#147 - Interview with Alex Bridgeman, Founder of Think Like An Owner

PODCAST

Starting and Growing a Profitable Podcast with Alex Bridgeman (Founder of Think Like an Owner Podcast)

Topics Covered:

- Think Like An Owner long-term vision - Why searchers should start a podcast - Starting, growing, and running a podcast - Monetizing a podcast - What makes a great interview - Lessons learned from 50+ conversations in the SMB space - Niche businesses you've never heard of before

Listen: iTunes, Spotify

FRAMEWORK

Spirit Selling

"Brown managed to dream up a campaign and a tagline that perfectly captured Nike's philosophy. His ad showed a single runner on a lonely country road, surrounded by tall Douglas firs. Oregon, clearly. The copy read: "Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never ending commitment." Everyone around thought the ad was bold, fresh. It didn't focus on the product, but on the spirit behind the product, which was something you never saw in the 1970s." - Shoe Dog

Prior to the 1970s, large corporations focused the vast majority of their advertising budgets on proudly displaying their products and capabilities. As growing companies like Nike started to see success selling the spirit of their products rather than the products themselves, other companies caught on. Perhaps the best example of this is Apple's famous 1984 commercial, which led to Steve Jobs being ridiculed and almost fired by his Board for introducing a campaign that did not even reference the product they were releasing. Jobs knew that most customers didn't care about RAM, gigahertz, or microprocessors.

They cared about status, power, and exclusivity - core human drives that have nothing to do with technical computing power.

While big business seems to have adopted the idea of spirit selling versus product selling, it seems like many small businesses still haven't. For instance, every pest control business around me seems to advertise their mosquito removal services. People don't necessarily care about mosquitoes, they care about spending quality time with their kids in their backyard. Wouldn't selling quality time be more effective than selling a commodity service at a commodity price?

At the end of the day, there are only a handful of human drives that really matter. The best businesses sell some combination of time, money, status, or pleasure. It's easier to sell to these emotional drives than to sell the product or service.