Success Stories Ep 102 - "Grilling Sales with the Pitmaster"

Do you need more sales? Is your marketing not up to stuff to generate interest in leads? 

If that sounds familiar, then today's Success Stories guest Bill Petrie with Brandivate will be just the ticket. For years, Bill has been actively helping companies succeed in educating the promotional products industry with his blend of humor, unique perspective and clarity of thought. He is one of the industry's leading sales thought leaders. 

This episode is one you're going to recommend to your staff and probably listen to more than once. So get your pin ready!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
Do you need more sales? Is your marketing not up to stuff to generate interest in leads? If that sounds familiar, then today's success stories, guest Bill Petrie with Brandivate will be just the ticket. For years, Bill has been actively helping companies succeed in educating the promotional products industry with this blend of humor, unique perspective and clarity of thought, he is one of the industry's leading sales thought leaders. This episode is one you're going to recommend to your staff and probably listen to more than once. So get your pen ready. Here we go. All right, Bill, welcome to success stories podcast.

Bill Petrie 
Hey, thanks, Marshall. It's always good to see you. Always good to spend time with you, and I'm excited to be here.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and we have a lot of similar interests. We we both like a good stiff drink. We both like barbecue. We both have a favorite college sports team, and we both have our roots in this crazy industry.

Bill Petrie 
We do. We also both have a least favorite college football coach that formerly coached our favorite teams.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh my gosh, dude let's not even go there.

Bill Petrie 
Okay.

Marshall Atkinson 
Let's not even go there. But okay, so let's kick it off, right? And so the first question here, you know, was, besides, you know that passion for barbecue and trying out new libations, you're also known as the sales whisperer, right? Can you tell us where that interest and passion for sales began, and how you got sucked into and got involved in the promo industry?

Bill Petrie 
Yeah, we all have a story of how we got the promotional industry. So I'll answer that question. First, I was living in New York at the time, not in the industry. I was 29 years old, living about 10 miles north of New York City, 15 miles north in Westchester County. And the company I had worked for, I had done sales, acquisitions and implementations for at a very young age. So it was a great experience. But as those acquisitions grew, I quickly found myself reporting to three different people who had three different agendas in three different cities, and it was pretty clear to me that no matter how hard I worked, it was only going to be 33% for each person and and was not sustainable. So I started looking for a job, and I answered an ad for Halo Branded Solutions, which at the time was was one of it, and still is, but it was a huge conglomerate. And what brought me into the what interested me in promotion products is my mom was a Welcome Wagon hostess when I was growing now, if you're not familiar with a Welcome Wagon hostess, it's kind of a kind of a throwback, kind of a relic of a different era. But usually it was little businesses run by housewives, where they would welcome people new to the neighborhood. They work with the Chamber of Commerce, get people who are new to the neighborhood and visit them with a basket of promotional products. And it would be for the local exterminator, the dry cleaners, the liquor store, the tire place and all that. And I always thought as a child how magical it was, and we had this little warehouse in our garage. It was really just a shelving unit full of promotional products. Now, if I was magical, they could put their phone numbers out. They put their name on it. So when I had the opportunity to interview at Halo, I jumped at it, because I again, I was always fascinated with with that the industry. Now, had I known that the company was going to file for bankruptcy nine months later, not sure, I would have joined the organization. But as it happened, because my background was on an acquisition team for a large office products company. I was a very, very good pet to have when Halo went through the bankruptcy trying to right size the organization. And so I found myself almost accidentally, as many of us do in a career we love. So I've been in the industry, promotion products, industry, brand of merchandise space for this is my 25th year now, and I still love it every day. And you know, I've done different things. But to answer your first question, Marshall, I think what has my interest and passion in sales? And it's funny you asked this question because I was just asked this last week as we're recording, I spoke at ASI, Chicago, and someone says, Why do you like sales so much? And I answered this way to me, sales is the most noble profession on the planet. Now stick with me. I believe that's the case because sales people are in the business of helping people get what they. Want as a sales person. When I'm in selling mode, I view it as my job. They might the person for me wants something. How can I make it easier, more efficient and faster and maybe more cost effectively? How can I make that happen to get what they want? And there's nobility in it and I also believe Marshall, nothing in this world happens without us fail. Sales are the catalyst of growth. Sales are the catalyst of the economy. So I have a passion for helping people, and I do that sometimes under the umbrella of selling them things. I don't want to sell anybody anything. I want to be in the position to help them get what they want. And to me, that's what sales is about.

Marshall Atkinson 
What a great answer. You can tell, you're a pro.

Bill Petrie 
I try.

Marshall Atkinson 
So I think here's the challenge that I hear all the time is, oh, the economy sucks. Nobody's buying. You know, the summer, it's a drought. No, nothing's going on. And I know the complete opposite or true, because I know people who are absolutely killing it. They're not only having record revenue, but they're having record profits, okay, Which is what I always kind of go to, is the profit part? Sure, yeah, and so, and I am a big believer in your sales is directly proportionate to the effort that you put into it. So when I ask people, you know, what's going on, you've got this big sale, you know, I go tell me about your sales activity yesterday, and they go, Well, we didn't really do anything. I had to clean screens, or I had to do something, right, you know? And it's like, oh, well, what about the day before? It's like, well, I made a phone call, right? And then you find and so my response to that is like, Well, okay, well, your biggest problem isn't the economy or the fact that customers aren't buying. You just see you don't have any sales activity. It's just not doing the work right.

Bill Petrie 
And you're also not putting yourself in a position again, people are buying. They might be buying differently. They might have a little more cost concerns than they did before because of budgetary restraints, but people are still buying. You just have to put yourself in that position, and part of that to help them, and part of that is the activity. The analogy I always use Marshall is a bucket. Almost every sales person I know, they ride that wave right up. Man, the things are going great, and then things don't go so great. So and I don't do that, I look at sales as a bucket or revenue, profit. If you put a bucket of water outside, it's full. The next day, it's still 95% full. But if you don't keep putting water into it over time, those that water will evaporate. And so if you don't put any water in there for a couple months, guess what? You're going to have a near empty pail. Your sales are the same way. Yeah, you can skip for a day or two because maybe you have a project to work on, but you have to continually focus on putting yourself in a position to help people get what they want. And when you scale back on it, because you're too busy, things are going great. It's a fool's errand. Things are never as good as they seem. They're also never as bad as they seem. You got to try to maintain that constant of trying to put yourself in a position people who are likely to buy from you to to help them get what they want.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. And nobody blames themselves. Nobody is accountable to themselves, right? You can't deposit excuses.

Bill Petrie 
No, no, it's really it's really easy and constantly blame everything else. Meanwhile, you're playing college football 25 on your PlayStation, because it just came out, and you're back. I don't know why my sales are so bad, why my numbers is off.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, exactly. So anyway, I think that we need more sales, and I think that's true of every company, right? We need more sales, and I think sometimes there's there's businesses out there where they don't have a giant staff, right? It's just one person, or, like, three people, or whatever, and they, they are wearing so many hats they can't get out of their own way, right? And so my next question here is really about understanding your customer and building a relationship, right? And I think for folks that are new to sales or struggle with sales, I think one of the the ways that you approach it, because you've got your C4 strategy. So I kind of want to get into that a little bit. You kind of unravel what you advise people do. And maybe, if you're time limited, or maybe you want to hire a sales team, you don't really kind of understand what you want, maybe this can help folks out. So kind of go through that C4 strategy and let people kind of just, if you're listening right now, close your eyes and just listen to what. Bill has to say, all right, Bill.

Bill Petrie 
Pressure's on. So you're talking about the hire us page on the Brandivate marketing, brandivatemarketing.com, website. So we have a hire us page and we have a don't hire us page. I have a dedicated page for clients I don't want because, you know what? I don't want every client, because not every client is a right fit. And I think it starts with that. I think, you know, classifying it. So the first C in the C4 process that we implement is understanding your target audience when it comes to promotion products. For example, we're told a great lie. We're told this lie of hey, is a great business for street because everybody buys promotional products, but most people what they they they're told that. What they hear is, everybody is my customer. Nobody's not your customer. Tell you that right now, not everybody's going to buy from you. I Marshall, you know me well enough. I love an analogy, and I love food analogy. So let's talk about hamburgers. McDonald sells hamburgers. So does In & Out, and so does Gordon Ramsay. They are all hamburgers. They are very different hamburgers, but they're still hamburgers, and they all sell hamburgers, but they sell them to radically different audiences. If I am expecting a elevated Gordon Ramsay experience and I walk into McDonald's, I am going to be sorely disappointed if I expect to pay a certain amount of money at Gordon Ramsay, I'm going to be disappointed they sell to very specific audiences. You need to focus on your your personal target audience. Where are you likely to have the most impact? Where do you understand their pain points best. Maybe it's the hospitality industry, maybe it's a restaurant industry, maybe it's healthcare, maybe it's insurance. I don't know. I don't know who's listening, but you have to understand who is likely to buy from you and who you can help the most. That's your target audience. Just because everybody buys something doesn't mean they're going to buy it from you. So it starts with classify. The second is connecting. Now you have to relate to that audience and start to build trust and in especially in the print and promotion product space, Trust is everything. Because you are taking somebody's baby, you are taking somebody's brand, a special design for an event, whatever it is, you are taking that and you're putting it on something that will last until somebody hopefully doesn't put it in the landfill so or recycle it, whatever. You have to take care of that. To do that, you have to build trust. You need to relate to your audience on their terms. Which leads me into the third C, which is captivating. You have to engage your target audience, where they live. I hear so often, you know, I'm on Facebook, and I all these younger people. They're Gen Zs. They don't like Facebook. I just, I want to get them to on to so look at me on Facebook. It is not their responsibility to ignore 25 years of technology they grew up with to make you comfortable with your marketing efforts. I don't like Snapchat. I just don't I think it's dumb. I also know that if I want my kids to respond when they're away at college, and I want them to do it within a short amount of time, Snapchats would go so I mold myself to my target audience. I do the same in my business. If people prefer to text, guess what? We text, whether I like it or not, if people prefer to use Facebook Messenger, that's fine too. If people prefer email, super, if they prefer Instagram, outstanding, I don't care. I can be a chameleon that way. That's my job to be a chameleon, I morph to what they need, asking people to cap trying to captivate people where they're not comfortable. They're going somewhere where there is there's too many other options, and there's too many other available options. So he has to engage the audience where they live in on their terms. And then the last C is convince. And that's when you put all this together. When you truly understand the target audience. You've classified them. You know how to connect with them. You can start engaging and captivating them. Now you can start moving them to action. What do you want them to do? Where do you want them to go? What are your specific calls to action that moves whatever ball it is forward. That's the C4 that we implement here at Brandivate, and we think it works pretty well.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. And there's so much noise out there, right? How are you different than everybody else? And I think it'll be. We look at some brands that are doing great, and you'll notice that they're not like anybody else. They're their own voice, right? And I think that's what really kind of registers with companies and their customers, is that the ones that really understand their customers, and they do it in their own style and their own way, I think that's what really kind of builds up loyalty. And there's white papers and business cases forever where, you know, like, Harley Davidson doesn't sell motorcycles. They sell a lifestyle, right? And, and, you know, Liquid, Death Water, right? They, they don't, they don't sell bottled water, right? It's, they're a lifestyle brand also, right? They're, they're the anti Dasani, right? And I think understanding your customers and really that target really helps you in sales, because if you know what your customer is struggling with, they they don't have a lot of time, and you can save them time, or you have something that can make them money, and they want to make money, right? Whatever, if you can focus in on that, you can really have great success because you're speaking the language that they they want to hear, right? And it's just how you show up. And I love the fact that you're using the communication channel that they're going to respond to best, right, and not perfect. And I would also say that this is a relationship business. You know, if you're going to build a book of business over time, it's about personal relationships. It isn't just emails and POs right, or text messages, whatever. Sooner or later, you got to get in front of people, even if it's a zoom call, like we're human beings, and we like to connect with other humans and and the more that you do that, the more that they're going to know and appreciate you. And I would try to get in front of as many people as possible, whether that's hosting an event, or, you know, our three at the golf tournament, or teaching at a trade show, or whatever, you know, I'm sure you know, I teach at trade shows just like you. What happens after your presentation is over Bill? people want to talk to you, right?

Bill Petrie 
You bet You know, but it cuts both ways. And I love what you were saying. There Marshall cuts both ways. There are brands like Harley Davidson. They know who they are. They live who they are. So does Liquid Death, so does Jack Daniels. Is another great example. But then you see sometimes, and here's prediction time, you see companies that seemingly know their audience. And for whatever reason, usually financially driven, they take a turn, and they think they're serving their audience, but what they're doing is alienating their audience. And the one I'm thinking of right now, and I'm not sure when this will drop, but just last week, Southwest Airlines announced that they're doing away with open seating. They are saying, oh, you know, our polls show people prefer to assign seating. Oh, my personal poll here shows me you you prefer more profits. And so that's the game, and that's fine, but I don't know any organization who is six that is successful by copying what everybody else does. So they're the last big airline to the game of we are assigning seats where to charge for seats we're going to charge for specific seats. And I have a prediction that they are going to turn off so many people, because people have come accustomed to I check in, I get my seat, I find my seat, and that's that's just the way South West works. I think they'll reverse course, because I think they're they. They are going to violate the trust we talked about trust earlier. You talked about I certainly talk about it. They're violating the trust that they have with their travelers who are comfortable with for 50 years of I got to check in 24 hours, or I can pay 15 bucks for Early Bird access, or whatever it is. I think they're alienating, right? So it's understanding your audience and making sure that you're always in step with them. And here's an example where, personally, my prediction is they're not in step with their audience. It could be wrong. I've been wrong before.

Marshall Atkinson 
It'll be like Coke Classic.

Bill Petrie 
That's exactly what it is.

Marshall Atkinson 
They'll have them classic.

Bill Petrie 
They might. They sure did. But it's, it's, it's a very interesting pivot for them. I'm curious to watch it.

Marshall Atkinson 
So one of the things that really admire you most, Bill, is that you're a risk taker, right? And you're fearless in reinventing yourself and starting a new career adventure, such as, you know, the the new provocation idea, which I just think is fantastic, right? Thank you. You've done this several times over the course of your business career. So walk us through somebody right now who there's this thing in their ability that says this isn't working out. I need to make a switch. I need to do something different. Do I have what it takes to say, You know what? I'm going to try something completely new, and and and go that direction, because I know where I am isn't working, and I've done that, and you've done that. We've both had experience with that, so kind of like, give. Us to give us the rubric of what we need to do to decide then launch that new idea, because you've done this several times.

Bill Petrie 
Yeah, interesting question, Marshall, and I think for me personally, I don't have ADHD, but I am restless. I am restless. I know that about myself. You know, I think if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one of the things we we crave most as humans is safety. And in terms of what we're talking about here, I will substitute the word safety for the word comfort. We crave comfort. Whenever I'm giving an education session, I'm trying to drive a point home about this type of a topic. I will say to a group of whatever, 100, 200 people, whatever they are, if I said, Hey, let's take a five minute break, there's free coffee out in the lobby. It's on me. Please have a cup of coffee. Come on back. We'll finish up with the workshop. Every single person would go get coffee, who drinks coffee? But they would all come back and they'd sit in the exact same spot they were. Didn't tell them to that's comfortable where they are what they do. It's why people drive the same route to work every day. It's why people have to go to the same favorite restaurant. We crave comfort. And so about 10 years ago, I learned that when I get comfortable at work, that my work suffers, not because I don't care. I always care just because it's not new, it's almost it's not boring, it's just not fresh. So I retrained my brain because I crave comfort, just like anybody else does. But I've retrained my brain that I know to be at my best, to continue to evolve as a marketer. And what I do, I have to force myself to get out of my comfort zone. So the second I feel comfortable with something, that's when I start evaluating what I'm doing. That's when I take a step back and look at what what my life looks like, what, professionally, what my life looks like, and all that. And I try to start learning. I try to start learning. That's what led me to start building websites. I said, You know what? I want to learn how to do that. When I get restless, personally, okay, I want to learn how to barbecue. I learned how to do that. And people say, Well, aren't you a little nervous? You know, starting something new? No, because here's the thing, the only way you get good at something is by doing we can all read, you know, people, I feel honored when people come to my house, I make them a great barbecue meal and they say, this is fantastic. How did you learn to do it? My answer is always the same, because I made a lot of shitty barbecue. That's how I did it. I learned what not to do that. You make mistakes. You learn from Okay, I'll do that. I won't use that wood with that meat, so on so forth. Same thing with work. But I learned how to build websites. I've learned how to build apps. You mentioned Provocations. I need to build. I need to create. There's nothing that gets my juices flowing more than taking an idea, something that doesn't exist, and then making it a tangible reality. I did that with Brandivate. I started Brandivate in July of 2020, now, if your memory is good, you'll realize that was at the height of the pandemic, because the position where I was in work wise, I love the people, I love the job, but I just felt complacent. I'm like, this isn't this is not going to challenge me, and this is a good time to do it. And so I did Provocations. You mentioned my business partner in that, Josh Robin, who runs of all promotions, a badge supplier in the promotional products industry, we had an idea of that's the best part of any industry event. It's not the talks, it's not the actual trade show. It's that one on one networking time. It's those bonds that are created over dinner, at lunch, over drinks, when you go out and do something and experience it as a group. And so we thought, why do we not make it something about that? Why we make that the event? And that's what we did. And we do networking events on cruise ships. We just announced our first land based networking event, which is going to be an all inclusive resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. And they've been incredibly successful to the point where our retention rate for suppliers, who generally foot the bill for this stuff, is about 80% people have been at every event. So to me, I if I don't try something different, I'm 54 I'll be 55 this fall. It keeps me young. I think it keeps me thinking differently. It keeps me from being from avoiding being irrelevant, which is probably one of my you know, if I'm being transparent, it's one of my fears that I'm just, oh yeah. He used to do something, right? Remember him? I don't want to do that. I want to keep pushing forward. I want to keep evolving.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, well, not to mention, this is Seth Godin, probably one of the biggest marketing gurus out there, right? Talks about being remarkable, right? Which you have other people talk about you, right? And so there's some folks in the in this industry, right? And in in people listening, they probably have their favorite. People that they follow on any social media channel, or if they're giving a talk, they'll attend, or they know the things. You're one of them, because you're always doing stuff, and everybody wants to know what Bill's up to. And look at this and and, and it's because you're fearless when it comes to doing this stuff. And I think people want to be dragged along for the ride, and they want to participate, because that I know, Bill, and that sounds like lots of fun, right? Because you're a fun guy and everything, but this also keeps you in the forefront of the industry, because people talk about you, right? And so, and here's what I'll tell you, is because I'd done similar things, you know, shirt lab, this podcast, and many other things, sure. And nobody asked me to do these. You just decide one day I'm going to do this, and the first one is going to be horrible, but..

Bill Petrie 
Absolutely.

Marshall Atkinson 
And we're going to learn, right?

Bill Petrie 
Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
And that's how you do it, is you just start.

Bill Petrie 
Exactly you asked, you know, what would a layout be for someone to do this? You're right. I do podcast with a partner of mine. I've been doing it for almost eight years now. Every Every week we do a weekly podcast. We combine between the two podcasts we've done. It's over 800 episodes, and people say, How do you, how do you do a pod? How do you, how do you start a podcast? You just start a podcast. And trust me, the first one was awful. I sounded terrible, and I had fast talk and loop brain and all these other issues that you have to learn to tamp down. So I think the one thing I would suggest to people, if you start feeling like I'm stuck in a rut, I'm not I'm not evolving, I'm not growing. I'm doing the same thing over and over again and maybe expecting better results, which we all know what that is. Find out what's holding you back, what is the one thing that's holding you back? From a fear perspective, you mentioned fear. I learned probably 10 years ago that I needed to be transparent. That is my if people ask me, What do you think your superpower is? I'm not the smartest, I'm not the most creative, I'm certainly not the most handsome, but I am very transparent. I have shared my more of my lows than my highs because I look at what people share on social media, and it's generally a highlight reel, which is great. That's not real life. And so I've been fired from jobs. You know, that job we talked about, where I started in the industry from Halo. I got fired from Halo because I didn't like working there. And my tactic at that point, I'll just stop working, not the greatest long term tactic for career success. I learned from it, yeah, I learned that that was probably not the way to go. So find what's holding you back from taking that chance? Maybe it's buying that decorating machine. Maybe it's learning how to you do you use a tool that you want to learn, but you're scared you might suck at it. What's holding you back and accept the fact that we are all constantly learning. You know, Eddie Van Halen, I guarantee the first time you picked up a guitar wasn't super great. Had to learn it.

Marshall Atkinson 
That guy came down from the gods, was to be able to play a riff.

Bill Petrie 
Who could possibly know.

Marshall Atkinson 
So I think you have to trust yourself, right? And and you. And here's the thing that I think people really need to understand, is you don't know how. You don't have to know how to do something, because other people have that skill already. You could just ask them. You could ask for help. You can pay somebody. You could watch a video, you know. You could do stuff, you know. And so there's a great book that came out a couple years ago called, Who Not How, right? Who you know. So Dan Kennedy there, right? Who out there knows how to do something, you know, build a website, help with a podcast, you know, whatever. And this helps you, right? When I started this podcast. Yes, I have a Mac, right? Because I'm a Mac guy. I did the whole thing in garage band, right? And it was such a time suck. I'm like, oh my god, this is killing me. I got a VA, and my VA team is so stellar, right? So my, my part of the podcast is just this part, Bill just being you, and they talk to the team, and they make it rock and roll, right? And I'm done with it right. And that helps me, because I have so many other things to do, but I had to go through that process, that evolution right, to to really understand that right. And sometimes you don't know where the struggle is until you're struggling. And that's the that's the fun part, is figuring it out. And I think for we're the kind of the same, right? That's the fun part is, is figuring out the struggle, right? What do we need to do? We do it we you know, nobody's done this before, so it's all virgin territory. All we gotta do is figure it out, and that's the puzzle, that's that's what's really fun about it, right? And that's what makes it unique, and that's the reason why, if you're listening, you should start today.

Bill Petrie 
Absolutely. Well, great way to do that is a David Lee Roth lyric from Van Halen, when was the last time? Ask yourself this, when was the last time you did something for the first time. And I do ask myself that about quarterly. You know, when was the last time you did something for the first time?  It's good I learn.

Marshall Atkinson 
And there's another quote I like is, if it scares you, then it's meant for you.

Bill Petrie 
Damn right.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, damn right. All right. Last question, you ready? All right. Crystal Ball time. Let's talk about the future. Everything up until now was the past. Let's talk about the future. I want to find that Bill, what excites you? What are you most interested in? What's coming around the corner that nobody knows about, or what are you learning that you know six months from now, we're gonna we're gonna see the new thing, right? What's going on in the Bill Petrie world?

Bill Petrie 
Well, other than being excited that my two kids who go to out of state universities will be graduating next year and getting off the company dole, and I am very excited about that, no, I think in probably a Nina, I've, I think, spoken about this outside of the podcast. Marshall, I think it won't surprise you that it's AI. You know, here, here's the thing. AI is here. I know a lot of people, they want to stick their heads in the stand, because it can be unnerving. It can be scary sometimes. But I will tell you it's here. It's like, it's like standing if you want to ignore it, that's like standing at the ocean and screaming at it to turn black. It's not going to happen. It's here. So you need to understand not only how AI will impact the way your business is today. What about in six months? What about a year? What about in two years? And so to me, it's taking advantage of this golden opportunity at the dawn of AI. How can you best leverage it for your business? That excites me. I use Midjourney for graphic I know you use, well, that is 100% 100% 100% my stock photography, and much like everything else, for me personally, when I first started using Midjourney, it stunk. I was terrible at it, because I didn't understand how to speak to I didn't understand how to optimize my prompts for AI and for the AI and mid journey. But I over time, I watched other people, like, I'd sit in a room and just watch what other people were creating. Like, that's cool. Why? How? Why can that person do that? But I can't, and so I'd start copying little pieces here and there, and it got better and better and better. Now I also have a subscription to chatGPT, and that helps me with marketing automation and things like that. What I've started doing is using chatGPT, because it will do whatever you need it to do, and you just and I have in this quick sidebar, treat AI with respect. I don't talk shade to it. I actually speak to it as if it were Marshall. I say, Hello, good morning. Hope you have a great day. I hope you're treated with dignity and respect, because when AI takes over, I want them to remember me as a kind mind human being. But I will ask it for this next request, like in chat, GPT, I'll say, for this next request, I'd like you to act as a prompt engineer for Midjourney. Here is the request. I'll type out what kind of picture I'm looking for, and it'll say, please ask me any clarifying questions before proceeding, and it will spit out a list of seven to 10 questions, very specific that I wouldn't have thought of. I will answer those seven or 10 specific questions. It will generate a prompt I will put in Midjourney, and I'd say nine times out of 10, I get exactly what I wanted out of it. So you combine the two, AI. That's the ones, you know, because I don't personally like Dali, which is the graphic embedded graphic service embedded in chatGPT. I don't find that it's as good as Midjourney. Personally, I think you would agree. So to me, that's exciting, learning how to make those two things together. And you know, we do. You do a lot of public speaking. I certainly do too. I've I use that specifically for all my photography in there, for all of the graphics in there, and people are blown away, because it's very specific, very specific. So that, to me, that's the future. Is not worrying about how a is gonna, AI is gonna take somebody's job, make somebody obsolete. I can't worry about that, because it's either going to happen or not going to happen, I can guarantee you I will push out my obsolescence by understanding how to leverage it, to make my offerings to better for my clients, to help them get what they want.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's perfect. And you know, as human beings, we fear what we don't understand. And there's a lot of people who fear AI. And what they do is they just rat and rave about how awful it is. But if you ask them, they've never tried it. So to me, I come across like that kid who won't try asparagus because it smells weird, right? And they do, how come? Have you tried it? It's like, No, I'm against it. I go from an ethical standpoint, because they stole somebody's idea. And we're like, well, they, you know, yeah, they use something for a training thing. But, you know, let me tell you, that's not really going to show up unless you personally put something in there to reference a particular artist or author. It's just going to give you an answer, or it's going to give you an image. It's not going to give you that exact thing unless you ask for it. Right? Now, here's what I tell you, there's a there's a dark side to all this too, which there is, if you're not an ethical person, you you can have great success with AI not being ethical.

Bill Petrie 
Oh, absolutely. And you look, I ghost write blogs for clients. I don't use chatGPT to do that. I could. I don't. I don't feel good about that. That's not that's something that they want a human perspective on, that there is a dark side to it, but you can mitigate that dark side by using it for good, you I use it for ideation often. You know, hey, you know, honest chatGPT, what do you think I'm looking for some ideas here, and if you're running a promotion products business, for example, you know, maybe you don't want to use Midjourney, fine. If you're not spending $20 a month for chatGPT, for the premium subscription, you're missing out. Because you could say, I've got a a Regional Health Care customer that is celebrating 10 years of providing exemplary service in a rural area. What are some ideas how to celebrate that with a you know us through the lens as an you know you being expert of promotional products or new products, all those things. Ask me clarifying questions. It'll ask you all sorts of clarifying questions. Who's the audience? What's the budget? What's the budget, what are you know, all these things. It will help you create so many ideas, and it'll actually unlock your creativity. One of my favorite quotes is from Miles Davis, great jazz expert, right? Or jazz musician, you can't riff on nothing, man, you've got to riff on something. What she means by that is, everything is is built off of something else. It's very rare. Sometimes a blank page is too much of a blank page. It can be stifling. That's why, when you're house shopping, and you walk into a house and it's empty, it's very hard to picture yourself living there. But when it's staged, even if it's not your furniture, you can, okay, I can see how the flow of the room works, and you can say, I wouldn't put that table there. That's that's terrible, or that couch is awful. It gives you ideas. Say, Yeah, I don't like these ideas. That idea from chatGPT, but this one is a good one, and I'm going to take that and expand on it. So it gives you kind of that starting point, so you have a starting point and ending point, and you can connect the dots, and it really makes you more efficient and helps you make you more creative, in my opinion.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, one of my favorite things to do is, regardless of the answer, is to say, hey and I'm with you. I like to thank chatGPT. For some reason I always say thank you and please.

Bill Petrie 
I do too.

Marshall Atkinson 
I don't know why. just do it.

Bill Petrie 
Coz you know what? When the overlords take over, you'd want to know kind of where you're at. I had mine with I hope you're treated with dignity and respect. Today, I do every time that's so laugh, if you want. But I, I, I'm like Ken Brockman on the Substance, I want to welcome our new insect overlords.

Marshall Atkinson 
Hey, Googly Googlers. That's right. So one of the things I do, Bill is, thank you. That's perfect. Okay, give me three things that would make this better, or you forgot, or, you know, I vary it up a little bit, and what they and a lot of times I'll, I'll upload something I've written. Also, it's a. Letter to somebody, or it's a blog article or whatever, and I go, Hey, what did I forget? Right? Or what? What are the three things that would that you could think of to make this better? And there's three things that will pop up. It's like, oh yeah, you forgot the tax implications or whatever. Like, oh my God, I need to forget that, right? And then that's just an awesome way of doing stuff, right? And it's since we're talking about AI, let's not forget the the my favorite tool, which is Grammarly, right? 100% on it, right? And that always makes me sound way smarter than I am.

Bill Petrie 
Yeah, I write a blog every week for for my websites, part of my marketing is to do that as kind of a give marketing. It's something I believe in. In every blog I write, first thing I do after I've done, if I'm done writing it, I don't even proof it anymore. I just throw it to Grammarly because it's more efficient than I am. It'll pick things up that I don't because, you know, we all have those words that, for whatever reason, we can't spell. I can't spell received to save my life. Without thinking about it, you just, you know, I put commas in places I shouldn't, you know, because you know what, I'm not perfect. I'm human, and that helps me. I necessarily become less human, but it helps me to make my human point a little more clear.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, the word that I can't spell your Y, O, U, R, because, for some reason, that arc, I never hit it all the way down, and it's always, you know, hey, thanks either, let me help out on you project. No, it's your in spell check. We'll pick that up because it's, of course, spelled right, but Grammarly will right. So that always, that always helps. So, yeah, all right. Well, cool. Well, thank you so much bill for your time and being on the show. Any last words of wisdom that you want to just throw out there for somebody go? Oh, that's a juicy nugget.

Bill Petrie 
No, the only thing I'll say is thanks for having me on. It's always we don't speak enough. We don't see each other as often as we used to. So it's always a pleasure to speak with you, and I know you have a good, big podcast following. If you're not following Marshall and what he does, you're you're missing out. I think the only thing I would say is, is really, you know, at get comfortable. Look at look at sales. You called me a sales whisperer. I don't know if that's accurate or not. I like the term. Don't get me wrong, my ego likes to be pumped up like anybody else's, but I think if you start stops looking at the you need to sell people things. I don't want to sell anybody anything. I want to help people get what they already want. And if you look at sales through that lens, your revenue growth will happen. Your profit growth will happen because you are an indispensable resource for making somebody's life easier, and you help them get what they want. Start asking either out loud to the actual person you're trying to get their business, or ask yourself, what is their likely pain point, and how can I make that easier? The way I always do that is through the lens of the annual review. Everybody's measured on something. And if I'm working with the VP of sales at a company, I know what that person is measured on its sales, profits, customer acquisition, customer retention. So what what I do? How can I help them get more of that and have a better annual review. It's the same thing if it's procurement, it's the same thing if it's human resources, everybody's measured on something. And I always think, How can I help them have a better annual review? Is the end of the day, people may work for a large corporation, but they're more concerned about themselves. We all are. So how can you make that individual's life a little bit better? And you again, focus on whatever services you provide to help them get what they want. You're going to experience wild success, and you'll stop that whole roller coaster of sales.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's right, that's right. People don't want to be sold, but they do want to buy.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yes, they do. Jeffrey Gitomer, right there.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right! All right, man. Well, hey, thank you for being on the show. What's the best way to contact you if someone wants to learn more about what you do or maybe how you could help them?

Bill Petrie 
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. My website is a Brandivate. B, R, A, N, D, I V, A, T, Brandivate Marketing all one word dot com, I certainly go there. And if you're interested in what my business partner Josh and I do with pro locations. It's spelled just the way you think it would be, promocations.com and there's ways to get in touch either way. But again, thank you for having me here. It's always a great it's honor to be here. I've listened to podcast for a while, so it's fun to be a guest, and always great to see you.

Marshall Atkinson 
Alright. Well, thanks, Bill. Appreciate you.

Bill Petrie 
Thanks buddy.