The Remarkability Formula | Rich Brooks

David McBee: Hello, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Rich Brooks, Founder and President of flyte new media, a digital agency in Portland, Maine that's been in business for over 25 years. Rich is a nationally recognized speaker on entrepreneurship, digital marketing, and social media. He founded The Agents of Change, an annual conference and weekly podcast that focuses on search, social, and mobile marketing. Rich is the author of The Lead Machine, The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing, and he has appeared in Inc. Magazine, The Huffington Post, FastCompany.com, CNN, the Social Media Examiner, and many other news stories that you are probably familiar with. Rich, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Rich Brooks: Thanks so much for having me. David McBee: No, it's my pleasure. I'm honored to have you here. I understand that you have developed a formula for marketers, owners, and entrepreneurs to use to uncover what you call their own remarkability. Can you tell us about that? Rich Brooks: Yeah, absolutely. This just came from me, like you said, being doing this for over 25 years and the idea that it's not enough to just be able to do Facebook Ads or have a website, you really have to stand out online. And so from that, we developed this format called the Remarkability Formula, which uses four lenses to view on yourself, which is Find, Focus, Forge, and Frame. Each one of them helps identify something that helps you stand out from your competition and build high barriers to competition. David McBee: Four Fs, that's pretty easy to remember. Rich Brooks: I had to work on that, but yes. You know us marketers. We need something that's either an acronym or the same letter over and over again. David McBee: No, too many acronyms. All right, well, what are some examples of businesses that have discovered and leveraged their own remarkability? Rich Brooks: Great question. Everybody should find their own. So, Find is actually the first one, and it's really just about identifying what you're already doing that's different and you may not even realize it. So, you have to ask your customers why they chose you. When I bought my first house, we actually were in dire need of a paint job. We called around. I had this vision from what I'd heard from friends that just it would take so long and they'd be there for a week or maybe even longer, all over the house. It would be a work zone. We found somebody who promised they could do it in two days and we're like, "Great, job's yours." The way he did is he showed up with 20 workers and four or five vans, and they took care of the entire house in one day, set up the ladders. I think they were singing sea shanties the whole time. I mean, it was just incredible. A day or two later, after the first coat was on, they did the second coat. As you can imagine, a lot of the neighbors took notice and so got them talking as well. That was just something that nobody else was doing and not easy for other companies to have that many employees on staff as well. So, that was an example of the Find lens of Remarkability. David McBee: I love that. I'm always asking businesses to tell me what their USP is, what makes you unique, and they all say the same thing. They all say best service, great prices, whatever. But to ask the customers what they think their unique selling proposition is, that's brilliant. Thank you. Rich Brooks: Absolutely. David McBee: What about the other letters? Do you want to dive into those? Rich Brooks: Sure. One is focus and this is all about niching down. It's tough and a lot of people don't like to niche down because they're afraid of leaving business on the table. But really, we should be focusing our attention on serving fewer people and offering less, which sounds counterintuitive, but that's how you become a specialist. When I was doing my research into developing out this thought process, I found that in, I think it was 2019, the average American physician, general practitioner, made a very healthy $297,000 a year in annual salary... Or 249,000, sorry. The average specialist made 399. So, over $150,000 more per year by arguably knowing less about medicine. But at the same point, they became specialists and they were able to charge a lot more because of that specialty. So, if we're thinking about an agency, if we can focus and narrow down on just B2B or just B2C or just CPA agencies or whatever it may be, or go in a different direction and be like, "We only do Google Ads," or, "We only do this type of marketing," then we become the experts in that field and will draw people to us, we'll know more about it, and we'll be able to charge a premium for people who really care about that specific service or are really focused on their industry. David McBee: I just had a guest a few weeks ago who only does geofencing and he only does it for hotels and restaurants. He actually fired a bunch of doctors and lawyers and other industry folks that had been his clients, but he said that was one of the best moves he'd ever made. Rich Brooks: It is true because all of a sudden, you can narrow all your attention, whether it's, what conferences should I attend? Where should I try and be speaking? How do I target my audiences on Facebook Ads or Google Ads to get in front of them? It really narrows your focus. I know it's hard at the beginning, and I will say for people who blanch at the idea, you can't have more than one focus. I mean, that's okay too, but it's narrowing down your offerings so that you become known for something is really what's going to help you stand out. There's examples for each lens, obviously, but the idea is just put these lenses one on top of each other, go through this process yourself, and then as you pile them on or pile them up, you'll start to see what makes you remarkable. Just remember that remarkability is in the eye of your customer, not to yourself. So, you really have to make sure that your customers think this is remarkable as well. David McBee: Well, if it's okay, I'm loving going down the letters. Can you hit on the last two? Rich Brooks: These are a little bit trickier. So, we probably [inaudible 00:06:08] save more time. One great story about Frame or one example is Red Bull, right? Let me just say, Frame is all about how you position yourself. You're not changing anything. You're just repositioning the way people see you. When Red Bull came to market, they could have just been another soda and they obviously would've been crushed by Coke and Pepsi. But what they did instead is they shrank the size of their bottle, increased their price, and promoted the one ingredient they had that other companies at the time didn't have, taurine. Instead, they positioned themselves as an energy drink, which was at the time something that nobody was talking about. But because of that, they now own most of the market when it comes to energy drinks, and I think they sold over $2 billion worth of product just a couple of years ago. That's one example of how you might frame going from a sugary beverage to an energy drink to really unlock your potential in terms of your ideal customers. The last one is Forge, and this is about creating something that's outside of your actual offering. I'm going to use myself as an example. We have an annual conference called Agents of Change. It's also the name of my weekly podcast. People can come to the conference, which is all about digital marketing. They don't have to use Flyte to buy a ticket. Likewise, people who buy a ticket to Agents of Change don't have to use Flyte. But by creating this thing that's outside of Flyte's offering, but still in alignment with our mission and vision and me getting up on stage, wearing my Flyte New Media outfit, so to speak, but talking about The Agents of Change, we're suddenly being associated with this conference that all these other companies are attending. I hear from our clients, "How did you hear from us?" Obvious question, right? They'll say, "Well, I've been going to your conference for years, but I'm finally ready for a website," or, "I'm finally ready for SEO and that's why we're talking today." The other thing about putting on a conference is it's a ton of work. None of my competitors are going to be like, "Let's pull in 400 people in the state of Maine to go to a conference and pull in all of these speakers from around the country." But I have those relationships that I've developed with them. So, this is my secret sauce. It makes it very difficult for someone else to compete with me on that front. They have to go out and find their own remarkability to get their ideal clients. David McBee: Well, I absolutely love your formula. Fantastic. There's your fifth F. It's all fantastic. Rich Brooks: Thank you. David McBee: All right, last question. Do you have a mentor or a podcast, and you're welcome to use your own if you want, or a book that you feel has helped you become very successful? Rich Brooks: There are so many, and I've had coaches and I do agency masterminds that I've started myself. But what I've been listening to lately that's really helped has been the podcast, the 2Bobs, and I'm guessing somebody must have mentioned... No? Okay. The 2Bobs, one of them is, I won't remember their names, Blair Enns and he wrote the no pitch manifesto, but Google the 2Bobs agency podcast, you'll find it. They're very funny and they've been consulting with agencies for years. Although I don't always agree with them, they've opened up my mind to different ways of running and being successful when it comes to agency ownership. David McBee: Awesome. Thank you so much, this was a great interview and I really appreciate you being here. Rich Brooks: Thank you, David. I appreciate it. David McBee: Thank you. All right, well, thank you guys for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.