Today, we're talking with Victor Pacini. I've known Victor for several years and we've been working together on his program that helps schools fulfill the Erin's Law mandate. A law that mandates schools educate their students about sexual abuse. Victor has an amazing story, and an amazing program that provides a solution for schools fulfilling that requirement.
Over the years he's perfected the way he delivers his presentation. He's written a book that helps schools understand their responsibilities and introduces them to his services, delivering presentations for them. It's been a great journey to see happen, and one that's been really successful for Victor in that he's completely booked across all of his programs.
What we're talking about in this episode is specifically the opportunity he now has to expand beyond just ‘Victor’ and use the book and the system he's created, to keep himself fully booked and then help others to expand this opportunity and really help fulfill the Erin's Law mandate all over the country.
This is a great story of starting out with one guy, with one presentation, with one opportunity to get in front of schools and to fully systemize that opportunity so he's fully booked and now looking to expand beyond just himself to deliver the presentations.
You're going to really enjoy this episode.
Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
90MinuteBooks.com
Want to be a guest on the show? Simply follow the 'Be a Guest' link on the left & I'll be in touch.
Download a free copy of the Breakthrough DNA book all about the 8 Profit Activators we talk about here on More Cheese, Less Whiskers...
Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 061
Dean: Victor Pacini.
Victor: Hey, Dean, how are you?
Dean: I am good. I am very excited about talking to you today.
Victor: Oh, yeah, me too. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I'm really excited. It's awesome. I've been listening to all the episodes, so it's very exciting. Thank you again.
Dean: Well, this is going to be kind of neat because we've got a lot of history. I mean, you've been in our world for a long time. You were actually part of the first breakthrough blueprint online group that we did, I remember.
Victor: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep.
Dean: We've done everything together from the email mastery and the 90-minute book. I know some of the backstory about how things are working. Usually, when I start out on these episodes, I don't really know people, so what I'd love is if maybe you could take a few minutes and explain the backstory here, like catch everybody up to where we are today. Then, we can build on that and adds some bigger and even more evil schemes for you, but I'd love to just hear how you put everything together so far, and maybe catch everybody up on where we are right now.
Victor: Sure. Sure. Basically, I've been speaking in schools predominantly for almost 18 years now. I'll be honest with you, when I started doing that, I always loved it. I started singing. Just to let you know the backstory, I started performing when I was eight years old in nightclubs doing a tribute to Elvis when I was a little boy, so it's kind of an ... That's a whole 'nother story.
Dean: That’s much like Bruno Mars.
Victor: Exactly. That's exactly what I'd do.
Dean: That's how Bruno Mars got started.
Victor: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Victor: Yeah, exactly. I did that for about ... Well, since I was eight. I've been performing ever since. When I got out of college, I was doing graphic design work and not really fulfilled. I thought I wanted to be a teacher, so I decided to maybe go that route. I landed a job as an aide at a school. To make a long story short, I happened to meet this little boy with Down syndrome. He had heard that I was going to be performing for the kids at the school because I went up to the principal and I said, "Listen, I'd like to perform for the kids, show them what I've been doing in nightclubs since I was a kid," and he agree to it.
Matt comes up to me on the playground, this little boy, and he says, "Could I sing with you?" Well, that turned into a song that he came up and sang Johnny be good with me in front of hundreds of kids. At the end of the song, every student gave him a standing ovation. He then put up his hands like he had just one the Chicago Marathon. A teacher came up to me and said, "You have something here," and I didn't know what that was. All I did was I started going off of that. I enjoyed being with the kids, but I was really close to going into college, getting my masters degree in education and something kind of happened where I started writing lyrics to songs and then these people showed up in my life, these awesome songwriters and started writing songs and so that became the hook that I use when I go to schools. I use music to connect with kids but then it turned into these self-empowering programs for students about believing in yourself, about character building and all that, and so I developed a list of programs that I took to schools.
In the beginning it became, it was very challenging because I was, I'll say this because this is the reality of it, I was trying to promote me. My face over everything and course it's me doing it so I have to have some of that but then I started going onto, okay well what is this thing called marketing and what's interesting is you had recommended watching The Founder, and I watched that movie recently and it just brought back all these memories because Ray Crock was down in the dumps. He had all these places that were starting up McDonalds but he wasn't making any money until that guy told him. He said "You are in the wrong business. You're thinking of the wrong business. You're not in the hamburger business, you're in the real estate business". So for me, I'm sure you know James Mallencheck. I started following him and said "you're not in the speaking business, you're in the business of marketing your speaking services." So that was a shift for me and that's when I started looking into Joe and you, and I started diving into hey, what can I do? To not let it be a hobby because I wasn't booked all the time, I was getting some jobs here and there and I had no real strategy.
So, long story short, I've been implementing a lot of things that I've learnt from all of you for the last couple of years and it brings me to where my career really changed was, in 2013 a law was passed called Erin's Law. It's a law in Illinois and now in almost 30 states that says that schools have to have sexual abuse awareness and prevention curriculum and education throughout the school year, every single year. It's a mandate. It kind of got me thinking, a lot of the reasons why I went into speaking with children was to give kids a voice and to tell that they should have dreams and goals. I was never really, I had a voice to say opinions when I was younger and my dad was not the, I love my dad but he wasn't the one that wanted to hear what I wanted to say and he was like "You should be seen and not heard" kind of a philosophy. So I went with that and then thinking with this law because being in night clubs when I was eight years old, I met a lot of interesting people and that led to I was abused as an eight year old little boy and I kept it an un-phased secret for 11 years until I decided to talk about it when I was 19 and my life changed.
That's when I started going inside and reading and writing, and doing all these great things. So, when this law was passed in 2013 I thought "you know what? I can do this. I can create a program. I want to share my story. I never really could because it was taboo" and so I started putting together a program that goes to schools. It interacts with kids and it educates kids to have a voice and that's what it's doing. It led me to okay I want to really crack the code on how to really connect with as many schools as possible to get my message in. Well, it's turned into, this year I've done over 500 presentations.
Dean: Wow.
Victor: It's been incredible, incredible. Doing five a day and I love every second of it. However, it's a lot and so I love this opportunity with you because I would love to see how ... I've kind of cracked the code where people are really getting to know what my work is and they know that it is effective but now it's like well how can I scale it so that I can scale back my live presentations a little bit and maybe do what we had talked about before, like how do I get my live streams out there where I'm in one school but yet I'm broadcasting to hundreds of schools? And how I can take my licensee, which I'm taking, a guy came on board last year with his own story of abuse and now he's going to schools under my be seen and heard umbrella and he's doing it. He's doing great but it's slow for him because it takes time to get out there when you're on your own licensing and all that stuff. So, that's kind of where we're at.
Dean: Very fascinating. It's nice to hear you say it all together. I've seen it all happen piece by piece as we go here and been part of helping with the process of cracking the code to get to where you're now fully booked, as you would say. Really for you, over fully booked, which is kind of a cool thing. So, let’s talk about the, because I do have some ideas for leveraging everything for the next level of this here but maybe you can describe the process right now. How it works, what's the model that you've landed on here that is keeping you fully booked. What are the ah-ha's, the realizations that you have along the way while cracking that code?
Victor: Right, well it started a few years ago when a friend of mine in this industry, if you will, of speaking at schools. I remember, this was maybe 10 years ago, I would go to his office and he would have all these envelopes and I'm like "What are you doing?" He's like "Well I'm this is really ..." He's wasn't into the internet as much and doing emails but he would send out invitations to school districts that were surrounding the schools that he was going to and invite people to come see his presentation, which is just a huge no brainer when you think about it because I'm getting paid to speak but yet I have all these people coming so I call it a paid showcase. I'm showcasing my work but I'm getting paid. That has been a very ...
When I started the Erin's Law presentation, that became my one strategy that really snowballed. I had one district come out to see my presentations and then that turned into, they booked me for their district. It snowballed and then you keep inviting people to come see it and then word of mouth happens and things happen that way. Now what I do is, right before I go into a district, up until I started email marketing, I was broadcasting to, it was personal in the sense of saying a person's name, but I was broadcasting instead of saying "I'm going to be able to say Victor Pacini ..." like who's Victor Pacini?
Dean: That's great Victor Pacini is going to be performing.
Victor: Right, and so what? It would say Victor Pacini will be at this district on this date, please come and if you'd like to come and see it and see what he's doing, that maybe he can come to your school, blah, blah, blah. It was long, it was cumbersome I though, and then email mastery opened my eyes up in the sense that now I can literally just write a short, expecting a reply email to one person, even though it might be going out to hundreds of people and say "Hey, I'm going to be in your area around this time, whatever, January, presenting my Erin's Law mandate." Just in case they don't know because a lot of schools don't know that it's a mandate necessarily. I don't have the exact words in front of be but "I'd like to invite you to come see the presentation and feel free to invite any of your colleagues." It would say something like that or it may say something like "Would you like to attend?" Expecting a reply and I've been getting so many responses, even if they say "No thank you, we have something in place". At least I know that, which is fantastic and then I can move them aside but then I'll get people to say "Yeah, when is it? Could you tell me the date?"
Dean: That's what you want. Now you're engaged in the dialogue.
Victor: Exactly. Then they show up and I would have to say that I'm getting probably the majority, 95% of the districts that come see me are booking me because they're seeing it right there. It's not a promotional video, it's me who's right there. They're gonna see it then they can interact with the people that are in charge of that school and it just becomes a great transition into their district. That's been fantastic, that's been my one strategy that's been working very, very nicely.
Dean: That's so great. Then how now, are you integrating your book into the process?
Victor: The book has been, it's been really cool because what I did was, and this is some of the questions I want to ask you today but I have a few people that are just so, they're so supportive of what this is all about, helping children. I have social workers helping me, I have my assistants helping me, they're all going online literally because all of these contacts, the people that I need to know, social workers and the curriculum directors at school districts, it's all public knowledge at their websites or their schools. They're doing the research for me and then I'm putting together an email that's sending out "hey would you like ... I've written a book that helps fulfill Erin's Law. I call it the Erin's Law solution. I'd like you to have a copy of it." And simply they click on it then go to the landing page, which I've set up through gogo clients and they download the book. They get a digital copy of it and I already have it set up so they get a bunch of emails after that to educate and motivate them throughout the process. It's been really great.
I haven't had a lot of conversion yet but I have probably, I would have to say, a good hundred people that have opted in to get the book since I started this a few months ago, which I think is it's a really good start because they're in. They raise their hand and they're interested and they want to know more. I guess, where I get a little frustrated is I know this is all about educating and motivating 'til they're ready. Until they're ready, but I'm ready.
Dean: I'm ready now.
Victor: Yeah.
Dean: I look at this that you look at what is the ... If you're getting to the right people. Who are you sending the invitations to, to download the book?
Victor: Here's the thing, I have people are ... I gave them specific instructions to say okay. The social workers at the school districts, at the schools I should say. Social workers, or counselors, or psychologists, or people that work with kids in this capacity. These are the heart center of ... They think with their hearts and they're very feeling driven so they're not the decision makers, which I know that but they're good people to get them to say "Hey, we should look at this" and then they can forward it on to the right people but I do also know the right people. Those are typically the superintendents, not of the district necessarily, but the superintendents of curriculum, who are in charge of instruction and putting the classes and all their topics together. They are a lot of times the people that actually hire me to do the presentations at the school.
Dean: Yeah, and so you look at it ... The way I look at anything like this, you said a couple of things that are pretty, I think, important in this whole piece here. That number one, it's a mandate so it required and number two, they have to do it every year. So, when you look at it, some of the, you say the last couple of months here, which is sort of the second half of the school year, so there's a good chance that some of those people have already figured out how to fulfill their mandate for this year but that they're thinking ahead and those people, presumably the majority of them, will still be in the position that they're in and that conversation is gonna start again when they start planning the next school year and that you will come up. Especially since you are continuing to educate and motivate people.
That's where the whole idea of having your super signature on every one of the emails that you’re sending is a valuable thing. The assets that you have are the 100 plus people who have downloaded the book. Especially because the only ones getting the invitations to download the book are the people who are key people or the decision makers. If they're not the key people. So, you've got the right audience there. I look at it that, where do we measure your ROI there? How do you measure the return on that list? That asset that you're building is, you've got 100 plus people who you know are the right people and they've already downloaded your book. So they kind of have indicated some interest on that.
Victor: Is the next step with that is you'd literally ... because I have all these pre-programed in, these auto-responders, and they're getting them every couple weeks. I'm not doing it every week necessarily. I'm finding with educators, I don't know I could be wrong, but they don't necessarily like that they get so many emails every day.
Dean: Yeah, you gotta find the right ... that's what we're saying, with our ... We will do, on the real estate side, with buyers we'll do up to every day but with people who raise their hand as seller, potential listings, we'll do less frequent but maybe do by mail. Something once a month. So, finding the right balance is the right thing but just knowing that every year means every year and these people that you've communicated with, you're going to be top of mind for whenever that next opportunity comes. When does the planning process typically happen for this? What's the typical window? Is it possible that it's already, as we're recording the middle of May, is it possible that they may not have done what they need to do and they need to scramble and get something in at the last minute or is it pretty typical that they plan ahead and know when and what they're gonna do?
Victor: That's an interesting question because I've had people call me up until last week and say "We haven't fulfilled our Erin's Law, are you available for this date?" Well I'm not, so I can't.
Dean: You're booked, yeah.
Victor: I'm booked and then so ... but the problem is too, a lot of times then I'm finding the pattern is when they're waiting to the last minute it also means that they don't necessarily have the budget to do it by the end of the year. So when I say I can send out my other speaker who does the exact same program as me, which is great for me because I really am ... see that's the thing, I'm trying to start thinking it's a we thing. It's not just ... I can send out me or one of my speakers. I need to start implementing that mindset because up until this year was just me and so I want people to know that hey you might not get me now because I'm so booked up and that's a good feeling to have. So that's something that's important but also yeah it's pretty much anyone who's calling these last ... It’s because they don't have a budget necessarily and they want to just scramble and do something.
So now, it's still happening but not, I don't have any dates available but what they're doing now is ... I will get my goal, my goal for in the next couple of weeks is to sign up the districts that had me last year because I have an ongoing program that I bring and I change every year, on purpose, so that they don't get stale but also, the kids are getting a review but they're also getting new material and it also allows me to be bookable year after year.
Dean: Of course, yeah.
Victor: Right, so my goal is to get 90% of the districts that had me last year to rebook me for this year. One strategy that I'm doing is "Hey, I'm asking you to book me now for next year", which would be great however I'm really asking you and it's working slowly but "Hey, how about this, you know you're gonna want to book me every year. So let's do a three year commitment. I'll freeze your price, so it doesn't go up year after year. You'll have me for three years. It's a done deal. We'll do one contract per year so that there's no worries about you have to give me all the money now and we'll do one year at a time but at least you'll lock in your dates and you'll know you'll have me come speak at your school." So that's what I'm offering them now.
Dean: That's so great.
Victor: So the majority will probably book me because they are ahead of the game, a lot of them want to get their dates on the calendar for next year but come August 1st to, I'd say, middle of September, that's a good window for the districts that say "Hey, we have to do it this year. Let's book now" and hopefully then I book up the rest of my schedule and my goal for next year is to say "Hey Tom, I'm booked up. I'm sending you here, here, and here, and here." My licensee, that's the goal.
Dean: That's really a great way to think about it. You've got an interesting situation in that the program is transferrable like that, where you can train somebody how to deliver it and the goal, it's not that ... It’s like I mentioned and used this line a lot that the choice you have to make is whether you want to be rich or famous and I don't know whether you've heard me talk about this but I was flying to LA, once I was reading in Forbes magazine how they had the top 100 entertainers. You know how they rank everything?
Victor: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: This was several years ago but I remember this so distinctly because it freaked me out, the way that the timeline of what happened. I was reading in Forbes and ... Is it Forbes or Fortune? I think its Forbes, the top entertainer list and I saw on the list that Siegfried and Roy were on the list with ... They had just signed a new contract with the Mirage to end out their career kind of thing there. Just like a long term deal. $35 million and they had to do eight shows a week for 42 weeks a year. That was their contract. I thought wow, that's, two things, that's a lot of money but it's also that's a lot of work. That's a lot of doing the same thing, right?
Victor: Right.
Dean: Then, I kept going and higher up on the list was the Blue Man Group. Are you familiar with the Blue Man Group?
Victor: Yeah.
Dean: The guys with the blue face paint and they made $69 million and I thought wow, that's great but then I read they had an article in there about them and what I found out was that they had 34 blue men and they had 11 concurrent shows running in Las Vegas, and Chicago, and New York, and Toronto, and Paris and wherever else. They has these shows going on and what I found out was that they guys that created the show, there were four originators of it, that they don't perform anymore. That they just have this army of blue men that do these shows and what really was fascinating was that when they started the show, there's four of them, but it's a three man show and the reason they did that was because that would give them leeway that of somebody couldn't make it for whatever, they'd have a fourth guy. The blue paint really kind of made it that they could train anybody to do it.
Victor: Right, smart.
Dean: That really struck me at that point, that the difference is when I go to see Siegfried and Roy, you're expecting to see Siegfried and Roy. You're not going to see two guys and a tiger. You are going to see Siegfried and Roy and you would be disappointed if they weren't there. Now when you go to see the Blue Man Group, you're going to see an amazing show, you don't even think about the people behind the blue make-up. You just saw some blue men put on this amazing show and that really struck me that that business, these guys were, they guys who invented it were rich, rich, rich and off enjoying whatever they like to do. One guy lives here in Florida, he's a big equestrian guy. It struck me that that's kind of a precarious situation that Siegfried and Roy were in and I wrote about it in a newsletter.
Just that, that the choice of being rich or famous. That was the thought that I had. That those guys are rich. Siegfried and Roy are rich but they're famous. The danger is, and I would use the analogy because I was writing it to real estate agents, who a lot of them want to build their team around their personality. They're building this personal brand as opposed to just building a team or a process that gets homes sold. I said to people that building the business around yourself is forcing you to be the center of attention and ultimately limits your ability to grow it.
Victor: Wow.
Dean: Then, literally two months later, is when Roy got mauled by the tiger and changed the whole context of it. You realized how precarious that whole business was. I started asking people "What would happen to your business if you got mauled by a tiger?" Talking about it as tiger proofing your business and the Blue Man Group is a tiger proofed business because it's a system that delivers a result. When I look at your situation here, in terms of the way that it's set up, you're sort of the Siegfried and Roy in that you're the face of it, the brand of it, kind of thing right now, to some degree. Not necessarily it's not inherently that we gotta have Victor Pacini. That's not really the thing that is there but you're now seeing a view of what could be with your licensee. That you're almost, I think if you look at it that that future of the company, the big scale opportunity is removing it from being specifically about you and turning it to being the Erin's Law solution. That's really what it is. Funny that that's the name of your book too. There's the thing that most people, until you introduce this to them, they have no idea who Victor Pacini is. Nothing against you but they don't know and they don't know that isn't going into the decision. You could be anybody but the way that you're presenting this message is unique.
Victor: Yeah and the way it was created and all of that, the process. The thing that you said just now was a huge interesting comment and ah-ha moment is when you said building your team around your personality as opposed to building it around the process. Well, when I worked with Tom last summer, I trained him all summer and I think I'm still holding onto a little bit of well, he's gotta present it just like me when in reality, no he's gotta present it like him. I had a break for a day and I went to see his presentation, which was the weirdest thing because I'm watching, there's my program in front of me with kids and I'm sitting in the audience and it was the most humbling experience because I'm like "Holy cow." I'm proud of the fact that I could get to this point.
So proud, but at the same time I'm like it's so weird that it's not me up there. So I was like kind of fighting back and forth and I realized, Tom is a different type of speaker than me. I'm very high energy. I'm very high energy but he's presenting the material the way I trained him to present it but I even told him when we first started. I go "I don't want to clone me. That's not my point here. I want you to clone the message but you have to do it with your story in the way you feel comfortable doing it."
Get this, if those people had never seen me before, they have nothing to compare it to. So they're looking at Tom as, this is Tom's program and he's doing a great job and now we want him to come back next year, which is the next step with that too. So, I think that's really important. If I want to take it to that level, I do have to remove myself and say "Okay, I have created something that's awesome and let's build a team around the process and not around who I am" I love that, do you want to be rich or famous? When I was in my twenties I wanted to be so famous but it's not so much that important to me anymore. You know what I mean?
Dean: Right, I got it.
Victor: Yeah. Yeah it's great. That's so important I think, so yeah I love that story.
Dean: We want to add into this that really you have a unique story in that this is a very personal thing in that this happened to you and that you're ultimately, what really happening is that you're bringing that awareness and hopefully that if anything is happening with kids, that they feel safe to bring it up or to be seen and heard. That's a big shift. I've never asked you this but have you had situations where people have come forward after having done a program?
Victor: Yeah, I've had probably total of, and these are ones, there are ones that I don't know of because some schools don't tell me after I leave but I've had about 50 to 55 disclosure of kids and probably 25 to 30 were the ones that came directly up to me after my presentation.
Dean: Wow that's gotta be an amazing feeling.
Victor: It is. It's bitter sweet and that's how I describe it to everybody because on one hand I'm so sad for that person because I know what it was like to go through something like and gratefully so for me, it was only one time and I know kids that it's ongoing. On the other hand, I'm so happy because now they don't have to stay voiceless like I was for 11 years. It's interesting, it is a business, I have to make it a business of course but part of what I give to the kids is, I wrote a book called be seen and heard, which is the story of a little boy and I don't tell them it's me until they get into third grade but what I do at the end is, I'm building up all this excitement about this book and I go "How many of you want this book?" And they all want a copy of the book. I said "Okay, here’s what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give you this bookmark and this bookmark has some great messages from today on here. I want you to take this bookmark, and I want you to go home, on the back there's an invitation for your parents to go to my website to get a free copy of the book."
This does two things. One, it bridges the gap for parents to have a conversation with their kids because the parents are extremely uncomfortable. Then the second, it's getting another email address of someone who's raising their hand to get the book. So there all kinds of things. A lot of strategic objectives there that I am excited to share with you too but the bottom line is that I had a fifth grader take the bookmark. She went home, wasn't ready to tell me that day. She sends me an email and says "Victor, thank you for coming to our school today. I want you to know that you're my trusted hero and I was sexually abused and I need to tell my parents." So, what do you do? She's like "Please respond".
Well, obviously I can't at that moment. I have to send it to the district. They took care of it and then I said "Listen, she trusted me to tell me this. I need to respond." So I did and I said "You're a courageous little girl. You're so brave blah, blah, blah." That's just the connection I get with kids and it's just so phenomenal. I'm at the point now where I literally tell fifth graders and up, and I'll say to them "I kept it on safe because the person who did this to me threatened me not to tell my parents and I believed him. My father, who was not the most, he wasn't the easiest dad to talk to when I went home, basically never really wanted me to talk about any of my feelings. So between those two people, I stayed silent for 11 years and I'm telling all of you sitting here today don't be voiceless, don't be like me for 11 years."
Literally, this happened just a couple of weeks ago, I had a fifth grader walking out of the room after my presentation. I high fived him. He said to me "I promise". I go "Promise what?" He's like "I'll never be like you" and that was a huge, amazing experience because now I'm telling a lot of kids, I'm like "Listen, you leave here today, promise me you'll never be like me. You would never normally say that to somebody but I'm giving you permission to say I'll never be like you in the context of staying silent". So, that has become this Montreal. They leave and they're smiling "hey Vic, I'll never be like you". I'm like "Good, don't be like me". So it's become this whole thing.
Anyway, it's just a powerful program and it's very exciting.
Dean: Yeah. So I think, this whole process here. What you've got now is the opportunity with this happening in 30 states right now, you've got so much opportunity to really help spread that word. I can't imagine that there are tons, and tons, and tons of options for school districts with this, right?
Victor: Right.
Dean: That are proactively seeking it out as being a solution provider. Certainly nobody who's marketing it as well as you are.
Victor: Right, I don't think so, no. There are a lot of organizations that come out to schools. Schools are purchasing online curriculums that have been around for a long time. Schools are creating their own, which creates a lot of stress in itself, but yeah no, I don't think ... I just went to a conference in California and a lot of the schools they came up to me "What's Erin's Law? What do we have to do?" So again, it's an unfunded mandate. There are some funds being released but it's interesting when people find out that this is really creating a great result, they're finding the money to, they're finding it in their budgets to bring this out to their schools. I guess my question to you is in terms of, am I spreading myself too thin? It's 30 states, I would love to have a list of everybody in all 30 states but that takes a lot of work obviously. Do you recommend that I would just totally saturate? Illinois, there's a lot of schools in Illinois that haven't had me yet. I'm kind of touching upon Vermont right now.
Dean: You're in a situation right now where you've got ... I think that you're shifting into an after unit driven business. You're doing five a day right now. You're touching a lot of schools. You're doing a lot of programs and that, just like you said, the number one focus, because it an annual thing, is they want to get their situation handled, you want to handle it with them and you're doing exactly the right thing is focusing on your after unit of that. Getting re-booked as many of those as you can and getting them booked in advance. That's really a big win and I would look at, just on the business of it, setting up a metric that you measure there too. To see how many of these I am actually getting re-booked into? What's your re-booking percentage? Whether it's booked in advance or booked at the same school, more just in time year after year. That's okay too, right?
Victor: Right.
Dean: Is just that you're that great option there but at the same time, I think where you have the big opportunity is in finding more Toms. Finding people who can deliver your program and maybe have a variety of different people in different areas. I think if you look at the states that are offering this, there probably lots of opportunities there. You just wonder how many schools. When you're saying you're doing five a day, are you doing five at one school, to different classes or do you do one assembly style?
Victor: No, yeah it's not one size fits all because of the topic and the way it's designed. Yeah right. So what it is, it's an intimate topic so we try to, it varies, but we try to do an intimate amount of kids but it's by certain grade levels and the language changes. So I'm doing five a day at a school. So if it's a five school district I'm there for the five days, going to a different school in that district doing five presentations. I used to do eight a day. I just couldn't do it, I physically couldn't do it so I scaled back and I said "I'd rather have ...
I’ve gotten really good at delivering the program when you do it over and over again so I said if I had to compromise and have a little bit bigger of a group, that's fine. I'll be able to manage it. So, we'll do five a day at a school and that seems to be the ideal. Some schools might have me do four, some might have me do six depending on what's happening but typically it's five.
Dean: Do what you say. That's really the reality. You're gonna be the expert. This is what we do and they go along because they're looking for leadership, that's the thing. Everybody knows oh we gotta do our Erin's Law. Well what does that mean? And you're there to tell them what that means and to I got this for you. I got you handled. So you look at all of these school districts in all of these different states and there's some big ... That solution, everyone of those are looking for a solution and I think it's really about building that out. You've got all of the thing, you've been working so hard over the last several years here to really build this all out. It's really just been in the last 18 months or a year that it's really all gelled together right now.
You've got all of those assets that you've created in terms of all the marketing knowledge that you have now for it. So you've figured out how to ... You know in profit activator one who your target market is. You've got a tool in profit activator two to engage and to get them to raise their hand. You've got all the things that you're doing in profit activator three to educate and motivate them. You've got your offers that you're making and your super signature for them and of course it is on luck.
You've got that process down that as soon as somebody says "Yes" you've able to deliver that for them. Deliver a great experience, all with an eye to getting re-booked for next year in the after unit. You've got all of that there. So much so that if you were to just, if something would happen and you pulled the plug on everything that you've got, right now and moved you to Vermont, like you said is Vermont coming on board or whatever, I know that you have 100% confidence that you would be able to plop yourself into Vermont and execute and have yourself booked.
Victor: Oh yeah I think, I know I could. I know I could. It may take a little time but once I start, it's one of these things where one person see then it starts snowballing and that's why I think I don't necessarily have to send out the eBook to everybody in every state, I just think once it starts happening it's gonna start a snowball effect of that.
Really quick, and I'm just looking at my scorecard in front of me here, I wanted to bring up this after sales service. Something that I'm working on this summer is, the LAW states up to four communications a year on Erin's Law. It doesn't mean four presentations but four communications that could be as little as a poster on a wall. It could be in the bathrooms, in the second grade wing. They see a poster that says "Be safe", whatever it says. So what I did was, I've been getting a lot of feedback from teachers and social workers saying "Hey Victor ... They're not following up with my follow up questions and the things I want them to do and I'm like "Why aren't you doing that?" They're like "Well, because everyone is very uncomfortable talking about abuse to their students".
I get that, I really got that. So I thought to myself, okay what can I provide the districts once I'm gone? So what I decided to do this summer, and I think this is a great add, I'm not gonna charge extra for it, it's all gonna be wrapped up, it's gonna be basically, once I'm there doing a core presentation then a month later they're gonna get an email from me. Hey, your first communication is up, go log in to my online course and I'm gonna create two to three minute video modules to review from what they saw before and then to get something to stick. That one, two to three minute video, is all they have to show for that communication. Then I'll do two more for the rest of the year and this way, the teachers can have complete confidence they don't have to do anything but log in, press play and sit there and watch their kids watch this video for two minutes. Hey its Victor, I'm back again I want you to know we talked about this last time, this is what I want you to focus on now. That is like the easy button solution, plus I'm providing after sales service, plus I'm providing hey, I'm on their minds still for coming back the following year. It just becomes a whole, full package of this is the whole kit for Erin's Law. This is how you fulfill it.
Dean: That's it. You're going all the way, perfect.
Victor: Yeah. Yeah, so I wanted to share that with you because I think that's something that I've been ... You want to give people what they want and need, and all that stuff so they definitely aren't ... you're not getting everybody who's jumping on board with this, they have to come and see it. Teachers sometimes don't want to come and all this stuff, so I'm trying to make it as easy as possible to say "He, here it is for you. Go ahead and just do it."
Dean: Yes and I think that's fantastic. Now, for you to start thinking about Tom, as an example, there's somebody who maybe doesn't want to be a marketer and build a business around this. They want to look at their calendar and say you're going to this school, this school, this school, this school, here's your bookings. When you look at it that you've got an option of training somebody in how to do the whole thing. Meaning here's the marketing part of it too, or you've got the opportunity of just training somebody on how to do the during unit of it and you doing the marketing because that's really what ... That would be a dream come true for Tom and people like Tom, multiple Toms. A dream come true for most of them would be to just go and do the presentation and not have to worry about doing all the marketing, and figuring out all that, and running the business of it. It's just here's the fee, let me go do it and you give me a check. I think there would be a lot of people who would love that scenario.
Victor: Oh yeah, absolutely. That's all done for them. All they have to do is learn the material and go in and present it and they get paid for that.
Dean: Right.
Victor: Yeah. The way I ran it last year was, I trained Tom all summer on the program and then I trained him on ... Again this is all the things I've been learning about the marketing end of it because I told him. I said "The first year you're kind of on your own because I don't have the time at that moment" because I was so booked up this year. I'm like "I will help you as much as I can". We did weekly calls and all that but I said "You need to set up your own way of communicating with people, finding your own leads and that kind of thing". I helped him and I gave him leads. He's very happy, I think, but I will tell you this. He was very frustrated.
Dean: Of course he is.
Victor: This is so important. Why am I not getting booked every single day?
Dean: Right, exactly. You kind of downplay what it took you to figure that out. You've invested so much time and money in getting the knowledge and the wisdom to put together the marketing of this. When you look at it now that, executing on that, you've got what I always refer to as the scale ready algorithm. There's not a piece of your puzzle that's not in place right now. You've got the ability to go out to the districts, to the emails, they're all public, it's easy to get. It's just effort, it's work. Did you hear the episode of I love marketing with Richard Vigory? The guy who built the conservative fundraising business.
Victor: I don't think so, no.
Dean: Richard Vigary, he's 90 years old now and just as vital as you can imagine. Just constantly working on marketing every day and he talked about how in 1962, I guess, whenever at one of the presidential elections. I don't remember who was running for president or who the conservative candidate was but it was the first year that anybody that donated $100 to a presidential political campaign, had to be registered. You had to register that they donated that money and they kept records of it. He thought, you know what, that would be a valuable list to have. So he went to wherever they keep the records and we have access to every public record. He was able to get all of those records and he started hand writing out the names and the addresses of all of the people and he hired six ladies to come in with him. At the end of it they had 12000 people who had donated $100 or more. They had the name, address, contact information for those people who donated. At the time, $100 in the sixties was a significant amount of money, so that was a valuable list.
He talked about that as the turning point for him. Even though nobody really would put in the effort to get that list. It got to where they would go and do that for all over the country. Governor campaigns and senator campaigns, everywhere, all the political things and now they've got the ... He built a whole empire around it. He's one of the guys that were credited with getting Ronald Regan elected president.
Victor: Wow.
Dean: Yeah it's a pretty fascinating thing that you've got. There's a finite number of key people in school districts that are the list that you would need to communicate with. Once you know that that's what you need, you can show anybody how to get that list. You can show anybody how to go physically and create that and you know what email to send to them, and you know that when they respond, you're going to be able to engage in this dialogue with them. So you know all of the pieces of it and it would be easy for you to scale that, to execute it with people that you can train to do each element of it.
Victor: Also, with the online modules too, because I offer that as the licensing piece too, then this live stream idea that I'm working on, where the vision I have for that is I can sell these to school districts anywhere. They just show up at their computer and I'm right there, live in front of them and I'm in front of an audience, and I'm doing the presentation and then I could take questions from different states at the end. I see that being, that could become the live part of my work where I only work a couple times a month doing those. Then, I'm building ... I got Tom, I use the word Tom because it's Tom but all these other people doing it and it becomes this Blue Man group philosophy.
Dean: That's exactly the thinking. That's exactly the thinking but you own it but you’re not creating all these individual self-contained units of tome, where now Tom's gonna go out and he's gonna have to do all of that stuff in a specific territory. You're centralizing that, what can be centralized because there's a lot of economy in that. You're the one that owns the relationship with all of these schools.
Victor: Oh I see what you mean.
Dean: Next year, right so now it's you. You're just using them as you're plugging in contractors, essentially. To go and deliver their presentation, which is really what people want. Now that's probably not gonna be a lifetime career for some people but they may want to do it a couple of seasons and then you have new people who can go out and deliver it.
Victor: Right, right. That's great. That's really great.
Dean: Then that becomes, now you've got something that your first choice would be. That they license your online program or that they do a live stream and then either way, but you can also provide them with a live training.
Victor: Right, right. That's great.
Dean: That's really the way to think about it, that you become, that you think about all of it. You're gonna be the organization that is the leader in fulfilling Erin's Law mandates.
Victor: Right.
Dean: It's not just you, you're not just training a bunch of individuals to go out and some of them might not do it the way that you do it.
Victor: Right. It's a different way of looking at it instead of training them to, here's what you do with the marketing, go ahead. Is it still considered a licensee though?
Dean: I don't think I would look at it as a licensee; I would look at it as giving them an opportunity. It's probably easier to find people who just want to do the presentation part of it.
Victor: Right. That makes a lot of sense because it simplifies it then. You don't have to go through ... you have to have an agreement of course because it's a very difficult topic and you have to be careful who you bring into school and all that stuff but in terms of...
Dean: Right and everybody has to be vetted and trained and all of that but it's easier to build on that foundation than it would be to train them in all the marketing and all the stuff.
Victor: Right, right. Now that's a completely ... It's still producing the same result but we're looking at it from a different perspective.
Dean: That way that allows your business to grow. That allows your business to grow, to scale because now you’re not dependent on them doing anything other than the presentations. Plus then it gives them an opportunity to focus just on that and really nail it down, and get it to the point where it's really solid and you're ready to go out, and you don't have to worry about any of the backstage stuff. You work the program and you go out there and do it.
Victor: That makes a lot of sense. It’s interesting. It takes a lot of explaining sometimes, when you're trying to tell somebody to write an email and your logo needs to be on and there are no logos. Well what do you mean no logos? No logos it's a whole mind shift of teaching people.
Dean: I know, yeah you're right.
Victor: I'm still learning so it's like why ... Maybe your right here and not maybe but why try to train somebody else on the marketing? I'm just getting good at doing it for me, I can do it for you too kind of thing.
Dean: Yeah we see the clone, you doing the presentations really. So you can ...
Victor: Exactly, right. You talk about it all the time, lifestyle and I'm 45, I'm crazy busy, I have a wife and three children and we have a great life but it's a lot of work and I come home at the end of the day and here I am with kids all day and now I got my three kids to take to baseball and I'm by no means complaining but it's like my presentations I'm drained. It's like let's free that up a little bit.
Dean: Yeah I get it.
Victor: You know what I mean? Let's free it up and let’s make it simpler and more impactful because the less I do, the more impact I think I'm gonna have.
Dean: You're right.
Victor: If that makes any sense. So, that's awesome. That's great, that's great.
Dean: It's all very exciting. So what's your action plan?
Victor: My action plan is to listen to this when it comes out, for sure and take more ... I didn't really take any notes because I knew it was gonna be recorded so I'm like let's have a talk. But yeah, I think what I'm gonna do is, I did write down a couple of takeaways. One would be start thinking of it more in terms of an after unit business in terms of reaching out more to my current clients and saying ... Again, it's that whole referral thing, if you know anybody who's talking about Erin's Law could you please let them know. I’ll send them, bring it up, whatever but really just say "Hey, do you ..." Really maybe even call them up because I know a lot of them very personally now and say "Could you help me in that capacity?"
I think, what I'm gonna start doing now is to really sit down and okay, well I have Tom here who's gonna continue on for next year so what's the next step? What do I do to find somebody else? Here’s a question really quick. I know we're ending on time here but the question I have is, in the beginning I thought I have to find somebody who not only can present and perform to some degree but also has a story of abuse but maybe not necessarily now that I'm thinking about it. Maybe I there's an actor out there or a performer who knows how to sing a little bit, there's not a lot of singing required in this program but can present and then instead of they're telling their story, they're telling my story in that program and I doesn't have to, I don't have to necessarily find survivors to present the program necessarily.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Victor: It can be but it doesn't have to be.
Dean: Right.
Victor: Yeah. I don't know exactly where to start with that in terms of do I start just going online and finding people who are looking for potential work in the performance space.
Dean: You wouldn't have to go very far.
Victor: No, not at all.
Dean: Even in your community theater and those kinds of things I'm sure.
Victor: Right, can you imagine ... I've always had this vision of someone who is, they buy into the story, into the idea. If they are a survivor it makes it even more impactful but the fact is, is that they're gonna be impacting kids' lives and they're gonna get to do what they love to do and that's perform and present. It doesn't get any better than that. So that's the mindset. I want to start attracting these people and start thinking about in terms of what you said, maybe making this an organization and not a licensing kind of thing, and start putting all this marketing together for everybody and again, start telling people, my new clients that start calling for this upcoming year saying "okay, you're gonna get a be seen and heard presenter." It may be me, it may be, whatever they're gonna get but just so they know that it's not just me presenting the program and it's a team of be seen and heard presenters.
Dean: That's right. That's exactly right. Once you become that you're the official ... The more that you grow this, that's reassuring that you're the national leader in Erin's Law content.
Victor: Right, exactly. Exactly, yeah so that is the plan. Then another action plan too is to within all these emails is to start getting people on board to do live streams, especially people out of state. That requires a lot of planning in terms of getting a company to be able to handle that kind of a thing with all that's because there's a lot involved with live streaming I'm guessing but I'm guessing they're easier than they used to be.
Dean: It's getting easier and easier, yeah.
Victor: Yeah, so that's very exciting to me and then to solidify the online and start licensing those out too. So, there's a lot of stuff going on, it all connects together but I think the biggest take away here is to look at my business as an organization of a team of people that are focused and created around the process of what it is that do. Not about me specifically, and go from there. I think that's it.
Dean: Yeah, that's it. Awesome.
Victor: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time dean.
Dean: I'm so happy for you. I'm glad everything is working out and I love that it's really, it's doing good in the world.
Victor: Exactly, exactly. It's doing great. It's making a difference. One child at a time and it's just awesome. I thank you for all of what you've offered everybody in your group and it's been a great way to ... It takes time sometimes to really understand something. You have to look at it and read it, and study it over and over again until it really sinks in and finally, after looking at all this, is just seems like everything is fitting into place and it's getting easier and easier to understand it. Always room to grow but at the same time, to understand what a super signature is and what to do, and how to put it together and really it's fun. It's fun now.
Dean: That's great, it's so awesome.
Victor: You know what I mean. Yeah, it's so cool. It so cool. So thank you. Thank you so much.
Dean: Thank you Victor. We'll talk later.
Victor: Okay, take care Dean. Bye-bye.
Dean: Bye.
Hey there we have it. Another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, want to go deeper in how the profit activators can apply to your business, two things you can do. Right now you can go to morecheeselesswiskers.com and you can download a copy of the more cheese les whiskers book and you can listen to the back episodes of course, if you're just listening here, on iTunes. Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying all of the eight profit activators are part of the breakthrough DNA process and you can download a book and a scorecard and watch a video all about the eight profit activators at breakthroughdna.com and that's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there. So, that's it for this week. Have a great week and we'll be back next time with another episode of more cheese less whiskers.