TBBO 428: John Dwyer - The Institute of Wow!

Baby Boomers, get excited. This is the podcast that's for you, by you. The Boomer Business Owner is the only podcast dedicated to helping baby boomers successfully start and run an online business. If you're ready for empowering conversations with successful online entrepreneurs, then grab a coffee and listen into your host, Charlie Posnick.

Welcome to the Boomer Business Owner. My guest today is John Dwyer. John is a baby boomer and a marketing enigma unique in the field of advertising. When it comes to creating more sales for businesses, his thinking is refreshingly unconventional.

John thinks way outside the square. He cuts to the chase and shows business owners exactly how to attract new clients to their business. He's also the guy who none other than Jerry Seinfeld trusted his latest advertising campaign to. Hey, John, welcome to the show.

Hi, Charlie, my pleasure. Way outside the square. I'm thinking you're probably not from New Jersey. Yeah, well, with that very quick, hi, Charlie, you picked it up.

You picked it up from down under. I'm from Crocodile Dundee territory. Excellent. Well, it's great to have you.

Thanks so much for taking the time. Notwithstanding my introduction, perhaps you could explain in your own words the services you offer. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Charlie.

Look, I have a business, which is the Institute of WOW. So the web address is theinstituteofwow.com. And what we do is that we provide marketing advice, which is a little bit outside the square, for business owners.

And there are so many business owners these days who are starting up a business from their home and going into business with a lot of technical skills about what their expertise is, but most people go into business without any marketing skills. So we help them attract clients to their business. Can you give me an example of something maybe that you've used for one of your clients that would kind of exemplify the wow concept? Yeah, good.

Okay. Well, as the name would imply, the Institute of Wow, we're all about wow factor marketing. I say to people, look, if you don't get the reaction from your prospect of wow, doesn't matter what you're selling, whether you're a lawnmower, whether you're a dentist, whether you're a doctor, whether you're a landscaper, if you don't get the reaction wow to whatever you might be marketing, then stop and start thinking about how you can. And most of the time, people think that they should get a wow by dropping price.

and that's the first thing that anyone does when they're on a bit of a dip in the sales curve, they drop price. And these days with Walmart out there and Costco and a whole lot of these big companies, if you think you're going to win on price, then I have to think again. So what I do is teach them the McDonald's marketing principle. And Charlie, I've got six children and they're 18 plus these days, but at one stage my wife and myself had six children under 12 and McDonald's because they had a wow factor with that free toy in the Happy Meal box.

We spent, I think, in the space of a few years, about $6 billion on Happy Meal, had nothing at all to do with the product, had everything to do with the free toy. So I teach businesses how to create a Happy Meal mentality to their marketing so that they actually have a bonus, a wow factor of some sort to take their eyes off the price. So for someone who's in what could be perceived as a commodity business, Maybe someone's an accountant, maybe they're a lawn mowing service. You're going to help them try to distinguish or differentiate themselves from the competition.

Absolutely. And that's what it's all about. And I won't bore you too much with it, but I just have five steps. And it's very, very, very simple.

If anyone's listening to this who is just starting up a business or perhaps owns a business and sales flatline, this wow factor formula is all about, number one, identifying your most profitable customer. and then just looking for more people who look like him. It's pretty simple, but believe it or not, not many people do that. They just say, oh, we've got men.

Well, no, no, if your most profitable customer is men, 50 plus, who have got an income of over $100,000 and they live in the richer suburbs, then they're the people that you want to continue to attract more of. So it's a matter of identifying who your most profitable customer is and then just look for more people who look like them. Number two is develop that wow factor I just mentioned. And number three is give them a problem and then give them the solution, which you'll see a lot of weight loss advertisements on TV.

I'm very, very good at that. Number four is fix your website because I would say that around about 90% of business websites, not just small, but business websites, don't have the proper direct response components on them and they wonder why it's not working for them. And number five is build repetitive trade. And the only way you can build repetitive trade really is to capture the name and contact details of your customers or prospects.

and you know that 84% of all websites around the world have no data capture facility on their homepage, which means they're letting people come onto their website, surf around and leave without giving them a reason to leave their data, which means they've had a dinner party and they had no clue who came. Okay, so I'm listening to this. I'm intrigued. Now, are you just consulting with me?

Am I paying for your consultation or do you also offer a done with you or done for you service? For example, you talked about website. Great. You could say, Charlie, do A, B, C, D, and E, but do you also have a service where you can implement that for me?

Yes, we do. Yeah, we do. What we found is that we're in the space, our sweet spot these days are businesses that are doing hundreds of thousands of dollars through to probably 20 million. We have businesses that are doing 100 million too but the sweet spot for us is that small to medium-sized business doing half a million through to 20 million and they sometimes just are too busy in the business to be able to um to work on it and so therefore they will come and invest in a coaching program that we have and we do that all around the world i've got a food or parlor that i spoke to yesterday in washington so they're part of our um our coaching program it doesn't matter where you are these days because of skype and what we do is that we do it with them and so we provide them with the recommendations for a marketing plan for their business and that happens very quickly within a week or so of talking to them so they get a complete 12 15 20 page document It have a layout of what their webpages should look like It tell them what they should be doing in terms of offline advertising And I provide them with our supplier list.

And our supplier list of people who build websites or might be, you know, record TV commercials, or they might be able to actually do PR for them. And they've got a supplier list from heaven because I've been working with most of these people for many years and trust them. Okay. So I just want to make sure that I'm clear in this.

I engage you for your services and I am a dry cleaner and you talk to me, you come up with this document, which talks about your recommendations and some of them are more technical recommendations, like as it relates to the website. Are you then saying, Charlie, this is what I'd suggest you implement. Here's my list of recommended website people. I've worked with them before.

If you show them the documents, show them what I'm suggesting, they will know exactly what to do for you. Exactly. That's it. So therefore, it'll be like Jerry Lewis introducing you to Dean Martin because he's worked with him for so many years, then Dean Martin pretty much knows what Jerry Lewis's next line is.

So these people have been working with us for quite some time. The reason we do it this way is a done-for-you program where I take everything over and basically physically liaise with all of the suppliers and make sure it happens. That would be a much more expensive program and most of these small businesses don't want to pay that sort of money. So what we've done is developed, and you nailed it when you said done with you, it's a done with you program.

So I'm there 24-7. These people can contact me on the Facebook page that we have. So this is called the Masterclass. And what we do is that we have a dedicated Facebook closed user group.

And that means is if they want to ask me any questions about layouts, or they want to show me a flyer and get my critique on it, or they just want to ask me what the sign should look like outside their drugstore, they post that onto this closed group Facebook page where they can get me 24-7. And within an hour, two hours a day or two, probably the most, I'm always back to them to say, look, I think you're a seafood restaurant. You should not be having a warm colours on your signage.

It should be greens and blues. And so they get the contact with me on a one-to-one basis, but it's via Facebook, you know, so that, you know, obviously if I'm building my database as I am, I couldn't accept calls all day. I'd go nuts. Understood.

So putting aside the monies that I would invest for implementing this stuff, like putting aside the money that I'm going to pay one of your recommended web developers, just to engage with you to get the high level strategy and have that relationship, I'm sure there's differing price points, but can you give me a range of what I should budget to work with you to avail myself of your service? Normally, it's just $2 million dollars cash in a brown paper bag is that australian dollars or at the back of the shelves yeah um yeah look charlie uh we think it's a pretty good deal it's uh it's australian dollars around a give or take around about two thousand dollars a month and so therefore in your money probably be 1500 ish us a month something like that yeah um and uh if you multiply that by the 12 is a 12-month program, so $24,000, $25,000 our money, which in American money would be about $20,000.

And what happens with that is that the business, if they really look into what they're paying their receptionist at the moment, it's probably that plus half, if not double. And I often ask them, who do you think you'd probably get the best value out of? Susie who's looking after answering the phones and doing all the office duties? Or do you think an investment in a marketing program like this would probably give you a bit of ROI?

and we know what the answer is. And a lot of businesses are very, very good technically at what they do, but when they came out of college, no one taught them at college when they were a dentist how to actually market their dentistry practice. They're a very good dentist, but they don't know how to get customers. And so what we do, because we've been involved in every business A to Z, we have a Skype call and after that one-hour Skype call, we get the business to actually fill in a questionnaire so that before the Skype call I can hit the ground running.

and then after that Skype call within 10 working days and we stick to that the company gets a marketing action plan from me which provides layouts of brochures and layouts of websites and just about anything they need with regards to telling them what they should be doing online and offline and then after that program gets to them we have another Skype call personally with me so that they don't get the 25 year old apprentice they get me and on that second Skype call they get to ask questions about the marketing plan and say look why did you recommend this and Why did you recommend that?

And then after that, we have podcasts and weekly and fortnightly webinars. We have the 24-7 Facebook club and we have all sorts of digital products. And then we have events throughout the year, which, of course, you guys wouldn't be coming down to Australia for events, but we do have events throughout the year in Australia. Do you have a preference of working with business owners who sell physical products versus digital products or services?

No, not really. And I know it sounds cliché, but the same principles apply. Those five steps that I ran through with you, Charlie, a moment ago, pretty much it applies to any business. And, yes, of course, you know, the executions need to change.

I mean, if I had a very upmarket Hilton or Sheraton Hotel on board, then the demeanour, the brand persona of what we pump out would be very different from the local lawnmower or landscaper. And so, therefore, you know, where a lot of our expertise is making businesses understand what look and feel they should be projecting in the marketplace. But essentially, that five-step formula pretty much works for every business, every business. And I know you mentioned your sweet spot of existing businesses, maybe a couple few hundred thousand dollars up to several million dollars.

Do you work with or do you have any interest in working with somebody who's newer in the game? So someone's listening to this podcast, they reach out to you and they say, John I just really like what you say I love to kind of get started on the right foot here I willing to make an investment in my business Will you work with me Will you work with a startup or newer business Yeah absolutely Absolutely And what we done Charlie is on the front of my website theinstituto.com, he puts in the plug.

I practice what I preach. I say to people, look, when you have a business that services a number of different demographics, make sure you don't create a website or for that matter, any communications that is one size fits all. Because I know in my own instance, we've got six children between 18, and he's just left school, through to late 20s, who has a mortgage and a little baby. Now, even though that's only a 10-year gap, the fact is the language and conversation I would have with the late 20s versus the 18-year-old, completely different.

One's interested in mortgages and making sure that the front lawn looks nice. The other one even hasn't thought about a house in his wildest dreams. And so what I've done in my website, and I advise everyone to do this if they have a sort of different demographics across the products and services that they're looking for, is have a Macca's menu board, a McDonald's menu board. And so when people come onto my website, they'll see that there's a panel there that says, are you a start-up?

And if they click that, they'll go through to a page where there's a video from me talking to a start-up and a whole lot of other information, but there's a video on every page, and that's a hint for everybody as well. And then if you're an established business, you'll click that panel on my McDonald's menu board and you'll go through to a subpage where I'll talk to you as an existing business. And if you're a franchisee and so on and so forth. And so what I would suggest to an accountancy firm, for example, was that if they had their homepage of the website sitting in front of you and me now, they should say, look, are you interested in self-managed super?

Click here. Are you interested in tax minimisation? Click here. And you might say, oh, that's up on the menu bar anyway.

well that's fine but what you should do is make sure that it's loud and clear just like you do when you walk into mcdonald's restaurant it's very loud and clear that you offer these three four five or seven services click which one you want to talk about so i certainly would speak to a startup business but in a different way to how i'd speak to someone who's been in business for 10 years got it now i don't know if it was on your linkedin profile or perhaps on your website the institute of wow.

com you mentioned um the wow manifesto giant book what is that Yeah, look, what happens is that when you're on the speaking circuit, and I am, it's almost mandatory that you have a book. And I think some people just sort of print one very quickly down at the local printer and just make sure they've got a book. I thought, look, I'll spend a bit more time on this. And so what I've done is I've created a huge book, which is a tabloid newspaper size, and it's leather-bound with the gold-tipped edges and it's sickening, quite frankly.

It's so big and it's so boastfulness. It's so showy off. It's quite sickening. But it's very, very popular because inside this book are pretty much the last 20-odd years of my best ideas, both online and offline, and I've called it the Wow Manifesto because I believe that if you're going to spruit that you're okay at everything.

So if you actually say, look, I'm the expert at whatever, So you better back it up because I'm a bit of a skeptic, to be honest with you, with a lot of these speakers who tell you how good they are, but they don't back it up with a lot of case studies. So this Wow Manifesto book, which is available online, it's a book of case histories of businesses using that formula that I mentioned earlier and actually making a lot of money out of it. So it's a giant swipe file for anyone that's interested in just swiping ideas and using them for their own business.

And can I get that on Amazon or on your website or both? Yeah, thank you, Charlie. Charlie, this is the best interview I've ever had because you're letting me have plugs here, there and everywhere, which is fantastic. Yes, mate, it's on my website.

So therefore, if anyone goes to the Institute of WOW.com, just click on the products page and you'll go through to not just the WOW manifesto, but a whole bunch of other things. Got it. Now, with respect to your business, is there some kind of overarching mission or vision of what you're trying to accomplish through your business over the next few years?

Yeah, look, I must say that I, look, and Charlie, I'm not going to give you that cliched phrase that a lot of speakers give and that is, look, I'm here to save the world. I just want to give back the whole thing. I think a lot of that's a bit corny, to be honest with you. Yes, you know, I'm a Christian and I want to make sure I do the right thing for everybody, but no, I'm not here to tell you that I'm out there to save the world.

I want to change lives and all that sort of stuff. I think I just have to be down to earth and say, look, the skills that I have are, I think, quite unique in terms of their direct response marketing tactics that I teach. And I think that at the end of the day, if you're a small to medium-sized business, there's a feeling of loneliness because you don't have a marketing team, you don't have a marketing manager. and you're very good as a dentist or you're very good as an accountant or a lawyer or you're very good as a landscaper but you don't know how to attract new customers and I think what we're doing is filling a big void because most of the big advertising agencies wouldn't look at you because you're a small business and if they did they would tell you to advertise on the side of a bus or the back of a taxi or billboards on the freeway or take out branding advertisements online and I always ask anyone in my seminar room, is there anyone in this room today who's ever bought anything off the side of a bus?

And the answer is no. What about the back of a taxi? No. Has anybody ever bought anything when they've watched the NFL football game and the electronic signage runs around the side of the field?

No. So there's so many businesses being conned by so many supposedly advertising icons. It's not funny. And I just think it's about time that, you know, small to medium-sized businesses had the opportunity to get into a coaching program where it's common sense on steroids because that's all I do.

I just provide common sense on steroids. Nobody I know has ever bought anything off the side of a bus Well by helping all these small businesses to help their customers derivatively you are changing the world So congratulations Thank you. You just poured cold water on my skepticism. Now, you help people.

So have you ever in the past or do you currently avail yourself of the services of an outside coach or a mentor or maybe a mastermind group to help you grow your business? Yes, I do. In fact, I'm one of a number of them. I think, you know, when I'm doing interviews like this, Charlie, and you probably get the same sort of question, I get asked the question, look, you know, if you could talk to your 20-something-year-old self, what would you advise them?

And my answer normally is to hang around with people who say why not rather than people who say why. And I guess that's a bit corny. It's, you know, really just hanging around with entrepreneurs, not necessarily entrepreneurs, but people with entrepreneurial your thinking, not people who'd go, oh, you know, why would you do that? And I think the mistake I made in my 20s and 30s, I think I woke up to myself when I got to my 40s, but I did hang around passengers.

I hung around people who sucked lots of ideas and hopefully energy out of me, but didn't give anything back. And I thought, no, this is not going anywhere. I've got to hang around with, you know, entrepreneurial, positive thinking people. So I purposely have gone out and, you know, over the years enjoyed mastermind clubs.

I'm a member of one in America at the moment where I go back to Phoenix three times a year and hang around with a whole bunch of other entrepreneurs. And it sets me back around about $40,000 to $50,000 a year by the time I go back three times. But you know what? I'm hanging around positive people.

And I have to say that when you hang around positive people, there can only be good that comes out of it. Yeah, got it. Agreed. Well, I hate to do this, but let's wrap up with this question.

So, I am your friend. I'm your neighbor. And I say, John, I know you're a very successful entrepreneur. I know you help businesses.

I am working for someone else, as you know. I'm looking to do something entrepreneurial myself. I'm kind of in the early stages. Are there any high-level tips or pieces of advice you would give me in these early stages to kind of put me on the right track to help ensure my success going forward as an entrepreneur?

It's funny, you know, my daughter's going through this at the moment, Charlie, and it was only yesterday that I was having a chat with her about it. She's 25 and she's just had a little baby a few months ago. So therefore, her husband works pretty hard at his job. And she's looking to set up, like a lot of people in that particular circumstance, is looking to set up, you know, an online business.

And I said where she's very much into organic food and healthy eating and so forth. And she started to go down that path. And I said, sweetheart, that's fantastic. We all know that organic is the new black.

So that's a growing industry. However, have you done Google search volumes? Have you actually pumped in some keywords and found out what people are looking for? And you know what, as savvy as these 20-something-year-olds are these days, and my daughter's pretty smart, she had not done that.

And so I would say to anybody, you know, rather than just jump into a career path because you love that subject matter or whatever that business is, I want to get involved because I love it. No, you can't do that. That's silly. Not if you want to put food on the table for your family.

We all would love to do stuff that we love. I mean, there's a bunch of other stuff that I'd probably prefer to be doing than what I've been doing for the last 20 years. But I had to put food on the table for six children and myself and my wife. So you do perhaps what you're good at, not necessarily what you love and what's profitable.

So I said to a sweetheart, look, the first thing you need to do is to do a Google keyword search on what people are looking for and then set up your business. And that's the piece of advice I would give to everyone. Just don't think, oh, look, I'm good at so-and-so, so I'm going to go out and do that. No, no, no.

You might be the only one in the world that's interested in that. Make sure you find out what people are looking for and what sort of demand there is for it. Excellent advice. So what is the best way for our listeners to reach out, connect with you, and find out more about your products and services?

Thank you very much, Charlie. Look, it's two things. Number one, the institute of wow.com.

If you go on there, I'd suggest you could be there for half an hour, an hour going through all of the case studies and free stuff that's on there. So even if you think, look, I can't understand a word that he's saying, this Australian accent is just throwing me. at least if you never want to talk to me, you can get on and pinch a whole lot of stuff off that website because I do practice what I preach. I give out a lot of free case studies.

The other website that someone might like to go to is that we have a daily webinar that we run twice a day, normally at 11 in the morning and 8 at night, and it's automated. And if anyone would like to go on there and watch one of my webinars, it goes for about 50-something minutes, you'll actually hear that five-step program that I snapshotted in a full presentation. And it's a webinar, which is a bit like a Tonight Show. It's not death by PowerPoint.

It's me behind a desk and various slides come in and come out again. I think it's rather entertaining, but I'm biased. So if anyone would like to see that, just go to podcastwithwow.com.

So that's podcastwithwow.com. Got it. Well, all the great resources mentioned in today's episode, along with a full transcript of today's episode, will be available on the show notes page at theboomerbusinessowner.

com. That's not to be confused with theinstituteatwow.com. John, thanks so much.

On behalf of all of our listeners, we really, really appreciate your help. My pleasure. Thank you very much, Charlie. Boomers, the time is now to take action and finally build your dream online business.

And the great news is that Charlie is here to help. Visit theboomerbusinessowner.com and sign up for your free 15-minute consultation with Charlie to help you discover your first steps to starting your online business. Only those who take action are rewarded.

So visit theboomerbusinessowner.com and we'll see you tomorrow.