Last Updated on: 24th April 2025, 06:26 am
In the latest episode of the Simply Be Found huddle, hosts Rob and Dean dive deep into the fascinating intersection of making organic marketing wins, human behavior, marketing psychology, and business strategy. Without bringing in a guest this week, the duo explores how understanding basic human psychological patterns can transform marketing approaches.
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Key Takeaways From The Huddle
The conversation begins with a discussion about behavioral science studies being conducted in Las Vegas. These labs, not open to the public, study everything from how people interact with slot machines to how they move through casino spaces. The hosts reveal that it’s not just casinos investing in this research—retail corporations, advertising agencies, and marketing firms are all tapping into these behavioral insights.
The Reptilian Brain & How It Drives Organic Marketing Wins
A central theme of the podcast is what the hosts call the “reptilian brain” or “caveman brain”—our basic instincts that drive decision-making. They explain how marketing leverages these primitive psychological patterns:
- The Opportunity-Reward-Repeat Loop: People see an opportunity, take action hoping for a reward, and then repeat the process regardless of consistent results.
- Near Wins & False Rewards: Just like slot machines that show “almost wins” (two pineapples instead of three) or celebrate “winning” 50 cents when you spent a dollar, marketing often creates the illusion of reward to keep consumers engaged.
- Fishing Analogy: The hosts compare marketing to fishing—sometimes you catch ten fish, sometimes none, but you keep returning to the same spot hoping for another good day.
Modern Marketing Applications
The conversation shifts to how these behavioral patterns apply to various marketing channels:
- Email Marketing: When you delete rather than unsubscribe, marketers get another opportunity to reach you with different “bait.”
- Social Media Metrics: Getting excited about likes and views creates the same dopamine loop as gambling wins.
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Many businesses experience diminishing returns but continue spending due to previous success.
Building a Recession-Proof Business
Rob and Dean discuss how Amazon’s same-day delivery has created unrealistic expectations for instant results in all areas of business. They explore how this affects marketing expectations, with businesses wanting immediate ROI instead of understanding the long-term nature of organic marketing growth.
The hosts emphasize the danger of relying on a single marketing channel or customer. They advocate for diversification through organic marketing:
- Having presence across multiple platforms creates stability
- Building a strong organic search foundation provides long-term security
- Avoiding dependence on any single traffic source protects against algorithm changes
The episode concludes with a reminder to Simply Be Found members to communicate with their coaches about what’s working and what isn’t. The hosts can track statistics, but only clients know if leads are converting to actual sales.
This thought-provoking discussion reveals how understanding fundamental human behavior patterns can help businesses create more effective marketing strategies while building resilience against market fluctuations.
Learn About Organic Marketing And More
Dean and Rob can teach you a lot more about marketing which can help you build long-term success for your business. Check out our member benefits at Simply Be Found and see how countless business owners are reshaping their brands with our help.
Transcript
- 00:00 | Intro – No Guest, Just Rob & Dean
- 00:24 | Human Behavior & Data Science Conversation
- 01:09 | Las Vegas Behavioral Study: Gambling & Motivation
- 02:13 | Reptilian Brain and Instinctive Marketing
- 03:04 | Behavioral Labs Beyond Casinos
- 04:06 | The “False Win” Slot Machine Example
- 05:41 | Social Media & Marketing Dopamine Loops
- 07:06 | Personal Story: Gambling & Observing Behavior
- 08:31 | The Psychology of Machine Placement in Casinos
- 10:02 | Near Wins & the Caveman Brain
- 11:14 | Fishing Analogy: Reward & Repetition
- 12:15 | Pay-Per-Click Decline and False Expectations
- 14:04 | Behavior Shifts & Changing Strategy
- 15:14 | Vanessa Van Edwards: Science of People
- 16:45 | Power Poses, Friend Cues & Positive Reinforcement
- 18:00 | AI as the Friend That Always Says “Yes”
- 19:17 | Email Marketing as a Behavioral Pattern
- 20:11 | Deleting vs. Unsubscribing: Marketer’s Perspective
- 21:27 | Marketing = Fishing: Multiple Casts for the Win
- 22:24 | Time Share Pitch & False Sales Promises
- 23:32 | Marketing, Gambling, and Trusting the System
- 25:01 | The Search Advantage & Mom Brain Interruptions
- 26:20 | The Tree Analogy: Listings, Website, and Social
- 28:01 | Overreliance on One Marketing Channel
- 28:57 | Google Market Share Drop & Search Updates
- 30:00 | Surviving a Google Update or Algorithm Shift
- 31:26 | Recessions Reveal Weak Foundations
- 32:45 | How Simply Be Found Was Built on Recession Readiness
- 34:20 | Real-World Data vs. Visible Results
- 35:16 | Coaching Reminder: Tell Us If It’s Working
- 36:00 | Final Thoughts on Behavior, Marketing & Growth
- 37:26 | Outro – Member Support and Coaching Team
00:00 | Intro – No Guest, Just Rob & Dean
Rob [0:01]: Welcome to the Simply Be Found huddle! You got Dean and Rob today. We don’t have a guest, but you got Dean and I talking about different things in business and marketing. If this is your first time joining us, welcome! If this is your second, third, fourth, whatever time that you wanted to watch us do what we do, welcome back and thank you for watching. We really appreciate it. Means the world to us.
00:24 | Human Behavior & Data Science Conversation
Rob [0:24]: Dean, you got to sit down, you got to be able to talk to a couple data scientists that are on our team, and I saw you guys having a huge conversation. If I was to guess, it’s about behavior and their whole entire study that they’re currently doing inside of human behavior. So I’m gonna let you take and open this one up.
Dean [0:42]: Well, basically the other day we were talking—and hi everybody, thanks for joining us by the way—and I was talking with the guys and they were saying, “Let’s talk about human behavior and let’s talk about this lab that’s in Vegas.” I said, “What are you talking about, this lab in Vegas?” And we got talking about—because I’m all about what motivates people, what makes people tick—and I guess there’s a whole behavioral science study that’s going on.
01:09 | Las Vegas Behavioral Study: Gambling & Motivation
Dean [1:09]: It makes people—you know, why do people get on slot machines? Why do they do—why does this behavior happen? And we got into this whole thing of this mental loop that people do, where you have the opportunity that’s out there, and then you have a risk factor, and then you repeat it.
Dean [1:34]: That’s kind of how people do a lot of things with marketing, but what they’re looking at is the art of gambling and why people do certain things. But I think it goes into more than just gambling. I think it’s used in everything. And we talked about the reptile brain. You call it the what?
Rob [1:51]: I call it the caveman brain or the reptilian brain.
02:13 | Reptilian Brain and Instinctive Marketing
Dean [1:56]: So basically it’s the basic instincts that make you do certain things, react to certain things.
Rob [2:13]: So from a VC standpoint and things I get access to and see, it’s not just casinos that are looking at how this behavior works. They’re using it in the casino setting. So they have like this office building—I don’t really know where it’s located, I know it’s somewhere outside of Las Vegas—and it’s not open to the public. You have to be a subject that gets put there.
Rob [2:38]: It has hotel rooms. They’re testing you for how you feel on the sheets to how you react once you go down and eat a meal, to going through the casino, walking through the casino. There’s all these things they test. Now it’s not just casinos that are watching this or invested or paying for these studies.
03:04 | Behavioral Labs Beyond Casinos
Rob [3:04]: There’s a lot of big corporations that are into retail, advertising, marketing—a lot of data that comes out of that whole entire study. Now, we don’t have direct access to that study. So I want to be very clear on that, but we do see different reports for what we watch on a data science piece of what those reports contain.
Rob [3:23]: I know I said we weren’t going to name drop, but there was a whole entire episode done on Joe Rogan about this recently, and he went through and talked about how this behavior works. But we use this behavior inside of marketing all the time.
Rob [3:35]: It’s done inside of search, close wins… In the study, there was a huge piece about when you’re sitting down at a slot machine and you get, you know, pineapple, pineapple, and if you had got that one more pineapple, you’d be winning the jackpot. The machines are set up to throw these off at random every once in a while because it keeps you entertained. It’s kind of like a false win, where the machine goes off, says “Hey, you won 50 cents!” But you just bet a dollar, so you still lost 50 cents, but it says you won 50 cents.
04:06 | The “False Win” Slot Machine Example
Dean [4:06]: Well, it flows into more than just that. I mean, it’s all the behavior. The opportunity has to be in front of you, and there’s got to be some kind of reward. So that’s going to make you do a certain action, and because there’s going to be some kind of reward—you don’t know what the reward is, but there’s a chance you get some reward—and then if you decide you want to repeat it, you loop back around and you start the process all over again.
Dean [4:38]: That’s really true. Like, we’re doing this podcast right now, and I actually fall into that behavior because I’ll go, “Oh, let’s see how many people watch this,” and “Hey, we had 50 people watch this in the first hour, and that’s better than the last one we did.” So it’s going to make us want to repeat this again because there’s a reward that we’re seeing—the likes, the views, whatever it is. And that happens on social media as well.
05:41 | Social Media & Marketing Dopamine Loops
Rob [5:09]: Agencies use that, and small businesses, businesses, marketing boards of Fortune 500, Fortune 100 companies fall for this because they’ll come in and go, “Look how many likes we got! Look how many views we got! Look at all this!” And it’s no different than that machine going “ding ding ding ding ding” and the sound effects that happen from it, bringing you into it. “If I could just get one more, if I could get another hundred views, maybe I get 10 more sales.”
Rob [5:41]: When the bottom line is, you want to be able to get sales in your door, right? But when you have those metrics mixed into it, it kind of covers it up and brings you in to where you spend more money. That’s why a lot of marketing agencies love reports, in my opinion.
Dean [5:53]: It’s no different than if you purchase an ad and you said, “I had 50 people contact me, so I’m gonna do this ad again.” So you had a reward of some kind that made you say, “I’m going to repeat this.” Well, the next time you may not get any. You say, “Hold it. We got 50 the first time, we got zero the second time. We’re going to do this again.” And that’s how they get you into that routine, that cycle that keeps happening over and over again.
Dean [6:17]: That’s why so many businesses say, “I keep doing this, and now I’m not getting any—the rewards aren’t there.” Well, we don’t know what the reward is going to be. That’s the part—that’s the thing about advertising marketing. You have to put yourself out there a little bit. You don’t know what the reward is, but you see a potential reward, and then you repeat it again. And that’s what they’re all about.
Rob [6:41]: What I find really interesting about the whole study that’s being done on the gambling piece is I’ve done this for years. I love to go to Vegas, I love to go to casinos. Not necessarily to gamble—yes, I like to gamble a little bit, but I gamble very little.
07:06 | Personal Story: Gambling & Observing Behavior
Rob [7:06]: My dad had a gambling problem, and there was a lot of stuff that came from that. My family has that tendency, and I watched them lose, and the house always wins. So I do it differently. I can walk away, and I take what I’m going to lose or what I have to lose.
Rob [7:24]: What I like to do, though, is sit and watch the gambling happen in casinos. I’ve done this since I was a little kid without even realizing I was doing it. I’d go and I’d watch how people interact, how the dealer interacts with people, how the reward systems work with the casino, how they place different machines.
08:31 | The Psychology of Machine Placement in Casinos
Rob [7:43]: I’ll talk to techs inside of Vegas and I’ll ask them why they put a machine in a certain spot. There was a time I was at—I think it was at MGM—and a guy was moving slot machines around. It was like 4:00 in the morning, and I may have had a couple drinks, being in Vegas. But I walk up to the guy and I start talking to him. Everybody in my party is like, “What is Rob doing?”
Rob [8:08]: I’m asking, “Why, what makes you move it?” And he starts talking about the whole entire behavior inside of it, and how there’s certain spots that’ll make someone react more, and how if they shift machines, they make more money.
Rob [8:26]: But it’s no different than how you get presented different stuff. You go and you search for XYZ inside of Google—next thing you know you’re seeing that product everywhere. This whole entire behavior has been learned. I think it’s just easier to look at inside of the gambling piece because everybody knows the house wins. The house has an advantage over everybody, but people still go and gamble. Why? Because there’s a possible reward.
Dean [8:55]: Correct. It might be a life-changing reward, but they’re looking at the big reward.
Rob [9:00]: Take that risk.
10:02 | Near Wins & the Caveman Brain
Rob [9:31]: There was a study that I was reading the other day, and I was talking to a couple of data science guys on our team. They were talking about this report I read over, and it basically all goes back into this caveman brain, the reptilian brain for hunting.
Rob [9:49]: We used to go out, we used to hunt for food. We didn’t always come back with food, right? So our brains were wired from the very beginning that you don’t always get what you’re looking for, but you might have gotten close. You might have seen that deer in the wild. You might have gotten close, got that fish on, but not been able to get it in.
Rob [10:13]: Then you get a small win. So when we talk about the slot machine going up and being pineapple, pineapple, and not giving you that next pineapple… It came close, right there. It’s no different than going out hunting and you got something, but it wasn’t enough to feed everybody you needed to feed—but everybody got a little bit of food. It’s that same part of the brain that kicks in for that process.
11:14 | Fishing Analogy: Reward & Repetition
Dean [10:43]: Let’s use that same analogy of fishing. You go out and you fish and you catch 10 fish that day. You have this bait, and you catch 10 fish. That was great! “I’m gonna do that same process again because that reward was awesome.”
Dean [10:56]: You do the exact same thing and you don’t get anything the next time. But you’re trying to make it so that you can get those rewards the easiest, fastest way that you can. And you might do that five, six days in a row until you have to go do something else, until something forces you to do something different.
Rob [11:15]: I see that right now inside of the world of marketing for pay-per-click. It used to work really well. Google ads did really well, Facebook ads did really well. Some people are still getting results obviously because these platforms are still making money off of it. But most of the people I talk to say, “It’s not working anymore. It used to, but it’s not anymore.”
12:15 | Pay-Per-Click Decline and False Expectations
Dean [11:53]: You get yourself to where you do it once and it does really well for you, and you do it again and again, and pretty soon you get diminishing returns. Finally, you say, “Do I want to keep doing that?” So your behavior is going to have to change a little bit, because you’re still looking for the opportunity and the big reward. You’re always looking for that big reward, but you have to change.
Dean [12:17]: If you’re on this slot machine and you’re not getting anywhere, you may say, “I keep doing it, I’m going to keep doing it.” But if you stepped over and tried another machine, it might happen faster. So you got to change something up. You have to go hunt in a different spot, you have to go fish a different pond or a different lake, or change your bait. Something has to change if you’re not getting those same results.
Rob [12:40]: I think that really fits into the marketing side. When I look at these studies that have happened inside of this lab, it absolutely blows my mind. There’s also another lab, Dean, that does a lot of stuff. It’s the Science of People, I think it’s run by Vanessa Van Edwards.
14:04 | Behavior Shifts & Changing Strategy
Dean [12:58]: Yep, I’ve read her stuff, listened to her stuff.
15:14 | Vanessa Van Edwards: Science of People
Rob [13:03]: She talks about different behaviors of people and what they do. She has some interesting studies as well. There was one study that she recently did that I was listening to. She was doing a whole study about how people think and how to think of friends and how they position themselves. One big part for her is she has a hard time having friends because she’s a human lie detector, being in behavioral science. You can tell when someone’s lying because you’re tracking how they’re behaving, what they’re doing.
Rob [14:00]: So she was talking about how to tell if you have toxic friends or good friends or bad friends. One of the big things is: are your friends excited for you? Think about, is your friend excited for you when something good happens to you that doesn’t involve them? And if they share that same excitement, that ends up bringing you in.
16:45 | Power Poses, Friend Cues & Positive Reinforcement
Dean [13:45]: One of the things that she talks about—I’m in the power pose right now. That’s a behavioral piece—how do you position your hands, do you talk with your hands, do you acknowledge? Like, you’re nodding your head right now. That’s all behavioral.
Dean [14:04]: So if I’m doing something and I’m getting head nods from you, I’m going to keep doing that same behavior because I’m getting positive reaction back from you. If I’m getting “no” responses, I’m going to change something up. That’s the kind of stuff that she looks at in the Science of People—how do you react with your customer base? You look for positive reinforcement of some kind and you keep doing that same action because “I did a cause and I got a reward, so I’m going to repeat and do it again.”
18:00 | AI as the Friend That Always Says “Yes”
Rob [15:32]: A lot of people are going now to AI to be able to get answers, and AI is constantly always on their good side. Why do they have AI do that? Well, you’ll come back because it’s not going to be negative to you—you keep coming back to it. So it fits into that same piece.
Rob [15:51]: I look at this stuff and I start to put it together, I talk to the data team, we have some very detailed analytical conversations. But it’s one of those things where all these things aim all the way down into that reptilian, that caveman brain. Can a caveman understand it? Nobody wants to overthink anything. Nobody reads everything word for word anymore—they scan everything. It’s changed the way marketing is working. But yet marketing is the same as it’s always been for how the human processes information.
Rob [16:21]: I truly don’t think humans were ever meant to see as many ads as we see in a day, how many marketing messages, and get as much information as we have. I think that’s part of our problem in the world.
Dean [16:37]: We have information overload is what I call it.
Rob [16:43]: We do.
Dean [16:43]: I run several emails for different things, and I open up and I have a thousand emails I get to go through first thing. That’s my daily to-do list. If I don’t know who they are and I don’t have time, I just delete them. So emails may work, but then again, I go back to what I always talk about—being in market. I may have something on my brain and somebody’s email came to me and I went, “Oh, that headline sounds like something I’m interested in.” So I may open it. But the chances of everybody opening everything and looking at everything is slim to none.
19:17 | Email Marketing as a Behavioral Pattern
Rob [17:27]: So let’s think about that real quick. Let’s talk email marketing. You delete that email, right? You don’t unsubscribe from it. You don’t report it as junk. You delete it. That means I get to, as a marketer, have another opportunity with you.
Dean [17:45]: I subconsciously do that because I may not be in the market right now, but I don’t want to lose track of them. They may have something I may be interested in later, but I don’t want to keep them in my brain.
Rob [18:03]: It’s no different than going to a lake, casting out, reeling in, casting out. I might not have caught you that time. The fish was there. You were looking at it. That bait looks pretty good. “Nope. Not today. Not interested.” So you hit that delete button. You made that decision just like this—boom. Didn’t even look at it. Don’t even know what it says. All you know is the subject, right? Boom. Deleted.
Rob [18:29]: But that means I get to change my bait at a different time and cast it out. And you might go, “Hmm, let’s open that.” Now that one, that’s another touch. So the first one’s a touch because you saw it. You processed who it was from. Processed whatever their headline was. Didn’t match. Next one—that’s a touch as well. You might have opened that document. You might not have taken action on it. You might have gone to the website, might have looked at stuff. Phone rang, you did whatever, didn’t do anything.
Rob [19:00]: But that third or fourth time, that next touch might be the time you’re like, “You know, I really need that product right now. I have this need.” Boom. Then that becomes a sale. But it’s no different than pushing that button on the slot machine.
20:11 | Deleting vs. Unsubscribing: Marketer’s Perspective
Dean [19:25]: It’s still a loop process. We as humans always kind of do things in that process. The email went out—that was the action. You were hoping for a reward. You didn’t get the reward. So then you repeat it. And how fast you repeat is dependent on your habit that you’re in. So that changes a little bit.
Rob [20:45]: But you keep waiting for that big reward. That’s why you keep getting those phone calls that happen: “Hey, your business profile is not optimized!” Click. But they may get you eventually—”I got 15 minutes, I might hear what this guy has to say or this gal and see what they have to say about this.” And then they may hook you and reel you in.
21:27 | Marketing = Fishing: Multiple Casts for the Win
Rob [21:16]: I did it for a time share person yesterday, and I kind of feel bad about it, but I really don’t. He calls, and I know he didn’t make any money by doing it, and that part is wrong—I’ve been that person on the other side of the phone in my past.
Rob [21:29]: I’ve never done time shares, but just sales in general. I wanted to listen to his pitch. I wanted to see how he would hand me off. I wanted to see what their offers were. We started at a $1,200 package, and then we were down to $800. Then we were down to $200, and then we threw some extra vacations in, and next thing you know we were up to $400.
22:24 | Time Share Pitch & False Sales Promises
Rob [21:51]: Until I went back and listened to my recorded call, I didn’t realize he went as low as $200 and then he went up because he said, “I’ll go $200…” and then bounced it right over. My brain in the moment didn’t pick it up until I reviewed it.
Rob [22:05]: Now there’s probably some kind of study or pattern they’ve noticed that triggers it to make my brain go, “That’s not too bad, $200 bucks,” and next thing you know, we’re like, “Wait, how did we get there? Okay, never mind, we’ll just do it,” because now I’m committed. Now my brain is there. There’s probably something inside of the human brain that causes that to happen.
Rob [22:24]: But if we’re comparing anything to slot machines, it’s no different than if you sit down at one of these complicated slot machines, which I will not play, that has all these lines to it. You have no idea the combinations it takes to win the game.
Dean [22:44]: No, you don’t. But you put your trust in the computer itself, the intelligence of that machine, and the level of payback that they have it set at.
23:32 | Marketing, Gambling, and Trusting the System
Dean [22:58]: So just like in marketing and sales, you’re playing a statistics game. You have to do so many tries before you get a reward. But who knows, you may land that whale. We talk about that sometimes—”Oh, we talk to these groups and all of a sudden this huge group comes in!” But you may never get one of those. I’ve seen businesses that have gone their entire careers and they’ve never landed what I call the whale. I steal that from Wolf of Wall Street, I think, “I got a whale!”
Rob [23:32]: You know, instead of just the little fish, you got to land the whale. And that’s what you’re hoping for, and that’s why you’re willing to take the risk—do the action for that possible outcome, and then you repeat to try to do it again.
Rob [23:49]: It’s no different than the baseball analogy when people say they want to get singles versus doubles versus getting home runs—you’re always looking for that home run. It’s the same exact division.
Rob [24:07]: Now, the biggest thing with the marketing side is being everywhere gives you more opportunities. So if you’re going to compare it to gambling or compare it to the casino logic for what that whole case study was, it’s about being everywhere. So you’re covering it. You’re covering all of those lines. So if something does hit, if someone’s looking for whatever product and services you sell, that’s going to give you the opportunity to be able to get in front of them.
Rob [24:33]: Doesn’t mean you’re gonna necessarily close them, because it’s just like the email piece we were just talking about. It might be just getting in front. It’s soaking in.
25:01 | The Search Advantage & Mom Brain Interruptions
Rob [24:47]: If you talk about the “mom brain” of everything going on—”mom, mom, mom, mom” or “dad, dad, dad, dad”—whatever it might be from your kids, you get pulled away from stuff all the time. And then you’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m back over here. I’m back doing this now.”
Rob [25:01]: The thing about search is you might search it again and you might get totally different results because you didn’t pick something the first time around. So that might give you a better opportunity because you might come up further in search because they already clicked on your website.
Dean [25:20]: But here’s the deal—we talk about content, authority, and trust—our three pillars. We talk about them all the time. If you’re not willing to put the actions in—and business small business owners struggle with this—if you’re not willing to put those actions in, you’re not changing the fishing game, if you will.
Dean [25:37]: Somebody may do a search one day and you don’t show up, but you put in some content, which gives you authority, creates trust, be it a post, be it wherever you’re putting that information. If you’re not willing to put that out there and change it up a little bit, your opportunity, your rewards may never change, and in fact they may diminish because the house wins.
26:20 | The Tree Analogy: Listings, Website, and Social
Dean [26:14]: Let’s talk about carnival games for a second. You know, “Step right up! Step right up! We got something for you today!” You know, I’m thinking about the pop bottle one where you throw the rings on it. That’s an old carnival thing that used to come around. You go, “Okay, if I throw a ring on there, I can get this reward.” So you either get a big stuffed animal or you might end up with that goldfish.
Dean [26:31]: But the thing is—and this is how marketing with content for your business is—you can have a skill set that you can add to that. You may have better hand-eye coordination than the other person over here, and you’re going to get there. So you can influence the outcome some by your skill level, by the information you’re putting out there.
Rob [26:49]: I think that’s a great analogy. Now I have a question for you, and I never thought about this until we just started having this conversation. We talk about instant satisfaction, right? Everybody’s looking for instant results. “I made a change to my business—it’s not out on the networks. Boom! Right away!” “I sign up for a service and boom, it’s not instantly on there, and I’m not ranking number one.” We get that a lot.
Dean [27:33]: We do.
Rob [27:33]: Amazon has ruined the world for same-day delivery and everybody getting things right away. So how does the brain work for instant gratification, and how does that fit into the rest of it? Is that where the close wins come in, or what happens? What’s your opinion?
28:01 | Overreliance on One Marketing Channel
Dean [27:54]: That’s a hard one. That’s a cool one, actually. That’s an expectation thing. I don’t know if the rewards are still the same—the speed of the reward changes. Is there a letdown on something that happens to the psychological level? I’d love to be able to get somebody on that does human behavior because I’d love to talk about that—what happens when you take away the instant gratification?
Dean [28:13]: If you’re not going to get the instant gratification of going out and getting that deer when you’re a caveman and you don’t have anything to eat, and you’ve been getting instant gratification the last 20 times, what does that do to the human brain? Does it cause depression? Does it cause all kinds of different things?
Dean [28:33]: It’s a letdown, but it makes it harder for you to see the small opportunities and the small amount of touches that are happening. It’s a long-term game versus a short-term game.
28:57 | Google Market Share Drop & Search Updates
Dean [28:57]: I’m from an era where we used to write letters a lot because phone calls were expensive. So you had long distance—back in the day you had long distance phone calls.
Rob [29:07]: 10-10-220.
Dean [29:13]: Yeah, there used to be a whole thing you’d dial at the very beginning of the number during the 90s when you made a long-distance phone call.
Dean [29:23]: But you used to send a letter, and you would mail it and it wouldn’t get there for three days. And then they might write a letter back and you’d get it back three days later. Then when phone calls became deregulated and you didn’t have long distance charges, you made the phone call because that was quicker. But the problem is they weren’t always on the other end, and you don’t know if they got your message. And then we went to emails.
Dean [30:01]: So if we keep accelerating the expectation piece, and if you don’t get something right away—is it because of the fast-pacedness of our lives that has increased so much that we want that? Or am I satisfied when I get that? It’s like when I get the new computer and I type in the commands and—boom—there it was. “Oh man, this is so fast!” Until you got fast enough with the keyboard and the commands, and that computer was slow again.
30:00 | Surviving a Google Update or Algorithm Shift
But even if you’re doing a mailing with a coupon, it isn’t instant. When it gets sent out, the response time is within a few days. But it takes time for you to put together your copy, create the printed coupon, and then mail it out.
So it still takes two to three months to even get that. But once you get it going, and then you say, “I want to repeat it.” There may be a reward, but you have to commit to these things and say, “I’m going to try it four or five times.” And you’re hoping for a big reward. And that first one may be zero, or it may be a big reward. And you go, “Oh, coupons work great!”
Well, coupons work okay for some businesses. They work great for other businesses. It’s just like any kind of advertising or marketing. But the digital organic search—it works for everybody all the time, no matter what industry you’re in.
31:26 | Recessions Reveal Weak Foundations
Rob: We have to step back. We have to look at being able to set it up because even those short-term wins that are out there—those little wins where you’re making some money—inside your tree, on your branches, you have social media, you’ve got ads, you got all that stuff going. You’re getting those short-term wins, but by building up your organic and building up your long-term, it’s going to usually reduce how much you’re depending on other channels.
You’re getting yourself everywhere so you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. You’re spreading yourself out to where you’re going to be okay no matter what the market’s doing. It’s going to help you whether we’re in a recession or not. There’s a lot of value to being able to have that organic base.
You might not need that organic base today. You might have enough business, you might have enough leads, you might have enough of everything—which, if you have enough of everything, you’re probably not listening to the huddle, but you might be! But it’s one of those things where when you do need it, you’re set up. You have your base, which means it’s going to be faster for you to be able to react.
It’s no different than somebody having a business where 90% of their business comes from one provider. If that provider leaves you, you’re screwed. So you have to think about, “What is my long-term play inside of business, and how am I going to make sure I’m okay no matter what happens?”
32:45 | How Simply Be Found Was Built on Recession Readiness
Rob: In one of my other businesses, we have a rule that no one customer is more than 30% of our gross sales ever, because I’ve been there. I landed a whale and they were 75% of my business, and then a merger and acquisition happened and I lost it all in a day.
So that’s what can happen if you put all your eggs in one basket in the digital marketing world too. If something happens and they change what they’re doing or how people are doing certain things—like Google’s still big out there. Google may not be in two weeks. I’m not making that prediction. But the thing is, you don’t know. That’s why you can’t put everything just on one search engine or one network.
If you look at Google last year, they were at 60-70% of market share. And you look at the study that just came out a couple weeks ago that was 18.5%—that’s a huge jump in reduction. And if you were just relying on certain keywords, it’s no different than when Google puts out an update. You might be ranking organically great, and they put out an update, or your Google Business Profile is ranking for whatever reason, and then they put out that update. Next thing you know, it takes you off the market.
Well, if you’re not working with somebody watching for that and making sure that you’re stacked up, you can lose market share like that, and then the phone stops ringing. I’ve seen that kill businesses overnight.
Dean: Right. We’ve both seen that happen from different factors. Something changed and affected them overnight, and then they were scrambling, and they weren’t in a position to get their feet back underneath them. They don’t recover sometimes.
34:20 | Real-World Data vs. Visible Results
Rob [37:44]: Correct. And then a lot of times they don’t have enough runway. I don’t want to be mean to most business owners, but they’re so locked into what they’ve been doing and what’s working. Going back to those gambling studies, they’re so locked in, they’re not seeing all the trees in the forest and understanding that other trees are falling down just like they are. There’s a few that are still standing up, and they need to look and see why those are still standing.
Dean [38:14]: This is going to sound horrible, but I look forward to recessions sometimes. I love recessions. Why? Because my business is solid. It’s been there. I’ve got a good foundation. I got a good root system. Recessions get rid of all the people that are hurting their industry, that aren’t doing a good job.
35:16 | Coaching Reminder: Tell Us If It’s Working
36:00 | Final Thoughts on Behavior, Marketing & Growth
Rob [38:46]: Thank you. If you’re not creating the opportunities to be able to stay in front of it, and you’re not putting yourself everywhere and having everything warmed up—by that I mean you’re on all the different networks, you’re posting out to everything, you’re using the social media suite, you’re going out to as many networks as you possibly can—you’re giving yourself opportunities everywhere.
That way, you’re not just in one spot with that lure, hoping that fish comes and takes a bite. You’re able to spread yourself out. That’s going to give you more opportunities, and if one of those channels falls off, you already have another one that might come up or something totally new as well. It gives you that opportunity where you’re not relying on just one place where customers are finding you.
Dean: I think a lot of people try to overcompensate if they’re not in a good position, and they get that false win or that false reward. They may do ads and go, “Oh, I landed three closings!” “Yeah, but it cost you $5,000.” “What did you make on it?” “I made $500 on it.” That’s that false reward thing we talked about. You think that you’re doing well, but you need to really pay attention to cost per closing and what your profit margin is.
Rob: I keep track of what each of those pieces are inside of our business. I watch that for our members when I’m looking at stats. There are different stats that we’re able to pull up. Those stats give us trends, and it allows our data team to work through that.
But then you have to look at the big picture. If you’re using us and you’re not getting more sales, not getting more phone calls, not generating more leads, or you’re not seeing movement, you have to communicate with your coach and say, “I’m not seeing this.” Because we can’t see that side of the picture. We can look at stats all day long, but we don’t have any stats that show your actual business results.
37:26 | Outro – Member Support and Coaching Team
Dean [42:38]: We can’t see what your winnings are, if you will. We have no idea.
Rob [42:44]: So if you’re a member, keep that in mind. Make sure you’re talking to your coach and communicating and saying, “This is where I am. This is where I think this is. This is how I think it’s working.”
Dean [42:56]: I think we did pretty good exploring this one and kind of capturing it. I think it’s a very interesting study. I’d love to see the data points, but of course that’s not public information.
Rob [43:16]: I’m sure they’re selling them for a lot. I’m sure they’re keeping them kind of close because that’s how they design machines. That’s how some of these big corporations are doing stuff. There’s some mad money inside of that whole thing.
Rob [43:26]: But if you’re not a member of ours and you’re not getting out there, you’re not building up your organic piece… We talk about the organic tree all the time, and that’s your root base with all your listings. Our listings engine works with over a thousand different networks. You have the website piece—yes, you can ask us to do a website, but we don’t really advertise it. That website is the trunk of your thing. And then you have the branches at the very top, which is social media, blog, and all the different networks that could be out there.
Rob [43:57]: We do have the social media suite. If you’re interested in learning how to get yourself out there on more networks, we have the right tools for you to do it. And the biggest thing is Dean and I handle 100% of the coaching ourselves and support. So if you have any questions, hit us up on simplybeFound.com. We’d love to see your questions, your thoughts, and if you ever want to join us on the show, we’d love to have you.
Dean [44:32]: Just one thing, guys. We handle all the responses, but we have a team that helps us.
Rob [44:44]: We have a major team behind us. It’s not just you and I, but we’re the faces of this company, if you will.
Dean [44:50]: That allows us to keep the temperature of what’s happening so we can direct the team on what to do. Now, they might do your reports, they might do that, but we also look at every single report before it goes out.
Rob [45:04]: Exactly.
Dean: Have a great day!
Rob: Thank you!
