strategy.” And in a matter of 15 minutes, just because you had that working knowledge, you were able to answer her question, which I couldn’t really answer. And you know, that’s one thing, that people get, specially when they are around a team … have… you know… have people like you on their team.
George:
Well, you know, I think, you know, whoever the expert is, you know, you want to share knowledge is power. And the Japanese call it the “Collective Theory”, Uh and it’s with companies, not with people. But it’s the same principle that you know, they take, you know, they feel, a hundred companies together are much more powerful together than a hundred companies competing with each other. And, you know, and they you know, that’s how they were killing us in the Automotive Industry, you know, 20 years ago, was acting in concert together, you know, even fierce competitors came together in certain areas, to compete against some other corporations. Like in the U.S. Auto manufacturing.
Same thing, if you’ve got the right team, you’re gonna get a lot further than trying to do it yourself. But, you know, more importantly before you can figure out who your team is going to be, you’ve gotta have that knowledge to know, what you need, who you need, and…and…and so you can pick those people that kind of associate with and align yourself with. And again, just a simple example, if you don’t know anything about what the back-end of a website is and if I’m talking about relational databases and data mining and data modeling and you have no idea what I’m talking about, how do you know that your webmaster can do that for you? I’m gonna bet you 9 times out of 10, he can’t. And so, now, you’re already a leg down from somebody who knows all that stuff.
Matt:
Mmm. Yeah. Wow!… You’ve… I mean this is … You know, one thing that I really told… a lot of people have been saying this, and this was one thing I wanted to let YOU know, is that I got a bunch of e-mails and people said to me. ”Like Wow! Sounds like, you know, the people that I’m bringing on here, you know, got a lot more quality.” And sounds like you guys out there sitting and listening now, you’re probably hearing it come out of his mouth. I mean, this guy, he’s dropping some gold nuggets on top of every one of us. It’s amazing information. Some powerful stuff. I mean, quite honestly, some powerful stuff. I mean, he said some words that I had him explain. I mean, there’s a couple of things that he did say to me, honestly, and I will admit this, that I had never heard before. And you know, like, the good thing is, you do not know, what you do not know. And we’re here to start learning things, and he’s like, pulling things up, and putting words out there, that open us up and make us realize that there is more stuff out there for us to learn. And so continuous… we’re continuously learning. But he’s got a lot of knowledge and a lot of specialty in an area that can really help take us to the next level.
Do you have anything to add to that?
George:
Uh, like I say, you know, if people are really interested, you know, if any of this is resonating with them, they should e-mail me, and I’ll be glad to spend some time, you know, one-on-one, just again, figuring out if there’s a fit, and whether I can help them, and if I can’t I’ll be the first person to tell them I can’t. You know, the Retreat’s not for you, or if the Destination Hollywood product is not for you. So, Um, I…I turn more people away from stuff , than I have, you know, brought them in. And some of the vendors that have been around me say, “Oh – those people are ready to buy your product. Why won’t you take their money?” And I say “You know, if it’s not gonna help them, and Um… I’m not just gonna take dough from people that, you know,,,if they are not gonna learn or benefit from what I have to offer.” So, we spend some time one-on-one and try to figure out whether it is something that is going to be right for you or not. And, if I can help you I’m gonna let you know, and if I can’t, I’m gonna let you know that as well. So Um.. Uh…
Matt:
Well, how do we do that again? I mean, you said, your e-mail address?? I mean, some people, I just heard a couple of people get on the call.
George:
Okay.Um….the e-mail address again is ‘George’, that’s G-E-O-R-G-E, George@GeorgeLebrun.com, and ‘Lebrun’ is L-E-B (like boy)-R-U-N. And if they want to look a little bit more on the Retreat and that kind of stuff they can go to http://www.convergentbranding.com/ and that’s spelt C-O-N-V-E-R-G-E-N-T Branding.com. So it’s http://www.convergentbranding.com/.
Matt:
Okay. And then your e-mail address… Now is there a phone number I can, you said, they can call you, or, do you want to just be , via by e-mail?
George:
And for anybody who doesn’t get it, you can also e-mail Matt and he can just forward your e-mail along.
Matt:
Yeah, well not only that, what I’ll do too, for those, the people that signed up, I’ll actually e-mail you guys out the link to this. So you guys can actually check it out and see what’s going on, and Um….. is it alright if I send out your e-mail or do you want me to just send it to people…..
George:
No – that’d be great. That’d be great. And then, you know, if anybody is interested, they can use it, and if they’re not, then, they can just, you know, get rid of it.
Matt:
Right. And that’ll be in your e-mail box, so you guys can see that. And just, you know, I mean, I’ll bring, you know, what I’m… my ..my intention is to bring people like this, all the time, to the table. Um and I’m gonna work on that, but Um….. you know, George, I mean, this has been … I’ve been having a lot of fun… really we’ve got about 15 minutes left, just to let you know. We typically do this for about an hour, and Um… I wanted to.. I wanted to pull you in because you’ve got an opportunity to get in front of somebody that can really take you to the next level. And work wonders for you. And Uh…you know, is there? I know there’s you gave out a couple of tips regarding branding. Is there any other tips that you would like to share with us?
George:
Let me think for a second. For something that – maybe- would apply to everybody. Um, you know, let’s go back to the web for a second, and Um, I wanna make sure, you know, you asked me about ‘Relationship Marketing’ earlier, and Uh, I wanna make sure that people realize, that the difference between marketing online and offline. You know, as an example, Matt, if I came to Atlanta to visit you and we went out to dinner to some restaurant that you thought was pretty good, and we had a horrible, horrible dinner. And I came back another six months later, and we tried another restaurant, but it was busy, so we decided to go back to the restaurant that we had a bad meal at, you know. More often than not, people will give a restaurant a second chance if they’ve had a bad meal. And online it’s completely the opposite. Um, once you have somebody come to your website, if you don’t capture their interest in like, 30 seconds, they’re gone and they’re never gonna come back.
And that, you know, proof of that is, you know, before 911, and before the Internet crashed, when… you know, I forget exactly what year that was, but when that last Christmas, before all that happened, and we had the most successful online shopping Christmas ever. There Uh… was a survey done… Um. I think by Gardner Group, so, you know, high-end agency, the highest end agency. And they surveyed so many women that had the perfect shopping experience. So they found the website easy to navigate, they found the shopping cart, they paid, you know, the stuff was shipped to them on time, it was wrapped the right way. Everything was right. No complaints. And then they polled those people and said, the next time you go online shopping, are you going to return to such-and-such vendor? And 50% of the women that they polled about this said that they would try a different vendor, the next time they shopped online. Now that’s totally counter-intuitive to any kind of customer or brand loyalty.
And so people need to understand, you know, that the consumer is in a much more powerful position online than offline. And you’ve got to…to go to a lot more great lengths, to get these people, to Uh, to basically buy into you, and your brand, and your products and your services and to stay loyal to you. And, I don’t know if you’ve kind of had any similar experiences to that or, or herd those kind of statistics or not, Matt, but I was just astounded. And you’d think if someone had a perfect shopping experience, they’d wanna go back, because they want to have it remain the same. They don’t want to take the risk of having something not pan out. But that’s exactly what these women said, or 50% of them anyway said that they would do, and I really kind of, found that startling.
Matt:
Mmm.
George:
So, again, your brand is just so important. And sometimes even you’ve done everything right, it’s still not gonna pay off for you. So, you really don’t want to put yourself in the hole, you know, by not doing everything you can, you know, to build your brand, and market it in the right way.
Matt:
Yeah. Well, wow! Well, thank you for sharing that story ‘coz that’s absolutely true you know. What you just said, well this is funny, ‘coz I did. Because – I’m having fun, I just got this nice new equipment and I invited a guy over to my house. This guy did… in the last 5 years, he did over…Um….no in the last 3 years he did over 5 million dollars in selling vitamins, online and that’s it. And Um… same thing he just told you about the internet and how it is. You know, in the first 30 seconds in the brain. It’s amazing that people buy from him, and then they’ll leave, and then they won’t come back. Even though they bought from him and had a good experience. And everything he just told you is what was said from this guy that is actually, I mean, this guy is a free search engine guru. And I got to sit down and pick his brain. He said the same exact thing that you just said. So I wanted to kind of put that there. You know, I mean. What you just said is the truth. And a lot of people, you know,,, that is so true. And that’s one thing I tell a lot of people, and that’s one reason, the great reason, to have an E-Zine, so you can stay in touch with people, and build on that. And the one thing that you said, it was interesting that you said personality, that’s why I kept on saying stuff about it. I tell a lot of people, and that is, let your personality shine through in your E-Zine. Because one thing is, and I tested this quite recently, what he’s telling you about personality, Well… personality… is so true.
There’s a guy… he’s worth Um… he’s worth about 4 Billion dollars. Mmm you might know Ted Nicholas. But he sold all his business for 4 Billion dollars not too long ago. And I get to speak with him once in a while, and with, actually, Joel Christopher. I mean, Joel Christopher’s inner circle. We meet every Tuesday and Joel is doing a lot of stuff with Ted Nicholas. And Ted said something very interesting. He said, he was the best business.. he was the best copywriter. Not only was he voted the Best Copywriter – Business to Consumer, but also Business to Business. And he asked him, he said, “Listen, I’ve got a question”. And they asked him; they said “What makes you so good?” Everybody’s all like, “some people are either good at Business to Business or Business to Consumer but nobody’s typically Best at all of them. You are. What makes the difference?” He said, “When I sell, I sell to Individuals, But not only do I sell to Individuals, I sell to personalities. Because personalities…letting your personality shine through really makes a difference. Because people sell to people” And Um. One thing that I really kind of wanted… is true is this. I Uh, I actually started testing this out to my list, and a lot of you guys that subscribe to this my E-Zine. On Sunday, I did this, and this is kind of funny. I mean, it’s not funny George, it’s actually true about personality stuff. I actually sent out an e-mail to described people. And I sent the e-mail to my family, and I started thinking about it, and I ended up cooking. I have a six-year-old daughter, and I took.. I started cooking with my daughter after I sent my e-mail out to my family. And I said, you know what, I want to send that same e-mail to my list and see how they take it. And I sent the same e-mail, from the… coming from the same place. It came from a place when I was talking to my family, the people that I love. And I wanted to talk to my list – for there are people that I really care about. When I sent that list, well, I had more responses than I have ever had. And what I did was I allowed me and my personality and who I really am to shine through. And it wasn’t about the “Here’s how to do it”. It was about, “Here’s what I am really about. Here’s my values, and here’s what I stand for, and here’s things that I talked about.” Um, it’s just some things I just shared with my family.
The interesting thing was, when you allow your personality to shine through, you allow you, the you to come out. Amazing things start happening. And you know that’s why it’s very interesting, you keep on talking about, it’s you know, you take, you know what we were talking about personality branding.
George:
Uh … yeah again, I think it’s critical, and like I say, most people are not in a space alone in their expertise. You now, there’s gonna be more than one of them that’s doing their kind of coaching, or more than one M.D., or mortgage broker, or whatever it is that’s their expertise, you know, holistic healing. Whatever it is. And so, you know, I used to be the in-house producer in a multi-media company, and Uh…we were creating, you know, edutainment products for kids, you know, CD-ROM’s when I first started Interactive, you know, first came out.
And Um, I kept panicking because I said you know if mom is standing in the store with ten products on the shelf, what’s gonna differentiate us from everything else? You know, she’s not gonna know, you know, any of the people that are executives in this company and the background we have and why we create a great product you know. That’s just not gonna do. We’re not gonna be able to convey that message, you know, in that store. So I said, you know, we need a license, we need to tie ourselves with a brand, that’s gonna automatically sell the package no matter what – whether it’s a good game or a bad game. We’re already gonna be in the consumer’s basket, you know, because they’re just gonna buy based on the brand. I got the C.E.O. to buy into that and I went out and got the license for Tiny Toons from Warner Bros. and the approval from Steven Spielberg, because he owned part of Tiny Toons. And we started doing kid’s edutainment games, you know, we had “Buster Rabbit” and the rest of those characters, and it was a huge success. We debuted our first product and Microsoft and the newly formed Dreamworks, tried to buy our company for upwards of 50 million dollars within a week of debuting that product.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
So, again, it was a clear example of how we had turned up with the exact same product and the exact same game programming, and same game play, same interactivity. Everything was the same with the kids, but if the characters, were just things we created from scratch, it probably, you know, would have not been nearly as successful, because again, there wasn’t anything to… for mom to associate with or resonate with to really buy. Or reason to buy it, but you know, just seeing Warner Bros. as the name and the characters on there was like “Oh – this is cool” and you know that was before Nickelodeon was really even in existence, so we.. we…we’re competing against tons of products for kids stuff, you know for an audience. So, again I just can’t overemphasize how important it is.
Matt:
Yeah – well, we’re coming down on the hour. We’ve got about 2 minutes left, and Um George, I mean, this has been awesome. You’ve been giving some amazing stuff. And it’s real powerful stuff for everybody that really wants to.. and I’m gonna stress this again, if you really want to go to the next level, he’s given you some great stuff, and listen to it and take it on. I hope you guys have pulled out some notes, or if you haven’t pull up a notebook and start writing stuff down. And also make sure that you record his e-mail address if you… Um.. if you want to talk to George. Um George what’s your e-mail address again, just so that they can have it.
GEORGE:
It’s Geroge@GeorgeLebrun.com. And again Lebrun one more time is L-E-B(like Boy)R-U and N (like Nancy).
Matt:
And then also his website that he talked about was ConvergentBranding.com.
George:
Right.
Matt:
And what I’ll do is actually… I have all you guys… when you guys signed up, I have your information. What I’ll do is, I’ll just e-mail you guys and let you have as, and let you just click on there and go look at it. And actually you’ll have his e-mail address too so you can e-mail him. And Um… so when they e-mail you kind of give them a feeling of if you want to kind of set up a time to talk to them, or how you want to go about doing that.
George:
That’s exactly right, you know, I would set up some time to, basically do an interview, one-on-one. I want to learn about these folks, you know, what they do, where they are at, with their current branding, products, where they wanna go and how long they expect to take to get there. And basically, spend some time talking, getting to know each other. And just figuring out if there’s a good match there or not.
Matt:
Okay, and is this for everybody? Is it..
George:
Im sorry – did you say IS this for everybody?
Matt:
Yeah – would it be for everybody? I mean….
George:
This is for everybody who wants to really – you know, again take their branding to the next level. And just to clarify that, if you wanted to produce a book, every, whatever the timeframe was, every 6 months or so you’re gonna put out a book, and you don’t want to do book tours, and you don’t care if anybody ever recognizes you by face and you don’t have any desire to ever do any kind of coaching, or public speaking or seminars, or you don’t want to stand and be a guest on a radio show, well, then, it’s not for you.
But if you really want to build recognition, be able to spread your message or expertise with people, also you know, find revenue, then absolutely, it’s gonna teach you an awful lot. You know, it’s not there to motivate you, it’s there for you to work hard and really, you know, come out of there with an Action Plan. I don’t want to call it a business plan, but an Action Plan, milestones that you’re gonna achieve, and how you’re gonna go about extending that brand. The idea is that even somebody who’s starting from scratch, you know, within 90 days, the website is done, the products are done, and they’re out making money.
And, you know, people might say – “Oh, I can’t write a book in 90 days”. Well okay – then you’re gonna write an e-book and your gonna sell it chapter by chapter. Or your gonna do some other product or service that you can sell online in 90 days and not wait until you have the book done. You know you want to make sure you don’t become one of these groupies that comes to the seminars all the time, but doesn’t really, ever get any further, with really producing anything.
Matt:
..(Laughs..) You know,
George:
That come to the show and nothing really happens after that.
Matt:
That’s funny – I tell a lot of people like “Yeah You know”, then I say this jokingly “You know it’s a great book.” “You know I love this book called “Thinking Originally” and they say, “Yeah – it’s a great book”. And I say – “But I’ll tell you what – I’m gonna write my own book. Its called ‘Acting Orig’”. I mean you can think about it all you want, but unless you take action, nothing is ever gonna happen.
George:
That’s right.
Matt:
You know, so… I just… I love the book – I just thought I’d let you guys know, I love that book, but Uh, You know it’s really true – you gotta take action.
George:
And nobody can do that for you but you, I mean you know. You’re gonna come to this Retreat, I am going to give you this enormous amount of information, unbelievable tools. You’re gonna already have done a lot of the work there, and I don’t mean note-taking, but actually produced work that you are gonna use. You know, site maps, content on your site, you know, I really, come out with a lot of the content already produced. But once you leave there, even if you are on the telecalls, you gotta be able to execute the work yourself.
Matt:
Mmm. Well this has been great! I’ve really enjoyed it! And I know the listeners have too. We’re actually about two minutes past the hour. And George, before we go, do you have any closing remarks that you’d like to add?
George:
Well, I Um, just hope that some of this information has resonated with everybody. And I hope you found it helpful. And again, if you are interested in learning more, please shoot me an e-mail, I’d be glad to talk with you. Matt – I want to thank you for having me on. It’s been a pleasure.
Matt:
Yeah – I’m having a really great time.
George:
And Um…. I want to wish everybody good luck in really getting to where they want to get with their lives and their brands.
Matt:
Well George, thank you very much for taking your time out. And I know your time is very valuable and thank you very much for your time. And Um folks, I know your time is valuable too and I wanted to tell each and every one of you, thank you very much and I really appreciate each and every one of you taking the time out. I know we had some competition tonight, but Uh, you took the time out to come her, and I really do appreciate you. And George, once again, thank you very much for tonight.
George:
Okay. Thank you Matt.
Matt:
You guys have a great day and you guys will receive his e-mail address and the thing in the mail today. So be sure to e-mail him. All right, you guys have a great night and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
by George Le Burn and Matt Bacak
Matt:
And.. uh.. I just wanted to make sure that we could be in conversation. And.. Um.. so everybody that’s on the call right now, I just want to welcome you for being on here. We’re gonna have fun tonight. Actually, I am going to be recording this. So this is gonna.. we’re gonna have a good time. And if you guys don’t know George, you’re gonna get to know him. And, um… just kinda.. before we get started, I’ll tell you that uh, I was just at a Mark Victor Hansen event, not too long ago… a Mark Victor Hansen speaking event, and George had a booth right next to where we were. And it’s very, very interesting. Him and I have a lot of stuff in common. A lot more than we even knew at the seminar. And George and I started talking about technical things. Actually, he has.. he had a booth and he has a product called “Destination Hollywood”, and I thought it was absolutely just something that was very interesting. And he’s got this great theme. It say’s “Hollywood’s ready for you. But are you ready for Hollywood?”. And, he’s an insider. And he really is … about Hollywood stuff. And I’ll tell you, a lot of his background; it’s very, very interesting. He’ll probably go into it a little bit later. But it’s very interesting, too, because you know how when you meet somebody, you kinda like, George and I kind of, like we talked, and went out to lunch a couple of times. We’d really not get into personal stuff much; we’d kind of talk more about business. Well, later on, like a week later, after this event, George and I started talking. He says, “Oh yeah, I’m from Ohio.” So I said “Oh that’s very interesting that you’re from Ohio. I’m from Ohio too. Where are you from?”
And he said, I think you said “Youngstown”. And I said “Well, where are you really from?” coz that’s what we usually use. He said, “I’m from Warren”. I said “Where are you really from?”. And he is from my rival.. well, one of the towns right down the road from where I grew up. So it’s very interesting. And now his mother lives where I live. And it’s very interesting how people meet. And Um.. not only that….
George:
And you should tell them that – how small a town that is..(…Laughs..)
Matt:
(…Laughs..) I know it is.. It’s a …
George:
How likely is that? It’s very UNLIKELY that that would happen.
Matt:
Yeah, that’s very true. And then even the likelihood.. and then we start talking too, because you went to school at University of… oh you went to Miami, Ohio.
George:
Miami, Ohio. Yeah.
Matt:
And a lot of my friends from college went to Miami, Ohio. Just so you guys know this too. I just think it’s amazing at how small a world it is. Not only are we from a small town, that’s very close, but his parents live there. I’m gonna be there 4th of July. He’s gonna be there 4th of July. But here’s another funny thing too. Um.. I mentioned “Oh you’re from Miami, Ohio. Well that’s my Alpha chapter of my fraternity.” And he said.. Well, I asked him if he was in a fraternity. He said – “Yeah, I am. I’m a Sigma Chi.” And I said “ In hoc brother. I’m Sigma Chi too.” So we have a lot of stuff in common. But we’re gonna have fun tonight. And another thing that we both have in common is this. And this is what you guys are all gonna get the benefit of. We both have… Um.. How would I say it? Big.. Both of us have something very unique. And it’s the fact that we both conceive things in people, and be able to find people and take them to the next level.
And George has got something… now George does it with…. I’ve done it with Hollywood people.. and George has with Hollywood people…and people in Hollywood and things like that. But, no, I’ve done it with people regarding, um, you know, wealth-building.. in the wealth-building area, regarding self-development. Now George, George, really, you have done a lot of stuff. You have done a lot of work with Matt Daemon, Ben Affleck, Chris Moore… You’ve done some with Dick Clark… Dick Clark Productions. You have also done.... I believe you also said you have done things with Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Monroe.. and Chicken Soup for the Soul. And I think…and haven’t you done stuff with the Academy Awards and a bunch of awards like that too?
George:
Yeah. I can give everybody a little bit of background about me. I worked in the entertainment industry for about 20 years. And, you know, some of the shows I’ve worked on. I have worked on The Academy Awards, The Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, written daytime TV for Dick Clarke. I used to work on “30-Something” for ABC. I have written and directed features that have aired on HBO, TNT and CINEMAX. I did work on “Project Greenlight” with MIRAMAX Television, and Matt and Ben. And recently, last December, sold a new pilot for a new television show to the Discovery Channel. And I was also the C.E.O. of a media and communications company recently had 239 licenses to the biggest media reps in the world including DISNEY, Jim Hansen, Ozzy Osborne.. and Chicken Soup is one of our licenses. We were in with FOX Cable…The FOX Family Channel.. the NBA… and quite a few different brands. And you know, also the Marilyn Monroe Estate. So, um, I’ve had you know the lucky opportunity to have worked in that business and it’s a lot of fun.
At the same time, I’ve.. I’ve.. you know really wanted to.. kind of… I guess work on the other side of my brain,. You know the business side.. the non-creative side. And I have gone to Law School and I have my law degree and I also sit on the Advisory Board, for the School of Business at UT, which is one of the top ten business schools in the country.
And I have served as Senior Management on several of the high profile companies. So I’ve kind of done the creative side and the corporate side of both.
Matt:
Yeah. And you have a lot to offer to every listener that’s listening right now, too. And besides that… so.. Um. Let’s kinda get started. You know.. how?.. If there’s a couple of things you want to get started on… what would it be right now?
George:
Well, I guess it’s kind of irrelevant for people to know how I kind of came to be in this space. So I’ll take a minute and kind of explain that. As I said a second ago, when I was the C.E.O. of VAUX4, Chicken Soup was kind of our license source, and you know, I got to know Jack and Mark. And after that relationship kinda grew, they hired me to be a consultant for them to help them on a couple of levels. One was to find alternative channels of distribution for their books. And another was to really help them kind of increase their branding, and kind of revitalize it. The brand had been kind of diluted, because they started doing really, too many books. It’s more like a magazine now than a book line, as you know with two of them coming out a month. It was just too much.
And I also spent quite a bit of time helping them on the online side with their back end and helping them find tools, and software solutions to help them with their data-mining and modeling and work with their relational database. And after that Mark brought in Robert Allen and I started consulting for Robert Allen. And then Mark decided, well, you know, you’ve got so much knowledge to offer, and I know he was very gracious to say so, but he said, you know, you should be speaking. And then Janet Swyzer and then later, some of the other folks, David Cooper, were like “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”. You know, so…. Janet was the one who got me to create “Destination Hollywood” because she felt that so many authors and speakers, which was the majority of Mark’s audience, are interested in ultimately. Maybe someday getting into Hollywood, whether it’s just selling a story idea which could later turn into a cable show or network show or feature film. Or. You know, maybe they see themselves as the next Dr.Phil or Oprah. And, you know, how do they kind of fast-track themselves into doing that. So, I decided to create that product and let’s see, last fall, and I think that one of the things that really kind of convinced me, was last March I was in Megabook. And I was just there as a V.I.P. and Mark said, “Hey, just show up and talk to people.” So I said “Okay.” And I met a guy, for any of you that were there, named Vorhees Cruz. And Vorhees is in the Health and Fitness market. And it’s a really overcrowded market, as you all know. And he found a niche for himself by talking about emotional eating. His hook is that it doesn’t matter what kind of exercise program you’re on, or what kind of food you eat or don’t eat. You’re not gonna lose any weight if you don’t conquer your emotional eating. And I totally bought that set, you know concept. And, long story short, we got to know each other a little bit. And I said, you know,”You need a TV show and I took his materials and I went to the Discovery Channel and I actually didn’t even take him with me. I did it just with his stuff, and I sold them on the idea. And they bought a pilot and now we’ve got a television show on the Discovery Channel that will come out either later this year, or early next…next year.
So that really convinced me that, hey I can really help some people, and have fun at the same time. And debuted the Destination Hollywood product, and it really kind of took of, and that led me to meeting with some of the clients that bought the product to create this other branding retreat that I call “Building a Convergent Media Brand”….
Matt:
So when you say “Building a Convergent Media Brand”, what do you mean by that?
George:
Well, convergence is kind of an overused word right now. It means a lot of different things to different people. A convergent project, like “Project Greenlight”, was in my mind, the first convergent media project ever. It was working online, television, film all at the same time. It wasn’t linear, like, you and I wrote a book, Matt, and we wrote Jaws 3, and two years from now they decide to make a movie out of it. You now, that’s a completely linear process. This is using multiple forms of media all at the same time to create a project.
And so when I take that concept of a media project into a branding situation, I think that it’s important that people learn how to build a convergent media brand. And so, I mean, don’t just be author, don’t just be a speaker. How can you be on radio, on television? Whether it’s your own show, or you ‘re a guest, doesn’t matter. But you know, have your presence on those two media platforms be in publishing, be doing public speaking, be doing seminars, be doing your own publicity. And have those six spokes, basically, revolve around the hub, or the center of your business which is the online media platform.
And um.. so I just basically, hand invited these twelve people and we went out…
Matt:
So you’re saying its kind of like multiple strings of PR…(laughs..)
George:
(..Laughs..) Yeah. Well, you know, I’ve got a good example of that. I really believe in teaching people how to develop personality brands, and not product brands. First, personality brands… have the products and services that you create underneath your personality brand. And that’s a big mistake that Jack and Mark did.
Matt:
Now why don’t you, can you kind of explain a little bit more. What do you mean by ‘personality brand’?
George:
Well, most people, you know, that are outside this circle, that attend Mark’s events, have never heard of Mark or Jack. I was in the Senior Vice President of 20th Century Fox’s office about three weeks, a couple of days before I left for Atlanta where I met ...(…beep..)And we just were talking, blah..blah… blah.. and I just happened to say something about Chicken Soup. What I said first was, “And oh Mark Victor Hansen…” And she said, “Oh, who’s that?” And I said, “Oh you know, the Chicken Soup guy!” And she said “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.”. She actually had two Chicken Soup books on her shelf in her office and she didn’t know his name.
Matt:
Hmmm.
George:
And so basically they are known as the “Chicken Soup guys”. They are not known by their individual names. And kind of a further example of that is, Kim Kerberger is Jack’s sister. Now, no one knows who she is. But she has the distinction of being the No. 1 non-fiction teen-author in the world. And she’s sold 20 million books.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
So I started managing her career for a year and the same kind of thing. When I first came on with her, she had a new book out with Scholastic. So she was expanding her publishing, not just with Chicken Soup and ATI as her publisher, but she had a new deal with Scholastic. And they were gonna debut the book and spend $10,000 to fly her to New York, and put her up in a fancy hotel, and basically there was going to be 30 people, 30 young girls at their Manhattan anchor store. And that was the extent of them spending the $10,000. And I told her, I said – get them to give us the money, and I’m gonna do something with that. And I had never done publicity before. And I went right out and cold-called producers in 8 of the top 10 markets in the country and successfully booked her on every single one of those markets. You know, Good Morning Dallas, LA, NBCLA, San Diego, Chicago, you know, on and on, San Antonio. And not only did I book her on television in those markets, I, instead of having a book-signing with 30 people, or 50 people, I booked her in a high-school with 3-4000 kids, and we sold books in the back of the room. And then I got the T.V. show to show up at the book signing event to film it, so that the next day when she showed up on the television show, they could roll B-roll of the day before and just make a big deal out of it. So Suddenly she is in front of millions and millions of people, and it was for free. I mean, she wasn’t even paying a publicist to do that for her.
And then we went to Discovery, and we went to Discovery Health and I pitched them, and they bought of on doing a pilot with her. And we went to Clear Channel Communications, which is the largest media conglomeration in the world, and then sold them on the idea of having a syndicated radio show for her. And then she met Joe Ralph from Revolution Studios that produces all these big, 100-million $ movies, and all of a sudden she’s got a movie in development. Suddenly she went from just being an author, and obviously, a lot of book sales, but not a well-known author, to gaining media attention in every vertical.
Matt:
Hmmm.
George:
And so now, again, we’re building again what’s called a “Convergent Media brand” for her. Does that make sense?
Matt:
Yeah – makes a lot of sense. So let me ask you a question. When I was if I’m sitting here, thinking you know what – I want to be the next Dr.Phil. I want to be the next Oprah. I want to publish my own book. Or I want to have my own radio show. You know what – I want to have my own infomercial. Do you have anything that you can give to someone that’s sitting there thinking something like that? Do you have anything you could tell them? Or some advice?
George:
Absolutely. And you know – there’s a little bit of a different answer there. And you know if somebody would really wants to be a brand like that that would be on television in Hollywood, you know, there’s a different strategy that they would have to go after to execute on that. And we teach those in the Destination Hollywood Program. And for somebody that isn’t necessarily going to have a National T.V. show, but wants to have a brand like Tony Robbins, that’s what we are focusing on in the Retreat. And teaching them how to go that route.
Matt:
So – okay.
George:
And, you know, maybe I should kind of talk about some of the stuff we really go through in the Retreat, Matt, and really how far back we roll with people all into the formations of their company.
Matt:
Lemme .. right! Well lemme ask you one question. You said okay, somebody says, okay, you know what, I want to be the next Tony Robbins. And you’ll help them take them there. To that point? In a sense?
George:
Well. I’m absolutely teaching them what tools they need and what they need to do that. And whether we work at that at the retreat or after the retreat or something like that is kind of a case-by-case basis. You know, but as I mentioned with Voorhees, I got it. You know, I knew, I didn’t have to be sold on him. I knew he was going to be a big name.
Matt:
Mmm hmmm…
George:
And – you know – this is a guy that Oprah came after – to put him on her show. He didn’t solicit that. He’s been on Oprah three times. The producer came looking for him.
Matt:
Right….
George:
I mean this is the guy.. he was able to build 3 million customers online all by himself.
Matt:
Wow…
George:
…Before he did anything offline. And so you know – a case-by-case basis on how far we take it. But absolutely going to teach people the tools, you know like specifically, like in a Hollywood situation. Who is the buyer? Who do you talk to to buy your television show idea? And once you know and identify who that is – how do you set up what is called a pitch-meeting with that person, in order to go out and actually try to sell them something. Whether it’s you as the host of a T.V. show or if it’s just an idea you have for a T.V. show. You’ve got the next hot reality show idea…We teach you how to set up those pitch meetings with the right buyers. And then, we’re teaching you how to pitch. Because there is a real art form to pitching your story and being a storyteller. A lot of people don’t have that innately, and they need some media training. And it’s far different from being a public speaker, in what you need to know to be a persuasive storyteller and pitch-artist. So those are just a couple of quick samples of some tools that we’re teaching people to get further.
Matt:
Right.. Wow! That’s amazing! So you keep on mentioning this program. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
George:
The Convergent Media Retreat – or the actual Hollywood Program?
Matt:
No – the Media Retreat.
George:
Well, the Media Retreat…
Matt:
That’s the one you keep on referring to right? Correct?
George:
Well, I guess there’s two. There’s the Destination Hollywood Program, which is really the ins-and-outs of Hollywood.
Matt:
Mmm hmm.
George:
And then the Convergent Branding Retreat is again for someone who wants to have a nationally recognized brand, but is not necessarily related with Hollywood.
Matt:
Mm..
George:
So again – Tony Robbins – you know is a Nationally recognized brand, but is not related to Hollywood. Oprah and Dr.Phil are related to Hollywood.
Matt:
Right.
George:
Martha Stewart is a Nationally recognized brand, but you know, she.. She … has the T.V. media everything. But the Convergent Media retreat, we really start from the basics. Like what kind of company to form. As an example of that – some people ran off and they form an S-Corporation, because it is really easy. And they figure that part of their plan is gonna be that they’re gonna have to raise some money. You know, so they want to raise half-a-million dollars coz they need it for branding, and you know, they need to produce so many books, because they don’t have any cash to do it on their own. So they want to go out after some investors. Well, if they owned an S-Corporation, and they want any kind of companies to invest in them they just kind of shot themselves in the foot, because it’s illegal for another corporation to invest in an S-Corporation. They would have need to form either an LLC or an S-Corp.. sorry – a C-Corporation.
Matt:
Mmm.
George:
So there’s some simple kind of basic corporation structure that we talk about. We talk about liability. We talk about Corporate Mechanics. And then we start getting into branding. About defining your brand. What’s your brand identity statement? You know, what kind of niche are you operating in? You know who is your audience and your market? And what’s your positioning statement within that market?
Matt:
Mmm hmm..
George:
And we talk about how many media platforms are relevant to your brand. You know, does your brand, work, you know, on all of them.. Television…radio…speaking… seminars…etc..etc. Or are you more limited? And hopefully you’ve got something that can be shown, you know, distributed on all media platforms. And we continue with the branding, and really teaching you how to create an emotional …(..beep..).. and how people will get attached to you and your brand. And how to make yourself an expert in people. Most folks are not going to have an expertise that’s all on their own. You know, they’re gonna be in a market where there are a lot of other people that do what they do. And so, that being the case – how are you going to differentiate yourself from other folks to get noticed. And so you know we teach you some techniques on how to learn to stand out. And then we go into product development and and/or service development. You know Chicken Soup is a brand that has not only products with the book. I helped them develop a distance-learning program online, so that people can come and go any day of the week and sign up for a six-week course on parenting. And that’s a great example because a few of these guys went out and created a program this one time. We developed the technology to run it. And now it’s like this passive revenue stream, where they get enough people to do about $10,000 a month, month-in month-out. And they never have to touch it. There’s really not… they’ve outsourced the customer service to that and it doesn’t really tie up any of their company immediate resources, yet they are generating a bunch o revenue from it. Now they’re talking about doing another half-a-dozen courses. So maybe they can generate $50-60,000 a month, every single month in income.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
So, you know – we really go in-depth into what people should be doing with their products and services. And then we continue on into identity. You know, what does your logo look like? What does your collateral look like? What does your business card look like? You know all this stuff is really important. What does your website look like? You know, what’s the look and feel of that – it’s gotta be consistent. And people remember things. And if you don’t really brand yourself right, those little things that are subtle will take away from your credibility. A lot of people really can damage themselves that way.
Matt:
Could you give us a tip or two – that you could kind of put out there? Like a tip or two that we could use? Regarding branding ourselves?
George:
Yeah – you know one thing that everybody should stay away from is, this is basically something simple, but it’s really true, there’s a big thing that any of you out there that have an AOL address, or a YAHOO address or any kind of free e-mail address, and yet you’re an expert and want to be taken seriously and want people to spend money with you, is very counterproductive. This doesn’t seem professional when people have AOL addresses or yahoo addresses, or HOTMAIL. You’ve gotta have an address that’s tied to your domain, hopefully, again you’re working on doing your personality brand, so you’re using your name – prominently for a URL. Or maybe company that – and under that – like I have GeorgeLebrun.com, but I also have ConvergentBranding.com and some other websites. But you wanna make sure that you have a website that’s gonna help promote your personality brand.
Matt:
Well lemme ask you – you keep on saying personality brand….
George:
Well – your logo on your business card, you wanna use heavy stock, you don’t want to use crap paper.
Matt:
(…Laughs…)
George:
You want to have an interesting logo. I’d rather have a logo that somebody hates – but it’s so distinct they’ll remember it. Even if they can’t stand it they are never gonna forget it. Because people remember you if they love or hate it. And that’s a lot better than just having some kind of basic, you know, business card that you’re handing out.
So even – as I say, even down to something as simple as a business card, it’s really, really important that it’s something that’s gonna kind of mark you and identify you to people.
Matt:
Right. Well, I wanna kind of go back a little bit, for one reason. You keep on saying personality brand, over.. another one.. what was the other one? Product brand? You said there’s two kinds that people focus on – either personality brand or product brand.
George:
Right.
Matt:
Why do you say personality brand over product brand? What’s the reason behind that?
George:
Well, again Chicken Soup book sales are off more than 50% right now. And you know traditionally for the past ten years that’s how Mark and Jack made their living. They’ve made millions of dollars, don’t get me wrong. But you know, now they still have a lot of work-life. It’s not like they are ready to retire and now the brand is really diminishing. And these guys don’t have brand names. It’s a very small circle of people that go to their conferences. It’s not even on the radar-screen compared to how many people are in the country.
So again I have never seen Tony Robbins speak. I have never been to a Tony Robbins event. But if Tony Robbins was on the call right now and I heard him speak, I could recognize his voice.
Matt:
Yeah.
George:
And most…most Americans could do that. And it’s not me. And even though I haven’t paid money or spent money with him, he is a household brand name. And whatever he creates, you know, can reside underneath that. So if you’ve got a product that you launch and it really doesn’t fly very well, and everything about you is tied to that, then, you know, again – you’ve kind of shot yourself in the foot, because that’s the way people are going to remember you. Or more importantly, not remember you. So if you’ve got a personality brand on top and you create a product that does so-so, you can kinda like exit it without really having any damage to your brand. And even when a product does well, you know, every product has a shelf life. And so when that product is ready to go, then you’re gonna be able to introduce something new. But again, you’re personality brand remains consistent and strong.
Matt:
Thank you very much for that distinction. I appreciate it.
George:
Hopefully that makes sense to everybody.
Matt:
Yeah – that makes perfect sense to me. And I bet it makes perfect sense to the listeners right now. Um – so I kind of took you of path. You were talking a little bit… you gave a couple of tips, regarding branding themselves, and stuff like that, and I want to get you back there. So I’m going to take you back to where you were.(..Laughs..).
George:
Well, you know, again, I was going through some of the stuff too, that we do in the retreat. And, you know, I guess one other comment I want to make Matt, is it’s really important, you know, most people in the audience out there probably create a type of.., you know, they’re creative thinkers, they are creating books, they are writing programs and products, and Um…most likely they think, you know, one way. They are not doing right brain, left brain. And it’s really important that people do understand that. No matter what you do, what your expertise is, whatever your brand is, you’re running a business. And you’ve gotta think like a businessman. So it’s ..it’s…it’s…critical that you’re thinking about all these aspects, other than just like, okay I gotta finish my book. You know. You know… I’ve gotta get this book to the publisher.
Matt:
So what you’re saying is, it’s not a hobby anymore..(Laughs..).
George:
Pardon me.
Matt:
It’s not a hobby, it’s a business. And run it that way.
George:
Yeah, and just because you’ve finished the book, it doesn’t mean anybody’s going to buy it.
Matt:
..(…Laughs..) Yeah.
George:
I mean, again, if you and I create the greatest product in the world, if nobody knows about it from the consumer side, well, we didn’t make any money!
Matt:
Mmm hmm.
George:
Right?
Matt:
Right!
George:
So, how do we let everybody KNOW that we’ve GOT the greatest product in the world? And, you know, how are you networking? You know, have you done the right kind of marketing strategy? Have you done your relationship marketing? Have you…. uh…
Matt:
Hold on! You just said something interesting. I never heard that word before. You said ‘Relationship Marketing’ … what do you mean by that?
George:
Well, er, ‘Relationship Marketing’ is sometimes called one-to-one marketing. It’s something that is very important on the web. When you and I walk into the Virgin Megastore tomorrow, we buy a CD and walk back out again. If we come back in the next day, nobody knows us… we just walked in and bought another… you know. ..it just…er… one-to-the-masses, you know, shotgun marketing, you know.
Matt:
Mmm hmm.
George:
And online, Amazon is probably the best example, where if I buy a book, and I come back in, they know who I am. Not only do they know who I am, but they’ve got agents embossed that are going to recommend books, or different titles that I might be interested in. They are trying to mass-customize their marketing and do ‘Relationship Marketing’, to make me feel like I’m important to them. You know, if you go to a really good hotel, er.. usually the doorman…. even if you’re there for a day, they memorize your name. It’s a really strange thing. The Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, I rarely stay there, “Good Afternoon Mr. Lebraun”, you know, they know who I am, they remember me. Everybody… everybody in the hotel knows your name. It’s just something they do. But, we all… everybody wants to feel special.
Matt:
Yeah.
George:
And, so when people do that, it makes you feel special. And you know, automatically you’re gonna have some loyalty or affinity to that hotel. And I might stay there instead of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Same thing, you know, with your folks, if you can ‘Relationship Market’ with your customers, on or offline, and you know, hopefully both, and/or possibly mass-customize some of your products to your customers, your gonna have a lot longer LTV, or life-time-value with those customers.
Matt:
Mmm. Wow! You gave me some amazing nuggets! That’s…Thank you very much for that! Thank you! So let’s kind of head back to your talking… I mean let’s get a little bit back to you were talking a little bit about the…Um… actually this, your workshop. The data that you have with you. Can you kinda go a little bit more into that?
George:
Sure, you know, again, it’s two-and-a-half days and I like I started to say, we spend time on the formation, the branding, the products. And the business aspects of how do you fulfill those products once you are doing a good job of selling them. And then, you know, we’re really digging into each one of the media platforms separately; you know, television, radio. Um, you know, in radio, do you wanna try and sell and have your own syndicated radio show like Howard Stern? Do you want to have your own radio show, in just one market? I have a client that she has had a radio show in Boston for two years. Most people don’t understand that you can go into a radio market and buy your own airtime. You can buy your way on the radio. You can have a weekly or daily radio show depending on how much money you’ve got. She spends $350 a week to do a one-hour show every Saturday morning in Boston. Now that’s a great station, because she’s found that, she is a financial planner, and that is basically, the Um… business radio station. Anything to do with finance, stocks, investments, you know, that’s their audience. So that’s the right home for her. She’s found the right home. And she pays them $350 per week. Yet she is able to sell the advertising in that hour to other people to offset the $350 that she spends just to pay for the airtime. So basically she’s on the air for free.
Matt:
Right…
George:
And you know, she’s building her brand, and she’s selling her products, and it’s not costing her a dime. You know, it’s not like, hey, I need $500,000 to get myself on TV. You know, she can get on a very powerful media platform with basically, you know, no money down.
Matt:
Hmmm.
George:
And again, we continue through the rest of the different media platforms, public speaking, and seminars, and again, publicity. Like I was talking about with Kim Kerberger, we’ll teach you how to go out and do that for yourself. And, you know, even if you are gonna have a book signing, and you’ve got your first book, or you work with folks like “Wake up and live the life you live… love” with Steven E., and those guys set up a book signing for you. And instead of just showing up at that book signing, you know, and signing a few books for some people, you should have placed ads in the paper to drive more traffic to that. You should have called the radio stations and the television stations to say that you’re going to be in town. And try to succinctly pitch them on what it is you do and what it is you’ve got, and an interesting way to get them to try to book you a guest on the show. You should also be telling people, you know, what is your next project after the, you know, “Wake Up” book. And what are you working on next. And then, you know, whether your talking to someone at the book signing, or on a radio show as a guest, or a T.V. show as a guest, every one of those media platforms you’re on should be driving those customers back to your website, to basically get them in a newsletter or E-Zine, and get them in your database so that you can start marketing to them. Targeting your marketing to them.
Matt:
Mmmm.
George:
So we…we…we…hit an awful lot of different things, Matt. And basically, the goal is that when you leave there, it’s not…. you don’t leave just motivated. You’ve left with a lot of Action Plan items, all the dots are really connected in what you’ve really got to do with yourself. Let me dig into the web for another example, and we start talking about your website is broken down into your front-end, your middle-ware tools and your back-end, we’ve explained to people that what they previously thought that some web-master could solve all their online needs, is a 100% incorrect. And a web-master is nothing more than a graphic artist who, you know, creates things on the web. He’s not, you know, going to create your content, Um, hopefully he knows about UI and navigation. But basically that’s all he’s gonna help you with. He’s not gonna do anything with your relational database in the back-end, he’s not gonna be, you know, a database programmer, and he is not going to be able to teach you…um…….how to data-mine and data-model, to get those customers back, and how to up-sell them and do all the other important things you’ve got to do. And people need to understand all of those aspects of even just the online part of the business. So, again, when people leave they really have an Action Plan of how to like, move forward, and really, you know, take their brand to the next level.
Matt:
Mmm….. That’s awesome. You know, one other thing… we were talking a little bit earlier, and um.. you know.. you’ve got… I mean, even …like … now.. I was thinking…..talking a little bit earlier, and you said not only do you have this, but do you have some kind of ongoing support regarding that too?
George:
You mean after the Retreat?
Matt:
Yeah.
George:
Um.. yeah… basically.. um.. yeah… again we do the Retreat By Invitation Only.. so, if you are kind of picked to go, we really try to create the right dynamic of people. That’s really important. So…Um…. If you do go and it works out… Um… you can be invited to join what’s called the “Convergent Group” which is kinda like the ongoing teleseminar group. But again – I do that maybe a little bit differently than most people. You know – we’re not just talking about ideas, or concepts or things that we talk about at the Retreat. These… we’re going after specific things that folks have already been working on. So, I’m giving them, basically, you know, deadlines and assignments, and if they don’t really bring back those deliverables to me, you know, if they were supposed to have a website up by a certain date, and this and that, then we really drop them, because we really want a highly motivated group of people that are out there executing on their business plans and their Action Plans and , you know, really out there to build a business and to drive revenue and not just people that want to talk about it, or talk around it.
Matt:
Hmm.
George:
So we try to come up with a highly, highly motivated group of people.
Matt:
Right. And Uh.. can….let’s kind of go to the beginning of that. I mean.. we keep on mentioning this. But let’s go a little more in depth about what you’re talking about. Now you have….is there an opportunity for some people on the call? I know it’s not for everybody. And I think you’re pretty clear on that. But can you kind of say what you’re talking about here? Like, a little more in depth?
George:
Well, basically, you know, for anybody who is interested in the “Destination Hollywood “ Program, as an author, or just a person, that they think they’ve got an idea that they’d like to try to sell into Hollywood, Um… they can just purchase that program. It’s a 4-Audio CD programs and a Manual that comes with it. And it also comes with a follow-up one-on-one call with that. That we… we… you know, we talk about your strategy and if there’s something I didn’t cover on the program, and you want me to, then we talk about that. I listen to who you are, what you’ve got going on. If it’s an idea that I’m really behind and I take some stock in, I may decide to work on it with you together and produce it for you. Like I did with Voorhees Cruz. Or, I might just say, you know what, you need to talk to this agent, or you need to talk to this producer, or you need to talk to this friend of mine, who runs.. you know, MIRAMAX Films. And I might network them with somebody. And so that’s the Hollywood product. If you’re interested in the Retreat, if folks are… really think that, you know, they wanna really learn how to build their brand and run their business, Um…. they should e-mail me at mailto:George@GeorgeLebrun.com. And Lebrun is spelled L-E-.. B like Boy, R-U-N, like Nancy. George@GeorgeLebrun.com , and sometimes I kind of speak one-on-one, so that, you know again, I can see what it is you’re doing, trying to work on, and figure out if the Retreat is really something that can benefit you. Because, again.. I don’t just let people sign up. I don’t want to take people’s money that aren’t gonna benefit from it. And again, even if, I figure out that somebody’s not really “coachable”, then I don’t want them to come either. I don’t want to kind of, wreck the dynamic of all the other people that are there with, kind of the right mind-set. So we are kind of picky about who comes to it.
Matt:
Yeah. You know, I think we talked… I think it was you…. We talked about it a little bit, but you know, one thing, I was an amateur boxer for a while, and actually I was… I Um. ended up going out and I found… what I did was… I said you know what, one of these days, I wanna become a Golden-Gloves State Champion. And I ended up doing that. But what I did was, I found a coach, I found somebody that actually did it themselves, and had already been there. And I went to him and I said,”Listen, I want you to take me there.” He actually interviewed me. It was very interesting, ‘coz what you’re talking about kinda reminds me of my days when I wanted to box. He interviewed me and he said, “Look, I can…”. He ended up saying, you know, asking me questions. Did you ever take Karate? Did you ever do this? Did you ever do that? And I.. I answered all of my questions, and he said, “Okay, I’ll take you”. And the reason he knew that is ‘coz he knew he could shape and mold me into the person that I needed to become. And uh.. that I had the attitude in order to go there. And I think that’s what you’re talking about , and that’s what…
George:
Yeah. Definitely. I think that’s a really good analogy. You now, it takes more than a check-book, you know. This isn’t how I make my living. You know, this is something new for me, in terms of approaching people. I mean, I’ve been in business for myself forever and you know, doing it, on a pretty large scale. And, you know, if you’re working in the Entertainment industry, it’s a pretty lucrative field to be in. So.. Um. I’m really looking to work with people that, you know, again, it’s not the check that they have, but the aptitude, the drive, and the…the desire to really do something with themselves.
And Um…. You know, the people that come, can be somebody who’s just getting started to, you know, again, I’ve got folks that are… you know, I’ve got one signed in whose got a brand new book with Riley’s, you know, so she’s with a big house, to you know, people who have been on Oprah, on Diane Sawyer, on Good Morning America, you know, and .. you know and done something to establish their brand. And yet, honestly, those folks, Matt, have seemed to me to make more mistakes. The people that are further along seem to be the hardest people to work with, not the easiest, because, yeah, the train’s already left the station. The stuff that they’ve done wrong, is kind of , hard to, you know, backtrack on. And Um… interesting story, I think is a client I have. You know, she was a guest on a radio show, and, you know, she…. She did really well. She had 80,000 people come to her website, after the radio show.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
And so she must have said something good on the show, right? But then 80,000 people came to the website, 14 people signed up for her newsletter and not a single person bought anything.
Matt:
That’s a bad product…..
George:
And she had enough products on that website to look like a college-catalogue.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something’s wrong, you know. If 80,000 people come to your website and nobody buys anything, you need to change something. But she had it in her mind that she hadn’t done anything wrong, and, you know, and, you know, I’ve been on Good Morning America, and you haven’t and so …it was just tough to coach her, and so I stopped. Because I wasn’t just going to take her money for the sake of taking her money, if she really wasn’t gonna, you know, heed any of the advice, and again, you know, that was just kind of a no-brainer. Everybody understood that something had to change there.
Matt:
Yeah.
George:
So again, like your boxing coach, you really wanna, you know, find people with that right attitude and aptitude, and have the desire, drive to work with.
Matt:
Yeah. You know, and that’s….
George:
You probably do that in your own practice?
Matt:
Well, I actually do. And another thing, you know, even, it was interesting, coz, and I am kinda gonna… and this is a different analogy but the same thing I’m talking about. Boxing. But even like, people that actually… if you hadn’t a year in Karate before, he wouldn’t actually let them in there, because they held their feet wrong. And he would always tell me, he goes, “Look, you’re… when you walk in here and you’ve never done this before, you’re…you’re….actually,… you’re actually perfect. I’ve just got to chip away and create you to become the greatest.” And we ended up doing that. I’ll tell you guys, I mean, we’re talking about, you have two choices in life, you can grow arithmetically, or you can grow exponentially. And that’s one thing that I’ve found, when you build a great foundation. And when you build a great foundation, you find somebody that… that actually has what you’re….you know, has what can take you to the next level. What you want to do is you want to go to them and work with them because the reason being is because if you don’t, you’re gonna grow arithmetically. But if you find somebody that’s where you wanna be, taking people where you wanna go, I’ll tell you what, you will grow exponentially. And things will start happening. It’s your shortcut to success. And I’m like a lotta people say, well, there’s no shortcut to success. In a sense, yes there is! You find the people that have actually done it and have actually done it before with other people, and…and get on their coat-tails, ‘coz they’ll take you there again.
George:
Yeah. Absolutely. I agree with you, Matt. I mean why would I wanna have to make all my own mistakes when I can learn from somebody who already made them, and not spend an extra year, or whatever the time-table is, you know, learning from those mistakes, that they did, when I can… or… doing this myself… when I can learn from what they did and not repeat them.
Matt:
Yeah. Yeah… you know what I mean. I mean there’s a, there’s the easy way or the hard way. And I’ve nagged my head on a lot of doors and a lo of walls.
George:
Right.
Matt:
You know. So. So it sounds like…. is there any… I’d like to say we’ve been through….. actually gone through… a lot so far. Um is there anything you’d like to just like, say and share with somebody. Maybe there’s something on your heart or something like that, regarding building your brand and things like that, that you really want the listeners to know about.
George:
Well , like I say, I… I.. I.. really want people to take to heart the idea that, again they’re not just creating a product and it’s gonna just launch itself into oblivion. I know that… a lot of these guys… say hey, you know once you put your website out there you’re gonna make $50,000 a month the next day. It’s just not gonna happen. You really have to put as many things in the right place for yourself as you can. You know, really have your ducks lined up in a row so that, you know, if it’s…. You know, I don’t believe in luck. I believe in creating the right opportunity and being ready for when that opportunity happens by having everything aligned as best you can. And it takes a lot of knowledge to do that. There’s nothing more frustrating, you know, than if I have a problem with a plumbing, and I just open up a phone book and look for a plumber, you know, and you know I’m just kind of pointing my finger at an ad. You know there’s no real science behind it, and I hate that feeling as a consumer, where I don’t have any kind of control or knowledge of who I’m looking for to help. I’m just hoping, you know, that it’s not just some guy that’s gonna screw me to death, you know, on the bill. And you know it’s the same thing, when you’re trying to build your brand, you really need to have a clear understanding, of the resources, and the types of people that you need, to help you get where you wanna go.
Whether it’s getting on T.V., getting on the radio, Um…. doing your collateral… who’s the printer or the main publisher that you need to work with to get your book out there? Who’s the copywriter you need to work with? The Editor? You know, there’s so many pieces in making this work for you, no matter what your expertise is, that you’ve gotta figure out, you know, who’s the team that you’re gonna work with. And I hope that people can kind of stop, and step back and really think about it from that perspective instead of just, again, “Hey, I’ve gotta get my book out. Once I get my book out, everything is going to be okay. I’m gonna, you know, that product, you know, or whatever it is, is gonna just, you know, be the ultimate answer for all… all their problems and needs.” And it’s not gonna be just that one step. There are a lot of steps along the path of being really truly successful.
Matt:
Yeah. You know – you said something and it’s very interesting. I just did a call earlier with a guy named Drew Miles. And we were talking about it. And he does things regarding tax-strategies and how to save money to protect your assets. And cull out the secrets of the rich. But, when we were talking, He said something that you just said , that was very… it was… and I’d have to say beginning rich… and he says getting rich is a team sport. And you just said it too. You’ve gotta build the right team, in order to be successful. The same thing, no matter what you wanna do, in your business. This is a team sport. I actually had somebody that called me today, and they asked me if.. they wanted …er …they wanted to work for me. And I turned them down, and I said “Listen, I’m sorry but you don’t fit the….”, like he wanted…”You don’t fit the position on my team.” And I see.. when I look at my business the way that I look at my business has been going, I mean, my business has been skyrocketing. Quite honestly. I could tell you two years ago, when I banged my head on the wall and didn’t listen to it. Now I’ve found some great advisors and some great people that have really taken me to the next level.
And then I finally..put…put…together…am putting together a great team. Even George, you today. I got a phone call from a lady that found out about me from a radio show. I did a radio show with Entrepreneur magazine. And, you know, g… they called me and said “Hey, I know… can you help me.” And I said, “Look, I’ve got a great person that can actually answer your questions.” And I called you up, and you were able to answer her question in a matter of seconds. With answers I couldn’t have. You know, I really… that’s what it is… that’s what it is like to have a great team. I mean put great people around you that have answers, and you like “Exactly. Here’s how.. here’s how you can do it.” Because you know, you did it before. And you’ve been through it. And you’re like “Oh, exactly… this is the whole strategy.” And in a matter of 15 minutes, just because you had that working knowledge, you were able to answer her question, which I couldn’t really answer. And you know, that’s one thing, that people get, specially when they are around a team … have… you know… have people like you on their team.
George:
Well, you know, I think, you know, whoever the expert is, you know, you want to share knowledge is power. And the Japanese call it the “Collective Theory”, Uh and it’s with companies, not with people. But it’s the same principle that you know, they take, you know, they feel, a hundred companies together are much more powerful together than a hundred companies competing with each other. And, you know, and they you know, that’s how they were killing us in the Automotive Industry, you know, 20 years ago, was acting in concert together, you know, even fierce competitors came together in certain areas, to compete against some other corporations. Like in the U.S. Auto manufacturing.
Same thing, if you’ve got the right team, you’re gonna get a lot further than trying to do it yourself. But, you know, more importantly before you can figure out who your team is going to be, you’ve gotta have that knowledge to know, what you need, who you need, and…and…and so you can pick those people that kind of associate with and align yourself with. And again, just a simple example, if you don’t know anything about what the back-end of a website is and if I’m talking about relational databases and data mining and data modeling and you have no idea what I’m talking about, how do you know that your webmaster can do that for you? I’m gonna bet you 9 times out of 10, he can’t. And so, now, you’re already a leg down from somebody who knows all that stuff.
Matt:
Mmm. Yeah. Wow!… You’ve… I mean this is … You know, one thing that I really told… a lot of people have been saying this, and this was one thing I wanted to let YOU know, is that I got a bunch of e-mails and people said to me. ”Like Wow! Sounds like, you know, the people that I’m bringing on here, you know, got a lot more quality.” And sounds like you guys out there sitting and listening now, you’re probably hearing it come out of his mouth. I mean, this guy, he’s dropping some gold nuggets on top of every one of us. It’s amazing information. Some powerful stuff. I mean, quite honestly, some powerful stuff. I mean, he said some words that I had him explain. I mean, there’s a couple of things that he did say to me, honestly, and I will admit this, that I had never heard before. And you know, like, the good thing is, you do not know, what you do not know. And we’re here to start learning things, and he’s like, pulling things up, and putting words out there, that open us up and make us realize that there is more stuff out there for us to learn. And so continuous… we’re continuously learning. But he’s got a lot of knowledge and a lot of specialty in an area that can really help take us to the next level.
Do you have anything to add to that?
George:
Uh, like I say, you know, if people are really interested, you know, if any of this is resonating with them, they should e-mail me, and I’ll be glad to spend some time, you know, one-on-one, just again, figuring out if there’s a fit, and whether I can help them, and if I can’t I’ll be the first person to tell them I can’t. You know, the Retreat’s not for you, or if the Destination Hollywood product is not for you. So, Um, I…I turn more people away from stuff , than I have, you know, brought them in. And some of the vendors that have been around me say, “Oh – those people are ready to buy your product. Why won’t you take their money?” And I say “You know, if it’s not gonna help them, and Um… I’m not just gonna take dough from people that, you know,,,if they are not gonna learn or benefit from what I have to offer.” So, we spend some time one-on-one and try to figure out whether it is something that is going to be right for you or not. And, if I can help you I’m gonna let you know, and if I can’t, I’m gonna let you know that as well. So Um.. Uh…
Matt:
Well, how do we do that again? I mean, you said, your e-mail address?? I mean, some people, I just heard a couple of people get on the call.
George:
Okay.Um….the e-mail address again is ‘George’, that’s G-E-O-R-G-E, George@GeorgeLebrun.com, and ‘Lebrun’ is L-E-B (like boy)-R-U-N. And if they want to look a little bit more on the Retreat and that kind of stuff they can go to http://www.convergentbranding.com/ and that’s spelt C-O-N-V-E-R-G-E-N-T Branding.com. So it’s http://www.convergentbranding.com/.
Matt:
Okay. And then your e-mail address… Now is there a phone number I can, you said, they can call you, or, do you want to just be , via by e-mail?
George:
And for anybody who doesn’t get it, you can also e-mail Matt and he can just forward your e-mail along.
Matt:
Yeah, well not only that, what I’ll do too, for those, the people that signed up, I’ll actually e-mail you guys out the link to this. So you guys can actually check it out and see what’s going on, and Um….. is it alright if I send out your e-mail or do you want me to just send it to people…..
George:
No – that’d be great. That’d be great. And then, you know, if anybody is interested, they can use it, and if they’re not, then, they can just, you know, get rid of it.
Matt:
Right. And that’ll be in your e-mail box, so you guys can see that. And just, you know, I mean, I’ll bring, you know, what I’m… my ..my intention is to bring people like this, all the time, to the table. Um and I’m gonna work on that, but Um….. you know, George, I mean, this has been … I’ve been having a lot of fun… really we’ve got about 15 minutes left, just to let you know. We typically do this for about an hour, and Um… I wanted to.. I wanted to pull you in because you’ve got an opportunity to get in front of somebody that can really take you to the next level. And work wonders for you. And Uh…you know, is there? I know there’s you gave out a couple of tips regarding branding. Is there any other tips that you would like to share with us?
George:
Let me think for a second. For something that – maybe- would apply to everybody. Um, you know, let’s go back to the web for a second, and Um, I wanna make sure, you know, you asked me about ‘Relationship Marketing’ earlier, and Uh, I wanna make sure that people realize, that the difference between marketing online and offline. You know, as an example, Matt, if I came to Atlanta to visit you and we went out to dinner to some restaurant that you thought was pretty good, and we had a horrible, horrible dinner. And I came back another six months later, and we tried another restaurant, but it was busy, so we decided to go back to the restaurant that we had a bad meal at, you know. More often than not, people will give a restaurant a second chance if they’ve had a bad meal. And online it’s completely the opposite. Um, once you have somebody come to your website, if you don’t capture their interest in like, 30 seconds, they’re gone and they’re never gonna come back.
And that, you know, proof of that is, you know, before 911, and before the Internet crashed, when… you know, I forget exactly what year that was, but when that last Christmas, before all that happened, and we had the most successful online shopping Christmas ever. There Uh… was a survey done… Um. I think by Gardner Group, so, you know, high-end agency, the highest end agency. And they surveyed so many women that had the perfect shopping experience. So they found the website easy to navigate, they found the shopping cart, they paid, you know, the stuff was shipped to them on time, it was wrapped the right way. Everything was right. No complaints. And then they polled those people and said, the next time you go online shopping, are you going to return to such-and-such vendor? And 50% of the women that they polled about this said that they would try a different vendor, the next time they shopped online. Now that’s totally counter-intuitive to any kind of customer or brand loyalty.
And so people need to understand, you know, that the consumer is in a much more powerful position online than offline. And you’ve got to…to go to a lot more great lengths, to get these people, to Uh, to basically buy into you, and your brand, and your products and your services and to stay loyal to you. And, I don’t know if you’ve kind of had any similar experiences to that or, or herd those kind of statistics or not, Matt, but I was just astounded. And you’d think if someone had a perfect shopping experience, they’d wanna go back, because they want to have it remain the same. They don’t want to take the risk of having something not pan out. But that’s exactly what these women said, or 50% of them anyway said that they would do, and I really kind of, found that startling.
Matt:
Mmm.
George:
So, again, your brand is just so important. And sometimes even you’ve done everything right, it’s still not gonna pay off for you. So, you really don’t want to put yourself in the hole, you know, by not doing everything you can, you know, to build your brand, and market it in the right way.
Matt:
Yeah. Well, wow! Well, thank you for sharing that story ‘coz that’s absolutely true you know. What you just said, well this is funny, ‘coz I did. Because – I’m having fun, I just got this nice new equipment and I invited a guy over to my house. This guy did… in the last 5 years, he did over…Um….no in the last 3 years he did over 5 million dollars in selling vitamins, online and that’s it. And Um… same thing he just told you about the internet and how it is. You know, in the first 30 seconds in the brain. It’s amazing that people buy from him, and then they’ll leave, and then they won’t come back. Even though they bought from him and had a good experience. And everything he just told you is what was said from this guy that is actually, I mean, this guy is a free search engine guru. And I got to sit down and pick his brain. He said the same exact thing that you just said. So I wanted to kind of put that there. You know, I mean. What you just said is the truth. And a lot of people, you know,,, that is so true. And that’s one thing I tell a lot of people, and that’s one reason, the great reason, to have an E-Zine, so you can stay in touch with people, and build on that. And the one thing that you said, it was interesting that you said personality, that’s why I kept on saying stuff about it. I tell a lot of people, and that is, let your personality shine through in your E-Zine. Because one thing is, and I tested this quite recently, what he’s telling you about personality, Well… personality… is so true.
There’s a guy… he’s worth Um… he’s worth about 4 Billion dollars. Mmm you might know Ted Nicholas. But he sold all his business for 4 Billion dollars not too long ago. And I get to speak with him once in a while, and with, actually, Joel Christopher. I mean, Joel Christopher’s inner circle. We meet every Tuesday and Joel is doing a lot of stuff with Ted Nicholas. And Ted said something very interesting. He said, he was the best business.. he was the best copywriter. Not only was he voted the Best Copywriter – Business to Consumer, but also Business to Business. And he asked him, he said, “Listen, I’ve got a question”. And they asked him; they said “What makes you so good?” Everybody’s all like, “some people are either good at Business to Business or Business to Consumer but nobody’s typically Best at all of them. You are. What makes the difference?” He said, “When I sell, I sell to Individuals, But not only do I sell to Individuals, I sell to personalities. Because personalities…letting your personality shine through really makes a difference. Because people sell to people” And Um. One thing that I really kind of wanted… is true is this. I Uh, I actually started testing this out to my list, and a lot of you guys that subscribe to this my E-Zine. On Sunday, I did this, and this is kind of funny. I mean, it’s not funny George, it’s actually true about personality stuff. I actually sent out an e-mail to described people. And I sent the e-mail to my family, and I started thinking about it, and I ended up cooking. I have a six-year-old daughter, and I took.. I started cooking with my daughter after I sent my e-mail out to my family. And I said, you know what, I want to send that same e-mail to my list and see how they take it. And I sent the same e-mail, from the… coming from the same place. It came from a place when I was talking to my family, the people that I love. And I wanted to talk to my list – for there are people that I really care about. When I sent that list, well, I had more responses than I have ever had. And what I did was I allowed me and my personality and who I really am to shine through. And it wasn’t about the “Here’s how to do it”. It was about, “Here’s what I am really about. Here’s my values, and here’s what I stand for, and here’s things that I talked about.” Um, it’s just some things I just shared with my family.
The interesting thing was, when you allow your personality to shine through, you allow you, the you to come out. Amazing things start happening. And you know that’s why it’s very interesting, you keep on talking about, it’s you know, you take, you know what we were talking about personality branding.
George:
Uh … yeah again, I think it’s critical, and like I say, most people are not in a space alone in their expertise. You now, there’s gonna be more than one of them that’s doing their kind of coaching, or more than one M.D., or mortgage broker, or whatever it is that’s their expertise, you know, holistic healing. Whatever it is. And so, you know, I used to be the in-house producer in a multi-media company, and Uh…we were creating, you know, edutainment products for kids, you know, CD-ROM’s when I first started Interactive, you know, first came out.
And Um, I kept panicking because I said you know if mom is standing in the store with ten products on the shelf, what’s gonna differentiate us from everything else? You know, she’s not gonna know, you know, any of the people that are executives in this company and the background we have and why we create a great product you know. That’s just not gonna do. We’re not gonna be able to convey that message, you know, in that store. So I said, you know, we need a license, we need to tie ourselves with a brand, that’s gonna automatically sell the package no matter what – whether it’s a good game or a bad game. We’re already gonna be in the consumer’s basket, you know, because they’re just gonna buy based on the brand. I got the C.E.O. to buy into that and I went out and got the license for Tiny Toons from Warner Bros. and the approval from Steven Spielberg, because he owned part of Tiny Toons. And we started doing kid’s edutainment games, you know, we had “Buster Rabbit” and the rest of those characters, and it was a huge success. We debuted our first product and Microsoft and the newly formed Dreamworks, tried to buy our company for upwards of 50 million dollars within a week of debuting that product.
Matt:
Wow!
George:
So, again, it was a clear example of how we had turned up with the exact same product and the exact same game programming, and same game play, same interactivity. Everything was the same with the kids, but if the characters, were just things we created from scratch, it probably, you know, would have not been nearly as successful, because again, there wasn’t anything to… for mom to associate with or resonate with to really buy. Or reason to buy it, but you know, just seeing Warner Bros. as the name and the characters on there was like “Oh – this is cool” and you know that was before Nickelodeon was really even in existence, so we.. we…we’re competing against tons of products for kids stuff, you know for an audience. So, again I just can’t overemphasize how important it is.
Matt:
Yeah – well, we’re coming down on the hour. We’ve got about 2 minutes left, and Um George, I mean, this has been awesome. You’ve been giving some amazing stuff. And it’s real powerful stuff for everybody that really wants to.. and I’m gonna stress this again, if you really want to go to the next level, he’s given you some great stuff, and listen to it and take it on. I hope you guys have pulled out some notes, or if you haven’t pull up a notebook and start writing stuff down. And also make sure that you record his e-mail address if you… Um.. if you want to talk to George. Um George what’s your e-mail address again, just so that they can have it.
GEORGE:
It’s Geroge@GeorgeLebrun.com. And again Lebrun one more time is L-E-B(like Boy)R-U and N (like Nancy).
Matt:
And then also his website that he talked about was ConvergentBranding.com.
George:
Right.
Matt:
And what I’ll do is actually… I have all you guys… when you guys signed up, I have your information. What I’ll do is, I’ll just e-mail you guys and let you have as, and let you just click on there and go look at it. And actually you’ll have his e-mail address too so you can e-mail him. And Um… so when they e-mail you kind of give them a feeling of if you want to kind of set up a time to talk to them, or how you want to go about doing that.
George:
That’s exactly right, you know, I would set up some time to, basically do an interview, one-on-one. I want to learn about these folks, you know, what they do, where they are at, with their current branding, products, where they wanna go and how long they expect to take to get there. And basically, spend some time talking, getting to know each other. And just figuring out if there’s a good match there or not.
Matt:
Okay, and is this for everybody? Is it..
George:
Im sorry – did you say IS this for everybody?
Matt:
Yeah – would it be for everybody? I mean….
George:
This is for everybody who wants to really – you know, again take their branding to the next level. And just to clarify that, if you wanted to produce a book, every, whatever the timeframe was, every 6 months or so you’re gonna put out a book, and you don’t want to do book tours, and you don’t care if anybody ever recognizes you by face and you don’t have any desire to ever do any kind of coaching, or public speaking or seminars, or you don’t want to stand and be a guest on a radio show, well, then, it’s not for you.
But if you really want to build recognition, be able to spread your message or expertise with people, also you know, find revenue, then absolutely, it’s gonna teach you an awful lot. You know, it’s not there to motivate you, it’s there for you to work hard and really, you know, come out of there with an Action Plan. I don’t want to call it a business plan, but an Action Plan, milestones that you’re gonna achieve, and how you’re gonna go about extending that brand. The idea is that even somebody who’s starting from scratch, you know, within 90 days, the website is done, the products are done, and they’re out making money.
And, you know, people might say – “Oh, I can’t write a book in 90 days”. Well okay – then you’re gonna write an e-book and your gonna sell it chapter by chapter. Or your gonna do some other product or service that you can sell online in 90 days and not wait until you have the book done. You know you want to make sure you don’t become one of these groupies that comes to the seminars all the time, but doesn’t really, ever get any further, with really producing anything.
Matt:
..(Laughs..) You know,
George:
That come to the show and nothing really happens after that.
Matt:
That’s funny – I tell a lot of people like “Yeah You know”, then I say this jokingly “You know it’s a great book.” “You know I love this book called “Thinking Originally” and they say, “Yeah – it’s a great book”. And I say – “But I’ll tell you what – I’m gonna write my own book. Its called ‘Acting Orig’”. I mean you can think about it all you want, but unless you take action, nothing is ever gonna happen.
George:
That’s right.
Matt:
You know, so… I just… I love the book – I just thought I’d let you guys know, I love that book, but Uh, You know it’s really true – you gotta take action.
George:
And nobody can do that for you but you, I mean you know. You’re gonna come to this Retreat, I am going to give you this enormous amount of information, unbelievable tools. You’re gonna already have done a lot of the work there, and I don’t mean note-taking, but actually produced work that you are gonna use. You know, site maps, content on your site, you know, I really, come out with a lot of the content already produced. But once you leave there, even if you are on the telecalls, you gotta be able to execute the work yourself.
Matt:
Mmm. Well this has been great! I’ve really enjoyed it! And I know the listeners have too. We’re actually about two minutes past the hour. And George, before we go, do you have any closing remarks that you’d like to add?
George:
Well, I Um, just hope that some of this information has resonated with everybody. And I hope you found it helpful. And again, if you are interested in learning more, please shoot me an e-mail, I’d be glad to talk with you. Matt – I want to thank you for having me on. It’s been a pleasure.
Matt:
Yeah – I’m having a really great time.
George:
And Um…. I want to wish everybody good luck in really getting to where they want to get with their lives and their brands.
Matt:
Well George, thank you very much for taking your time out. And I know your time is very valuable and thank you very much for your time. And Um folks, I know your time is valuable too and I wanted to tell each and every one of you, thank you very much and I really appreciate each and every one of you taking the time out. I know we had some competition tonight, but Uh, you took the time out to come her, and I really do appreciate you. And George, once again, thank you very much for tonight.
George:
Okay. Thank you Matt.
Matt:
You guys have a great day and you guys will receive his e-mail address and the thing in the mail today. So be sure to e-mail him. All right, you guys have a great night and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Marketing Tips Provided to You by:
Matt Bacak, The Powerful Promoter
Author of Powerful Promoting Tips
posted by Matt Bacak at 1:04 PM
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