Uncovering Rembrandts in Your Attic - Mike McGroarty - Your Story

Most businesses spend their time looking for customers.

Mike McGroarty spent his career building an audience.

That difference explains why he has generated hundreds of thousands of leads and built a loyal following that continues to buy, refer, and return. At its height, his landscaping business had an email list of 200,000.  Not bought leads, captured leads. These were people who'd raised their hand and expressed interest in what Mike offered. Every lead was a potential buyer.

When people first discover Mike, they often assume he's in the landscaping business. While he certainly knows landscaping, that's not what made him successful. His real business has always been education.

He teaches first.

He sells second.

At the core of Mike's success has always been his story. Who he is. Who he is for. And why he does it. Story is one of the most powerful lead generation strategies available to any entrepreneur.

In this episode, Mike and I discuss the power of story and share Mike's.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;29;21
Speaker 1
A Rembrandt in the attic is any untapped or unnoticed opportunity inside a business that, once discovered and leveraged, can produce massive results. Most business owners are too close to their own operations. They don't see the Rembrandt because to them, it's just an old painting gathering dust. This isn't magic. It's not a gimmick. It's a system, a repeatable, strategic process of unlocking your hidden value and showing it to the world in a way that makes people want to buy from you.

00;00;29;23 - 00;00;47;25
Speaker 1
You already have everything you need. You simply need to turn it into something that works for you 24/7. Building trust, driving leads and elevating your position far above your competitors.

00;00;47;25 - 00;01;03;05
Speaker 1
Well, as you've heard me say before, Rembrandt is really a metaphor for anything that you have in your business that's untapped, unnoticed or unused. So these are opportunities inside your business that once you discover them and you leverage them, you can produce massive results.

00;01;03;07 - 00;01;23;07
Speaker 1
Now, most business owners aren't familiar with these Rembrandts because they're kind of too close to the trees to see the forest, as they say. They oftentimes, they view them as, these are just things we do. Or I again, another metaphor for reference is that they see them as old paintings just gathering dust. So we're going to dig in.

00;01;23;07 - 00;01;51;22
Speaker 1
And I have with me Donna Critch, who is a contributing author in the new book Lead Hunters. And Donna has three chapters in the book. We're only going to talk about one in this episode in order to keep it brief. What we're going to talk about today, maybe a Rembrandt may not be a Rembrandt. It's it's a Rembrandt, really, but it's something that a lot of people are not familiar with.

00;01;51;25 - 00;02;03;11
Speaker 1
And when Donna wrote this, it's brilliant. It's. It's brilliant as it is Felicity. And that's we're going to dig into it. So, Donna, thanks for joining me on the podcast.

00;02;03;14 - 00;02;04;16
Speaker 2
I'm happy to be here.

00;02;04;23 - 00;02;27;11
Speaker 1
Good, good. So let's start with your story, really. So to give people perspective of where you're coming from. And one of the things that I warn you guys watching and listening again, don't make the mistake because whatever business Donna's in, her core business, her foundational business doesn't mean what we're talking about today can't work in yours as well.

00;02;27;13 - 00;02;33;02
Speaker 1
So gonna give us a little background on you and where you come from.

00;02;33;04 - 00;02;57;21
Speaker 2
So the simple way of saying it, at the point of figuring out Beda, Ron, is that I was quitting, I was quitting. I was done. Yeah, I was burnout. Marketing wasn't working. Sales weren't happening. And really quickly, if I'm blunt and you know me well enough, know, I'm usually pretty blunt. I was done like I was hating the business I was in, the one that I loved.

00;02;57;23 - 00;03;36;21
Speaker 2
I was now not loving anymore. And I was having some real health issues as pretty much a mess. So I was working with some natural hormone experts. And I also being in the wellness industry, I saw that hormones were trending. So I got to digging into the information with some other experts as well. So I was told about, you know, if I if I put this plan together and that component and this component, that this end result would be people losing £20 in 30 days without any hunger and they'd get rid of night sweats and hot flashes and irritability and all these amazing things.

00;03;36;23 - 00;04;00;07
Speaker 2
Right. And there was even some proof that that this had worked. But I hadn't done it right. Offered it as a business. Now I'm. I'm taking the protocol. Right. And I'm doing the things. So I'm like, well, you know what? I believe what they're telling me. Yet I need to be sure. So the beta campaign literally came out of, I'm going to just do this.

00;04;00;09 - 00;04;17;03
Speaker 2
I'm going to put this message out and I'm going to say, I'm doing this in beta. Obviously, the right words matter, of course, but all of that information is in the book, right? I've got to put this information out. I'm going to give them just what they need to hear and then I'm going to say, Are you in?

00;04;17;05 - 00;04;38;13
Speaker 2
And everybody came back with. I mean, we literally have never seen this, not work. And when I say it transformed my business, Ron, that is an understatement. Now, there were leads. Now there were sales. Now I was be I was able to breathe again. I started getting excited again and I started falling in love with what I was doing again.

00;04;38;20 - 00;04;59;18
Speaker 2
I mean, when I say it transformed everything, this is the thing that transformed everything. And I will add one more thing to the ramble. The Rembrandt thing, the beta campaign literally is a Rembrandt because the message is sitting right under your nose. Yeah, but I promise you're too close to see it. Most times people think, something has to be brand, brand new to be a beta.

00;04;59;22 - 00;05;18;14
Speaker 2
No, there just has to be a beta component to it. And that component is always sitting right under your. I mean, we've done that. Sorry. Right under your nose. We've done this. If I could only ever do one campaign for the rest of my life, it would be a beta campaign. Well, because it always works.

00;05;18;16 - 00;05;31;01
Speaker 1
But we've kind of let the genie out of the bottle here. But why don't you summarize what beta marketing is in a simple, concise way? Because we're telling them what we're going to tell. But what is it?

00;05;31;03 - 00;05;54;06
Speaker 2
It is a campaign that costs no dollars, that brings in leads every single time you offer it. And the best part is those leads come ready to buy what you have, cost no money. It literally works every single time. We've done it again and again and again now for years. And the leads that come, they're not tire kickers.

00;05;54;06 - 00;05;59;13
Speaker 2
They're not looking for a free report. They're come in wanting what you have.

00;05;59;16 - 00;06;24;00
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. So in the book, you share that this there's no doubt that you believe in this and you're excited about it. And in the book, you talk about how it's generated, you know, ten, 25, even a hundred sales. And the book talks about lead generation. But really, that's the predecessor to sales. And sales is everywhere we want to get to.

00;06;24;02 - 00;06;37;20
Speaker 1
But you kind of talked about how this came about. And why does it work? Why does this premise work so well?

00;06;37;22 - 00;06;57;19
Speaker 2
So it's got exclusivity. When I say to you, I mean, I could do it right now. What Ron John has just developed this thing for guys that will literally have them feeling like they're 30 years old again. But he's beta testing it. He just wants to get some feedback in. I know Ron cheats. He's going to go. I'm interested in that.

00;06;57;19 - 00;07;23;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. Right. Exclusivity. Right. There is. There's a behind the scenes kind of a thing, right? Urgency. I'm limiting this to only a certain number of people. And there's a high value associated with a beta campaign. Because if I'm beta testing something, obviously I see it as value in my own mind. So there are three psychological components here that make this work.

00;07;23;04 - 00;07;41;06
Speaker 2
And again, I don't mean to demean like quote unquote, I kind of say it a little bit sarcastically. Free report, right? Free reports are gone. They're people don't want them anymore. They see them for what they are. Maybe I should say it like that. They see them for what they are. And it's a way to get someone on your list when you reach out with a beta offer.

00;07;41;13 - 00;08;07;13
Speaker 2
There's some some scoop going on, and everybody loves to be in on the scoop. You say very directly in your messaging what they're going to get from the beta offer. So when they come back and say, I'm in, they you already had the message that they want what you have. They've already sent you that message because in your messaging, you talked about what the benefits are, what the transformation is going to be.

00;08;07;16 - 00;08;09;10
Speaker 2
They already want it.

00;08;09;12 - 00;08;18;22
Speaker 1
And it has. Correct me if I'm wrong, it has this feeling of non commitment.

00;08;18;24 - 00;08;39;05
Speaker 2
Yeah, I guess. But I will say that everybody that we've worked with, with the beta offer, it does feel very easy, very simple, very safe. But everybody that we have experienced that raises their hand for a beta offer, like I said, we've done it for years now, even even through our business clients. Right. So it's applicable. They are ready.

00;08;39;08 - 00;09;02;06
Speaker 2
You do a follow up call right after you send the beta offer out. You do that follow up call and that that script takes them up even higher with their interest level. And then the next step is they just buy. I really do believe that these psychological triggers lend themselves to that person being ready to purchase because they know it's beta.

00;09;02;08 - 00;09;25;27
Speaker 2
Okay. Well, they want to be in on beta, right? They know it's got high value. Well, that's already bringing credibility and authority. And they know it's limited to only a certain number of people. So it's got urgency. It's got these three triggers to it that what we have found is that when we put out a beta with the right messaging, those people by now, yes, it feels safe and simple.

00;09;26;04 - 00;09;31;26
Speaker 2
Right To your point, non-committal. But it's they buy. They just they buy right.

00;09;31;27 - 00;09;52;18
Speaker 1
It takes them by barrier down, I guess what I mean by non-committal. It takes that buying barrier for I'm good. It's like going into a car salesman's office and behind him is all of the awards he's won as top sale. It takes all of that away because now we're asking you to be inside on something that's going to be made available to other people.

00;09;52;22 - 00;10;20;00
Speaker 1
So as I've found in doing philanthropic promotion for some companies, people want to get involved. They want to participate in that stuff because they feel the value and the benefit in that. But comparing it to philanthropic. So, so so let me ask you this. If somebody listening to this doesn't see themselves as a marketer, what do you what do you say to them?

00;10;20;02 - 00;10;40;20
Speaker 2
You don't have to be if you're not a marketer at all. This will work if you're sort of kind of fair. Marketing doesn't work. If you're great at marketing, this will work when you create that message. And the outlines in the book, right, the really only two steps, you create the right message and you send it right.

00;10;40;22 - 00;10;57;09
Speaker 2
You don't need to be a marketer because once that messaging is created and again it's laid out in the book or my team will help you. My team's here to help you too. You copy and paste. Yeah. You don't have to think about what's going on in the mind of that prospect because we've already hit those three triggers, right?

00;10;57;12 - 00;11;22;08
Speaker 2
The message is super short, super simple. And because those triggers are hit, you don't have to rewrite it every time. You don't have to change it for an email, you don't have to change it for social, you don't have to change. It protects. It's identical. You literally use your thumb and copy and paste or whatever. You use the CRM, you put it in CRM, but it's you don't have to be a marketer.

00;11;22;15 - 00;11;40;24
Speaker 2
You have to be able to copy and paste. I mean, Lisa, who's stories in the book, she's one of our business clients. She's one of the hundreds and hundreds of business clients that have proven this is applicable. And she was exhausted and living in her business, worn out. Marriage was failing, her health was going down. She needed help.

00;11;40;27 - 00;12;06;18
Speaker 2
We gave her the beta campaign. And she's I think there's even a video of an interview with Lisa in the book and she literally says two words. She goes like this. Copy and paste. Copy and paste. Copy. She goes, If you can copy and paste, you can send this out and it will work. And it literally brought her back from having 400 bucks in her bank account to doing half a million dollars a year, working 25 hours a week.

00;12;06;20 - 00;12;07;12
Speaker 2
Now.

00;12;07;14 - 00;12;28;10
Speaker 1
Yeah. All right. I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment. Okay. So one of the chapters that I talk about in one of my chapters in the book is, is the fact that there's leads and there's lists, leads or those things that have raised their hands that they're showing that they're either interested and then we put them on a list and then we market to them.

00;12;28;13 - 00;12;48;16
Speaker 1
So with this beta campaign, if somebody is starting out and doesn't have a list because we have to send a message to somebody. Yep. How does that work? So I'm fresh. I want to get started. How do I. And I have a list of people to talk to what we do.

00;12;48;19 - 00;13;11;11
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's one of my favorite questions, Ron, because we've literally worked with countless numbers of business owners who had no list, who had zero list. What we do, and I'll kind of jump to the end here if I could, because if somebody. Look, if you look at the chapter, you should be able to plug this in. Right. But if you if you have questions or it needs some tweaking, you're not messing it up.

00;13;11;11 - 00;13;25;19
Speaker 2
It might need some tweaking. Then you reach out to us and we'll help you tweak it. However, if you're looking at a chapter, you're like, I'm not quite sure. You reach out to us. We'll literally help you with the messaging. And we talk about we ask you a few questions about your business. We'll help you with the messaging.

00;13;25;19 - 00;13;56;25
Speaker 2
And let's go back to what you just asked me. We help you with who to send it to. Even if you have no list. So we literally process through with you on the call who you do have because everyone has someone. We have had people come to us not only with no CRM, but just no list of any kind at all, and showed them how to offer a beta campaign to the particular people that we help them create a list from because everybody does have one you may not think you do.

00;13;56;27 - 00;14;18;00
Speaker 2
Everybody's got contacts in their phone. Everybody has contacts via social. Right. Everybody is involved in some capacity with their neighborhood or their church or their chamber of commerce or whatever. Now, again, you don't have to figure that out, because if we get on the call, we'll take you through asking you a few questions about your business. That's where I glean the information to know how to help you find the list.

00;14;18;00 - 00;14;32;24
Speaker 2
Right. Asking some questions about your business helps me help you find what the better offer can be and then who to send it to. And quite honestly, then, like I said, you just copy and paste and leads are going to come. A lot of them.

00;14;32;26 - 00;14;57;05
Speaker 1
Yeah. And then there's other parts of the book that helps people figure out what to do with the leads, but you also help them on that because it sounds to me like that part of what you're doing with them is helping clarify the business that they're in and how to be able to grow that business. As you talked about with your client in the book, who went from 400 bucks to half a million.

00;14;57;08 - 00;15;05;28
Speaker 1
Now, that's a that's a big claim. But how many times have you seen that happen?

00;15;06;01 - 00;15;35;24
Speaker 2
I'm going to tell you, we have been privileged to generate $2.2 billion for our clients. So I'm a big one. You know, there's about me. We've known each other a long time, Ron. I'm a big one on systems. I don't I get really grouchy and irritable if I have to create something again that I already created. I want a checklist, I want a system, and I want it to be able to be repeated again and again without effort.

00;15;35;26 - 00;15;57;25
Speaker 2
And I think it's just because my my little ADHD brain goes so fast that I don't want to have to go back and do it again. But it has turned out to be this amazing blessing for the people that we get to serve in business because we've got these systems that are applicable. What's really cool, I hope this is okay to share because I'm about to share it, is that in a meeting you and I were in, you gave me praise for the beta campaign.

00;15;57;25 - 00;16;17;24
Speaker 2
Thank you for that. That meant a lot to me. And then you shared, Hey, I put this in another business. I just went ahead and tried what John is saying works and tried it in another business and it worked. There is no business. This won't work in. There is no business. Now, granted, I'm in the wellness space and I.

00;16;17;26 - 00;16;46;18
Speaker 2
I got to tell you, I think I shared this with you last week when we talked or maybe it was in Cleveland. This thing is so good, and sometimes you're so close to the things that are good, you don't realize how good they are. I mean, I know how much money it's made me, but I don't think I realize because to your point of the simplicity that I could really share it with so many other people and I'm looking at the wellness space and I'm going in any space, I could sell this thing, I could sell this.

00;16;46;18 - 00;17;06;28
Speaker 2
It's that good because it generates that much money now. And I don't know, I just decided, look, I was in a bad place when I created this. I was quitting. I was quitting. Nobody knew it. My team didn't know it, but I was so scorched and so, I don't know, let down, burnt out. You know, I was thinking about money all night long.

00;17;06;28 - 00;17;35;21
Speaker 2
How am I going to pay the bills? It was just not good. And I thought, you know, there's somebody out there who's in that spot. You give this to them, you don't sell it, you give it, and you're going to help them transform the way I transformed. I mean, we travel all over the globe, right? Lisa went to Scotland for three weeks, for three entire weeks this year because of what's been generated.

00;17;35;23 - 00;18;01;10
Speaker 2
And I'm going to jump back and say this one more time, because I think it bears repeating. There's nothing like this. If I could do no other campaign ever, I would just keep doing better campaigns because they always work, they always generate leads, quality leads. Those leads always turn into money. There are better campaign offers sitting in any business again, where I've focused big time as the wellness space.

00;18;01;15 - 00;18;14;09
Speaker 2
Right. But to your point, you you looked at it, you took it went, I wonder if this would work in that business completely unrelated to wellness. Completely.

00;18;14;12 - 00;18;20;15
Speaker 1
Well, it wasn't a matter of will it work? It was more a matter of duh.

00;18;20;18 - 00;18;21;24
Speaker 2
yes.

00;18;21;26 - 00;18;38;29
Speaker 1
And and I'll tell you, I find myself like, as a starting point. So that leads me to probably my last question. And usually my last question is like landing the plane becomes more questions. But if if somebody wants to do a beta offer, what do they do now?

00;18;39;01 - 00;19;04;08
Speaker 2
Well, like I said, they can look in the book. Yeah, because it's pretty outlined. But I will tell you that your messaging is crucial if you want that lead to be a highly qualified lead that really wants to buy what you are selling. And you do. That's why you want to lead, right? Then you're messaging matters. So I arrange this with my team and if somebody wants to know how to do this, you text the word beta better.

00;19;04;13 - 00;19;27;10
Speaker 2
Beta 24199055546. The word is beta the number is 4199055546. We're going to get on a call with you. I'm going to ask you about five questions about your business. It's really all I need. And then I'm going to be able to start showing you here's a possible beta, here's a possible beta, here's a possible beta, and then we're gonna help you craft the message.

00;19;27;16 - 00;19;43;13
Speaker 2
We'll help you do it, and then we're going to tell you who to send it to. Based on the five answers you gave to those business questions, I'm not going to say, okay, now go to your CRM That's got 10,000, right? No, no, you don't have to have that. I'm going to guide you through. It is what I'm going to do.

00;19;43;13 - 00;20;04;20
Speaker 2
And then, like I said, you just need to be prepared because you're going to get the response I'm in. That's the response that we asked people to give us. Right? And you're going to get them and you're going to get a lot of them. The messaging matters. So I would say reach out and note something, Ron. I've got you texting me at a real phone number.

00;20;04;24 - 00;20;24;28
Speaker 2
This is not a I. We're real people. You're not going to get a bot responding back to you. This is a real text to a real phone number to talk to real people. It really is kind of a version, right, of how you're going to do beta. Beta is that simple? It's neat. It's analog, It's it doesn't require sophisticated funnels.

00;20;24;28 - 00;20;44;03
Speaker 2
And and like I said, CRMs and an expensive ads. It just it just doesn't require any of that. It really is the perfect campaign for maybe somebody who's kind of at their wits end and says I don't know if anything is going to work and I don't have the money to spend on anything. But then it's also the perfect campaign.

00;20;44;04 - 00;21;07;21
Speaker 2
Like I said, we just did another one. We literally just ran another beta campaign and we had 103 sales, 103 not leads, 103 sales from doing that beta campaign. So it's also perfect for somebody who's always looking for that slight edge, the person that that wants to be successful. I mean, it's my favorite. You can tell. I mean, it's my favorite.

00;21;07;26 - 00;21;20;16
Speaker 2
Your dad. You know, this brother, I've been in business for 40 years. 40 years. That's a long time. And I've just never seen anything work like this works.

00;21;20;19 - 00;21;44;21
Speaker 1
I started out for the audience. I started this out saying that the brilliance of the beta campaign is in its simplicity. And it is. And what Donna just clarified is the thing that makes it work is a lot of psychological, emotional things that just from reading the chapter, it's going to learn a lot, but there's going to be things that you can miss, which is what she stated.

00;21;44;21 - 00;22;12;09
Speaker 1
So you have one or two options here. Get in touch with Donna in order to investigate further this beta option. One of the things in the book in the introduction that Dan Kennedy is brilliant about in the introduction is understanding the dual path of people looking for something. And you may be one of them right now. And that dual path is to say, Hey, you're ready to take action.

00;22;12;11 - 00;22;30;22
Speaker 1
If you're ready to take action on this, get in touch with Donna. However, if you're still kind of on the fence and this is what Dan was talking about, then get the book. All right. Go to chapter 12, learn about the beta, because Donna goes into detail in here and then get in touch with her so you can get the book on Amazon.

00;22;30;25 - 00;23;02;22
Speaker 1
Simply search, read Hunter's Ron Sheets and you'll be taken to you right away. Donna has two other chapters which we're going to talk to her about in other episodes of Uncovering the Rembrandts in Your Attic. But Donna, as I said in the Mastermind, it's brilliant. And I'm going to it's a part of what I'm doing from here going forward, which I'm even doing in testing things like I'm even testing do I want to investigate if I want to go in that direction and get a litmus test of the audience.

00;23;02;22 - 00;23;27;00
Speaker 1
And it is that that in itself is good, too, because as you and I both know, we've sold from the stage and it's like I you know, I think that there's a need, but I'm not going to put all this effort into this unless I know there's actually a need there. So this thing is brilliant. So we to get in touch with Donna and we'll have phone number is on screen now or get the book at Amazon and either way, you're going to do this.

00;23;27;03 - 00;23;39;13
Speaker 1
Donna, thank you very much for bringing this to the world, for for your enthusiasm and for not giving up, because I know we had conversations. You were at a very dark place. Yeah.

00;23;39;15 - 00;23;59;05
Speaker 2
Very dark place and bad. If I if I said one thing from Amaka, the perspective saved me from that place. It literally was legitimately was the banner campaign. It it transformed everything. It transformed everything. That's good.

00;23;59;07 - 00;24;11;22
Speaker 1
Yeah. With that will close. Thank you for watching another episode of Uncovering the Rembrandts and you attic. Donna thank you very much. Go back and watch the episode again and pick up what you missed. We'll see you on the next episode of I Everybody by Ron.

00;24;11;22 - 00;24;12;06
Speaker 2
Thanks.

00;24;12;06 - 00;24;15;25
Speaker 1
Bye bye. You're welcome.

00;24;15;27 - 00;29;01;12
Speaker 2
Recording Stopped.

00;29;01;12 - 00;29;32;08
Speaker 1
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