The Umbrella Marketing Podacst : Episode 01 – Breaking the Noise: The Evolved Marketing Agency ft. Yanik Silver

Hi … and Welcome to The Marketing Umbrella Podcast! If you the owner of a local marketing agency who is looking to grow your business, OR maybe you are an entrepreneur looking to build an agency, then you would love The Marketing Umbrella Podcast!

In each episode, we interview leading digital marketing experts and sales gurus – and I’m talking about LEADING … They will share their story and provide advice in the form of practical tactics you can put in place to grow your sales … break the noise … scale … and provide better value – OR in short, grow your agency. I’m your host, Mr. Itamar Shafir, CEO of UMBRELLA, the technology platform, and brand that is powering thousands of marketing agencies globally. I have built my business by learning from super-successful people, and I want to introduce you to other people who can help YOU, too.

And as our first guest, we have thrilled to be joined by Mr. Yanik Silver who is the founder of Maverick1000 and has built several seven-figure online businesses. He is equally passionate about solving 100 of the world’s most impactful issues by the year 2900. So without further ado, lets dive right in.

Itamar: Welcome to the Umbrella Marketing podcast, where we talk with successful marketing experts about ways to build and grow your digital marketing agency. Our guest today has built several seven-figure online businesses. He’s the founder of Maverick1000, and says he wants to solve 100 of the world’s most impactful issues by the year 2900. I’m excited to say hello to Mr. Yanik Silver.

Yanik Silver: Hey, Itamar. Thank you.

Itamar: Hey, Yanik.

Yanik Silver: This is actually part two, we should tell everyone. We-

Itamar: I’m embarrassed.

Yanik Silver: It’s okay. The second time is always better, so who cares what we talked about in part one.

Itamar: Yes. Yanik is referring to the fact that we had this interview. He was amazing, and I forgot to record. For those of you listening to us now, I’m going to be really quiet because you Yanik deserves double time, and there’s so much I wanted to talk about and so much he said last time that was super important. Yanik, the Umbrella Marketing podcast is helping marketing agencies grow their business, but before we get into that… I know you’ve been helping so many entrepreneurs, so you’re very versed at how to help people grow. Why don’t you tell the listeners just a little bit about your background and how you got into helping entrepreneurs?

Yanik Silver: For sure. Let me just… A quick background story, so our family’s from Russia. We came over from Moscow actually when I was three years old to the U.S. My dad was working at a hospital center. He came over with $256 for me, my mom, my grandmother. He was working at a hospital center repairing medical equipment, and then on the side, he’s repairing medical equipment for some of the doctors in their private offices. Then the administrators found out about it, and he had a choice. This is like… As entrepreneurs, you have that choice of either going for it versus the more safe secure route.

He actually told me many years later, he’s like, “I’m glad that my boss was a little bit of a jerk, because I might have stayed with him.” The hospital administrators gave him that choice of, “You have to either stop this, or we’re going to fire you.” He quit, and so he ended up starting his own medical equipment sales and service company, and then I grew up working there. Like in any family business, you end up doing everything and anything, and so at 14, I was telemarketing latex gloves, calling on my own clients. 16, the deal was I got a car but only if I went out cold calling. I cold called doctors and talking to these 56-year-old doctors.

Then from there, I sold an entire surgery center to one doctor, and he and I became friends. He’s like, “Hey, you seem like you’re into this marketing stuff.” He gave me a Jay Abraham tape. It just really turned the lights on for me about like, “Wow, I could get people to raise their hands and be interested in something without me having to cold call,” which cold calling really sucks. Then I learned everything i possibly could about direct response and copywriting and using psychology in marketing in that way, and then helped grow my dad’s business from a little regional player to a national player.

I mean, I would give him these ads, and he’ll look at it. He’s like, “Nobody’s going to read all this.” I call my dad Joe. I’m like, “Joe, let’s just try it. Let’s just see what happens.” He’s like, “Okay.” Then we get a 1,000% return on investment from selling fetal dopplers online… or not online, sorry. I’m not even online with that obviously. Through the fax machine or through mail order and so forth and selling all sorts of things, very complicated medical equipment that we could get. The big thing that happened was you could get customers or prospects interested and raise their hands, and that were seven, eight, nine or 10s on the ready to buy.

Then I’d only talk to them, so it just really changed the dynamics. A couple doctors had hired me to help them with their marketing, and then that turned into me being like, “Oh, well, I could do this in a bigger scale,” and then I created a kit. We’ll talk about that too, and then the internet came along in 2000, and all these little connection points started of just following one little dot to the next dot and to the next dot.

Itamar: We talked about it last time, but I need to ask them. Some of the questions were so good, so I need to ask them again, the answers, excuse me, not the questions, patting myself on the back. Your dad seemed to have an influence about you becoming an entrepreneur even though he didn’t really push you into becoming an entrepreneur per se, right?

Yanik Silver: For sure. It’s an interesting question, always that nurture nature question. Are entrepreneurs made? Are they born? Are they developed? Certainly being in and around it, you see the possibility of it, and that’s a big thing. If people can’t see possibility, then they’re not going to maybe pursue it or don’t think that it’s for them. That’s the great thing right now is we live in this age of entrepreneurship really like, “How many side hustles or $100 startups,” or all this thing happening. There are so many more opportunities than ever to become an entrepreneur and really help… For me, entrepreneurship is about freedom.

It’s about setting your own course. It’s about being able to decide how do we connect the… I was talking about connecting your head, which is your business side, your marketing side with your heart, which is the impact you want to make in the world, and even your highest purpose, what were you made to do here? That entrepreneurship is really that pathway to it. My father definitely had that influence of allowing me to see that that’s possible, and you can help start making your own course.

Itamar: Right. You got a very early education, very early exposure to that, and start working to getting your own car. You were starting working at 16 in marketing-

Yanik Silver:14.

Itamar:  … in 14, excuse me. That’s the right path to grow an entrepreneur that at the age of 20 and a bit already makes a lot of money online with his own business selling kits. How would you help a person that has been more in the corporate side, been an employee from after college, maybe not for childhood because that’s not really… We can’t do that anymore. Now, he’s really anxious to move into being an independent entrepreneur, and is trying to but he finds it mentally very, very hard because at the end of the day, it is hard building your own business. You have nobody to rely on but yourself.

Did you have any tips for those people?

Yanik Silver:  Absolutely. Again, this is the perfect time. There’s never going to be a perfect time. So many of us are like, “Well I’ll wait until, whatever, the kids are older, or I’ll wait until my job is more stable, or I’ll wait until whatever it is,” and so we continue making these excuses. I find that if you put the stake in the ground, you can move towards it. For me, that stake in the ground originally was… I looked at… I was helping a few doctors on the side. You always have this opportunity on the side. Whatever your main thing is, you can either watch Netflix and scroll through Instagram or whatever, or you can say, “I’m going to do, I don’t know, at least one proactive thing a day towards my dreams or towards what I want to move on.”

You’re going to learn more through… The very beginning parts of entrepreneurship are really more about the process. It’s less about even the profits. There is an energy that comes when you sell something, and you’re like, “Oh my God, it worked. Something happened.” That’s really, really powerful, but it’s really more about the process and showing yourself that something can happen from what isn’t the traditional path. That stake in the ground that I’m talking about, for me, it was selling a kit. I wanted to sell… I was helping doctors on the side. I’m like, “Okay, I could trade my time for money, which is one way,” and then you move up the ladder.

I’m like, “Well, what if I created a course for them?” That’s going to be $900 to help cosmetic or, sorry, dermatologists get cosmetic patients. I had a very specific niche that I was working with, because they were getting crushed by managed care, and they wanted more cosmetic patients. I put out a little ad in cosmetic… no, sorry, in dermatologic surgery news, which I know is probably in your living room right now. You can flip through it every night. It’s a very, very riveting publication. I got 10 doctors to raise their hands.

I’m like, “This is interesting.” I had written a letter. It’s basically a sales letter, but it’s a report. I gave him some good information too about marketing practice, and I was selling this kit, but I didn’t even have the kit done. It was faxed back to order, and literally every time I hear the fax machine in my dad’s office, it’s like… I go running over there. I’m like, “Oh, that’s another order for whatever I had created for them,” and then run back, and then literally on the last day of this deadline, it’s like…

I’m like, “I got this thing.” It’s a $900 order. I was like, “Yes,” and it worked, and then literally, I’m like, “Oh shit, I have to go make this thing.” I sent back a note to the doctor saying, “This is going to be republished. We won’t charge your card until we get it out for you within 30 days.” I went to work, clocked out at 5:00 every day, and worked till 2:00, 3:00 in the morning creating this kit. That was that stake in the ground and that energy of selling something and sometimes getting someone to say yes, and then you go and fulfill on it. Then that turned into a couple thousand dollars and a 10,000 and a $15,000 per month side business.

Then I told my dad. It was a very hard decision because I was going to stay with the company. I was going to grow it. I thought I was going to… He and I talked about me growing it and growing it even bigger. I’m like, “I have this, I don’t know, this seed that got bigger and bigger and bigger.” That turned into me saying, “Now, I really want to grow my own thing,” and then I left my dad’s company, and then that became that mail order company, mail order publishing company. Then that became the seeds of my internet world.

Itamar:How do you take that? That’s transitioning from working for somebody and becoming an entrepreneur and having that stake in the ground “dream a product,” whatever you want to do and moving towards that. What do you do with… You have a marketing agency right now. You’re already in business. You have a book of business. Now, you need to move to the second phase. You’re already an entrepreneur, but you’re not doing enough. You’re not doing as well as you want to do. How do you grow that agency? What can you do about that?

Yanik Silver: In the agency, it’s going to come down to differentiation for sure, because there’s a lot of agencies. You have to make yourself a choice that other people look at you, and they’re like, “Okay, well, this is the perfect choice for me, so how do we do that?” One way is niching. For when I started way, way, way back, it was start with dermatologists, helping them get more cosmetic patients, and then it moved on to plastic surgeons and other cosmetic surgeons and then others that did elective patients like ophthalmologists who are getting LASIK patients and so forth. It was in that same vein, but I started with one niche.

That’s one opportunity as well for agencies to say, “So many of us are like, “Well, every small business is my client. I’m going to go after every small business.” That might be a way of doing it, but a lot of times, if you can say, “Okay, I’m going to pick one industry marketplace niche,” you might have a better better shot at it because now, you can come at the sales presentation with, “I understand you need your customers or members or clients or patients from. I understand this.” You can really target that part for you. Plus, you can provide them a really interesting way of doing things.

When I was selling to the cosmetic surgeons, later on, we started doing things that were more specific where we give them pre-done newsletters and pre-done marketing toolkits and all sorts of things. Then we’d say, “It’s only one per zip code,” and then give that exclusivity for them, because now, I could create the same thing over and over again, but then only one could use it. This could work for an agency today easily. You could say, “We’re doing this for chiropractors and this for dentists or whatever it is,” and you pick one niche. That’s-

Itamar: When you’re doing that, did you ever provide some value ad for freebies or try to create some shock and awe or something that helps with the differentiation?

Yanik Silver: I mean, everything. You have to make yourself stand out in some way, shape or form. For me, the best way of doing that was information, so we would use information content, an ebook, a report, something that had value. It was really interesting. I’m thinking back when I got started. Most of these doctors were targeting baby boomers, so I was able to have an interview with the leading baby boomer demographic experts. I literally just email them and say, “Hey, would you do an interview for my doctors?” They’re like, “Sure.”

He’s a professor somewhere, incredible credibility, but then that turned into a piece of content that we would provide like linked me with that expert too, so I had higher authority. Then it gave them something that was really valuable, which is insight into the mindset and into demographics and trends and so forth for baby boomers. It’s a very simple way of using content as that initial piece that gets, a, the people that are interested to raise their hands, and b, creates that freebie, that value ad that you’re talking about, and now also positions you as an expert. It’s a super simple way, and that could still be done today easy.

Itamar:It is, and it’s an amazing idea. Guys, to boil down what Yanik just said, find a person who is a thought leader or somebody that influences your community of clients, cares about in some way. Interview them and get to a place where you’re associated with them. You get some social proof for yourself. They get interesting content, and you start a conversation. That’s very, very powerful, Yanik, advice. We have niche.

Yanik Silver: That’s one way. Another way is… This is what we talked about last time, which I really think could be great for agencies, is maybe you do want to serve a lot of different businesses. One niche maybe is not… You have to also look a little deeper into your own heart like, “What is interesting for you?” It’s gotta be something that you’re passionate about and excited by. If it was, “I care about serving entrepreneurs and all sorts of small businesses,” great, but let’s do it into maybe a more strategic way. Maybe we’re going to pick 10 categories, and we only serve two or three clients in each of those 10 categories or something like that.

We also could create a way that they support each other. Maybe you say, “Okay, we’re going to work in one community that has these 10 categories, and not only are we going to find ways to grow your business, your practice, but we’re going to also introduce you to each other.” Maybe once a quarter host even a wine dinner or some sort of event that brings them together. You’re the hub now of that community or of this community that you’re building. That’s the value ad. At the same time, you could do it virtually if you wanted to, or in person. It works just the same, and so maybe you don’t do it in one local community.

It could be globally. You say, “Here’s the 10 categories of businesses that we work with, but we only take on three or four at a time of this category, and then this category,” but then we also bring you together for ways that you can help each other and serve each other.”

Itamar: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Creating those little communities, I think it’s an excellent idea. We talked about doing a wine, a dinner, hosting something in the real world, which is it’s coming back, the real world, but we also we’re talking about maybe doing could be a Zoom, could be a different situation now that everything is remote, right?

Yanik Silver: You can totally do it that way. I mean, we just did one with our Maverick group, where we sent everyone wine and had… You would like this. We called it a Maverick Mazel Tov. We’ve sent everyone wine, because we like alliteration with a lot of what we do, so we needed another M word. Then we just had everyone celebrate what was a win for them. Then after that, we raised the glass and Mazel Tov, and everyone had a little bit of wine, a little bit of wine tasting, and then it just brought everyone together. It was just a fun way of doing it. Have some fun with it too. I believe in…

My three core values, especially what we do at Maverick, was originally a dollar sign, a happy face and a heart. Then that dollar sign became a treat, become growth, but it’s really about growth, impact and joy. How do you bring that together, and bring that into your agency and everything that you do and your clients? Of course, they want to grow their business, and you have to show them how to do that, but you can also be showing them how to make a greater impact and how to have more fun and ways of doing that with them, for them, together with them.

Itamar: If we’re talking about that, why don’t we talk a little bit about your evolved business model, which can help agencies create differentiation and also tap into the core values that they care about, and maybe want to share with our clients, right?

Yanik Silver: Absolutely. Evolved Enterprises is a book I wrote a little while ago, and I talked about the seismic shift that’s happening in business, and that businesses that don’t have a core impact in what they do are going to be at a competitive disadvantage, actually, because you’re seeing this from consumer buying behavior changing, where customers want to buy from companies that have a greater mission, a greater impact. You see this where they’re either changing brands. They’re either paying the same and changing brands or even paying more for that idea that the customer… or sorry, that the company is making that impact, and they have a greater mission.

Then it’s happening inside out, which is team members want to work for a company that has a greater mission. You as an agency, part of what your role is to help show up with new ideas and new ways for helping your clients. One of them for sure is being at the forefront of this idea of what I call evolved enterprise. It’s also called conscious capitalism, a triple bottom line for benefit companies, but showing up and saying, “Okay, let’s create a differentiation point for you, Mr. and Mr.s Clients, which includes the impact that you’re making in the world, or your greater mission.”

Almost all entrepreneurs have that. When you start asking them why like, “Why did they get in business,” and usually, it’s not even maybe their first answer. You have to maybe dig three or four or five times down. There is a deep why for something that they wanted to eat or help alleviate or a pain that they wanted to stop, or a group that they wanted to help. There’s some reason why. Now, some entrepreneurs are literally just… They saw a marketplace that they thought that have a…

Itamar: Piece of.

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Yanik Silver: Right, and they go in there, but at some point, they find that empty, and then they all start looking for their bigger thing. But most entrepreneurs that you’re going to be working with, they have something. Also, this can be part of your work is helping them uncover what was that. Then you can connect their world, whatever product or service that they have, into that impact that they want to make in the world. That’s, again, that connecting your head, your heart, your higher purpose. In the evolved enterprise, there’s a framework with it, and so it starts with you. You as entrepreneur, a founder, how do you evolve yourself so you get to know yourself better and understand that?

Then it moves out into cause like, “What’s that why?” Then it moves into community, which is the community of customers that you’re building, and then the product or service, so the creation. How do we bake in that impact? Then the culture, what’s the culture that’s within the organization? These are all pieces that I found from almost going out of business. The story continues for me. I’ll maybe share a little bit more of that, but almost going out of business when I had this cosmic alarm clock moment 12 years ago, just asking, “Am I happy? Would I be happy doing what I’m doing 10 years from now? Then have a lot of exploration there.

Itamar:We’re going to get back to the cosmic alarm clock, but if members… I’m sorry. If listeners are going to hear… They’re going to read the Evolved Enterprise book. Would that give them a practical roadmap into implementing that for themselves and for their clients?

Yanik Silver:Absolutely. It’s going to give you a step by step framework of what I just outlined. What’s really interesting… I believe that we can really change the world through the leverage of business, because think about all the different ways that we have. I think of it really simply, and it doesn’t even have to be money. Money could be another byproduct of it. Most people think about, “Oh, we need to make a donation. That’s going to cost us money, or how are we going to do that?” It truly drives your business. It’s been proven. There’s an interesting book called Firms of Endearment that did all these different studies of companies that have a greater mission and based them against the S&P 500.

It was very negligible at first. It was pretty much neck and neck, but then as the years went on, they saw a 1,400% difference in over a 15-year period, so massive difference in companies that had that greater mission and impact. You see it now with… A lot of people think about these social enterprises. They might think of Toms shoes, which is the buy one give one model. Blake who you I’m friends with, we did an interview, I don’t know, a couple years back, and he was talking about how they’ve given away 30 million pairs of shoes. It’s exciting to talk about that, and that’s what I call an impact scoreboard.

You can also help your client create that impact scoreboard that their customers can get excited by, and be a part of, or their team and so forth, but Blake will tell you that they never even intended to be that big. It just grew, because you add in marketing into a great impact story. It turbocharges it, and that’s what you can do as an agency, but there’s 11 different impact models. Now, that one is not right for every single one, every single company, and so many times, we’re trying to force, “Oh, I’m going to, I don’t know,” whatever. If you have an ophthalmologist client, it’s like, “Oh, we’re going to give away an eye surgery to someone else.”

Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t, but you have to understand more of how do we integrate this impact into it. I look at… There’s five things. You got the product or service itself like, “How do we bake in that impact?” There’s the talent within the organization like the ideas and the innovation. There’s a company called Pacific. They’re a food company. They’re a packaged food company, and they work with a local food bank. They take all their food. Once a month, they shut down their production line and say, “Okay, here’s the food that we got. Here, team, go figure out a great recipe for all this food.”

Then they turn it into packaged goods that then get sent back to the food bank, and now lasts so much longer.

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Itamar: Amazing.

Yanik Silver: It’s a beautiful way of using their own organization. Then there’s also distribution in your voice, so every company has that opportunity of using their own distribution and their own voice for that greater impact. There’s also empowered employment. This is one of my favorites. There’s a company called ULTRA Testing. They do quality control testing for different browser platforms and iOS systems and all sorts of things, and they hire people on the autism spectrum scale, so different neuro diversity, because typically, they’re okay, and even thrive under conditions where there’s more repetition and more attention to detail and so forth.

It takes something that… It’s like, “Oh, well, this group of people maybe isn’t as valued, but let’s increase it. Let’s create a competitive advantage now by having them as part of our company.” That’s a unique opportunity. That empowered employment, and then even supply chain like, “Who are you buying from?” Then thinking about that part. There’s lots of ways of incorporating that. You can show up and be a resource for clients and say, “Okay, well, how do we give you a differentiation point so that I can market you better?” That creates also a halo effect. It gets your customers to want to buy more. It gets your team members really excited.

It gets the celebrities, icons, people involved and excited by. It just really changes the dynamics of business.

Itamar: I agree. I think it completely breaks the noise if you’re talking about, for example, one-on-one prospecting over LinkedIn, and you’re trying to have a conversation with somebody with a decision maker, and you open the conversation by talking about how can you create an impact together. Then instead of how can you promote their company, it’s a different conversation. You get more… You break the noise. That’s basically it. You’ll get somebody replying to you and starting a conversation. I think everything you mentioned is perfect.

Everything is implementable by the agencies immediately. I want to ask you a difficult question. Do you think that some people are just meant for success, and some people are not? Do you find, after helping so many people, any common denominator between the successful ones or the unsuccessful ones?

Yanik Silver: That’s a great question. I saw this study way back. It was interesting they had studied successful people from all athletics, business, science, just every different category, and they couldn’t find one common denominator, except for having one person that was their cheerleader or someone that had their back unconditionally. For me, that was my mom. She had no idea what I was doing on the internet or what was going on, but she’s like, “Okay, that’s good. I love it. You’ll be great.” Just whatever it was, it was just… Having that one person, it could be a grandmother. It could be a father, and it doesn’t always happen.

I remember I shared with you this story. It’s a real true story. After I left my dad’s business, I was teaching people how to… I started something called Instant Sales Letters, woke up at 3:00 in the morning with this idea for these fill-in-the-blank sales letter templates that work really, really well. Then people are like, “Oh, how did you do that? Can you teach me how to do that?” I started teaching people how to take their expertise and their information, and sell it. Then my dad’s like, “Oh okay, show me what you’re doing.” We’re literally driving in the car. It’s a cassette tape, right?

It was a cassette tape. We were listening, and he ejects it. He’s like, “People pay for this bullshit.” It’s so funny. You might not always get that from-

Itamar: From the dad.

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Yanik Silver: … from whomever, right? Also, a lot of times, you can find that people talk about mentoring, and they’re like, “Oh, well, I don’t have a mentor, so I can’t do it,” or whatever it is. For me, my mentoring was through audios and programs and podcasts like this. That provides incredible information. I think that your life changes through the people that you meet, the books or materials that you study, and the experiences that you have. How do we position ourselves and our lives so that we are around the right people that we want, that we engage in those activities that we want and experiences?

How do we spend our time studying things that are going to help grow us? If you’re going to ask me, though, what I’ve seen across our Maverick members and others that are extremely successful, I think those characteristics are growth. They’re always interested in growing themselves. They’re very curious. They’re looking for things beyond maybe not just an expert has them. They’re asking, I don’t know, a person that they meet, a waiter, a waitress. They’re just curious about everything like how things are run within their own world. They can pick up insights from everyone, so that idea of growth and curiosity, also being of service.

I remember I had written a goal to become a millionaire by age 30. I wrote, “I get rich by enriching others 10X to 100X in return for what people pay me,” and so that idea of providing value is huge. Thinking about that and not how do we take as much as possible, but how do we provide enough value and then the byproduct is just automatically that you’re successful, and it changes your framework. Even as an agency owner, if you’re thinking about, “Okay, how do I provide 10X in value to my client?” That’s a different thing too. I think your questions really create your answers too. If I’m constantly thinking about, “How do I create 10X and value? How do I create 10X and value?”

Your output is going to be completely different than, “How do I sell this to clients?”

Itamar:  I completely agree. I used that. By the way, after we talked about it last week, I used that. I told you I’m going to use it. I use it. Every Thursday, we have our Umbrella local training. One of the members was going on and on about not being able… I’m not going to use a bad word here, but he was not talking very well. He was not superlatives about his client. I was saying, “How are you looking at it? Are you looking at how am I going to make $50,000 a year from this client or $10,000, or how am I going to generate 100,000 or 500,000 for this client?” If you go with that mentality, you will shine.

The client will see it. You will see you’re trying to help him grow. Of course, you’ll be rewarded for that. That will be the side effect of helping him grow his business, and he got that, and he said, “That’s very insightful.” I said, “Thank you very much. I thought about it.” No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I told him it was you, but-

Yanik Silver: That’s 100%, right? You have to-

Itamar: It is.

Yanik Silver: You have to feel like that, and then also, it’s evaluating, and if I can’t feel like that, am I serving the right clients? Maybe I can’t be excited by who knows whatever that client is selling. That’s okay. That just means that you have to go back and think about what kind of clients, and that goes back to maybe niching or categorizing or whatever it is, but who can I… Even this four-letter word, who can I fall in love with? It’s almost silly, but it’s true. Could you love your clients, and what does that look like? Because if you can’t love your clients, then maybe you have the wrong clients.

If you’re just looking at them as, “Yeah, this is my $50,000 paycheck for this. I’ll get through it.” I don’t know. It might be the wrong client.

Itamar: Exactly, but I agree with you that it starts initially with you and your mentality, and how do you project that when you’re thinking about yourself, and you’re going through the motion of telling them about themselves, but you’re thinking about yourself or you’re actually thinking about them. Your success would be a byproduct. I really took that to heart. By the way, last time-

Yanik Silver: I love it.

Itamar: It’s been a long time since I think you really put it on the spot. It’s not just in marketing. A lot of people that deal with sales go into it with, “Give me.” I’m telling you like I’m going to provide you something, but I actually want to take.

Yanik Silver: Or how do I manipulate them in the way that is going to get to the sale? How do we-

Itamar: Exactly.

Yanik Silver: People are more… You and I come from a marketing background. I’ve been studying marketing forever, and I actually walked away from the internet marketing space for a while because I didn’t love what I was seeing in there, because it felt a little off putting, a little… It just wasn’t feeling really in alignment with me, but it’s just like any tool. A tool can be used for good or for evil, and it’s like people are getting smarter and smarter. They see whatever. Obviously, scarcity still works, and rarity and so forth. That’s one of the psychological triggers that works on me. It’s like, “Oh, you only have 10 things.” I’m like, “Oh, shoot, I should buy one.”

If it’s fake scarcity, if it’s created scarcity, just to try to manipulate into the sale, people see through that. They see through the value stacking and this ridiculous amount of bonuses that have this inflated number that’s not really true. If you show up and you are authentic, and you’re genuine, and you’re saying, “Okay, my idea is how do I 10X or 100X your business, or 10X, 100X the results I provide you?” That’s already different. By the way, we did this last time too, which I thought was great is… Then you start asking the owner or the CEO or president, whoever you’re talking to, and what does your company care about?

What do you care about? We did this. What do you care about the most making a difference in the world?

Itamar: We talked about it last time. I said kids is a big thing.

Yanik Silver: If I was your agency, I’d be like, “Well, guess what? We also have a program where we take 10% of our hours, and every time that we bill you an hour, whatever our project plan is, 10% of that goes into a pro bono account, and you get to decide which charity or cause that it goes to. Now, 10% of your billable hours or this package that we have for you goes into helping a nonprofit for kids or something like that, right?” You can start incorporating that into it, and then your team is going to get excited too, because they get to work and use their marketing skills for key projects.

Then you’d be like, “Well, I have this nonprofit that we really like, or I sit on the board of so and so, or I’m associated with it. Let’s introduce you to them.” That also can become a way of getting new clients, but you don’t get it that way. Imagine, because every nonprofit has a whole board, that they also have very smart people on that board that have companies typically, and have an opportunity for you to get in there. It just is a beautiful way of serving, which is also self serving.

Itamar: 100%. 100%. Look, I think we covered a lot of excellent examples from you, Yanik, which are really going to help agencies. Before we wrap up the session, we always do a rapid Q&A. If you feel one of these questions are too much, you can just say pass. I don’t think they’re going to be too much for you, but they need to be short and fast, okay?

Yanik Silver:  Okay. I’m ready.

Itamar: First one, did you get along with your parents growing up?

Yanik Silver: Yes, for the most part, but my parents got divorced when I was 13. Then we had this rift for a while, but then we got back together.

Itamar:  Too long. No, that’s a good answer.

Yanik Silver: Then I go with yes. Yes, for the most part.

Itamar: Do you have siblings?

Yanik Silver:Yes, younger brother, nine years younger.

Itamar: Do you have a pet?

Yanik Silver: No pet.

Itamar:How old were you when you had your first kid?

Yanik Silver: 33.

Itamar:  No.

Yanik Silver: I know.

Itamar: No and bad parent. When do you wake up?

Yanik Silver: Usually, whenever I get up, 9:30, 10:00.

Itamar: When do you go to bed?

Yanik Silver: 2:00, 3:00.

Itamar: Ideal vacation?

Yanik Silver:This is a hard one, but anything with sun, sand is good.

Itamar:Excellent. Yanik, I really want to thank you for being on the show. It was wonderful, and you provided amazing ideas and amazing insights. Guys, go get Evolved Enterprise. Go get the Evolved Enterprise book. It’s evolvedenterprise.com, or you can find on Amazon. Just that book alone will give you a format into a major differentiation that can get you a ton of clients and also evolve yourself, which is super important, right?

Yanik Silver:100%. Give it to your clients as a way of them thinking about this process, and then say, “Oh, I can help you do some of these things,” and get them excited by it, because it does grow their business. Everything has to be a win, win, win, and it’s going to grow their business. It’s going to grow your business. It’s not just a good for you kind of thing.

Itamar: I agree. I agree. I think it’s a major differentiation. I think it’s a good evolution for them and for their clients. Yanik, thank you very much. It was awesome. I’m sure the listeners are going to take it to heart and are going to implement a lot of the suggestions you brought in today.

Yanik Silver: Thanks, Itamar. It’s fun. Appreciate it.