MKJ (00:00.568)

Hey, hey, CEO Mischief Makers, welcome to the conversation. I get to chat with a guy that’s been on my podcasts probably this is probably the fourth time I’ve talked to Peter Lasoski, who is the CEO of iProlio and the founder of the product Relatable and the framework Relatable. We’ve probably chatted, Pete, what? Probably at least four times on my podcasts.

Peter Lisoskie (00:25.84)

Well, you just can’t, you can’t get rid of me. I’m kind of like that old dog, the stray dog that keeps coming back to your door. You know, I will say that I was looking for pets. You know, one thing about sales is 90 % of sales is showing up and seems like dogs always do a great job, but they’re looking for food. They all show

MKJ (00:33.122)

And I

MKJ (00:43.448)

They do dogs, cats, birds. had a we have a raccoon that my father in law I’m living with my father in law right now and and he feeds the raccoons and the deer and everything. So the raccoon raccoon comes up to the back door back sliding door up on the deck. He has to come up on the deck upstairs and come to the door and he just sits there and stares at you until you throw him some bread.

Peter Lisoskie (00:52.205)

really? Wow.

Peter Lisoskie (01:03.376)

Because he knows what’s on the other side of that door. There’s food.

MKJ (01:06.754)

He knows and he watches he can see us. So I get up and he watches me and I walk over. I mean, it’s like, what the heck? Bandit is trying to steal bread. Anyway, thank you for coming back to the conversation and continuing to engage with me because I really we’ve got some pretty cool stuff going on. But but to follow this framework, we’ve talked about on the show before, but we’ve talked about different things. This time, I really want to hone in on.

the difference between what we were doing together before, let’s say back in 2020, that whole process we were going through, we don’t have to talk about the details there, but we had a very different mindset, you and I, in 2020 when we worked together on another product than we do now. So take us through that. What just between 2020 and now, when we worked on open lists and we were doing all of that in the process there,

We, know you and I talk about it in relation to lead generation versus demand generation, but it’s much deeper than that. The whole mindset is much beyond that, much deeper than that. So start with that. How did your mindset shift from what we did in 2020 to

Peter Lisoskie (02:21.284)

Yeah. Well, you know, Mary, it’s, it’s funny you say that because I, you know, we were going through, I hope, and you know, you’ve heard me say this several times, you know, in life and in business and in your personal life too, it’s like you win or you learn. I define failure as failure is when you quit, when you still have passion in something. And that usually leads to regret and no one wants to ever regret. Right.

That was the first thing. The other thing is, as you know, Mary, you know, me, you know I have a set of questions that I go through. One of the most important questions for innovation and inspiration is what else is possible? And

I asked myself when we were back in 2020, this was at the height of the COVID, right? And people were kind of isolated and things like that. It got me thinking about, you know, and then I moved up to my property here. We couldn’t meet anybody because for a year, because we were stuck in COVID. So that triggering event got me thinking about like, well, wow, you know, being isolated, human relationships are important to me. And

They’re important to everybody, right? We’re social as human beings. And then I started thinking about, okay, well, what actually goes on online in the social world, right? Or in the digital world. And it’s like, I started realizing, man, we’re doing a lot of stuff wrong. As far as how do you actually develop, you know, a human relationship? So…

MKJ (03:49.144)

you

Peter Lisoskie (03:54.766)

I was sitting there brushing my teeth one morning in my bathroom and I was looking in the mirror and I thought, okay,

Peter Lisoskie (04:07.108)

How does a person actually create a human relationship, right? And you know, I started getting clarity on that. Way back when when I was on your show and I told you child bots were a pile and you got mad at me. You know, if you think about how relationships, we start with awareness, connection, and engagement. And if you look in most everything,

whether it’s passive video, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, everything. Everything stops there, all social. It’s a truncated relationship. It gets so bad that…

Facebook calls people friends. They’re not your friends. You don’t know them, right? So this is the thing of like I said, well, wait a second now. What’s the rest of relationships? we have to, beyond engagement, there’s nurture, there’s trust, there’s respect, and then business is affinity or personal is intimacy. So I said, okay.

MKJ (04:55.652)

Yeah.

Peter Lisoskie (05:20.456)

I told you a long time ago, we’re not just in business to build software to make money. That’s a byproduct of doing the right thing, creating the right impact and transformation, and creating a movement. And I’m more about creating impacts and movements than I am about just making a big dollar valuation. That all will come as a side entity to that.

So that’s where the focus should be and that’s where our focus is. It’s like, okay, that’s the way humans do relationships and where we are today with email marketing and funnels and websites and social media, we’ve got to fix this crap, right? So.

And the other thing too, Mary is it was funny because I was talking, this was yeah, back probably back in 2020. There’s a buddy of mine, he’s pretty, pretty wealthy. He lives down the street from me. And you know, we, go during COVID. The only thing we do is I go out for walks with him. We talk about each other’s businesses. I mean, the guy’s got his own private jet and he flies around, does business, right? And so, you know, I got to know him over a while and it was funny because he’d tell me, goes, yeah, I’m going out, I’m golfing with this, this guy and I’m golfing with that guy. And we’d do business out in

golf course and I’m going you know what I said think about that people it goes down to the old adage people do business with people they like no trust it is timeless it is never going to go away and I can make a case even with artificial intelligence that’s just going to propel that for people to do business with people they like no trust so that’s how this the origins of our new movement

MKJ (06:57.603)

Yep.

Peter Lisoskie (07:08.164)

with the framework and tool called Relatable, that’s how it began, was we have to get back to human -to -human interaction, digitally human, creating relationships because, and we’ll talk about this, I’m gonna stop talking here, you know, because I know you wanna interject and you have some thoughts too. I don’t wanna monopolize this conversation, but you know, the thing is,

There’s been a massive shift. This shift is not going to happen. It’s happened. And we’ve gone away from the attention economy and lead generation

the relationship economy with demand generation. And that’s where we wanted to be and provide a tool and a framework to help people in the relationship economy create a predictable stream of potential customers or clients.

MKJ (08:04.556)

Absolutely. And that is a mindset shift that you have to flip that script you have in your head. Because the script we had was lead generation, get as many people in the top of the funnel as possible. We may not have created a funnel to do that, but it’s get as many people into our world as possible. Tell them all this great stuff that we’re doing. Send them emails, send them a chat bot message. Do whatever we can do to get them to understand how amazing we are.

and then sell to them at the bottom. really the shift is no longer that it is really the awareness, which is the same as the top of the funnel. Tell people who you

what you stand for, what you stand against, what your point of view is. I know we’ll talk about all these things, but I want to talk about it in the next episode because that’s when we talk about innovation. So we’ll talk about that. But here we’re starting with awareness and we’re going, okay, here’s who we are, not here’s why you need us and why we are the amazing and why we’re going to sell you this thing that’s going to get you this great thing. It really is, here’s who we are. Here’s what we believe in. Here’s where we stand in this world.

Peter Lisoskie (09:07.578)

Yeah.

MKJ (09:13.624)

What we don’t like in this world based on what we do And what we do love and what we espouse and then hey if you want to discover more That’s where the consideration phase comes in people then can invite us into their buying process they can do the Research go to the website watch some of our videos, but then it’s it’s really an invitation. It’s not a

Peter Lisoskie (09:38.938)

Yeah.

MKJ (09:39.136)

And that’s a very, it may be subtle to people. They may not, they go, well, I can hear people saying, well, I’m inviting people when I try and sell them something. I’m inviting people to my webinar. I’m inviting people to my landing page. It’s a different framework. It is not selling. It is a true invitation in the sense that there’s no pressure. There’s no expectation. It’s just, this is who we are. Do you align or not? And if you don’t, awesome.

Go find someone else you align with. But if you do, come on. Come on this journey with me and let’s see if we really are aligned. Let’s get a little deeper in this relationship. That’s the mindset shift. And from you getting out of the shower one day, looking at yourself in the mirror and going, OK, we’re in the middle of COVID. We’ve got these, we need relationships, but we can’t have them right now because we have to stay all by ourselves. To have that.

Peter Lisoskie (10:07.566)

Yeah. Yeah.

MKJ (10:36.174)

basically create the framework for where we are now. And I know working with you over the last year and a half to two years on this, I know even that has shifted.

and continues to evolve the mindset of where we are. We were just talking before we came on air about another mindset evolution of how we look at the people we want to serve and how we consider them in our world. It’s constantly evolving as we open this up. So is there anything else you want to add to that?

Peter Lisoskie (11:01.914)

Yeah.

Peter Lisoskie (11:06.717)

The only thing I want to add Marius, know, I look at things from like, and you guys, do too. We’re all the same as human beings. There’s a little or big thing, however you place value on it called common sense. If you think about common sense and you go, well, okay, how do we develop relationships? Well, common sense tells you what I just said in this podcast. There’s another common sense thing too, guys.

I want each of you to go look in the mirror whenever. Tonight, tomorrow morning, after your shower, whatever. Look in the mirror and ask yourself this question. How do I buy? Now, if it’s not a pack of gum or candy bar, the answer is, common sense is, well I go online and I do research. If that’s how we’re buying, do you think that your buyers…

any differently than that person is staring back at you in the mirror? No. And this is where things fall apart with lead generation because we are inviting someone into our sales process to try to persuade them to buy.

when that is not how we buy. That is not how anybody buys. Common sense will tell you that is not how people buy. If you don’t do it, they’re not doing it. So why are we doing lead gen in the attention economy? Which is, well, okay, here’s the thing. So since I need to convince these people, I am going to use technology and I’m gonna bug the shit out of them. I’m gonna send a lot of emails. I’m gonna run them through a funnel and sell the hell out of them. I am going to go on social and

until the cows come home. And this is exactly what’s happening. And this is, you know, these people, look, we’ve talked, Mary and I, we’ve talked to a lot of CEOs and founders. And every single one of them now is starting to get in panic mode because they’ve done this play by the numbers, aren’t, you know, arms length stranger marketing, or I’m gonna send them through a funnel. And the problem is not only do we not buy that way, but people’s BS meter is at an all time high, Mary.

Peter Lisoskie (13:18.34)

They know. I mean, think about it this way. Another common sense thing, and I’ve told this to you, Mary, but for the people that are listening, right? You guys know this to be true. If you’re gonna go buy something, is the first thing that pop in your head go, I think I’ll pick up the phone and call a salesperson. No, we don’t do that. In fact, Gardner, which we all know, the respected research company.

MKJ (13:18.402)

Yeah, yeah, completely.

Peter Lisoskie (13:42.16)

They did a study late last year and found out that 72 % of all B2B and B2C buyers want a seller free experience. That means they never want to talk to a salesperson. So, and guys, if you don’t believe me, you go talk to SDRs and BDRs out there. They’re panicking because they’re not getting leads. And the cold call, mean, here’s the thing. You guys listening to the common sense.

When someone, a strange number calls you, do you ever pick up and go, hey, yeah, let’s talk. No, we don’t. In fact, now we have spam features on our phone to report and block those people. It’s getting harder and harder and harder for salespeople to operate in this environment

MKJ (14:11.404)

answer.

Peter Lisoskie (14:25.552)

That is the common sense approach. This is how people, they don’t want to be sold to, they want to buy. So you have to match that. But I will stress this once again. When they are going through that process, if you never build a relationship and trust with them, you’re gonna lose them to your competitor. Another study came out by Gardner, 84 % of all potential buyers, clients or customers,

MKJ (14:45.956)

That’s right.

Peter Lisoskie (14:54.128)

will buy based on relationship, even if your competitor has a better price or better sales terms, 84%. So if you don’t get the relationship economy thing right and you don’t get the demand gen thing right, guess what? Your competitors are and they will go to them and you will lose the business.

MKJ (15:15.3)

That’s right. That’s And that’s the shift we’re talking about. That really is. So here’s the deal. Peter and I work together on this product relatable and I am fulfilling a particular role right now, which is more of a partnership manager. And I get on lots of calls with people and the call starts out with them thinking it’s a sales call or they’re thinking I’m going to try and convince them of something or there because that’s that’s the way we’ve been trained. But the first thing I talk about is

This is not, I have no expectation. I’m just going to show you what’s happening. If it works for you, it’s great. If it doesn’t, that’s great. And this is the way I’ve done it since day one. I don’t do sales calls in that respect. And the, you can see, you can see the relaxation because, I, I say, I’m not, I don’t have anything to sell you. don’t, if they start off with what does, how much does this cost? Or how much does that like, it doesn’t matter what it costs if it’s not what’s right for you. So I don’t even.

I don’t even gonna talk about that until I find out if this is for you and that whole concept of not selling but actually talking about who you are and I dive into their business and what they do and how they market and how they’re different and all the things we just talked about in our mindset shift.

And it becomes an actual conversation between two humans to try and help their business, not a conversation of what am I going to sell you or what are you going to try and sell me, MKJ? What are you going to try and sell me? That it’s nothing about that. And even if it doesn’t, even if I don’t start talking about relatable or in it all share it, the conversation was a fruitful conversation because we got to know each other a little bit deeper.

Peter Lisoskie (16:42.693)

Right.

MKJ (16:53.32)

And that that’s what we’re talking about. And yes, you’re probably sitting there thinking, but hey, you know, I can’t I can’t put that on my KPI spreadsheet. How am I going to be able to put that in my numbers and make sure that I’m getting, you know, as a marketer or a salesperson and make sure I’m getting my meeting my numbers? I get it. There’s processes we can put in place for all those things. And we’ll talk about that on the last episode when we talk about strategy and tactics. But right now.

If you don’t even shift that mindset, you won’t get to that. You’ll stay in that hamster wheel, as Peter talks about, and just keep trying to get leads and keep trying to sell them and constantly around and around and around doing the same thing. And if you build relationships, you have a very different, rather than a hamster wheel, you have a very different style of doing business. So any last thoughts on that, Peter? Any last thoughts on the mindset shift between lead generation, demand generation and relationship

Peter Lisoskie (17:31.716)

Yeah.

MKJ (17:48.518)

economy.

Peter Lisoskie (17:50.108)

My only last thought is I just can’t stress the relationship economy piece enough. And that is… That was part of the reason why I wanted to develop something. So, I mean think about it, right? Mary what you just talked about. You have a wonderful approach.

but there’s a limitation to it because you’re doing one to one. look, I’d love to have business. I’d love to go to coffee and have an in -person meeting or a video meeting like this one -on -one with every single customer. And I do that to some degree as time allows. But part of what I wanted to do with Relatable is like,

you know, answering the question, what else is possible? How could we create an environment of interactive video where you could have a coffee chat with 100 ,000 people at a time? Right?

It’s not email marketing where I’m blasting emails 100 ,000 at a time. It’s like I’m having this intimate, interactive, engaging video conversation where they can see me, they can see my hand, body movements, all this body language, but they can build familiarity. And so that’s a key piece to it too, is guys, you, you know, we talk about if you do this right with the relationship economy, with Relatable as a framework and tool and demand generation,

you can create a predictable stream of potential buyers, customers or clients who you’ve developed a relationship with to some degree at scale. And that’s my closing remarks is everybody, every business wants to be able to do something at scale, but let’s stop doing it where we’re pissing off and annoying people. Let’s do it in a relationship fashion because like I said, to end this podcast, everyone wants to do business with people they

Peter Lisoskie (19:38.226)

Like, know, and trust.