Episode 095 – Drew Griffin

Richard Matthews  0:47  

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Welcome back to The Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews and I have a special treat for you today. I have, live on the line, Drew Griffin. Drew you there?

 

Drew Griffin  1:59  

I am here Richard, how are you? It’s a privilege to connect with you again. I’m always excited to connect with you and talk.

 

Richard Matthews  2:08  

Awesome. So, for those of my guests who don’t know, Drew Griffin is the co-founder of delicious marketing hacks and the CO developer of ever links, which is a cool software that lets you do all sorts of fun things. We use it on our Twitter accounts that not Twitter, Instagram accounts for a lot of our Push Button Podcast clients. So anyway, glad to have you here on the show today. So my first question for you Drew is what is it that you’re known for? What is your business like? What is it that you guys actually provide to the marketplace?

 

Drew Griffin  2:38  

Thanks, Richard. Listen, I guess one of our key products is a course that we teach. We have a local marketing agency, but we also have an online group called the Delicious Local Marketing Hacks. And  a few years ago, my business partner David Calafiore, and I was running similar types of businesses. And agencies in our respective places in the world. He, being in Pittsburgh, I being in the Philadelphia region and that type of area. And we ran into a problem. And the problem, being that the competition seemed to be increasing, and what we call Me2Marketers or Me2Agencies that pretty much anybody that’s out there can hang up their shingle, put in a business card and call themselves a Social Media Marketing Agency without really having any results to prove or, results to give and gain for local clients. And we want to pivot a little bit, we wanted to kind of insulate our agency and switch the model a little bit into more of an asset-driven type of business where we command the asset, we command the attention and then we broker that attention on behalf of anybody that wants access to it, right? So we developed, we did some testing, of building out directories and that sort of thing. And then what we’re really pivoted into and really developed was what we call local media assets. And a lot of our approach to local marketing or digital marketing revolves around the concept and idea of assets, digital marketing assets that we control that we can manipulate, and provide results not only for our agency, but for local businesses and individuals, organizations that know want attention, they want new leads, they want new customers that they can market to, and eventually convert into what we call transactional customers, people that want the stuff that they’re selling, whether it’s a service or a product. So, that’s kind of where we are. We also do software development and things of that nature. We do a lot of online education, knowledge, commerce, we’ve learned a lot from you and how to structure those types of things, through webinars and that sort of thing. Yeah, that’s kind of the area and space that we play.

 

Richard Matthews  5:04  

That’s awesome too. And for our listeners who have paid attention to my story on other podcasts and stuff that I’ve been on, I’ve been in the local marketing space since 2009. And your local media assets is probably one of my favorite strategies for getting into and talking to business owners that I’ve ever seen because it leverages the thing that they want more than anything, which is they want the attention of the people who live in their area, right? They want their attention so they can become in and, try out or buy their products or services or have, come to sit down in the restaurant, right. And you guys are leveraging that desire by putting that front and center and be like, hey, well we can do is we can actually come to you with attention first. And then we can use that attention to help grow your business and turn those into agency relationships, which I think is brilliant, and very different than what most people do, which is you know, knocking on the doors and saying, hey, how can I help you You guys are showing up and saying Here, let me help you first.

 

Drew Griffin  6:03  

It’s been a lot of fun, the pivot and I guess one of the main challenges that we faced aside from the me2marketer moniker that we kind of assigned to it is the typical fear and of rejection that pretty much anybody that pivots into business ownership will face with regards to prospecting, right? People knock on the doors, as you’ve just mentioned, and often they’re faced by a gatekeeper or somebody that pushes them away could be the business owner themselves, to the point where that, you know, that that builds up the trauma of facing and hearing no, all the time is unpleasant. I hate it, you know, and we just decided that we didn’t want to deal with that as much as we were experiencing. So, using this method and the strategy moves away from that and more towards building relationships and giving them something that they truly want in advance. And gives us -bat to develop and just be cool with people, right. And that’s what he wants. The universal law of reciprocation, when somebody gives you a gift, they’re probably more in tune with, hey, let me listen to this guy or this gal or whatever. And, you know, often they will reciprocate with something far greater than the gift that you’ve actually given. And to us, that is the attention that we’re seeking to have.

 

Richard Matthews  7:28  

And I think like, it’s important to, to look at the flip side of that relationship to like, where you’re saying, Hey, it actually sucks to go in and get rejected all the time. Imagine the business owner on the other side, who’s got people coming to their door all the time and knocking on their door and don’t really have anything good to offer. Maybe every once in a blue moon, there’s someone that actually has something good to offer but they get missed. So, they miss cool opportunities to do good marketing because they’ve got all these filters in place to protect themselves. You can come in and just change that conversation completely and give them a good experience all the way through. So anyway, I just really love you guys are doing over there with that. But I do have a quick question just sort of in the midst of everything that’s going on right now with our crisis and pandemic. How have your local media assets for you and all your students that have been doing that? How have you guys been sort of,  helping businesses and helping your local communities with those local media assets? Have you noticed any sort of change in your strategy or change in the kind of news that you guys are putting out for those has this sort of affected or is it not? Has it been insulated?

 

Drew Griffin  8:30  

It’s been insulated. It’s the strategy builds upon the very nature that we’re dealing with, right? There’s a lot of isolation, a lot of businesses are trying to navigate things. And it really opens up the gateway to do some pretty cool things. Using a medium such as Zoom or StreamYard, Skype, something along those lines where we’re able to reach out and connect with people. We still command the attention we still have growing assets. Growing attention, because, number one, people are spending a heck of a lot more time online watching and trying to consume information. They’re spending an enormous amount of time on Facebook, they’re browsing the web, to find more things, find out news about what’s happening in their local community, their governments, what’s going on with various organizations, what’s going on with the food supply chain. And, you know, what’s going on with crime, what’s going on with everything that’s happening in the schools. The list goes on and on and on. And the ability for us to connect with people and say, Hey, listen, we’ve got this attention. People are starving for information, no pun intended. They’re interested in what businesses are open. How can they continue to acquire services, products, and services from those types of businesses without much disruption? And when you command that attention, it’s very easy to a broker that for them and bring them on to like an interview. feature them, let people know about their open hours in the service. That they’re providing or you know, what disruption that they’re facing, and you know, how people can reach out to them and so on and so forth. So yeah, business is, as usual. A lot of our customers, a lot of people who were using this strategy are having a blast, right? Because we’re doing all kinds of things. We’re sharing relevant information, we’re building out lists of people that are interested in that information. We’re entertaining people with memes and heartfelt stories and whatnot. It’s been a blast. Things are on the increase, as opposed to the negativity and fear of closing things down. We can continue to build out the attention of the audience that is looking for this type of information.

 

Richard Matthews  10:43  

And it’s really cool. And it seems like you guys have an opportunity during this crisis to actually be a voice for good and a voice for positivity in the business community and in the communities that you guys are serving. So that’s really a heartwarming story. I guess for me, to know that you guys are doing it because I don’t think You guys set up with like, this, we’re gonna do these because eventually, we’re gonna have a crisis. And this is you know, it’s gonna be good assets for that it wasn’t part of the intention, but it’s a side benefit that Hey, you guys can actually be you in any of your students who are using these local media assets can actually be a real benefit to your community even in tough times, which is really cool.

 

Drew Griffin  11:18  

Small pivot and fortunately, we guessed right and it’s helping a lot of people and you know, they’re, they’re finding some value in this even though they may not immediately see the return on their investment monetarily. Building out that good faith, goodwill, certainly the opportunity is there to make money. It’s just you just need to know how to make the ask from some of those businesses and make it appealing enough that the return on that investment from local businesses is really good. But the other “I” in ROI is actually Influence. So, you have the ability to put that information out in front of people and you know a win on the engagement side and the share side and the growth side.

 

Richard Matthews  12:01  

Awesome. So, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit about your origin story as an entrepreneur. We talked on the show all the time, every hero has their origin story. And so you started to realize that you were different that maybe you had superpowers and maybe you could use them to help other people. So my question basically, is this how did you get started as an entrepreneur? Where did that come from for you?

 

Drew Griffin  12:22  

Well, truthfully, it probably started way back when I was a young kid, right? And I used to try to hustle on my the street that I grew up in Philadelphia, I would take coloring books and rip them out and color in these color book images from various types of coloring books that we had. And I would go around and try to sell that to my neighbors for a nickel. And sometimes it was a win sometimes it was a loss and, and then some of our neighbors saw the opportunity to hire me to do other things. Like, you know, do a little gardening here and there and you know cut grass and stuff. And yeah, I did that. Moved into my dad who was an entrepreneur. He did all kinds of things. He had a pizza shop, he had a, what we call Iron Burglary Protection company where we would make fabricate and weld iron gates and bars or like imagine the bars behind a jail right inside of Philadelphia. You know, crime was pretty, pretty commonplace. So what we would do is we’d make these things and put them on the front of storefront. So these are things are thinking about garage door where it kind of opens up. Well, these were a little bit more designed for protection of storefronts, and we would make these things and put them on Windows and that sort of thing. So, I learned to weld, to learn to do all that kind of stuff. But I’ve always been a tinkerer, right. I’ve always been you know, behind computers. My first computer was like a Mac or commerce –

 

Richard Matthews  14:02  

Is that one behind you there? One of your first computers.

 

Drew Griffin  14:06  

That’s one of the originals. So, we moved away from the Compaq or computer, Commodore 64 or TSRE. I forget exactly what we had. But when this thing came out, it was really good for word processing, but, and some gaming and stuff like that. And I became very interested in the innards of these computers and started tinkering around with them. I’ve always been, kind of self-taught with that type of stuff. Fast forward a number of years, and then I’m going into the medical industry after college or became a hyperbaric wound care nurse, of all things. I was actually attracted to seeing people actually heal physically. It’s hard to see blood pressure get better, but learned a skill, helping people recover from gunshot wounds, surgical wounds, and things of that nature. And I spent about 25 years doing that in burn units. I did some helicopter stuff and ended up in hyperbaric units working with dive patients, diabetics, and all that kind of stuff. And what I saw for a lot of the patients that I started working with were diabetics. And in that populace, a lot of those people made the same mistakes, and a lot of them were lifestyle choices, and they just didn’t care for themselves. 

 

It was very hard for diabetics to actually heal their wounds because of the disease process. So, I ended up developing one of the first apps to help diabetics track their blood glucose is what’s also called a hemoglobin a1C level, which is kind of a snapshot in general of how people are actually dealing with their diabetic diseases and allow them to track their journey like journal their activities, what they’re there foods were that sort of thing. And this was a mobile application that came out right around the advent of the iPhone. So like, as soon as the SDK or the software development kit came out, tinkered around with that language came out with something. And immediately, almost two weeks after that app came out, we saw about just about 35,000 downloads of that application. And I realized very quickly, that my time in the clinic was over. 

 

And I realized, wow, and there’s gonna be a lot more people that are carrying around these mobile devices that we all love. These iPhones, these Android devices, and that sort of thing that Apple has actually acquired. And my venture into the local marketing space and trying to figure out how to, get more digital products into more people’s hands seemed a lot more appealing than working 8 to 16 hours a day, in a filthy medical environment. And I was hooked. I was immediately hooked. And realized that man, we can just create things that people use either educationally or computer programs to do things better, that end up serving their lives a lot better. So yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing ever since and wouldn’t want to go back there, in the least.

 

Richard Matthews  17:19  

You have a wide story of things that you have done and been involved in. I think you said you mentioned one point you did. You did some work with podcasting, too, right?

 

Drew Griffin  17:29  

I mean, podcasting is a tremendous source of information and way back when the Chris Brogan’s and the Christopher Penn’s of the world who were actually the founders of a conference called PodCamp. I got into podcasting. I just loved it because people were using a microphone and they were talking with individuals they were learning about and connecting with people by recording episodes much like this one. So, I started following that around, had a magazine called Podcasting Magazine, and just featured other people and businesses that were podcast had podcasts, associated, they were podcasters, by general. And along with podcasters comes in the audience, which they have and you can leverage to connect with. And it’s just a wonderful way of following the ripple where you can, travel and learn and maybe share some information, insight, and knowledge to people that you would have never have met, unless you were on someone’s podcast, or you can consume someone else’s information.

 

Richard Matthews  18:38  

Makes a lot of sense. So, amidst all of the things that you have done, over the years of your entrepreneur career, I want to find out a little bit where you think your superpower lies, right. So the way that I’ve been framing this for people, actually, since our last mastermind that we were at together is is you know, what do you do build, or offer this world that helps solve problems for people and if you like, if you look at your set of skills, they’re probably wide and varied, you probably have one skill that really energizes the rest of them, right your zone of genius, so to speak. What do you think that is for you that’s really allowed you to grow and do the stuff that you do.

 

Drew Griffin  19:15  

So, I think recognizing emerging technologies, and then democratizing them for my audience, seeing the technology and where it’s going, and how you can actually leverage it, to connect with other people, to sell to other people to inform, to educate is a fantastic mindset. In the healthcare world, a lot of what I did was education-based, connecting the dots and helping them understand complex things, and then making it much more simple so that they can go about and get the results that they’re looking for. 

 

In particular healthcare diabetic, hey, let’s get your blood sugars under control, and that way your wound will actually start to heal because of the biochemistry of what’s going on in your body. Often that complex situation is very rarely understood. And if you can do behavior modification, activity, food modifications, those sorts of things, you’ll get better results. And therefore, ended up living longer, having less amputations, and being able to be around for your family, right. So that’s the end result of doing things a little bit differently. Transferring into the information world that we live in. I love understanding that and putting my twist on it so people can understand things a little bit better. And often I struggle with that, right? But once I can figure something out, democratizing that, or finding systems, and I know you’re big on systems, Richard is I’ve applied a lot of what you’ve taught me, revolving around systems and processes, to better democratize the things that I’m trying to do with various audiences I’m trying to reach.

 

Richard Matthews  21:02  

Interesting. And it almost sounds like, like if you were to narrow down what that means it’s almost like you can see the future. Right? You’re like if we make these changes now, this is the future we could create. Right? And you can see that where other people can’t, which allows you to say, Hey, here’s some of the things we can do today to help you move towards that future.

 

Drew Griffin  21:23  

100% I couldn’t say that much better, you should probably just interview yourself because I’m a big fan of what you do. Yeah, when you can see the future. It absolutely allows you to understand things better, and help guide people to making better decisions, or at least giving them the opportunity to make the decision to move forward, avoid the pain and move more towards pleasure, right. So, to quote, Frank Kern, a on the left-hand side of the equation, the ain’t got it. To the right side of the equation, they can get it, but you just need to follow the steps. 

 

Richard Matthews  22:00  

The steps to get there. So the flip side then of your superpower it was, of course, your fatal flaw, right? Just like Superman has his Kryptonite, what would be your kryptonite through something that has held you back in your entrepreneurial endeavors over the years that you’ve had to fight against? What is that for you? And more importantly, what have you sort of done to help curb that? So someone who’s listening who struggles with the same thing might learn from your experience there.

 

Drew Griffin  22:24  

So I think it comes down to the imposter syndrome and the imposter syndrome have has multiple layers to it. And that’s just like believing that I can actually accomplish something or moreso who am I to deserve this? Who am I to tell somebody about this? You know, This information already exists out there. And the truth of the matter is, part of that is fear of the unknown. And maybe sometimes recognizing that there’s a hurdle that I need to get over. And one of the things that I realized a few years ago, our mutual friend, and someone that has been instrumental in me moving my business forward, leaps and bounds is Dr. Ben Adkins of Serial Progress Seeker. And formerly, or maybe still currently, enclosures cafe has done tremendous things for me in my business. I took a course, from him a number of years ago, I realized the thing that, that I wasn’t doing that I need to move my business forward was getting more sales. And I was afraid of this icky thing. And it’s kind of revolves back to, you know, moving away from the typical sales approach to things and positioning us in a little bit different way to actually develop relationships first, and then sales will come later on. I realized through that course that no matter how many courses that I’ve gone through, no matter how much technology that I’ve invested in to get those end results that I’m actually looking for vis-a-vis actually working with a local agency, through my local agency actually working with local business, I wouldn’t need to get in for more businesses, I would need to be able to make more sales, cash is king. And I just didn’t believe that I was able to go out there and sell. And then I realized, my investment in these courses and thousands and thousands and thousands of 10s of thousands of dollars. I’ve invested in courses trying to teach me better things to do in order for me to get to the end result I was going to learn to sell and never thought of myself as a salesperson. But I could go out there and explain these things better. So it comes down to the imposter syndrome. Sometimes I feel that it comes, wreaking its ugly head back into me. And then I just realized, hey, let me just figure out how to do things a little bit better. Make a modification that suits my needs and will probably get better results for our customers and our clients. And then just develop the relationship and show them you know, the result. Ultimately, they’re actually going to be getting. So it comes down to imposter syndrome. For me, that is my kryptonite that is the antithesis of what I’m trying to do. But yeah, so far over the last couple of years, things have gone quite well. And building up that confidence by continuing to take action makes a big difference at the end of the day.

 

Richard Matthews  25:21  

Absolutely. So, my question for you on that is have you ever watched the Big Bang Theory TV show?

 

Drew Griffin  25:30  

I’ve caught some things here and there, but I can’t say that I’m an expert in the show.

 

Richard Matthews  25:39  

So the last season of the show is worth a watch, even if you’ve not watched anything else, particularly for the imposter syndrome thing. Because near the end of the season, one of the main characters has a very funny and very public meltdown about imposter syndrome and the character is basically yelling and another character who, who is trying to steal their Nobel Prize award. And they were like, I feel like we’re an imposter. You know, we suffer from imposter syndrome and she freaks out has a meltdown. She says you can’t have imposter syndrome, the imposter syndrome if you are an imposter, right? We’re the ones that would have imposter syndrome, because we’re the real deal. Right? And she has this whole meltdown about it. And one of the things that really struck me about the whole scene is how true that is, right? You don’t have imposter syndrome. If you are an imposter, right? If you don’t actually have the skills or the things to back up what it is you do, and it’s one of the things that helped me with struggling through that same imposter syndrome. I was like, I don’t deserve this. I can’t do this. I can’t do those things. Realize that hey, I’m actually the reason I’m struggling with impostor syndrome is because I have the skills, I’ve done this I have, I have a background of success that I can look at and I can remind myself that so it’s just that it’s imposter syndrome. So right so you can be in both camps or in one or the other camp, you can actually be an imposter. And if that’s you, right, you have to go and work on your skills and actually build up the backlog of success that shows that you’re not an imposter. Right? So that’s sort of like the, what you call it the baseline, right? You have to have the skills that you think you have. But if you have that, then you don’t have you’re not an imposter you have imposter syndrome that’s something that’s not real right? So you can step forward and actually take action to realize that hey, you know, I actually, imposter syndrome, something it’s all in your head.

 

Drew Griffin  27:39  

Agreed once you do take that action. I I completely agree with that. And I will go back and watch that show, but just because a lot of people recommended it to me. But yeah, I think you’re right. Once you do believe in yourself and you have those skills at some point. You have to go and take action upon this stuff, or you’re just going to get the same results that you’ve always gotten. And that’s nothing, right? Yeah, once you have that skill set, you have to, you know, write that blog post, you have to record that video, you have to ask somebody to be a guest on the podcast, you have to go and connect with a business and really try to solve their problem. And once you do that, you develop fantastic relationships, and you feel really good about it.

 

Richard Matthews  28:23  

And it’s interesting to how and you’ve probably seen this in everything you’ve done, it’s that we’re, we’re, you start off with whatever you’re trying to do. And it’s like pushing that rock, right where you feel like you’re pushing the rock up the hill, it’s a lot of work. But once you sort of get over the hump and the rock rolls down the other side of the hill, it starts to get easier and easier as you sort of go and grow everything from like, I remember putting this podcast together took me three years to get the first eight episodes done. And the last year we’ve done that, almost 100 episodes, right?

 

Drew Griffin  28:51  

It’s amazing once you get that momentum, once you get that thing moving, it becomes a machine and something that serves you and that’s that’s fantastic, and congratulations. On, on the success of your show, and this is clearly a work of endearment for you. And you’ve probably reached a lot of people with the episodes and the guests that you’ve had on your show.

 

Richard Matthews  29:15  

Thank you very much. And it’s cool to see it to start growing. And I realized that someone just the other day, they hit the new noteworthy on iTunes and their podcast 150 episodes into their show. 

 

Drew Griffin  29:27  

Wow. 

 

Richard Matthews  29:28  

And I was like, I’m not even there yet. And you know, ready to make new and noteworthy for some of these things. And I feel it’s, it’s interesting that you know, a lot of times and this is so true in a lot of things that you do in business, you’re like, I feel like I should get started today. And then like, I’m not super successful in six months that I should just give up. Right or, you know, move on to something else. And sometimes you realize you just have to put it in for the long haul.

 

Drew Griffin  29:53  

Having new quote-unquote, new and noteworthy at 150 episodes. That’s that’s, that’s amazing.

 

Richard Matthews  30:01  

It really is. So my, my next question for you has to do with your common enemy and the way that I’ve been framing common enemy for people. And for you, I think it probably makes most sense if we talked like in one of the specific spaces you’ve worked in maybe the education for like the local media assets. And it’s something that you have to fight against constantly with the people that you’re teaching or training, right that you’re constantly like banging your head against the wall that if you had a magic wand, and you could just remove something that they were struggling with, you know, they would get better, cheaper faster results. What is that sort of common enemy that you constantly have to fight against in your space?

 

Drew Griffin  30:40  

So, I guess there’s probably two parts to the two answers to this equation. And one is that the most common thing is patience. So, a lot of people that take our courses and they see this, they want immediate results, and part of what we’re doing strategically is building something up over time. It’s not gonna happen overnight. And often, the avatar of people that typically jump into a course like that is, you know, somebody that likes software they like to buy bright, shiny objects and they put the course on the shelf. They want immediate monetization. And like anything, you have to build something, you have to build on a foundation, you have to build something, and leverage the machine to actually get that momentum that you’re just speaking of. Clearly, you’re not adding 150 episodes yet, maybe you’re not recognized and new and noteworthy. But how long has it taken you to get to where you are today, right? Your overnight success only took you X amount of years and in order for you to reach that with LMA, and situations like that is, you know, some of what we’re teaching is structure-based information but it takes effort. It takes skill set. It takes investment of time, energy and money for people to build some of these things up. But once you have it established, you’ve got an amazing tool that you can use to lever the attention that you that you’ve built up. And, for example, these local media assets, imagine a Facebook page that you just start and perhaps you invited a bunch of your friends to like your page, and you’ve got 16 or maybe 160 people that have liked your page. Given the Facebook algorithm, you may not be getting a lot of attention on every single part, you know, every single post that you put out there. But if you’ve got 15-20,000 people that are following your page, and you’ve built up a messenger bot list and an email list and you can drive more attention and traffic to the videos and each and every single one of your posts and that traffic translates into your website. You can see it in your statistics and analytics. That takes a little bit of time takes, a little bit of effort takes consistency to build these types of things up. So the end prizes is being having a realistic expectation of what you’re looking for. 

 

Do you truly want to build something that is going to deliver you ongoing and consistent results, a true business worth something that has assets built around it for security and installation? Or do you just want the next bright thing that just came through a local brokerage company or software brokerage company, you know, bright, shiny object, piece of software that will give you that eventual result that you’re looking for. We all suffer from that haze, the new thing came out on AppSumo or something like that. We love AppSumo. But sometimes building a business around a piece of software that comes out may not be the best approach. The common enemy there is patience and belief in themselves, consistency, and building something out. 

 

Each and every single time when we apply the LMA approach to things, we consistently and predictably build things out, that can serve local businesses, local constituents, and the agency behind that LMA. Then, the second common enemy is maybe part of what I just refer to, and that’s the bright shiny object and imposter syndrome. people having the belief and you know, controlling their attention span of what’s being offered in front of them. Listen, we’re all inundated by messages we’re getting offers every single day. And it’s very difficult to keep the focus and attention on building something that is going to truly serve them. So those are the common enemies of that. We, internally I guess, my business partner, David and I, we suffer from that too. It’s like, hey, let’s we’re identified. 

 

There’s so many opportunities that are out there. And that can really lead to some trouble. If we don’t do our due diligence, we don’t have patience. There are so many opportunities and problems out there that are worth solving, and just very little time to get to them all. So that’s, that’s the challenge that we face on a day to day goes. And, we just have to be patient with ourselves.

 

Richard Matthews  35:22  

It reminds me of one of my, my early business mentors, who probably told me one of the most important things that I ever sort of learned in business was that we, as people, we vastly overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and vastly underestimate what we can accomplish in 10. Right. And so we get disappointed with things after a year and shift gears. So we’re always ever only ever a year into something right. We never push something long enough to see what happens when you put 10 years worth of consistent, a little bit of effort every day. Right? And it’s that slight edge mentality. We’re like, hey, if I just put a little bit of progress forward every day into this over the long term, it allows you to have an impact that is significantly greater than most people ever have in their lives because most people never make it past that first year of effort into something. 

 

Drew Griffin  36:14  

That’s true in a lot of things, you know, health, right, people that want to lose weight or they just want to improve an aspect of their health, their vision, you know, their clarity, it’s going on on their body, the chemical makeup of their body, going from alkaline to more acidic to alkaline or vice versa, right. Making some adjustments, your gut situation, just muscle makeup, whatever, whatever it is. People want that quick kill – It takes time and effort and I know that you’ve recently done this. You’ve made impeccable strides in your health. But you see this every year at the end of the year. People want to jump into the gym and now people can’t even get to the gym because of the Coronavirus, quarantine. And more people are getting that quarantine 15 to 20. Back on their midsections and trying to figure out all over again.

 

Richard Matthews  37:16  

Yeah, and I’ve been in the in that process and one of the things that’s really been blowing me away about like really, really learning to understand my health is the doctor that I’ve been working with his mentality for working with individuals like me, is daily like it. It’s interesting that like, what he’s focusing on is helping me change daily habits one at a time, right and creating small little incremental changes that build up over time. And starting with real baseline stuff like making sure that your liver and pancreas are working right and taking a month or two months to get back working right. Rather than working on your gut and then working on you know, we’ve got he’s like it’s a year-long program and everything about the program is all It’s all habits, it’s habitual little habitual things that you build up over time to, you know, like you mentioned, one of the things that we’re working on, I think in the next phase is working on changing the acidity to have more alkaline in the body. And it’s really interesting to see that even in health, it’s little changes made over time. That make big impacts.

 

Drew Griffin  38:21  

Isn’t it something that just those little minor habitual changes, habit hacking, that’s cold little phrase to approach it that way. Yeah, can make a profound impact on your performance. And maybe that’s the way to go start with that. Do that inside your business as well and move away from things that habitually are harming us. Maybe that’s the attention of your email box inbox, and all the different offers that are going out there, and then maybe taking more of a look and a long term approach to hacking your business for work.

 

Richard Matthews  39:02  

It’s the same kind of thing, right? The health of your business how can you do you know, make little habits every day that change what’s going on and you can that you can improve the health of your business a lot. So, if you’re a common enemy, it’s something that you’re fighting against, then your driving force is something that you fight for. Right? So just like Spider-Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or, you know, you gotta The Little Star Wars character there in the back. Maybe it’s Luke, who’s fighting against the warfighting for the rebel cause what is it that you guys fight for over at Delicious Marketing? And what’s the mission? We want to sort of know what it is?

 

Drew Griffin  39:42  

So, I guess the mission, the why is time. And I guess time. The thing that really motivated me before was I used to spend a tremendous amount of time away from my family and moving forward in the agency world and trying to approach entrepreneurship. Originally, some of the whys have changed, right? I get to spend an enormous amount of time with my family right now. And, principles, right? So I grew up Irish Catholic and I had a very strong faith growing up and tended to move away from that and not I saw some things and may have misinterpreted things and I guess my faith kind of took hit for a while and realized that I needed to do I made a lot of mistakes and you know, I don’t like the feeling of regrets and try to apply a lot of that towards business. So, trying to work more towards back having a relationship with my god and doing the right things and trying to be a model father, for my kids, and doing things the right way for what our beliefs are. And so getting that not getting that aside, but having a deep-rooted, having that really having that deeply rooted in my day to day activities. It’s also approaching business and doing things the right way, instead of just trying to sell somebody something that they’re going to buy. Let’s really try to develop relationships and grow with sound marketing, sound business principles, that are rooted in doing things that are going to serve more people in a way that’s going to get them results. And if we can do that, then we can make a positive impact in our approach to things so we tried to design things that will help improve our business and help improve the businesses of our clients, our customers that are buying our courses, buying our software to do micro things a little bit easier, a little bit better, and to get the real results in their business. While at the same time repelling things that don’t work so much. And learning more about more people and seeing opportunities, cheering more businesses on cheering more individuals so they can get those wins those, maybe get their first customer maybe get their second, third or fourth customer to start to grow those types of instant, those types of situations. So yeah, moving away from things that we don’t like that create a lot of fogginess, and confusion in the marketplace. We like to work with more people that are an abundance mindset. We love to cheer other people on that are getting wins. And, you know, moving away from that thought of competition as being bad. But really learning from people who are doing some amazing things in the community and listen to businesses that are crushing it. We love it. We love to learn from that. We love to model We’d love to improve upon that and make it better for all our customers.

 

Richard Matthews  43:04  

I heard someone say the other day that I don’t fear competition, I breed it. And I always like that mentality in business. But it sounds to me like what you guys are striving for is you’re striving to build a business that’s built on integrity. And that integrity goes all the way down to like your core beliefs and being able to get you back home with your family, and then help other businesses do the same thing where they can build businesses and build lives that are structured around, you know, life and love and happiness and joy instead of chaos and fear. And, I think that’s a powerful thing.

 

Drew Griffin  43:38  

Both can definitely be motivators, right. So, chaos and fear can be a huge motivator. In fact, it’s very, very strong. I joke with it almost every day talking about, you know, moving more towards the dark side of the Force, and clearly I’m a Star Wars geek and whatever. But I also use that as kind of a recognition that I had a wall built around me. And going through a process in high school called Kairos is about removing those barriers, but often, things build-up, we’re all experienced trust in the world. And, you know, we’re impacted by things that happen all around us. And as far as we can control those types of things moving more towards inclusion is only a good thing. So I’m excited.

 

Richard Matthews  44:34  

Absolutely. So, I’ll shift gears a little bit and talk practically in your business, right? We call this the Hero’s Toolbelt. Maybe you got a big magical hammer like Thor, or a really cool lightsaber like Obi-Wan Kenobi, right? Or maybe you just really love how Evernote helps you organize your thoughts in your business. What are some of the practical tools that you guys, you and Drew used every day in your business that you couldn’t do what you do, educate your students, work with your agencies, work with your clients, if you know something, a couple, one or two things you’re like, you know what, I just couldn’t do my business today without these tools. What are some of those for you?

 

Drew Griffin  45:04  

So we’re still learning a lot of different tools. But in general, you know, we love leveraging webinars, we love creating courses, that house a lot of our products. We are starting to embrace a heck of a lot more programming and developing tools that solve problems. Right now we’re in the midst of creating and bringing to market an extension that helps facilitate group growth. And we’re really excited about that. That’s gonna be coming out relatively soon. It’s called Group X. And we’re thrilled about that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s been a pleasure to do it’s a very simple application, and extension that more or less helps facilitate group growth, list building by way of using Facebook. So yeah, all the social things that are out there, my core, our core thing right now is educating and helping people through, you know, some online courses. It’s a great source of revenue for us, at least in the time of social distancing. We can still sell things so we’ve got tools like Thrive Cart and Sam Cart are amazing tools to help facilitate payment processing. We’re able to use and leverage Facebook Live and webinars to actually sell, inform, educate, entertain, and eventually sell those types of products. And I think our business will take a hit if those weren’t there. We absolutely enjoy it. The social aspect of connecting with people so like Facebook, various Facebook groups, has been absolutely impeccable. Messenger has been a massive massive tool for us Facebook Messenger messenger bots with many chats. There’s learning to incorporate all those working together. Clickfunnels is big for us being able to rapidly deploy web pages. Russell Brunson, his amazing team, and I’m trying to get better at copywriting. So I’ve been learning from Jim Edwards and finding and looking for other people to help educate me on those types of things. So, those are the core pillars of our stuff. And of course, our software we believe, are cool things we’ve got Everlinks, which is a rapid, mini web page developer, designed for mobile-optimized, linktree focused types of links where they can link out to multiple products, from links and bio or pretty much any hyperlink that you can provide online. Yes, that’s our core, our core software product. We’ve got a few others that are coming out. But yeah, those are, those are pretty much the things that we live in religiously every day.

 

Richard Matthews  47:59  

Absolutely. It’s interesting to how important online learning has become just in the midst of our, you know, global crisis. And it’s funny because you know, you and I have been in the online education space for a number of years. And it’s crazy to see that like, our whole business has been based on like a small subset of the population being interested in online learning. And now it’s like the whole world has just opened up to us where it’s like, everyone wants to know a little bit about online education. So if you’re in that space, whether you’re teaching people how to do it like I do, or you’re actually providing online education, like you do, it’s, it’s very interesting times to be alive and be a be taking advantage of a lot of these tools that we’ve mastered over the last couple of years.

 

Drew Griffin  48:40  

It’s true, it’s a huge opportunity. And I do believe that it’s deep-rooted in a lot of different business structures. The opportunity to move more towards an education component or have an education component in their businesses is going to be critical for customer acquisition. And it’s an opportunity for people that don’t know where else to go either had a former employee mentality they’ve been furloughed or laid off or completely fired. Turning to online education could be a huge opportunity in a way to generate revenue and serve a lot of other people at the same time.

 

Richard Matthews  49:17  

Absolutely. So, my next question for you has to do with your own personal heroes, right? Just like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi-Wan Kenobi or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad, who were some of your heroes, were they real-life mentors, speakers or authors, peers who are a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far with your business?

 

Drew Griffin  49:34  

Am I you know, the cool thing is I’m identifying and starting to pause a little bit to recognize even more hero heroes that come You know, come across. I come across in my life. You know, I could use the stock version, but I’d be lying and if I didn’t recognize, you know, my parents, I lost both my parents. They’ve instilled a lot of interest in things in my life. Each of my siblings are heroes to me in their own right. My wife, my wife is an extraordinary hero, one that I don’t deserve all the time. She’s an occupational therapist. She has single-handedly instilled amazing values and skills in my daughters. And, you know, in this time of social distancing and whatnot, seeing my kids thrive within these challenges, graciously, has been a joy to see. I’m excited about their futures, I see that they’re going to do great things. And it’s certainly a testament to what she’s been able to do, raising them, you know, in partnership with me as well. But I do recognize other heroes that are out there. Not gonna lie at first when I When we first met, I was kind of, you know, confused by how we actually initially met. And you know, seeing the success that you’ve had over the number of years as I’ve come to know you, there’s certainly a sense and I’ve revealed this to you before that I was intimidated, right. I was intimidated by what you were able to accomplish because I truly wanted a lot of I just recognize that you have an amazing skill set, the intellect. The way that you approach your family, the way that you raise your family, the way that you provide for them, the way that you serve other people. Is amazing, right. So you’re one of my heroes. And, you know, I’ve been privileged to come to know you have been privileged to break bread with you. I recognize what you’re doing in the world, not only with your customers and clients, but everyone that you touch by wave your podcast, your customers, your clients, and certainly the colleagues Some friends that we both share. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention your partner Zach, I’ve sought out his, his advice on a lot of different things I’ve learned to do business better as a result of knowing the both of you. And, yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of my colleagues in the healthcare world, they do and touch people’s lives in a very, very interesting way. In fact, just yesterday, I shared this story with a mutual friend of ours, Tabitha Thomas at Serial Progress Seeker, you know, at the hospital, who was checking in on a patient that I was asked to do a consult with, so I occasionally still do some things in healthcare. And a colleague of mine who is particularly endearing when working with patients just has a way of comforting them, you know, outside of medicine, right, instead of just pushing the drugs and all that kind of stuff, actually takes time to sit on the side of the bed and work with them. Right, and listen to them and just spend some time with them when their family members can’t be with them. And, you know the story a little bit, you know, kind of shook me a little bit. So the patient was on the hospice and was fearful. And so when we entered the room, she asked us to pray with her. So my colleague sat down on the side of the bed and did so and asked her if she believed in Jesus and so on and so forth. And the patient revealed that she was Jewish, and, you know, did not believe and but was interested in learning more and hearing more and it was too late and that sort of thing. And the conversation was going on and I was doing you know, what I needed to do with the patient. She was sitting there comforting her, and the conversation went on and she said, you know, she was doing something with her eyes. It was a little bit weird. Her eyes were tracking back and forth, and she literally was, appear to be looking through us and beyond us to what else was going on in the room, which there was nothing really going on in the room that we could see. And she said you know, what are you looking at? And she said I’m looking at the angels. And, you know, that kind of hit me a little bit differently. Right? So she said, You know, so the nurse that was there with may have said,

 

Ah, you know, they must be beautiful. You know, are they are they beautiful? What are they wearing, basically, probing asking her what they look like, and that sort of thing? And, and she said, Well, some of them are beautiful. And, you know, she was tracking back and forth and like, you know, when the way that she said it hit me, pretty hard said, “Some of them are beautiful.” And then she shifted to the other side of the room with her eyes. And, you know, I’m sitting there watching her at the exact time, she said, and some of them aren’t. And I was like, “Alright, I need to go.” That’s my time in the room here. I’m not exactly sure why I shared that. But yeah, she was a hero, you know, the the the nurse spending time with her when, she had her time is waning down is a here it’s a lot of my colleagues in the health care world, even though I spend a lot of time in that world anymore. I recognize that they deal with things in the face of a lot of uncertainty with this virus. They put their lives on the line every single day. And yeah, so those are heroes. And I think pretty much everybody out there that just wants to do the right thing. There are people that are looking to get become an entrepreneur, they’re looking to improve their businesses in the face of fear, a lot of uncertainty. And they’re looking to do the right thing by serving their customers and clients in the right way. Those are heroes, those are people that I’ve never met before yet and hopefully, through this medium this internet thing that, you know, we’ll cross paths with other people that we’re destined to connect with, and touch the lives of people that you know that really need it.

 

Richard Matthews  56:12  

Absolutely. One of the reasons I asked that question is because it’s always struck me how everyone has an answer to it. Right? Everyone has a hero in their lives. And what’s interesting to me is very often a lot of the people that you would consider heroes, those people don’t know you consider them a hero. Right? And it’s always cool when you know you find out someone considers you their hero, thank you for that. But the thing that struck me is a realization that like, I always want to act in such a way that I’m worthy of that. Right that I’m worthy of it for the people that are in my lives that the same gentleman that told me a number of times that I needed, you know that we underestimate what we accomplish in a year. And also told me that, you know, when you grow up when your kids grow up, or as they grew up, they’re gonna have a hero. Right? And he’s he said, it is damn well better to be you. And that always struck me because I was I always thought it is like, if you’re not worthy of it, your kids are going to pick someone else, they’re gonna find someone else to be the hero in their lives. And I’ve always liked that whole mentality of thinking to myself, how do I how am I acting today or acting in a situation, am I acting in a way that’s worthy of someone’s admiration? Right? Because if I’m not, and I need to change something, and that’s where, like, sort of the heart of that question comes from I’ve always, I just love that you have so many like examples of that in your life where you’re like, I’ve got all these people that I can see that are worthy of admiration, or worthy of being heroes. So anyway, that’s it’s a cool story.

 

Drew Griffin  57:52  

Well, I thank you for that. But it’s true, the sooner that we can find and recognize here In our lives, the better. And when you experience having a wall built up around you that’s based in an a, a false belief of, you have to compete, you have to outdo you have to be better or whatever it might be. Certainly there’s are things that are going to motivate you, you want to improve and model, improve and do things that, you know, people have taught you and, and that’s based upon, you know, really trying to serve if you really come comes down to it. So that said, I know that your legacy, you know, for your family is deeply rooted, and with that belief is that you want to serve them and you want to provide for them, you want to show them a pathway and you’ve clearly accomplished that and there’s no, there’s no fear that you’re going to not continue to deliver that for your family and know that your family loves you know, your wife does an amazing job. I’m actually learning from your wife too. I mean, just some things The things that she posts online comes from that place. She’s absolutely amazing person. So, and I’m privileged, I’m honored and grateful to call you a friend. And grateful for your mentorship and being a guest here on your show.

 

Richard Matthews  59:20  

Absolutely, then goes the other direction. So I have one more important question for you. I call this your guiding principles. Top one or two principles or actions that you use regularly today that you think contribute to the success and influence that you guys enjoy over at Delicious Marketing, maybe something you wish you’d known when you first started getting into this whole entrepreneur game. Yeah,

 

Drew Griffin  59:42  

I think the one thing that I don’t like is regret. Right? So I learned this principle this statement, and there’s something kind of really deeply rooted inside there from my father and it’s, you know, there are no right or wrong decisions, there are only consequences. And, you know, the one caveat to that is, you know, you just have to have a moral compass that you’re trying to help and serve other people. Certainly, there are profit-driven decisions. And certainly, you know, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to and earning a profit off of the actual services products that you’re putting out there. But being doing it for the right reasons is something that you should use as that moral compass to move things forward. And yeah, just you know, don’t waste the time, right, is clearly we’re all facing something going on in the world right now. make that decision to move forward and even if it’s the wrong one, at least you’re going to learn from it. Move forward, take action. Don’t be fearful of making mistakes because that’s how you learn. And surround yourself with people like yourself, surround yourself with people that are heroes. They’re making a difference in the world and find those problems. Look for ways to solve those problems, whether it’s through your education, whether it’s through technology, or through service, and I think you’ll be on the right path.

 

Richard Matthews  1:01:21  

Absolutely. And, just to further that point, even if it’s the wrong decision, right move, because if you’re moving, it’s easier to course correct a ship that’s moving than it is to get a ship going. Right. So once you start, get that effort, get that ball rolling, it’s easier to change and course correct and make better decisions moving forward than it is to just get started. So once you get over that hump of getting started, it gets easier. 

 

Drew Griffin  1:01:44  

That’s true. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:01:46  

Absolutely. So that basically wraps up our interview. I have one last thing we do on the show every time it’s real simple. It’s called Hero’s Challenge. And it’s something we do it every show. It’s basically this you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story, who are they? First names are fine. Why do you think they should come to share their story on our show?

 

Drew Griffin  1:02:07  

Well, it’s this guy who has probably been on your show a lot of times but been a great influence. My life has been Dr. Ben Adkins. He has been amazing. In my life. He’s made a big difference. He’s put a lot of money in my pockets. But I’m going to shift a little bit. So I’m going to say two or eight. So Dr. Ben Adkins, if you haven’t had him on, seek him out. I think he and his crew are absolute world-class. They live in integrity. But I’m going to give a shout out to my business partner and give him the opportunity to jump on here as well. David Calafiore. I’ve grown to know him as a friend, as a partner as somebody that lives and walks in integrity. I’ve learned a ton from him with regards to business, but I’d love for you to hear from him as well. He’s got a very interesting story. It’s got a lovely family. And I couldn’t be more proud and privileged to be associated and call my business partner and friend.

 

Richard Matthews  1:03:08  

Awesome. So, we’ve had been on once before, but it was one of our first episodes from several years ago. So we may have to get him back on for another interview. And, David, I think we might have conversations going already to get him on the show. So we’ll see. We’ll see about that. If not, I’ll make sure to let him know that. You told me how to come on.

 

Drew Griffin  1:03:28  

I’ll force him to come on. He’s got a little bit of a shy guy and he clearly has more hair than I do. But I think you’ll enjoy that conversation.

 

Richard Matthews  1:03:36  

Absolutely. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Drew really appreciates it. Last thing, where can people find you?  If they want to pick up any of your courses or follow in your groups or pick up some of your software, right, they find you and I guess more importantly, who are the types of people that are best to sort of reach out and get involved in what it is you guys are doing?

 

Drew Griffin  1:03:54  

Sure. So I guess the people that are probably the people that would be interested in some of our stuff are new, aspiring or even established local marketing agencies or people that are want to find a different way to connect a better way to connect with local businesses. We talk a lot about prospecting and lead generation and just better ways to connect with various types of businesses. Yeah, the best way to do that, we’ve got a website a few websites https://deliciousmarketing.io/

 

It’s not dot com it’s dot IO https://deliciousmarketing.io/

 

Our software program is called EverLinks. E-V-E-R-L-I-N-K-S.io. And lastly, if you want a little book that kind of explains one of our core products is called LMA or Local Media Assets. You can find that at LMAbook.com. And yeah, it’s a very, very quick read, but it gives you a lot about the principles of what we’re trying to share. And you can pick up, pick that up relatively inexpensively. A couple of bucks. And you’ll be all set when you have an understanding a deep or deeper understanding of what’s going on. And in that principle, and how can we be able to serve you if you want to build out an asset that serves you and your agency for years to come.

 

Richard Matthews  1:05:15  

Absolutely. And for those of you who are listening, if you are in that space, or you want to be in the space where you’re talking and working with local businesses, and it’s a huge space, right 60 million-plus businesses that are currently struggling. You can come in and be a knight in shining armor, so to speak. And what Drew and his team have put together with, I’ve watched them develop it and build it over the last couple of years really, really good stuff, I would highly recommend picking up their book and doing that. So Drew, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it. And look forward to talk to you again soon.

 

Drew Griffin  1:05:47  

Richard, it’s been a privilege. Thank you so much for your time. I know you serve your community quite well. And I can’t wait to have you on our podcast relatively soon. Because I know that one of the things that you talk about absolutely makes an immediate impact in people’s businesses. So again, thank you so much for your time. Be safe out there. Say hello to the family and I can’t wait to hang out with you real soon.

 

Richard Matthews  1:06:10  

We’ll do. Thank you very much, Drew. Have a good day.