Episode Transcript
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Zack Zeller (00:00):
Hi. This is Zack
Zeller, author of "Fully Booked"
(00:05):
and founder of ZZ Media, and onmy episode of the Business
Growth Architect Show, I willshare how books are for buyers
and content is for browsers, andhow you can use this to make
soulful content that gets youbetter buyers to grow your
(00:25):
business with head on over andlisten to the full episode right
now. And
BEATE CHELETTE (00:30):
hello, fabulous
person. Beate Chelette here.I am
the host of the Business GrowthArchitect Show, and I want to
welcome you to today's episodewhere we discuss how to navigate
strategy and spirituality toachieve time and financial
freedom, truly successful peoplehave learned how to master both
a clear intention and a strategyto execute that in a spiritual
(00:52):
practice that will help them tostay in alignment and on
purpose. Please enjoy the showand listen to what our guest
today has to say about this verytopic. Welcome back your host,
Beate Chelette here with ZackZeller from ZZ Media, and today
we are talking about contentcreation utilizing AI tools and
(01:15):
sort of really diving into whatyou can do to get your message
out concise, quickly andconsistently, which I think is
the most important thing, Zack,I'm so excited for you to be
here. Welcome to the show.
Zack Zeller (01:28):
Thank you so much.
I'm super excited to be here aswell. Zach, for
BEATE CHELETTE (01:31):
somebody who has
never heard about you or does
not know who you are, tell uswho you are and what do you
solve for your clients,
Zack Zeller (01:38):
absolutely. So I'm
a full stack marketer, I work
with a lot of service providersto pour gasoline on their on the
fire with really good marketingand messaging to help them go
from overlooked in themarketplace to really fully
booked. So
BEATE CHELETTE (01:58):
what does that
mean? So most people, most
business owners, they love whatthey do. They're impact driven,
they're service providers.
They're getting their stuff out,but they don't know how to find
enough clients, and they don'tknow how to find enough good
clients. If I come to you and Itell you, this is the problem I
(02:18):
have, I'm amazing. I'm reallygood at what I do. At least I
think I am, and I get greatresults from my clients, but I
don't have enough clients. Wheredo we start? Yeah,
Zack Zeller (02:29):
the biggest
assumption that I see is with
social media and in unlimitedappetite for content, online
business owners feel all of thispressure to put out so much
content, and so they think morecontent means more eyeballs,
means more sales. But really,that's a flawed assumption,
(02:55):
because really what happens isbetter content, when you go
slower, when you create morethoughtful content, then you can
get better customers and growyour business a lot more easily,
because it's not about getting amillion customers, it's about
working with 100 really targetedcustomers. That's the
BEATE CHELETTE (03:21):
opposite of what
Alex Hermozi says and Grand
Cardone. They say, Take as muchstuff as you have, just go in
the studio, change your shirtevery board, four messages, and
just record for a whole day andput like 100 videos out there.
Have a staff of 20, a budget ofa million, and just get it all
(03:43):
out a month, and you weretelling me it's a lie.
Zack Zeller (03:48):
Well, so I have to
confess, because before I
started ZZ Media, I was workingwith an online education brand
with another type of AlexHermozi is Jason Capital, and we
were teaching people how towrite, copy, close, sales and
speak, and we had that wholemachine set up. We had a quarter
(04:12):
of a million dollars a monthgoing out for a production team
and all the people to track andrun that system and build that
tech. We had six posts a daygoing out on Instagram, tik,
Tok, like everything. And to befair, we were doing a lot of
high volume sales, making 300 to$400,000 a month at our peak.
(04:37):
The problem is that we didn'thave a really strong business.
We just had really strong frontend acquisition, meaning, out of
the 300 to 400 people we wouldwork with over that first month
for $1,000 on getting whateverresult, we only had. About 1% of
(05:00):
those people go into the backend, and so our business became
dependent on that high volumecontent strategy, which doesn't
last forever, because it's soit's so fickle to have your
business rely on going viral andbeing a thought leader in that
(05:24):
way, where you're getting reachand connecting superficially
with people, but it's notbuilding that long term customer
value that comes from a lot ofqualifying, deep connection, and
I view it as useful, liketactical value coming from your
content. Well,
BEATE CHELETTE (05:44):
I think that
what you just said is really
powerful. I call it the churn,because the churn of bringing
people into the pipeline andthen keeping that pipeline
running and running and runningand running. Now I'm going to
divorce myself from this idea ofthis internet marketing. But how
do I start with an actualstrategy? Like, how do I how do
(06:05):
I begin? So I I'm a serviceprovider, I'm a coach, I'm
consultant. I have, I have aclear idea. But what do I build?
Like, how do I get started?
Zack Zeller (06:18):
Yeah, the biggest
thing I see blocking people is
focusing much more ontransactions over relationships.
And so what that looks like is,if you're looking at a lot of
the bro marketing, sales, sales,sales side of things, it's very
BEATE CHELETTE (06:37):
Oh my god. That
is so good. It is totally bro
marketing, lots of cash,airplanes, toys, fast cars,
girls, tequila,
Zack Zeller (06:47):
exactly. And it's
and it's so focused on the
manipulation side of marketing,of here's what to say, here's
the right funnel, the right leadsource, and everything is very
superficial, so it solves oneproblem, but it builds around
(07:07):
your business, and it doesn'tactually build your business. So
focusing on the relationshipside really changes the way you
think, and I view this justreally straightforward with your
customer lifetime value. Soinstead of focusing on, how can
I sell the biggest, highest costthing up front, it's, how can I
(07:32):
create a customer journey whereeveryone that I work with in my
business can become worth 20,000$100,000 or whatever that number
is, over the course of workingtogether over time, I
BEATE CHELETTE (07:50):
like this a lot
more. So what's the what's the
shift in my head that I need todo to actually embrace this?
Yes,
Zack Zeller (08:01):
the biggest thing,
and I see this all the time,
it's that copy won't fix a lotof the marketing or sales
problems you have. It needs tobe focused on an actual
marketing strategy. So this wastaught to me as you walk into a
(08:22):
room and you sit on a chair, youunless you're sitting on some
sketchy chairs, you're notworried about if the chair will
hold your weight, if it'll fallback, if you know anything, Ban
will happen from sitting on thechair. We really take that for
granted, because the chair has aset structure to it, but most
(08:44):
people don't have theirmarketing set up that way. They
kind of do marketing by the seatof their pants, where, if they
need a client, they'll do someoutreach really hard for a week
or two, or they'll post somecontent and do a launch and work
until midnight three days of theweek to just get some stuff out
(09:06):
and drive more sales into thebusiness. But that's not a long
term strategy. That's what youcan do to get cash in today. And
in fact, when you focus on doingthose cash injection strategies
too often, it keeps you almostaddicted or dependent on that
(09:26):
way of thinking and that way ofoperating in your business.
BEATE CHELETTE (09:29):
Why do people
not know this? I mean, if what
you're selling is so compellingand clear, it's like building a
relationship, right? You are notlooking to, when you go out in
the world, to have 50girlfriends or boyfriends, most
people looking to find their onepartner. So the concept is a
(09:49):
clear concept. It's got to bethe right person, the right
relationship. Yes, what goeswrong that we forgot that the
right relationship? What we alsoneed in business. What happened?
Zack Zeller (10:04):
Yeah, the truth is
how Warren Buffett described it.
Because I think Jeff Bezos wastalking to Warren Buffett about
this, and was saying, WarrenBuffett is infinitely richer
than a lot of these otherpeople, and just said, How come
(10:25):
more people don't just do whatyou do? And the answer was,
because people don't want to getrich slow. And that's how I
think about these differences inmarketing, because it's very
seductive to say you don't haveto build a relationship and
(10:45):
consistently post and work onyour offers and give a good
product or service and do all ofthe things that will work with
you that will build yourbusiness over time. Because it's
a lot more seductive to say,hey, here's this Facebook ad
loophole, or here's 30 days ofTiktok content, or this offer
(11:10):
that's working for me, that youcould just copy and throw into
your business, but it justcreates, again, this very
superficial business that youhave that doesn't compound or
not scale in terms of allowingyou to handle more capacity
infinitely, but scales goodwill,where you're able to point to a
(11:35):
book that you wrote five yearsago to close a client that just
heard of you today or share I'msure you do this or have seen
this a lot, where someone canask you a question. You say,
Hey, I've actually talked aboutthis in depth in a podcast. You
share that with them, they comeback to you a week later saying
they've binge watched 20 hoursof your podcast content. How can
(11:58):
I work with you that kind ofconversation? But that doesn't
happen if you're continuouslylooking for the quickest way to
make money this month.
BEATE CHELETTE (12:08):
You know, this
is so simple, it's almost it's
almost too easy to to talkabout. But I think you're
absolutely correct. It is theallure of saying I don't have to
work hard, I don't have to beconsistent. So now let's switch
gears here a little bit. Solet's say I'm listening to this.
(12:30):
I'm now taking a deep breath,and I'm going finally somebody
is telling me something Ibelieve in less is more, better
is better. How do I now developthis actual strategy? Like, do I
write a book? Am I going to do apodcast? Am I going to start
blogging? Am I going on substack? By the way, I love sub
(12:51):
stack. Am I going to do Facebookads with just a little bit am I
going to do tick tock,Instagram, LinkedIn? Am I going
to take a LinkedIn? CRM, whatthe heck do I do now? Because
all these modalities are stillout there yelling at me that
they want to be serviced. Yes,
Zack Zeller (13:08):
yeah. And part of
that is starting by taking a
deep, a deep breath and limitingyourself. And it's going, it's
one of the most, I guess,relaxing business activities
I've ever done, where I gavemyself permission to just say,
this year, all I'm going to dois three things, like, I'm going
(13:32):
to write emails, I'm going tofocus on LinkedIn, and I'm going
to write a new Book. And even ifI do two out of those three
things, it's a win for the year,and I can joyfully say no to
everything else and just focuson getting really good on those
(13:53):
three things. And even thosethree things may even be too
much, but I gotta add a littlebit of variety and and a little
bit of that just for to make itinteresting for myself. Because
once you really can add thoseconstraints, you can go very
deep, and that's where you standout. Because if you're rushing
(14:14):
to write a newsletter and postit on sub stack and then go on
LinkedIn and Instagram, andyou're in a mastermind
community, and you're fulfillingfor clients or working with a
team or something else, you'regonna be flitting from one task
to the next task to the nexttask, and it's going to drive
(14:38):
you crazy, because when you'redoing one task, you're going to
just be thinking about gettingit done. And when you're done
with that task, you're you'regoing to be thinking about, Oh
man, I wish I could have spentthat time to improve it or do it
well. Or even worse, you'regoing to have things breaking
down or not being as. Only doesyou want them to be I like to
(15:02):
say there's this trend of fastcopy, which is almost like fast
fashion, where people will writeposts a lot of the time using AI
or other swipes or templates.
And I've seen that you can writecopy fast, but it has a much
shorter Half Life. Meaning, ifyou look at something like a
(15:27):
LinkedIn post to convertsomeone, you can write a post in
maybe 30 minutes or an hour.
That does really well to get abunch of inbound leads, but it
loses effectiveness over time,versus if you take the premise
of that post and develop it intoa blog post or a book, something
(15:51):
with more substance and depththat can continue to get you
clients for a much longer periodof Time. Are
BEATE CHELETTE (15:59):
you saying that
it's not just 140 characters. So
what, what I'm hearing right nowis that I can actually write a
long form, post a real article,even though I'm told that people
don't read and there aren'tenough time for anything. So
what's the truth in all of this?
Zack Zeller (16:16):
Yeah, the truth,
which is really tough, is that
there's a pendulum to it, sothere's gonna be a point where
the market really loves highticket, done for you, high touch
offers. And that's thezeitgeist. And this kind of
(16:38):
changes every three to sixyears, then there's going to be
a time where people are justburnt out of spending 50,
$20,000 on these big courses.
They lose all of this trust, andpeople just start buying low
ticket offers to build thattrust back up. What it really
(16:58):
comes down to isn't the perfectfunnel or the perfect strategy.
It's really laying thefoundation of knowing who you're
talking to. Because low ticketproducts can fail. High ticket
products can fail. The thingthat I've seen build the most
success is knowing your audienceso well that you can express
(17:24):
what you do as this siren call,this big idea that can cut
through a lot of the other noisein the marketplace and speak
directly to Your audience
BEATE CHELETTE (17:41):
so that they
fascinating. I want to dive into
this a little bit, because Ithink this is the, this is the
very critical message right now.
I have this theory, and I talkedabout this extensively on the
show. I think there's been amass activation of leaders that
have been called to help theleaders of tomorrow create the
future. I mean, if I turn on myTV now, look what's out there.
It is a freaking screaming messwhile people are breaking stuff.
(18:03):
Internet Marketing is not reallyworking so well anymore. So
where are we looking we have tolook into the future. We want to
create because everybody else isso so busy either breaking down
or or trying to recover what wasonce worked, and we know it
isn't. So we need to look in acompletely different way. Now,
if you come and tell me Zackthat I have to be super
(18:23):
deliberate about it and actuallyhave a sense for it and build a
connection to my community,which I think is the key word
here, that I can share withthem, what is going on. I'm
gonna give an example to ouraudience. So I lost my house, I
lost my office, I lost mypodcast studio, I lost my car, I
(18:44):
lost everything in the fire. Thechoice is, am I recreating what
once was, which I really kind ofcan't or am I going to say, if I
have no constraints, what can Icreate in the future? So the
latter is the more appealingversion for me, but I don't know
what that's like. So followingwhat you just said, can I then
(19:08):
go to my audience and say I haveno clue how this is going to
come to fruition, but here'swhat I'm thinking, Can I do
them?
Zack Zeller (19:23):
Yeah, that's that's
how I operate a lot of the time.
Because so here's the funnything of working in marketing,
there's half of it where youbasically have imaginary
friends, so you're sitting in aboard room or on a zoom Call
now, and you're having thesehypothetical conversations with
(19:46):
other business owners about wehave this avatar. We think he'll
respond to this. We think thatthis is his pain point, and
here's how we'll structureeverything that's that feels
productive. If that feels likeyou're doing everything a good
marketer should do, but paper,yeah, on paper, but the other
(20:08):
half of it is putting it outthere and seeing what people
actually respond to. And theinteresting thing is that the
more you get stuck in your head,the more out of touch you are
with the actual market, becauseit it doesn't reflect reality.
If you do everything right withmarketing, a lot of the time you
(20:31):
set your audience up to buy fromyour competition, meaning you've
talked about problems solutions,the different you've shared
testimonials, you've overcomeobjections, and basically gotten
them all the way down the salesprocess where they're ready to
buy, but then they can justgoogle more about the solution
(20:54):
or more about the problem, orfind someone on YouTube, or
think of someone else, andthey're completely out of your
funnel or your buying process.
The thing that makes people buytoday, more than ever, is your
uniqueness. Oh,
BEATE CHELETTE (21:10):
wow. So you
basically just told me that if I
follow the old internetmarketing principles, I'm
actually teaching them to go andlook for it somewhere else.
Zack Zeller (21:20):
Yeah. And this,
this was a problem that I had,
that I just realized within thepast year or two, because I was
trained for the past 11 years asa very like a direct response
copywriter, working with brandslike Agora Financial and like
learning from them, and learningand working with big marketers
like Jordan Belford and JayShetty and a lot of these
(21:42):
people. And when I started myown business, I thought it was
going to be a slam dunk of justYeah, because you knew
everything, yeah. But that's notthe case, because with your
marketing as a business owner,expert, it's almost like you can
see the maze from the top down,you know, the whole path, even
if, even if, take some time totrace it out, but your audience
(22:07):
views it as they're goingthrough it. So they don't know
all of the fancy turns andtwists and inside of the maze.
They can just see it turn byturn. So I was going out as a
copywriter into a marketplacewhere, during COVID, a lot of
people jump, jumped intocopywriting. AI tools made
(22:31):
copywriting more abundant aswell, and really ate up a lot of
the low hanging fruit in thecopy world, and that colors
everyone's perceptive perceptionof this, because if I talk to a
business owner and say, Hey,here's what I can do, they're
thinking in their head, I canspend five minutes asking chat
(22:51):
GPT for this, or there's someoneI can pay in the Philippines to
do this for $5 an Hour, whenreally, whether that's the case
or not, it's all about theirperception. And so now I stepped
up my uniqueness and reallyfocused on the full stack of how
(23:15):
to not just create the copy, buthow to use it as a strategy to
grow your business, so thatyou're not tied up creating
everything or managing a team orwriting a million posts and
building a hamster wheel thatyou need to run on every single
day in order to get more clientsand more sales. But it's
(23:37):
something where you can have itcompound and build over time. I
love
BEATE CHELETTE (23:42):
this so much. I
think this is very aligned with
what I see. To be honest withyou, is to say that you know my
gifts always been, that I seethis in people before they see
this for themselves. So now Iwant to hear from you, because
that's you developed thesystems. I want you to talk
about this system that youdeveloped with a copy and the
(24:03):
email pieces, would you share alittle bit about that on how you
help your clients to kind of nowget this all figured out?
Zack Zeller (24:10):
Yeah. So the
biggest thing I work with my
clients on is having basicallycustomers come to them sold 80%
of the way to work with them.
And what we do is, instead of myclients having to be on sales
calls all the time, where theyare a good week is if they have
(24:32):
three to five calls a day, whichis exhausting, but they don't.
If they don't have that, thenthey're not getting leads and
getting money and and all ofthat stuff. And a lot of people
think that hiring a sales teamis a good idea, until you
realize that someone needs tomanage that sales team and keep
them on track and executingwell, which is a whole other can
(24:55):
of worms. So,
BEATE CHELETTE (24:59):
plus, yeah.
Execution, plus the deliveryplus the fulfillment.
Zack Zeller (25:04):
Yes. So the way
that I like to view it is, what
if we take the salesconversation and front load it,
and that becomes your marketing.
So your book becomes your uniqueidea, which is the title and the
headline, the unique idea of theproblem that you solve. And then
(25:25):
the book is filled with how youdo that on a high level concept
with different stories fromcustomers, different IPs and the
your all your traffic funnelsthrough that book. So the the
goal is, by reading your book,which is going to be usually 50
(25:48):
to 70 pages short book, peoplecan understand how you get
people results, and it builds alot of trust, but because
they've spent so much time goingthrough your signature process
and understanding your point ofview, you've built a lot of
uniqueness. And so what are yougoing to do? Read a book from
(26:13):
the author themselves, seeingtheir whole process, and then
work with someone who is justkind of a generic service
provider on getting that done,even if the author of the book
is a lot more expensive, there'sa lot more trust, and there's a
lot more status and goodwill,and all of that stuff built up,
(26:34):
plus you've started theconversation by basically giving
them a gift.
BEATE CHELETTE (26:42):
So now you have
this book of like 50, 60, pages,
which is a short, beneficialbook. Now, what do I do with the
content? So you help me it, andthen I have this content, and
then what happens now? So this
Zack Zeller (26:55):
is what I was
talking about before, which is
really powerful. You have areally wide foundation when you
build a book, because a lot ofthought goes in, not just
organizing the book, but I callit smartening it down, so you're
not dumbing it down andsimplifying it, you're making it
easier to understand and doingthe work for the reader so they
(27:17):
can spend More time experiencingand appreciating the insights
you're sharing now that all thiswork has been done that makes
writing posts or getting reach alot simpler, because whatever
one strategy you choose, andagain, one strategy, you have
really targeted, specificlanguage behind it. So if you're
(27:40):
running Facebook ads. You cantear apart the pieces of that
book to talk about differentdifferent hooks, different
angles, problems, solutions,buyer psychology to make those
creatives that same work. Cancreate LinkedIn posts or
Instagram posts, or createepisodes of a podcast that you
just talk about, and then on theback side of it, I like every
(28:04):
book to have a reader magnet,which means when they go into
the book, it's not just a deadend. It actually has ways for
people to get onto your emaillist, to get onto calls with
you. And I love putting peopleon an email list, because you
(28:24):
have not just 100% control overthe messaging that you send
through that list, but you'reable to get multiple touch
points with people.
BEATE CHELETTE (28:33):
Yeah, I like
this a lot. We work with 180 day
content plans, and we map it outweek by week by week, and then
it has to tie in with what we'relaunching. And then we reverse
engineer. So if we're launchingour signature program, turn your
talent into a business, thenwhat do we need to talk about
now that then creates thesetouch points, and I think to
(28:58):
your point, it's not a 10 pieceemail sequence, which I also
find extremely inefficient, butit is about starting a
conversation and doing a webinarand pulling shorts out of that
webinar, and then writingarticles around this. And a lot
of this can be utilized with AItools. So you had said that you
(29:18):
also know a lot about AI contentcreation with the right kind of
tools. Do you want to talk aboutthis for a minute before we wrap
the interview up? Yeah,
Zack Zeller (29:27):
the biggest thing
with the AI content creation is
understanding how to direct it.
When I use AI, I look at it asunskilled labor, where good
labor? Yeah, because, becauseyou'll ask it when I'm doing
email marketing, I like to thesimplest way I figured to do
(29:49):
this is I'll create, typically,30 to 40 page report on my
target market, like my myavatar. Are like, here's the
problems they're facing. I'mvery keen on empathy maps for a
lot of this, which, just incase, the empathy map focuses on
(30:10):
what people see, what they hear,basically the everyday
experiences of the problems thatthey have, which a lot of people
miss out on their marketing,because no one cares about your
solution until they know it'sfor them, and they cannot
possibly know it's for themunless they have some sort of
(30:32):
cue. So if I'm writing a bookabout how to hire a VA, that's
the solution. But people aregoing to know about this based
on always feeling hurried andharried and resistant to
delegating or having too manymeetings on their calendar.
(30:54):
Those are going to be the topspecific things. So I'll feed
that into AI. I will also feedit a lot of formulas and
templates, just to give it alittle bit of a guide of what I
like to see as an output. Andthen I like to feed it a lot of
a podcast interview or a book,so that it understands your
(31:16):
voice and your personality. Andso the three things, just to
summarize that, because I wenton a little bit of a rant with
the target market stuff, but youneed to know who you're writing
to, which is the target market,and feed that in. You need to
know who you are as a uniquebusiness with a personality. And
then you need to know what goodcopy looks like, and feed that
(31:39):
in with examples for AI. Andthen when you do all of those,
you get really good outputs.
BEATE CHELETTE (31:48):
You're
absolutely right. Looking at AI
as unskilled labor that you haveto train is probably the best
way to put it. What I'm takingaway here Zack is that it's very
aligned with what we talk abouton The Growth Architect all the
time, less is better, and betteris better. You just got to get
it out of your head that youeven want to serve a million
(32:09):
clients or even 1000 you want toif you got, let's say, 10
clients or $10,000 or 20 clientsand $25,000 that's a good you
know, that's a good start formost service providers that are
doing this because they don'twant to be in a corporate job
(32:32):
where they give up their life,but they are where they want to
have a life where the jobprovides them For this
particular life that they'redesiring. So we don't want to
replace bad with worse, and so Ifind it's very refreshing on how
you have shared this with ouraudience today. So for anybody
who now wants to know, you canhelp them write the book or
(32:53):
bring their message to market.
Where do they go?
Zack Zeller (32:56):
I'm very active on
LinkedIn with Zack Zeller on
LinkedIn, and they could justreach out to me, directly to it,
zack@zzellermedia.com I alsohave a little bit of a gift. So
I have a free book called "EmailCash Flow," which talks about
(33:16):
why posting ads and funnels areactually losing you sales and
the three email system thatfixes it. So if Writing a book
is too much, I would say thebare bones strategy is
continuing that conversationwith your audience. And pretty
much every business I talk to,they have the past 90 days of
(33:41):
people that have gotten on aphone call or connected with
them that hasn't bought and youcould send them these emails. If
three is too much, start withone a week, and it really does
compound, bring in more sales,and start those conversations
that lead to sales.
BEATE CHELETTE (33:57):
Wonderful. I
love it. Thank you so much.
Well, Zack, it's been great tohave you on the show. Thank you
so much for being here. Yeah, mypleasure. Thanks for having me,
and that is it for us. Fortoday, we'd appreciate if you
share that link for thisepisode. Thank much until next
time and GOODBYE. So appreciateyou being here. Thank you so
much for listening to the entireepisode. Please subscribe to the
(34:18):
podcast, give us a five starreview a comment and share this
episode with one more person sothat you can help us help more
people. Thank you again, untilnext time. Goodbye.