How to Master Conversion Rate Optimization with CRO Expert Marty Greif

Get ready to unlock the secrets of conversion rate optimization with Marty Greif, the CRO wizard behind www.SiteTuners.com This episode is your golden ticket to transforming your website into a high-converting powerhouse. Marty shares his transition from tech aficionado to marketing maestro, and why he swears by the power of CRO to skyrocket business success. From educational startups to quirky t-shirt ventures, Marty has seen it all, but it's his passion for fine-tuning the digital experience that will captivate and educate you.

Navigate the intricate landscape of website optimization as Marty spills the beans on the hottest industry tools and strategies. Discover the hidden messages in heat maps and learn why 'anger clicks' might just be the best thing to ever happen to your website. Marty doesn't just theorize; he offers concrete, tried-and-true e-commerce tactics that you can implement right now. Say goodbye to rotating banners and hello to crisp, compelling messaging—changes that aren't just cosmetic, but sure-fire revenue boosters.

Wrapping things up, we journey through the resilience of sales and the magic of relationship marketing. Marty reflects on his own trials and triumphs, portraying every rejection as a seed for opportunity. He pulls back the curtain on SiteTuners' wealth of resources, aimed at those eager to master their digital domain. So, if you're looking to amp up your entrepreneurial game or just inject some serious efficacy into your online presence, this episode with Marty Greif is the mentor session you've been waiting for.

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The Digital Revolution Podcast
Welcome to The Digital Revolution Podcast, where marketing experts share their expertise.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Transcript

: 0:41

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.

DAVID: 1:06

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. Today we have the pleasure to interview Marty Greit, the author of True Connections Relationship Marketing in the Digital World and the founder of SiteTuners, a service-based consulting firm that focuses on helping clients enhance their conversion rate and increase their return on investment. We're very excited to have Marty at part of the show today. Welcome, Marty.

MARTIN: 1:28

Well, thank you, david, and thank you Ken. Thanks for having me here. I was, uh. I've been looking forward to this, so well good, as if we.

DAVID: 1:35

There's a lot of really good stuff we're going to get into today. So, to start things off, can you please share with our listeners a little bit about your background and paths to becoming an expert in conversion rate optimization? I?

MARTIN: 1:47

really have to go back a ways to do that. And I was a technical person. I used to code way back when and somebody said to me once hey, you can talk about technology without drooling on yourself. You should be in marketing. And the next thing I know I was a product manager working for a publicly traded company. Generating my division was generating about $120 million a year and it was a blast. But, interestingly enough, I had this desire to start my own business. So around that same time, when I was doing these technical things and wound up as a product manager, I started my first company, and that first company was called Tanstoffel, which is an acronym for there are no such thing as a free lunch, and I created this up in Massachusetts. I created a 7R series where I taught people who were unemployed how to get a job and how to market themselves, and it made money. And I shut it down because it was the most depressing thing I've ever done in my life Helping these poor people who were almost without hope to find a job right and the stories that they would tell. It broke my heart. And so, even though it was profitable and even though the state of Massachusetts paid us to teach people. I just couldn't do it. So you got to love what you're doing. So I immediately started a second company, Biteware, and that was Bite not as B-I-T but B-Y-T-E, and it was t-shirts for nerds, and this is pre-Internet, and so this was, and we had slogans on it like Bite me and Megabyte me and you know, and we were good at trade shows and these things would fly off the shelves. I mean to fly off the shelves, you know. If the internet had been around at that point, oh my God, this thing would have killed. But to go to physical trade shows after and pack up stuff, so that business broke even, you know. But I learned a lot from it, you know, and where I really learned about conversion rate optimization was when I founded a company called Privacy Partners and we sold proxy servers online for people and our clients fell into a couple categories. They were people who were really concerned about their privacy. They were people who were posting different we'll call them reviews for their own business right, using different IP addresses. Oh, my favorite client were the tinfoil hat people who really believed that aliens were listening to their thought and the government was spying on them. I love those people and so we did that and that business took off right and soft to the races, and then I joined Sightuners and wound up buying it. I just fell in love with it. I'd already learned about conversion rate optimization. I bought a second agency and it's been 12 years now and I'm having a blast. So long story, that's all right.

KEN: 4:35

That's right. We like long stories and so, before we kick everything off, marty, can you share with the audience at a high level what is conversion rate optimization and maybe some you know? Just explain it in simple terms for the audience.

MARTIN: 4:47

The easiest way to think of conversion rate optimization is you have some number of people that are looking on your e-commerce website or they're on your Amazon store or they're, you know, on eBay or wherever they are. You've got visitors and you want those people to buy. The percentage of people that buy, as opposed to the people that visit, is your conversion rate. So if 100 people visit and one person buys, your conversion rate is 1%. If two people buy out of 100, it's 2%. And what we do as a company is we are think of us as the online persuasion people. We will get a higher percentage of people to actually take the desired action. And in any e-commerce company that's buy In an affiliate marketing play, where people are sending off affiliate traffic, it's making sure that upstream messaging aligns with wherever they land, so more people buy. If it's Legion, it's getting more people to fill out the form. So you'll notice there's a common thread here. We're the more people. That's what we do. We get more people to take the desired action.

DAVID: 5:44

Very nice, very nice, and I like how it's. This topic is not just specific to an Amazon seller or a Walmart seller, or it is. I like your working definition and how it really applies to anybody involved in marketing in some way. And so, moving on, how do we measure success on a website? Is this one particular metric that you like to look at? Is there? We have some DTC websites. When we're looking at those, how do we measure whether those are successful?

MARTIN: 6:15

Well, there's multiple metrics, david, so unfortunately it's not one size fits all. Revenue tends to be one of the obvious ones. Profit is really important. Cost prat position how much does it cost you to get that sale? You want that as low as possible. Engage rate or bounce rate, depending upon what you're looking at. Are people coming and are they engaged on the website? And, interestingly, if all of those things matter and if you're running an e-commerce business where you have repeat customers, then lifetime value is absolutely critical. So if I go back to one of the companies that I had where we sold subscriptions online, the subscriptions were, you know, $9.95 a month, but people would stay with us for years and years and years. So I would spend 30 or $40. Crazy as it sounds to get a free trial of my software, because we knew that half the people that were free trial would become a client and then half of those would only last a month, but the rest of us would stay until they rolled and died. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the lifetime value was huge. And if you understand lifetime value, at least in our world, that was an important metric that will inform the marketing decisions you make and your cost-practization. But if you don't have repeat visitors. Then you want to look at referrals. You want to look at your conversion rate what percentage of people buy? You want to look at average order value. If you could do upsells and these were all persuasion things that you could look at and tweak. Now what most people don't really appreciate is conversion rate optimization. Getting more people to take action is the gift that keeps on giving, because if you change your website or you change your Walmart listing, you change your Amazon listing. Once you change it and it's working and you're driving traffic to it, a higher percentage is buying from you, so your cost per acquisition will be down. It'll stay down and that's the benefit of having persuasive listings, persuasive websites. And one last benefit, if I may, guys if you really have your visitors engage, you'll get Google Love. Now, what is Google Love? Google Love is the organic listings. Google wants people to be engaged on your site. So if you get people to come to your site, stay on the site, go from page to page and buy something, google goes, yep, that's a good one, all right, and you'll get more Google Love and better rankings. Same thing for your ads. Google say oh, look at this. They advertise for this. The quality score is good. People are engaged. Check to more Google, love lower cost per acquisition. I get my jollies out of this. I know it may sound a little weird. I love this stuff.

DAVID: 8:51

No, we love this and I wanna go a little bit deeper on this conversion rate optimization. So is split testing needed? To right size your landing pages or whatever you're trying to optimize? Is split testing a necessary step?

MARTIN: 9:03

Depends on your volume. All right, split testing requires a certain volume to get to what's known as statistical significance. Otherwise it's a guess. So, having said that, we never start with testing with our clients. We always start with the obvious conversion barriers. For example, let me give you a no-brainer that everybody listening can immediately do on their website which will increase their conversion On a desktop site. Phone number is the biggest trust symbol on the face of the planet and it needs to be in the top right-hand corner. And, yes, it'll increase calls, but I promise you it increases sales more than it increases calls, and you don't even have to answer the phone. You can have a go to some wonderful voicemail system, as long as you provide love in that voicemail system. Don't make it be like oh my God, I called the cable company and I wanna hang myself. Don't do that, right. But having a phone number shows you a real company and so I will trust you. On mobile, it's the click-to-call icon and the color of that phone number or the click-to-call icon needs to be the same color as your main call to actions, because it is a call to action and it is a trust symbol and I promise you, if everyone just makes that one simple change, they will make more money.

DAVID: 10:14

I like that, I really like that you had mentioned statistical significance. And at what point is it number of visitors or at what point does something become statistically significant to where you can start split testing?

MARTIN: 10:28

Okay, well, let me define statistical significance first. Statistical significance says that if you've got a test where you're testing the original versus a variant, you wanna know with some level of confidence that one was better than the other. In testing, it will keep showing the different variations, the control versus the variation, until it gets to a point where it says, oh, the variation or the control, whichever one is winning, and it will win 95% of the time, 98% of the time that, 95 or 98 is the statistical significance. You can run a test where it's 90%, but what that says is nine times out of 10, that might win 10% of the times, it may not, right, and so the higher the statistical significance, the more likely you have a real answer as to, yes, my control or my variation really did win. Now how do you get there? You have to measure the number of conversions. It's not about number of visitors, although that is a contributing factor. It is the number of conversions, and on e-commerce site typically, conversions are the sale. Tests should run in an increment of seven days, and the reason it runs in seven days is because that eliminates time of day, night versus day variations and day of week to people actively on the weekend and they do during the week. So increments of seven days. If you only had a minimum of 10 conversion per day per device type, because you also have to test desktop versus mobile so if you had 10 conversions a day, a test would run probably about a month 28 days, because it's in seven days. At some point the test loses its validity because too many things happen. So, for example, when we were running tests and Russia invaded the Ukraine or the Hamas, israel, palestine, you know crazy. This is going on. Right now the world changed. Your test is invalid because people start to fear the concern. Economy, inflation, any kind of major thing that happens invalidates a test and you have to write it over again. If your test is running one, two, three months, there's too many things going on in the world that are gonna negatively impact your tests and you're not gonna get a valid answer, and so you have to take all of that into consideration.

DAVID: 12:36

That was great. One last question here, and I'm gonna kick it over to Ken Is there any third party software that you recommend, or split testing a website?

MARTIN: 12:47

Yes, there's well, there's actually multiple types of software. So there are testing tools, and there's testing tools like OmniConvert or Optimizer which is extremely expensive, by the way or Visual Website Optimizer or Convert. There's dozens and dozens of these. They are paid and it costs money to do these. There's also, however, landing page builders all right, like lead pages, all right, and so on, where you can create a page and do the testing within that page. And then there's also another type of tool that we love. I mean love, love, love this next type of tool, which is the heat mapping tools. Heat mapping tools show you recordings and or maps of where people are clicking, including and I love this anger clicks. You've ever been on a website where you're like, don't like, click him. It captures that. So if you've got people acting like that on your website, you need to change your website. That is not what we're going for, okay, so there's all sorts of wonderful tools out there that will help you know what reality is and to be able to test.

KEN: 13:49

Now, I like that and I have angry clicked on several websites before and so I'm assuming, yeah, if you, if you see those results in your heat map, you have. You have work to do right.

MARTIN: 13:57

Absolutely the one. The mark of the heat map can't capture is when you take your laptop and throw it out the window into the pool. It doesn't capture that real well.

KEN: 14:04

It doesn't go office based style. So, marty, now you covered. You covered a couple things here with split testing and you gave a pro tip out to the audience about. You know, if you have a website and you don't have the phone number on it, put the phone number in the upper right and make it the same color as the call to action Beautiful. Now, if you get a, so you get a new client that comes in and they've never split tested before. They have a high amount of traffic coming in, you know. So they have 5000 visitors a day coming in. They're getting conversions. They're just, it's really low. Maybe they're conversion rates, 0.5 or something. Now, what are the you had mentioned? But testing you never more. Some, maybe seven days, maybe 28, never more than that. Now would you set up a series of split tests and just improve one by one, because you can't split test too many things at one time because the data is all over. And so what are the top two or three things that you that you test to make the biggest gains on a website for conversions, for e-commerce?

MARTIN: 15:29

I'm going to back up again and it's not going to say the things that we see on every single or on most e-commerce sites. I will say everything because that's not fair. On most e-commerce sites that they can immediately change without testing. Unless they've got the weirdest visitors on the face of the planet, the stuff works right. Having said that, you can also test it. We won clients because we tell people do this, just do this. Then they go test it, they come back. We had one client was doing over 100 million a year. I told him to do one thing and he came back to me and he said I know, when we talk, I wasn't impressed with what you said, but we tested it anyway and it increased our revenue by an incremental million dollars a year. Would you consider working with us? And so so what his thing was I'll never forget this is rotating banners. All right, you've seen these rotating banners on a homepage. Lower conversion rate 8 to 12%. And the reason? Oh yeah, no, we've tested this, we have tested this a million times. Right, the reason that low lowers conversion rates is because we are literally animals. 50,000 years ago, our ancestors were living in caves around a fire eating our hunk of meat right Movement was a danger signal, like a bear is coming to eat me or an enemy tribe is coming to sneak up on me, or it was danger. So every time there's movement on an ad, all right, and I'll exaggerate we basically go bust hat and it's basically causing cognitive friction because it is distracting us from whatever was written. If you get rid of the rotating banners and instead put a banner that is designed for the visitor, that has your unique value proposition or unique solid proposition as described as to what's in it for them, you'll increase your conversion rates. 8 to 12%, absolutely no worries, nice. The other thing that you can do that we tell people to do is on a website, underneath your logo, if you can describe what you do in three to six to 10 words that have meaning to the visitor, that way it'll appear on every single page on the website, because people read left to right, top to bottom, and so if I land on the aboutus page or whatever page I land on, I'll at least know what it is you do as a company and I won't be confused. And that's really good for your SEO traffic. And again, we've tested this over and over and over again. So, by the way, your listeners are certainly welcome to test these things, but I can also tell you these are some of the just do-it stuff right, and it works again, unless they've got the weirdest visitors on the face of the planet.

KEN: 17:57

Oh, those are. Those are great. So, just to recap, make sure you have a static banner, not a rotating a static banner with your, with your best value proposition, whether it's free shipping or whether you know whatever it is site white sale, how the customers or the visitors are going to benefit, and they can focus on that, read it and then move on. And then the second one was six to ten words describing what the business or product or service that you're offering, right below the logo on every single page at those two are just must-do's.

MARTIN: 18:25

Yeah, absolutely, although I'm going to go back to the, to the banner, just for a second site white sale and all of those things aren't things that we typically recommend. We really recommend benefit oriented. If I buy this, it's going to help me stop snoring. If I buy this, I'm going to stand straighter. If I buy this, I'm going to look years younger, right, or whatever the thing is. It's all. It's benefit oriented. Now it's okay to put also, you know, end there's a sale, but it really has to be the benefit oriented. The structure for any iConverting page on a website is what is that page or website about? Followed by the called action. What you want her to do, and near the call to action, is always trust, and trust could be logos, you know. It could be a trust statement like join over 10 000 happy clients worldwide or serving the saint you guys aren't saying Lewis serving the saint Lewis metropolitan area for over a decade. Those are trust statements, anything like that. Right near the call to action, I go oh, they're talking to me. Oh, look at this, that's exact. That's the problem. Brand is all. Oh, I can trust them. They're not two guys in a cave in Afghanistan. This is good. I should buy from them, right? That's what it does. You're laughing at me, but I'm dead serious, guys no, I I'm agreeing with you.

KEN: 19:34

I agree, like when someone sees that and it's going to help improve their life, that they want that, then like clearance and sale. That's the busy stuff where someone's always you work or constantly go look at our inbox or constantly getting pounded with sales and all that stuff. But when you see something like what you suggested, hey, how is this product going to enhance my life or my loved ones life around me? I want to get that, you know so yeah, those are good.

MARTIN: 19:56

So, ken, would you like the secret to to having a high converting website? That also happens to be the secret to to being a better spouse, parent, friend, lover maybe not the same time, but it's one secret, absolutely. So you see my hand, right, yeah, and if you were to describe my hand, what would you say? It's a hand with five fingers, see. But if I were to describe my hand, ken, I would have said fingernails, knuckles, you know, and hair, which one of us was right. It's about perspective. Your website visitors see this. Your spouse sees this. Before you can do any kind of marketing, you have to have good communication. You have to understand what they're seeing first. First you understand them and then you can describe you. I'm telling you, this absolutely makes a difference. When I discovered this, this changed my life with people I worked with. It changed my life with my friends. I've mentored people on this and it is the basis of what I consider relationship marketing on a website and it's all about them. And so the other way I say this is most websites do what I call the opera school of marketing, which is me, me, me, me. It's all about me. Don't care about you, don't do that, okay. Make it all about the visitors. If you understand what they're seeing and truly understand them, you can explain what they should also know.

DAVID: 21:14

I've got a follow-up question to that. If somebody's running a 20 year old season business and they've got great relationships with their customers, describing the the front of the palm versus the back of the palm I think would be an easier exercise for some people just getting started. There may be some challenges there and understanding their customer, what's important to that customer and and what that customer wants to see. And so do you have any any advice for those newer companies that are still trying to get a feel for what their customers wants and needs are and that way they can best address those when they're trying to put the best foot forward on a website?

MARTIN: 21:50

it's like any relationship, a good relationship based on communication. So how do you have good communication? You ask questions, and you ask questions about you know, what would you like to do for dinner? What would you like to go here? What are you looking for? How can I help you? What's that? It's all about the visitor, and there are tools that allow you to ask questions of your visitor. And so when people come there, ask questions now, what does a typical entrepreneur do? They have an idea and it's going to revolutionize the world, right. So then they tell their spouse or their brother or their sister, their mom or dad and they go. That's a really good idea, but those people love you and it's not really the right people to ask. Find people who don't like doing ask those questions. Find people who don't know you and ask those questions. So I will go. You know this is about firing the man. All right, if you are working in an organization, I guarantee you and forgive me, I will use this word but the asshole sitting next to you, okay, you despise, but have to see every day of your life, of working life. Take that person the like to say, hey, john, jane, whatever the person's name is, you know, I've got so website and I saw something that did this, this and this. What do you think about it? What would be important? And you know, janes and Johns and no disrespect to anyone named Jan or John but there is a lot of people in these corporations that you probably don't like don't have one lunch, the next day take somebody else, and the next day take somebody else, and by the time you've got people, you'll you'll start to see a trend and then you start your business and then on the website, you ask the questions and if you really want to know what's going to work or not work, and you will just spend a little money doing it write, you know, create some ads and send them to a page that asks them questions, spend a little money, send them to the page, ask them this and they will give you answers and you can tell them product is coming, service is coming, whatever is coming. Sign up for this in the meantime so that we best enhance this service, product, whatever it is for you. Can you tell us what things are most important to you in this? Now, if you ask questions and you say here are five choices, you've limited them Open-ended questions where you say just tell me you're going to let it get a lot of garbage. There will be pearls of wisdom in there that will make whatever you're selling worthwhile to the masses. I'm sorry, I am long-winded on every single thing I say.

KEN: 24:06

We love it. So this next one is kind of a softball, but it's kind of the mystery to the universe for all of our listeners. And so how can the listeners grow their e-commerce business?

MARTIN: 24:15

Well, there's multiple answers to that. Pick one or two, do, and I'd try to do them all at the same time. Okay, let's start with that. Okay, roll, walk, run. All right, I like that. If you have an e-commerce site you are advertising on, let's say, google, consider advertising on Bing or maybe Facebook, you know, on Facebook and Instagram. Or if you have any e-commerce store, considering put your products up on Walmart or Amazon, but don't add your advertising in your Amazon store at the same time. Right, don't do that. Or look at what your traffic is and ask yourself should a higher percentage of people be buying our product? And in that's conversion rate optimization? And I would tell you, if you optimize your site prior to running ads, what will happen is those ads will become much more productive for you. Other channels my profit on this site is X-Widers and I'm unwilling to spend 25% of my profit. Create an affiliate program and let people send you traffic. Maybe that's the right answer. Look at your product. I'm giving you lots of stuff here. If, please everyone listening please don't do them all at the same time. Okay, I've got a product Product is really good, you know for just a few dollars more. This would really enhance it, and so that would be an upsell. You know, or you didn't buy my product and you left my product, so we can do something called abandon my recovery, where it goes back automatic If they filled out like their email address up on it and it'll send an email saying we noticed you didn't complete your purchase, and there's ways to do that. Last one well, probably not the last one, but for today, last one on this, you're laughing at me, guys. So the last one would be what if what you offered wasn't what they were looking for? But there are others that do things that are similar but not quite the same. And what if you had an exit about to say, if you were looking for this, this and this, instead, consider this product, that product and this product. These are some sites that we found that are really good and as long as they have affiliate revenue, you're making money. If they don't want your product, at least they'll buy somebody else and you get paid. Right, we're making money. I can't help what we do.

KEN: 26:22

I like all of those and so, yeah, for the listeners, those were gold. So don't just, like Marty said, don't try them all at one time. But if you're looking to grow your business, you know, rewind this, you know three minutes and listen to that again, jot down your notes and then do those one at a time. So excellent, marty.

DAVID: 26:38

Marty, just to be clear, we're laughing with you, especially in laughing with you on an entrepreneur's tendency to try to do 10 things at one time, and I stand here and raise my hand as one of those guys who's done that before. And so really really good practical advice here for our listeners and for Ken and I. And so, yeah, loving this Moving on. What are three questions that everyone asks when they land on?

MARTIN: 27:06

a web page. So the three questions everyone asks am I in the right place, how do I feel about this site and what am I supposed to do here? The am I in the right place question is highly dependent upon the upstream messaging. So if the upstream messaging promises you know, you know a demo of whatever your product is, or a video, then the next page says should be about a video. Whatever you promise, you have to deliver. I'll give an example of something that is not good, so I'll give you the reverse. You do an ad that says get reviews about the best selling cut cars, cutlery, anything right and they land on the page and it says subscribe to get your reviews. Well, you lied to me. The ad didn't say subscribe, the ad said get reviews. Reviews are promised. Reviews are out there being delivered. You lied to me. Now, if it said the ad said subscribe and get reviews, fine. Or if the ad said get reviews and I landed on it and says here's three reviews For more reviews, subscribe, at least you've given me some reviews. So, and if you're reviewing, let's say, 15 different products, do reviews of the three that most people aren't interested in. So they'll buy the reviews for the ones they are interested in. My point is whatever you promise, okay, and ask them that, so that's. Am I in the right place? And it's actually quite literal. This is why we always put that those three to six to 10 words underneath the logo, because you never know what page you're going to land on and you want them to know what you do. So that will answer the question Am I in the right place? How do I feel about it? Well, we talked about the phone number. It's about trust, and we talked about, underneath the button of shop, buy, join over 10,000. That's a trust statement. Phone numbers, trust Logos can be trust. And what am I supposed to do here? Have your calls to action Obvious? Shop now. But don't just say shop now If you've got, let's say, 50 products, shop over 50 products. Because whatever I, it's the shop. But shop over 50. And curious, I'll go look. Maybe there's different categories. Maybe I'm selling kitchenware and I've got pots and pans, knives and dishes. Am I in the right place? I've got three themes. Look at, I was searching for pots and pans. I'm in the right place. Or I was searching for this. I'm in the right place. How do I feel about it? Shop over. You know I've got trust on here. What am I supposed to do here? Well, it feels to click on one of these and look, they got lots of products for me. Make me feel good. Think of it this way and again I'm going to say this. I preface this no disrespect to anybody out there, but the shopping experience when you buy a Ford is a lot different than the shopping experience when you buy a Lexus or a Mercedes. Now, one could argue they're obnoxious in different ways, but that's okay. In the Ford dealership they don't pay attention to you. You're a number and they're going to push you. Whatever they've got, you know, the lower cost cars, they push you. They don't even listen. I remember taking my daughter to buy a car and they kept talking to me. I said no, the cars for my daughter, and they kept talking to me the cars for my daughter. Freaking talk to my daughter, you idiot. You know, on the Mercedes they kind of whine you and dine you a little bit. That's a little over the top and they may be a little snobby and all the rest of it, but at least they're listening to you, right, and so make your visitors feel like you're listening to them. Don't be snobby, but make them feel loved. Do not know the meaning of a short answer, I swear.

KEN: 30:15

Now, that's good. I like thorough. That's good, cool. So, marty, tell us more about side tuners and what type of clients you work with.

MARTIN: 30:22

So our clients range for people doing less than a million dollars a year to we've have a client setter in the billions of dollars a year, and so we've gone from small ammium to multi-billion and everything in between. Having said that, who do we like working with? That's a different story. The people we like working with are the principals and the elders of companies, because they actually care about what we do, as opposed to when you're in some billion-dollar company. A lot of times you're dealing with somebody they just want to make their resume better. They go home at the end of the day. It's successful, it's not successful. It really has no impact on their life, or almost no impact, right. But when we work with the principals of a company, it matters to these people. All right, and that's where we get our jollies is working with people where we can make a difference in their lives and, interesting enough, that can be someone doing less than a million dollars a year. But we work with principals in companies where it's on a million dollars a year and they're still involved. That doesn't mean we're not working with their teams also, but we really like to be involved with the principal.

KEN: 31:17

David and Marty. Are there any questions that we didn't ask, that you want us to ask, or anything that we didn't cover that should be covered?

DAVID: 31:24

I'm good on my end. What about you, marty Well?

MARTIN: 31:27

I would say that this was, without a doubt, most fun podcasts I've done. You guys are awesome. Let's start there, and for those of you who are listening, who don't know this, there's some preset up. I got questionnaires in advance. These guys are very professional what they're doing, and so working with professionals who really care about their audience is worth its weight and gold. So, guys, thank you for making this a wonderful experience. Thanks for the kind words Marty.

DAVID: 31:54

And it's not over, Marty. We got got something called the fire round.

KEN: 31:57

For all of our guests that we have on Marty. We run them to the ringer and it's called the fire round. It's a series of four rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

MARTIN: 32:04

Yeah.

KEN: 32:05

What is your favorite book?

MARTIN: 32:06

I have two Del Chronically, how to Win Friends and Influence People. I read it twice a year. It is the basis of almost everything I do. And the other book which completely and totally changed my life was Beverly the Angelus what Women Want Men to Know. It was an astounding book. It's got to be about 20, 30 years old now, but she's Beverly the Angelus, phd. And when I read this book and no one, no one like off the podcast with what I'm about to say you got to listen to both sides. Okay, when I read the first 70 pages in the book, I went, oh my God, women can't possibly be this dysfunctional. So I asked the women I was working with you do this and this and this? They went, yeah. And then I read further and I went oh my God, men, are we really this dysfunctional? And the answer is oh my God, we are. We're all dysfunctional. But when you understand how we communicate, oh my God. It changed my life and I will tell you, it absolutely made me a better spouse, a better boss, a better friend. It was an amazing book and so, between the two, I strongly recommend it.

KEN: 33:07

And a little feedback for you. I've read the first book and I can tell from communicating with you and your thoughts and your ideas that that's spot on. I can tell that you read that book twice a year because you put that book into work, into action, and so I like it. Next question what are your hobbies?

MARTIN: 33:23

That's changed over the years. I used to love cross-country skiing, but I moved to Florida. That just doesn't work as well. I used to live up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and so we had a sailboat because there was wind. I live in Tampa Bay. There's no wind. I remember the first time we rented a sailboat. It's like it went nowhere. I was like again, nothing happened. That was terrible. Reading has become a big thing for me, and spending time with my daughters I have two daughters and they're like my best friends, including my wife, obviously and we do things together. We live in Florida, so we had annual passes to Disney for forever and Universal and Bush Gardens, and so we would do things, and so family time really.

KEN: 34:04

Third one what is the one thing that you do not miss about working for the man?

MARTIN: 34:09

Being in a dysfunctional team. So I will tell you, in all the years that I worked for other people, there was only one person that was my boss. That was amazing. I was a VP of marketing and his executive team were all in sync. It was absolutely amazing. And years later, after I left there, he invited me to come work for another company and I went to work with him and it was horrible. And the reason it was horrible is because one of the team members on the executive team was not in sync, and when one person is not in sync, it ruins the entire thing. So we were so lucky to have people in sync. So, as an entrepreneur and I now have a team of people I go out of my way to make sure that we are all in sync. We listen to each other, we respect each other. We don't have to agree all the time, but we have to respect each other. And so being in sync, I think, is the key to growing a business. I think it's the key to having great relationships. And so back to your point. What I miss is being in these dysfunctional organizations. I don't miss it. I mean, they were just awful and I only had one good experience in the all the years I was an entrepreneur. Last, one.

KEN: 35:12

What do you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?

MARTIN: 35:18

Fear of failure. I can't tell you how many times I fail. Failing is just one step closer to success, and I learned this. You know I said early on that I started out my career as a, as a technical person, but the truth is I did have one thing that I did shortly before there. I was in sales. We had a cold call. Our commission was about $1,000 when we sold something and way back when, and we were taught to pick up the phone and make 200 phone calls on a Monday to make appointments. And whenever somebody hung up, per status whatever, we were told to put our shoulders back, look up and smile and put the phone down and say thank you for $5. Because each one got us closer to the one who's going to get us $1,000. So thank you for $5. I mean, and we get, we're all right. Thank you for $5. Okay, you have to be willing to fail over and over and over again. That's the true sign of success.

KEN: 36:11

Okay, yeah, I really like that answer.

DAVID: 36:13

Absolutely, Marty. This has been an absolute blast having you as a guest on the podcast. We're definitely going to have to have you back on. In the meantime, if people are interested in getting in touch with you or working with site tuners, what would be the best way?

MARTIN: 36:26

They can go to wwwsitetunerscom. They can read about it there, they can sign up for a review of their website or, if they want, and they want to make it a lot easier on themselves. They can actually just get a copy of my book right up on Amazon, which is, you know, relationship marketing in the digital world. It's up on Amazon. 70% of what we do with people is all contained within this book, so hopefully that's helpful.

DAVID: 36:50

Absolutely, and to our listeners, we'll post a link to that in the show notes. Go out and get your copy. Marty, thank you so much for your time today and we're looking forward to staying in touch. It was a pleasure, absolutely, thank you.