MKJ (00:00.628)
All right, welcome back to the conversation mischief makers MKJ here and my wonderful guest Peter Lassosky for I think at least the fourth time that he and I have talked on a podcast of mine. Welcome back, Peter. You ready to dive down into ground level and talk about how we can actually make a difference with being relatable?

Peter Lisoskie (00:19.075)
Yeah, we can be real. Like I said, I’m the dog at your door. you are the raccoon at your door. Yeah. Begging for food. Yeah. So yeah, let’s dive into

MKJ (00:23.856)
Or in my sense, the raccoon at my door looking for bread. Yeah, right. That’s right.

So we already talked about mindset shifts and impact and innovation. If you haven’t listened to those episodes, please go back and listen to them because they will be the frame through which we will now craft. What do you

And so when we talk about what do you do, we’ve talked about relatable and this framework and tool using lead gen and demand gen and relationship economy. And we talked about innovating using brain science and all kinds of other factors with a previous experience. But now let’s take that relatable concept and let’s say we create an interactive video experience for our audience, our customers, a DM, for someone we’re trying to talk to about what we do and what our point of view is.

Now, how do we actually get that out there and use this idea of interactive videos and relationship tool to actually grow relationships? What do we

Peter Lisoskie (01:30.689)
So as far as, are you talking about like the distribution of it or what do you want me to discuss?

MKJ (01:35.968)
the content creation, the distribution, and how that all fits in the framework of our marketing and our business.

Peter Lisoskie (01:45.391)
So yeah, there’s, so in this relationship economy, like I said, first of all, you have to really think about, how am I going to build trust in relationships, right? That’s why the relatable framework and tool exists that gives you the ability to do that. But guys, here’s the thing. I will say that relatable to tool is no different than your car.

You know, you can have a fancy car or you can have a real beater, but at the end of the day, it gets you from point A point B. So, you know, well, yes, the tool is great and yes, the tool will do, it will help you build relationships at scale. The more important thing is you.

your message, your content, your thing that you do that’s different, right? Everybody I talk to, I tell them, look, you guys, look, if you’re a coach, there’s a million other coaches. If you’re a consultant, there’s a million other consultants. If you’re an agency, there’s a million other agencies. If you’re a SaaS business like us, there’s a million other SaaS businesses, right? So the thing about them, is, okay, what’s your different, right? And then how do you express that different?

That’s our, you know, our categories, interactive video relationships. That starts with the awareness. That starts with your point of view. What do you stand for? What do you stand against? In previous…

Shows here. I told you guys I stand against email marketing. I stand against cold sales calling I stand against funnels I stand against billboard websites because we’re again reshaping our website into a demand gen Experience not a billboard website. So I stand against short -term sales thinking I stand against lead generation. I mean we talked about all this

Peter Lisoskie (03:32.985)
You know, and what I stand for is relationships, authenticity, empathy, building that one of our value statements in our company. Mary knows this and she lives it every day. How can we give first? That’s probably our most important value statement, right? Because if you don’t have that kind of mindset, pretty much nothing else is gonna work for you, right? If you’re focused on the money, the money is never gonna come. So.

You got to start with the awareness and then there’s the change of perspectives, right? So you have to, you know, like here’s an example for change of perspective. And this is how, you know, if you’re doing something different, so in the world of different, there’s obvious solutions, obvious problems. That’s the status quo. That’s the blah, blah, blah. That’s the people you’ll see up on LinkedIn go, how I made X amount of dollars in this amount of time doing this.

marketing playbook.

And if you follow them, be careful because you may not get what you want. Right. So then Mary has a whole thing she talked about experts and things if we have time for it here. But that’s that. Then the second one is non -obvious problem to an obvious solution. That’s where we fit. Right. Because we the obvious problem is people know and we’ve talked to a lot of people they’re panicking now because sales aren’t working. Leads aren’t working. Emails not working. Funnels aren’t working. And so the

MKJ (04:36.535)
Please.

MKJ (04:49.187)
Yes.

Peter Lisoskie (05:02.097)
obvious solution is relatable. So that takes powerful point of view story and messaging and it takes repetition to get that out and change your perspective and so a lot of these common sense things that I brought up where people go…

Damn, he’s right. Right, so, you know, and that’s what gets people to go, yeah, I’m gonna try this out, because, you know, what you’re telling me, I resonate with that, and a lot of times they’re going, yeah, that’s happening to me too privately. So, and then the third one is non -obvious solution to a non -obvious problem. These are like scientific breakthroughs, academia, things like that. They’re wonderful, but the problem is they take millions of dollars and tons of time, usually years,

MKJ (05:20.196)
Yes.

Peter Lisoskie (05:47.991)
you to change the perspective. Okay, think about Thomas Edison and the light bulb. That’s a non -obvious solution to a non -obvious problem. Think about Henry Ford and the Model T. If customer, he would ask his customers, what do you want? They would have said a faster horse. He created something totally different, right?

MKJ (06:01.124)
in the automotive.

MKJ (06:09.742)
Right.

Peter Lisoskie (06:10.371)
These are things that that’s the first thing. So you got to have that change of perspective, right? So, know, goody story on that one, Mary. Change of perspective. We’re coming up with this this new you talk about, you know, continual innovation. So I was sitting back thinking, you know, we’ve got a lot of these businesses out there. They have these customers. And yet how do they actually continue the relationship and make it?

really good for them to turn them into raving fans. Well, I had a large construction company, 72 employees. We did a few thousand customers a year. Back in the day, we didn’t have any of this stuff. It was pre, actually pre internet, I think. Well, it was right around the internet when was starting. And so what I did is we went out and did good work. I called up a lot of the customers and the people were really appreciative of our business. So I’d say, you know, they would say, I love what you’re doing.

Is there any way I can spread the word? said, yeah, come on in, pick up some, we had paper flyers. That was what it was back then. So I had, at one time I had 289 customers coming up to my office on Highway 9 in Lake Stevens in Washington State. Then you go out and hand these things out to all their friends and neighbors and we get all kinds of work. Well, I used what was called send out cards at that time and I’d send them little cards, personalized cards and gifts, thanking them. Fast forward to today, that’s what relatable is.

basically on steroids, because we can use tech, but it’s done in the right way, not in the email marketing way, where you’re actually building these relationships. So that’s the key piece of that. Now, the second thing is consideration. In demand generation, look.

MKJ (07:34.488)
Yes. Yes.

Peter Lisoskie (07:52.485)
When people come in and they’re doing research, you are not the only game in town. In fact, I was telling Mary this the other day. Who do we compete with? Well, we don’t really have competitors directly because we’re a new category of software, but we do have indirect competitors. One is I’ve got, there’s 20 or so companies that are doing interactive video applications. The problem is they’re not doing relationship building. So those guys, while they have branching videos and questions and hotspots and all this stuff, I tell everyone,

That’s like going out with your significant other on the first date and at the end of the day they dropped out on a knee and go, hey, you want to get married? It’s like we don’t do that as human beings. You need to nurture, build trust, build respect before you’re going to enter into some kind of commitment. It’s as true in your personal life as is in your business life. So that’s indirect. Another indirect is passive videos.

This is why I make the distinction in our messaging and so does Mary. Passive videos produces passive viewers. And that’s about all you’re going to get.

And after they watch your video, maybe they’ll remember it for five minutes, but then they forget and they move on. Right. There’s no engagement. There’s no interaction. There’s no re -engagement to nurture. It’s just one pass. I mean, guys, if you’re TikTok viewers, your thumb is probably sore because you’re scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Right. So this is exactly what I’m talking about in passive experiences. Right. So in consideration,

MKJ (09:15.972)
Constantly. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Peter Lisoskie (09:26.041)
We still have to help our potential customers understand how are we different?

Why should you consider us? That can be in the form of use cases, white papers, your website, customer success stories, a competitor buying guide. You should, and we’re developing one, you should go right, go, hey, this is what they are, this is what we are. You make your choice, but this is how we’re different and how we’re better as a fit for you in transformation and impact, right? So one thing I want to address here,

MKJ (09:49.006)
Yeah.

Peter Lisoskie (10:03.785)
And guys, I learned this the hard way when I was a young engineer. And that is use cases. the reason why I bring this up is this. If you do not…

Create that connection between what your different is and your solution to exactly how they can use it They’re never gonna make that connection. It’s too much brain power. We look we have these things called brain heuristics We didn’t cover that in neuroscience, but there’s all these shortcuts We use as human beings because our croc brain still rules our brain. It’s our old cave person brain and Guys, we have evolved but not a lot. So the thing about it is it’s you know

MKJ (10:28.224)
All right.

MKJ (10:39.096)
Yeah.

MKJ (10:43.384)
Yeah.

Peter Lisoskie (10:46.869)
You have to make those direct connections with people. So again, we are not perfect. We are still growing. We are creating all these use cases using Relatable to show people here. If you’re a coach, this is what you use. If you’re a book author or publisher, this is how you use it. If you’re an agency, this is how you use it. If you’re an HVAC company, this is how you use it. Right. So that they go, I get it. That’s simple. Man, that’s a good idea. I’m going to use that. Right. So that’s the consideration phase.

When people get through all of that, you know, it depends on, you know, the level. Like we have our prices are $49 to $399 a month. We’re not a $500 ,000 enterprise software platform. So typically, when they’re ready, they’re going to go, okay, I’m going to pull the trigger. I like relatable. What’s your FAQs? Do you have a free trial? Can I jump on board? Where do I subscribe? That’s the demand ready. Typically, they would probably not say, hey, I want to talk to a salesperson because

MKJ (11:38.158)
Yeah.

Peter Lisoskie (11:46.391)
the level of money commitment is not there. If it was 500 ,000, although I will say Gardner has said, even for enterprise level, they never want to talk to a salesperson. So you better have really good virtual demos and things where they can see exactly how they’re going to use this in their organization. And oh, by the way, the other thing we do in consideration in Relatable,

MKJ (11:54.616)
Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Lisoskie (12:07.695)
There’s this thing called dark social. I don’t know if you guys have heard about it. It’s not the dark web. It’s nothing nefarious. Dark social, what’s going on is people are privately messaging other people. If you send texts, if you send emails, if you do WhatsApp, you send WhatsApps, or any form of private messaging, you are part of dark social. What?

I didn’t realize until about year ago was that up to 80 % of all content sharing and product and service recommendations are done through dark social. So that was another innovation I went hmmm. So what else is possible here? So then I said okay we got to create something in relatable where a person can watch your video content and you can say hey by the way if you like this and you’d like to share this with your business colleagues or friends go ahead and

on this button, you can text them, you can email them, you can send a WhatsApp right while they’re in the video. Now if they do text, if we’re in the United States, that’s a big deal. If you’re overseas, internationally it’s WhatsApp. Everybody uses in the Middle East and Europe and everywhere, right? South American countries. So, but let’s take the text example. You go right into your phone contact database, the link carries forward for that, or you can actually choose the one you want to send to them. And then you

Choose the ones you write your message and they get it. Now, think about it this way guys. You ever had a company that you didn’t know send you a text message? What do you do with those? We delete them, we block them, we report them as spam.

MKJ (13:43.534)
Gone. Yep.

Peter Lisoskie (13:46.093)
Now, if Mary sent me a text saying, hey, there’s this video thing I just saw on this. It’s really cool. We do it in Slack. We can do it in Relatable too, but it’s really cool. You should watch this. What do you think I’m gonna do? I’m gonna watch it, because I know Mary. That’s the power of dark social and private messaging. And by the way, guys, when those people are sending your message through text or WhatsApp or email, it costs you nothing.

to build your audience, build your customer base. Zero dollars. So again, we implemented that in Relatable because we

that friends will recommend other products and services to friends for those friends to buy it. There is no Yelp review, there is no customer review, there’s no nothing that can replace the power of that friend recommending something else to another friend. Because why? They know, like, and trust that person.

MKJ (14:47.126)
Yep, yes. And that basically fits exactly what we’re talking about. It’s relationships at scale. That’s exactly the power of that particular part of relatable. So I just want to take and encapsulate what you just talked about. This whole idea of awareness, I call it demand curious. And the reason I call it that is because that’s when the potential buyer’s thought process has shifted.

Instead of them just being aware of you and they’re seeing the fact that you exist. Now they’re curious about, well, what, is this about? How does this work? Who are these people? Now they start to get curious and start asking for things. They start clicking on things. They start opting in for things. They start reading more posts. They start watching more videos. That’s when they become curious about who you are. Once you’ve shifted to that curious state.

Now there, it’s going to be a cascade effect if they align, it’s going to be a cascade effect to get to readiness and to actually be ready to buy. But remember all of this is from the buyer’s perspective, not ours. In lead generation, it’s all about our perspective, our prospects, right? The prospects are about us. They’re our prospects.

the clients, customers, the funnels, it’s all about us and how we can get people through that process. This, what we’re talking about awareness, curious or consideration and readiness, it’s all about our potential buyer and whether they are ready to invite us into their process.

I know there is a lot we can talk about in this whole process of strategy, but so far, to just to kind of reiterate a little bit, we’ve talked about the fact that you can create content, video, interactive video relationship content. You can distribute it on multiple channels. Any of the channels you’re currently distributing your content, you can put a relatable interactive video on and they will interact with it. And then when people are ready to buy, you will be able to have that that clickable button right there on the video for

Peter Lisoskie (16:44.623)
Yep.

MKJ (16:51.062)
them to actually choose to enter into your world and invite you into their buying process. Any last thoughts about, and I love what you talked about. have to mention dark social. If you don’t think it exists or you don’t know that’s most of the time when you look at your Google analytics and it says that you just have a direct.

to your website, it probably came from Dark Social because someone shared your content and someone clicked on it in a LinkedIn DM, in a Reddit thread, a wherever. They clicked on that link and went directly to your site. It’s not because they typed it in. It probably came from a Dark Social exchange. So you need to know about that. If you don’t know about it, investigate a little bit more. Any last thoughts about the strategy of interactive video relationships?

Peter Lisoskie (17:17.85)
Yep.

Peter Lisoskie (17:43.997)
My last words is really the whole idea of this is creating interaction, engagement, nurturing, trust, ultimately relationships and doing that at scale. know, Mary, you talked about, I add to, I think you mentioned something about developing.

One way communication like email can do it. I will say brands can’t do it either. You know, imagine what if we had a brand where the customer decided what your brand was and it was dynamic. Ever thought about that? I mean, you you’ve heard me talk all the time, Coke, Nike, all these, they have brands. All of the rest of us, in my opinion, we don’t have brands. We have our personal brand, but really that brand is based on the relationships that you have with people.

MKJ (18:16.662)
It is. Yes.

Peter Lisoskie (18:32.197)
and your messaging and their ability to interact with you. you know, if anything, guys, you know, I can’t stress this enough. This is not something that’s coming. This is something that’s here. The relationship economy is here. The demand generation is here. If you go and look at your email statistics or you look at industry statistics of the 20 % open rate, 1 to 2 % click through rates, the funnels are now down to below 10%, probably near 1 % from the sources I have.

You know and the other thing too guys is I if you even just say forget Gardner forget All these statistics just look in the mirror. How do you buy? Is your BS meter at an all -time high? Would you pick up the phone and call a salesperson on your first thought if you not doing it your customers aren’t doing it either So it’s just based on common sense Mary and what what we really have to get back to you Like I have always said people do business with people they like

trust and that at the end of the day it’s always going to be that way and it’s not ever going to be different.