Niching, Storytelling And Building a Business You Are Passionate About with Matthew Pollard

[00:00:00] Emma-Louise Parkes: Matthew. Thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with us 

[00:00:08] Matthew Pollard: today. It’s my absolute pleasure. I’m excited to be on. 

[00:00:12] Emma-Louise Parkes: So obviously I’m an introvert. I’m a huge book lover. I’m a coach for introverts and I have read probably every single book that I could find about introversion. And I have to say yours is the one I have gifted to the most people.

And I think to. All of my clients. So for that, thank 

[00:00:34] Matthew Pollard: you. Well, that’s huge praise and I’ll say thank you. I mean, for me, I, as you know, I’m on a mission to help introverts realize they’re not second class citizens, their path to success is just different. And, you know, without the support of the ever-growing introverted community, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s really hard to get the message out.

You know, even with social media, we can reach so many more places. As long as you’re the clearest, because everyone’s trying to be the loudest. Right. Which does not work for us. But the truth is that unless you have passionate people to believe in your mission, that support it, you know, you’re just not going to get in front of the right people and help the people you really want to help.

So, you know, I’m, I’m really grateful for that. 

[00:01:08] Emma-Louise Parkes: Well, whenever I start with a new client, I always send them a questionnaire. Like before we get, go in, what, and I just say like, just tell me quickly, what are you most struggling with at the moment? And I always think if I can just get them a book out in the next few days, something they can start delving into.

And so many times it’s like, I’m worried about sales calls or I’m not selling that so straight away, straight away it’s Matthew. 

[00:01:29] Matthew Pollard: Well, that’s terrific. And you know, it’s, it’s interesting because this isn’t new stuff. I mean, Brian Tracy said the top 10% of all sales performance have a plan presentation, the bottom 80%, you know, say whatever comes out of their mouth right now, who do you think is better at saying whatever comes out of their mouth?

Well, back to the extrovert, they’re also more likely to brag about it, but they’re the ones that tend to. And the top of that 80%, but what’s interesting is if you look at the top 10%, it’s actually predominantly introverted. And what I found, I mean, that was mind blowing to me. It was that. Okay. So most introverts sit at the bottom of their, you know, of the, of the chart of, of sales people or business owners that can sell.

But yet, why is it the top echelon all can sell amazingly well can network amazingly well. And the answer is they follow plan presentations, you know, and if you think about. While an extrovert will rise to the top because they can wing it. They’ll get to the top of that 80% mark, the introverts hold onto a system for dear life.

We’re an, extrovert’s more likely to go, oh, I liked winging it and going back to winging it. So for me, I find that an introvert with a plan presentation will constantly focus on it, constantly improve. And I mean, you know, a process will always. From something winged eventually. Now we may be terrible at networking, terrible at sales at the start.

But again, if we just follow that process and go in with that mindset of experimentation, I believe, you know, introverts make the best salespeople. They make the best networkers. They made the best public speakers. And I, it’s not just me thinking that. I mean, you think about some of the best sales trainers.

We know Zig Ziglar was probably the most well-known sales trainer in the world. He was an introvert. Jeff blunt is an introvert, right? He’s one of the most well-known, you know, sales speakers right now. Now, if you look at introversion and networking, well, obviously we can’t network except for the fact that I’ve admired one of the founder of BNI, the world’s largest networking group happens to be an introvert and, you know, built a system for networking.

But, you know, w we can’t do small talk. Well, hang on a second. Oprah Winfrey Allen did. They do talk shows and they happen to be introverted. So it’s not just a theory. What it is is that I find that the most important thing, and this is why you might find it work. The bookwork for your clients is to help them realize or help us realize that we can.

And as soon as we realize we can giving them a step-by-step process to sell and truth, it doesn’t need to be my process. Of course. Have a whole bunch of stories in them of introverts that have used the process to work. But in truth, any process I’d like to say that was designed by an introvert will give you this step-by-step process.

And as soon as you follow that and build it as a system, you’ll, you’ll do amazingly. 

[00:04:03] Emma-Louise Parkes: And I love that you said experimentation there because obviously we’re not all exactly the same. We’re not all going to follow the same formula. And there was a client of mine, one of the ones who got gifted your book at the start, and we spent three months refined in her sales process.

And, you know, she was amazing at what she did. She had no problem getting leads. She had no problem delivering high quality work. It was the sales call. Always the thing. And it was because she worried about being caught off guard. What if they ask me something and I don’t know the answer and I mumble. So every time there was a call, a new question would come out.

And what we did is we built her a bank of frequently asked questions and she started to send them to people before the call to say, oh, I know we’ve only got 30 minutes for the call. So here’s the questions that most people ask. And then we’d got to the point where people would come on. They’re like, I don’t really have anything to ask.

You answered it all in. Frequently asked questions and it was more of like a vibe check. She felt really comfortable. Nothing was coming from left field to catch her off guard and people thought it was great. They’re like, oh, you’re so thorough. You’re so organized. 

[00:05:05] Matthew Pollard: Yeah, it’s interesting that, so I get a lot of people, cause I tell a lot of the same stories, quite frankly.

And I tell people that if in my mind, firstly, if you’re a small business, especially this is important, you need to niche down and pick a specific nation by the way, small business or corporations. And that’s not a niche, that’s a huge marketplace. Right. So I talk about, you’ve got to niche down. And for me, like when I first started an introverted space and you’d think that space.

Is kind of not very saturated, but I still started with just introverted business coaches because I didn’t know enough while I was introverted and I I’d run a lot of successful businesses. I had, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to assume that I knew them better than they knew themselves. So what I find is when you start with the granular.

The first couple of times you’re asking what struggles they have in their business, because you’re genuinely interested. But then when you get to the 10th person, you’d meet you, cut it already, start to know them better than they know themselves by the 60th. They think you’re a mind reader. So you can then build that, you know, that question and answer, but this is the other thing that’s really, really important.

You know, when a lot of people first start their business, they’re like, well, any customer is a good customer, so I’m going to just sell to everybody. And then later I’ll split. Well, the truth is that when you’ve got less economies of scale, less proof of concept, less experience in sales, the last thing you want to be seen as is the everything, cultural, the everything service provider, you need to niche down so that you can come across as that mind reader.

And like, you know what I can, you know, from, from speaking to this person, I don’t need to check references. It was like, when I spoke to that person, it was like, wow. He just knew me better than I knew myself. Now when we get to that point, here’s the other thing that happens when we know our nature, all of a sudden we can start to say, well, what are the major problems that they have?

And then we can start to build packaging and pricing that stimulate purchasing behavior. We can create stories that are designed to educate and inspire while embedding us as the only logical choice, which moves a lot of the variability in. So a lot of times y’all talk about how sales is a step-by-step process, but then at the end of what, in the end of my sales book, I say, well, if you’re a small business owner, though thing you need to realize is you can remove a lot of that heavy lifting by making sure you target a niche by making sure that you have a structure, a great strategy.

That allows people to go, do I need to question this person I’m willing to pay a premium because generalists, I mean, we don’t, I mean, we don’t pay doctors as much as we pay specialists, but we expect a specialist to have a better general knowledge than the generalist anyway. So because of that, it gives us a huge advantage.

Now, one thing I do want to mention, and we were talking about this just before, before we press record, was actually be passionate about the niche that you focus on. You know, when, when we talked about just before, about how we moved in to the introverted space, W I, I get people say it to me all the time and I know you do as well.

It, wow. That’s a really amazing niche, you know, really clever for you to pick that. And it’s like, no, I’m actually passionate about it. You know, I, I really want, you know, I’m on a mission to help introverted service providers, you know, create rapid growth in their business. And I realized that introverts like me having a struggle to achieve success.

And I realized that it’s because we’re so focused on our functional skill and we believe sales, networking, all those things that make businesses successful. You know, it’s not possible. We believe it’s not possible. So helping people realize that, Hey, it is possible. And then giving them strategies. That’s what I’m truly passionate about.

This is what happens. People think about niching and a couple of things happen, they say to themselves, okay, what niche practically is going to allow me to make enough money. Right? Cause we’re all worried about not making enough money. The truth is we’ll make more money out of the one we’re passionate about because I mean, let’s face it.

If you’re going up against somebody that’s passionate. You’re not going to work the hours they’re going to work, but you’re not going to be able to show the passion that they have. You’re not going to, as an introvert, be able to put this much energy into a podcast interview over and over again, and still feel like you’re a kid at Disneyland.

So you have to focus on a mission. Focus on having, focusing on a passion that truly resonates with you. Otherwise you’ll struggle to find what to say. You’ll struggle to just go through the motions. And so for that, and I know when we talk about passion, everybody is, you know, kind of all that stuff we will be nice to have, but it’s not.

I’ve learned that you can create a rapid growth business at anything, but there’s nothing worse than a rapid growth business with customers. You can’t stand the business. You do not like, and in truth, everybody studied what they studied to do a specific thing. For a reason, they had choices. Everybody could have picked any job.

They chose this specific job you have to go to. Why did I do that? And you’re I worked with people in insurance sales. They just, oh, they come across. When they go to networking rooms, you know, I’m dying to have your client as a client because I just, you know, I’m really trying to buy a new car. That’s how they sound.

But as soon as you get them to ask a couple of questions down, you get to a granular, this is what I truly care about. And as soon as they learn the communicate that it’s transformative and the way they communicate in networking rooms and all the barriers are just removed in the world of sales. It’s, it’s really interesting to see how many interviews.

Yeah, they want to come across as authentic, but because they haven’t asked these tough questions because we’re all as, as introvert. So logical thinkers, you know, we’re so focused on the logic and the practicality and will it really make us money? We don’t ask ourselves the true questions, which is why we went into business for ourselves that stop us from being successful and make us feel like we’re convincing and controlling and selling, which is a dirty word, which we don’t really need to, if we’re truly trying to do.

[00:10:30] Emma-Louise Parkes: And the passion is something that, you know, we talked about this before we hit record you. And I, and I know it’s true for my audience. They can see through that. If people have just gone, oh, this dish looks profitable. So I’m going to call myself an introvert coach. They just look at it and smell BS. And they’re like, nah.

Or they read the posts and they’re like, no, you don’t really get me. And like you say, you can talk to someone for five minutes and be like, not interested. Like don’t believe you it’s fake. When someone has that passion, it comes through so strongly that, like you say, that’s half of the Senate is being 

[00:11:04] Matthew Pollard: done for.

Absolutely. But what are the things that happens though? And when I say, yeah, I can speak for five minutes and understand, cause I’m asking different questions, right? I’m not asking as a buyer, I’m asking because for me, you know, I, I feel like it’s part of my, my job to make sure that I do not put people that aren’t passionate about the introverted space in front of my audience, because you know, the last thing I want to do is have someone bending to that niche because people will find out, but also, you know, though, Clients.

So I, I don’t want to do that. So I, you know, before I speak to any, before I introduce people to my audience before I’m willing to go on a podcast like this, I mean, you and I know, I mean, we, we met well before this podcast and, you know, I wanted to understand you and you know, you definitely passionate about the introverted space.

But the, the thing that I find though is there’s this balance, this is this delicate balance, because what happens is you, you do have people that are bending themselves and they can’t articulate why they care. About the audience, but then you also have introverts that are incredibly logical, but don’t know how to communicate what the, why they really care.

And on top of that, they then, you know, one of the things I talk about is creating stories that, that really communicate your value. But a lot of times, because our brain is always trying to make it available to everyone. Right. That we don’t want to cut people out of our audience. We make the story so general, they don’t fit to the audience.

You know, I worked with an introverted coach the other day and it’s clear he’s so, so passionate about helping people in the corporate space yet his stories have nothing to do with introversion. Why? Because he’s trying to make it general because what if there’s somebody in the room that hears the story that might want to highlight.

Because at the, when I first thought anyone that hires me is good. Right. And you know, an extrovert might have these same problems. So a lot of times we have this internal battle about making this decision. I’ll give you an example because sometimes passion is hard to understand, and I will say it, we kind of gave.

At at, at a bit of, you know, we’ve kind of put them down a little bit before, and I will tell you there, I work with a ton of people in the insurance space and they are tired of every time they go into a room or, and they S you know, they could put so much value into somebody and give them advice and offer them introductions.

And then somebody asked them what they do. Yeah, the person says, oh, you know, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m an insurance. And it’s like, this dread fear face comes on. It’s like, how do I get away from this person? And their eyes are, you can tell it’s like, they see, I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen that movie Groundhog day, but it’s like that they’ve walked into Ned Ryerson.

Right. That guy is like trying to sell it. He’s like super odd. And all of a sudden they see that and it’s, it’s horrible. But usually what I find and you know, there’s actually a story from my networking book where I talk about this because. Passion is great, but if it can’t connect to how you can make money, then you have a problem.

The truth is you can always connect it. You just don’t ask the right questions. So, you know, I sat down with a, a guy, Nick and I sat down, we sat over zoom and. We had a conversation about his passion and I’m like, why did you get into insurance? And he’s like, well, I, I just, I’ve always wanted to help people.

And, you know, insurance, I really believe helps people. So I wanted to do it. And I said, okay, sure. Right. I have to play devil’s advocate. Right. So sure you want to help people. So let me ask you, do you want to help people that are making $50,000 as much as the people that make two. Hold on. I mean, the people that are in two 50 can afford more insurance.

So they’re the group that I want, which is going to drive them straight to, Hey, I’d love you as a client because I want to buy a new car. That’s how you’re going to feel when you’re networking right now. If you can’t articulate your passion and the value you provide, when somebody’s politely listening to you, face-to-face in a networking room.

What chance do you have when the microseconds you get online? So communicating that is not going to work in the networking room. It’s definitely not going to work on. It’s all right. Well, let me test this for a second. Let’s cipher second that you met two people. One of them, you know, struggled at school, but learned and studied hard and grew up in a poor family.

But you know, eventually got into Harvard and, you know, one, you know, did amazingly well at Harvard got into a corporate job. Now they’re a C level executive and they manage a whole bunch of stuff and they make 250,000. Versus somebody that maybe didn’t do so well in school, but saved up a bunch of money and started their own business.

And now they’ve got a whole bunch of staff and they make 250,000 profit. Which one of those would you more likely help? And he said, well, obviously the small business owner. And that’s why obviously, I mean, the guy that studied at Harvard, I mean, to me, that person worked harder for me, younger. I just feel that they deserve it more.

I’m like, explain it for me. And he said, well, you know, I had a grandfather that, you know, he saved up to buy a farm and, you know, he then employed all these people and gosh, he always prioritize their wants and needs over his own. Never prioritized himself. He said, eventually my grandfather got sick and he said, well, it’s not that, you know, he couldn’t, um, it, it’s not that, you know, he died, he got sick and he couldn’t afford.

To pay for the farm because he was no longer actively involved. And the farm profits were starting to split. So we had to sell the farm and he said, I just watched my grandfather, you know, kind of, well, he had to sell the farm, you know, then he moved into this apartment and he just died really the last 10 years of his life, he just faded away in front of a television.

No, I just never wanted somebody to have that life. I mean, they deserve more for creating something out of nothing. It’s when you sell insurance, how could you have helped? And then you started telling me about all these products where you can put high cashflow in and how you can leverage it. He had this unique knowledge because he truly cared.

I didn’t know that much about helping the guy from Harvard, but this small business owner, he learned more because it was relevant to him. And I said, well, how would it feel to wake up every day and help these hustlers of the world go out and, you know, and, and really protect themselves against not having second class retirements like your grandfather did.

He might be amazing. Now of course we niched granular more granular than that to start because we had to build the momentum from much smaller niche, but we called him the hustle life guard, and we reframed his brand. So now when he goes to networking events, he explains that that’s what he is. What exactly is that I’ve never heard of it.

They leaned forward and they ask instead of going, oh my gosh, he sells insurance run. And then when they ask, he talks about his passion and mission for helping people in this space and then moves into a story about his grandfather or, you know, at that point, cause he didn’t have a lot of clients. And now one of the clients that he helped and people are.

I need that. And now people, even outside that nature, like, you know what, you’re really passionate, cut, borrow that passion to help me. I’m not really in the same situation, but just everyone else I speak to doesn’t seem to care. You do. And I would like to borrow that to help. And 

[00:17:29] Emma-Louise Parkes: what happened is I’m obviously, you know, listening to you and I love listening to you, Matthew, because you’re always full of value, but the set you’re telling that story.

And the second she said to me, oh, my grandfather saved up to buy a farm. I’m leaning forwards because I’m like, I w oh, I want to know what happened. Like there’s an emotional connection with that story. I’m like, he’s saved by far. What’s happened to the farm. You know, you story does that to us. Um, as you well know, you know, we’ve had this conversation before that you’ve built the business from store.

[00:17:59] Matthew Pollard: Well, I’d like to say I built a business from one story and, you know, I always tell introverts that because when you say, Hey, do stories, they’re like, wow, how many stories do I need? I’ve got to go and have a story for every situation. I’m like, whoa, hang on a second. Let’s just slow down. No, your niche at mode.

Say, what are the three major problems they had and then create one story for each one. But truthfully one story is going to be the most relevant. Now, of course you want to have the origin story that your own personal journey and, you know, I mean, you know, mine, um, and I mean, we can talk about it later, if you like about, you know, my, my door to door sales and how I should never have been in sales, but you know, creating one story this law about you.

Introverts, especially, we hate to make it about ourselves. Right? So talking about someone else and explain that journey of someone, just like the person who was speaking to and helping them see that we truly understood their pain and we understand them just that path better than they understand themselves and the positive direction we took them in.

That’s gonna allow them to see us as the only logical choice. But for us, I mean, there’s introverts. I mean, we’re terrible at rapport a lot of the times. And you know, I mean, my book, I give you some examples of how. And record generators at the beginning because I can’t walk into somebody’s office and go, oh my gosh, you’ve got that photo of that football team.

I, I mean, especially in America, I don’t even know who the teams are. Right. But the thing is that I’m not great at that, even on a zoom call. So I have to have structured ways of bringing up those conversations, but. What I find is when you do structure, you do generate great rapport. However stories do so much better.

So, you know, there’s studies out of Princeton that say, when we tell a story, what happens is it activates the reticular activating systems of our brain. It creates artificial rapport because our reticular activating. Synchronized. So when I go on stage, I mean, I’m listed by big speak and a bunch of other places, one of the top 10 sales speakers in the world.

And when I go on stage, I can tell you, regardless of that, I can tell them. I said, Hey, people think I’m pretty good. I’m still terrified. So I feel like the first 30, like the 30 minutes before, and I actually have to tell the meeting, Oregon. Don’t worry that I disappear, but I’ll be somewhere pacing and going through my introduction lines, because if I don’t I’ll feel uncomfortable and I’m like, don’t think I’ve run away.

The scared introvert just ran away. It’s not what happened. I’m just, I’m going away to plan and prepare. And truthfully, if somebody comes to speak to me, I’m like, can you just leave me my space? Because otherwise I get in, you know, I, it can run. So I’m really focused on practicing, but I’ll always stop by saying, you know, what a wonderful introduction from somebody from all the way on the other side of the world, how will I live up to such a great introduction?

I know. Let me tell you about Wendy. And then I go through my Wendy story, which is my one story. As soon as I start to tell the story, I noticed everyone stops to relax and I start to calm down at brains. A synchronizing. Now stories are super powerful, not just because of a report, this active, but for us, people say.

Complicated services. And by the way, if your services as complicated, if your product is complicated, it’s probably something that you can fix because usually it’s because you’re trying to sell them everything in the kitchen sink, as opposed to a simpler offering. So you should definitely notice that.

But when you go in and tell a story, first thing is you’re not opening up that fire hose of information, which when somebody else, what we do in a networking room, that tends to be what we do. And then we wonder. People say, well, let me go and apply that. And then when I’m done, I’ll hire you. Well, truthfully, I don’t apply it because they’re overwhelmed or if they do it well go, right?

Because you didn’t give them enough information to truly do it in their unique situation, but you’ve set them up for failure. So what I do is I tell a story because that limits the amount of information that I overwhelm them with because I have to make it relevant to the story, but also I make it tangible and a plugable to today, unique situation by embedding it into a story.

And the great thing is people remember up to 22 times more information. When embedded into a story, it’s a study out of Stanford, which again makes us, I mean, it’s, it’s a huge, unfair advantage because I mean, you could have 10 people to went and sold to them before. They’ll probably remember more of what I said than all of them combined.

And the last thing that’s really important for stories for the story in sales and networking in podcast interviews, speaking from stage is that when we tell a story. What happens is our logical brain. Short-circuits like you said, I leaned forward immediately. I’m like, what happened to that person? It’s a logical brain short circuits, and we speak directly to the emotional brain.

Now, if you’re asking what the difference is, the logical part of the brain, the part of the brain that would say at a networking event, that’ll work for me. That won’t work for me. My situation is different, you know, in a sales appointment, they’re more like, well, I’m not sure if that’ll work for me. You know, I, my situation is different.

I don’t have. And of coal, right? But when you short circuit, the logical mind with a story and speak directly to the emotional mind, firstly, they’ll listen to you hands longer. I’ve clocked out people that get on cold calls, cold call sales people that get eight seconds of getting two and a half minutes almost on cold calls by segue, straight into a story.

When they get an objection. That’s how long you. From a cold call. So imagine the sale or a networking event, but what happens is when you tell a story, they assume all the details in the story is factual. Please don’t lie to clients. Make sure it’s a real story, but they’ll assume all the detail in the story is factual.

They will not question it. They just listen to the moral at the end. And if the moral is, we went with someone just like you, who wanted what you want. That’s why it’s important to know your nation, what their problems are and their concerns. And we got the money to build an amazing result. It can be like, oh my gosh, I want more windy has, oh my gosh, I want what Nick has.

And because of that, they’ll see you as the only logical choice, which again, gets them to lean forward. So stories are really, really powerful to ensure that we get our customers or our potential prospects, you know, to go, oh my gosh. You know, I, I, I, I never understood the situation. Like you’ve articulated it.

I need this. 

[00:23:31] Emma-Louise Parkes: And I probably read two books a week on average, a lot of business, a lot personal development, a lot of non-fiction. And I think the reason that your stood out, obviously it was really relevant and really relevant to my clients, but it was the Wendy story. So it worked because I read it and I did.

That is just genius. And then when we connected and you were like, yeah, I use the Wendy story. It just makes so much sense. I think, to be able as an introvert, especially if you’re new to business and scared of sales, to be able to read that and go, oh, it can be that. 

[00:24:07] Matthew Pollard: Yeah, absolutely. And it drives everyone over complicates sales, everyone over-complicates network, everyone over-complicates business.

I mean, that’s, that’s the truth, right? So the, the focus is we, we, we tend to start a business and we’re like, oh my gosh, I’m worried about not getting clients. So I build this website that looks more like a shopping cart. It’s like book a call with me, buy from me, which again says my time is not valuable and I’m just here to sell to you.

We, we then have a. Focus on. We can help everybody with everything because we want every client. And that then makes the, the process of communicating our value. Really tough. It makes our packaging and offering really tough. It makes our sales process really uncomfortable because we end up having to convince and control clients, which introverts height.

And then it also makes the followup process feel awkward because we didn’t really know. Articulate our value. Right? Which means we feel uncomfortable to follow up. And by the way, generally, you know, if you’ve got everything right, you should be closing everybody on the phone. Right? My closure rates through the roof on the phone, because I tell the Wendy’s story or I remind them of the Wendy’s story and that thing gets them to go, oh my gosh.

And then I segue, but everything is planned prepared. And while to everybody. Feels organic and natural and like a dialogue to me it’s like Groundhog day. Right? Which is another, you know, bill Murray movie. I think I’ve mentioned two references to bill Murray tonight, but by the way, bill Murray, the really eccentric guy that is in both of those movies, he is an introvert.

Yeah, he’s phenomenal, but everyone’s like, you can never get, you never could control him onset yet. He’s an introvert. He’s just practiced being dynamic. But the thing is that when we look at making a hour, when we look through an introverted lens, first thing, I mean, it doesn’t work for extroverts either.

I, you know, I get a load of extroverts that reach out and they’ll say, you know, Matt, I’m really good at talking to people, but then I find that when I’m selling myself, For the first time I feel really uncomfortable. You know, I feel like, I mean, how could I not take rejection personally when they’re saying no to me?

Right. So all of a sudden they’re starting to feel not. I mean, they’re of course not introverted. They’re not exhausted afterwards, but they feel rejected, which is a new thing for them. And the answer is. That you have to create a, you know, you have to create what I call a unified message. So people don’t automatically commoditize you and I’m not sure.

I mean, I, you can tell me, do you want to leave the Wendy’s story out there or do you want me to actually tell the Wendy’s story so people can understand how it’s kind of framed and what the power is? The unified message. I am going to 

[00:26:26] Emma-Louise Parkes: say, leave the Wendy story out, firstly, because I think everyone should read your book and learn about the Wendy’s store.

And I know that you will not promote your own books. I’m going to do that for you. And secondly, I think if anyone comes over to follow you, you know, watch videos, if they managed to catch any of the live streams that you do or anything like that. They will have plenty of opportunity to hear the Wendy’s story there.

So I’m going to leave it dangling like 

[00:26:51] Matthew Pollard: bait. You should, and you know, what’s funny, you will find it everywhere by the way. It is definitely not hidden. You do not need to buy my books to find the Wendy story. Find me on LinkedIn, find me on Facebook, Instagram, you’ll find the Wendy’s story pretty quickly.

It’ll just set. You’ll find something, you know, like stop being a commodity on the top of the video and you’ll, you’ll, you’ll see it. But the thing I will tell you is that again, people would worry about that, right? You telling the Wendy story on all these podcasts, you’re telling the Wendy story on Instagram, on Facebook, you tell them the Wendy’s story in your book are people sick of hearing the Wendy story?

And I’m like, how much do you think people truly care about me? Like, yeah, my brand’s grown, but people aren’t thinking about me every day. Right? They’re not, they don’t care. Not I might sit down and be on your podcast today. And people may not think about me again until they hear me on another podcast.

And they’ll hear the Wendy’s story again. And they’ll say, you know what? I didn’t take any action on that last time. I’m going to take action now. Well, that’s a great reminder. Now, sometimes I’ll go into a board of directors meeting with like 12 people and one person’s heard the Wendy’s story and I’ll look over to them and I’ll say so I shared with you Wendy’s story, a story of Wendy that I feel like would be really applicable for everybody.

But I know I’ve already told it to you. Would you like me to tell it again? Or have you already shared it? And they’re like, you know what, Matt? I tried to explain it to everybody and I must’ve, I think I butchered it. It was enough to get you this meeting though. Would you mind retelling it? I’m like, sure.

And then I will tell the entire story. So the truth is that people feel like they have to constantly, I mean, the truth is people have no plans when they think about the way they want to business. And I, you know, I say this all the time, like what happens is people think that they need to always be different, like my entire business, the way you will see it on the.

Focuses on the fact that most businesses, most introverts struggle and they get stuck in this hamster wheel struggling to find interesting people, trying to set themselves apart and make a sale. Mostly feeling like people only care about one thing price, by the way, story off the story in all of my books, in all my videos, share that as soon as they get these elements, right, funnily enough, people don’t care about price.

They’re willing to pay 10 times as much. The story of a ghostwriter in the book, actually, I’ll give you an update in the book. He made 27,000 in 2013 and 12,000 by October of 2014, when he reached out, he sold ghost writing services for $20,000 and felt that people could not afford him. And then by following a regimented sales process and getting his messaging, right, he made like 40,002.

80,006 weeks, 120,000, by the end of the year, by the way, he was charging 40,000. Because if they can’t afford 21, not charge 40, it had nothing to do with the price. It was everything that went with the way he sold it, how he articulated it. He now charges $130,000 to do a ghost written book. We’re recording this in the 1st of September.

He’s booked out until next may and it has, so it has nothing to do with price. It has everything to do with understanding your volume, knowing your. Learning how to articulate your value to your niche, I should say. And then making sure that you have a sales system that’s actually structured to work. So for me, a lot of times when I’m out talking, I use stories to communicate those three outcomes.

I use the same three stories every single time. I use the exact same advice every single time. And I disperse them in lots of different places, because I want people to get constant, consistent messaging. Now, if I don’t go in with a plan of, this is my niche, these are the things they’re struggling with.

These are their main problems. These are the ideas. These are the stories. Next week. I’m going to be taking a photo of my dog for something to say on Instagram, because I’ve run out of ideas. So you have to have a methodical process. And the truth is. One of the things that I, I talk about this in the back of my new networking book.

So by the way, every one of my books leads you into understanding a different concept, right? So sales, I take you through sales in the last chapter of mine. You know what, if you start with sales, you’ve already lost, let’s understand differentiation in niche marketing, which is a lot of the first part of my new networking book.

And then we get through to the end of the networking book, and I say, you know what? All about trying to get you to master the networking room so that you never have to go back to it, because if you can’t articulate the value of what you provide, when someone’s plight through this thing, you have no chance online.

But the truth is here’s the thing, the reason why people blog everyday podcast every day, take photos of that donut on social media. Every 10 seconds for something to say is because if you can’t be the clearest, you have to be the loudest for me. I mean, I focused on just being the clearest and because of that, I created a whole bunch of automation that you can’t get away with in today’s.

If you’re the light, you’re trying to be the loudest, but if you actually are the clearest, you’d actually need to be that great at social media to break through the noise, or you can be great and leverage the power of automation to breakthrough in social media. And I can tell you, I mean, I literally, I mean, cause when I moved to the U S I went, I’ve got to create an online brand.

Yes. Multimillion dollar businesses from the ground up, but they’re all bricks and mortar, tele marketing, direct sales. And I didn’t even know how to change the word that to the word down on a website. I was just determined not to be that person on social media, every 10 seconds. And what I realized is that by being the clearest, I could use these automations.

It took me two months to figure out, but literally three days to employ. And then literally we didn’t touch it from 2014 to 2018. It just drove people from podcasts, from virtual presentations, live presentations from social media and website website to email him on a phone call. And it worked on autopilot until we launched the first book in 2018, we did not touch it.

And that’s what I really like people to know in business. They over complicate everything because they’re trying to speak to everybody they’re trying to do too much. And it seems. Counter-intuitive to say, do less and communicate to less people. But as soon as you do that, especially in today’s digital world, where you really can use technology, psychology and strategy to get your ideal clients, to chase you where people like yourself will share with me platforms like this to get in front of my ideal clients.

We’ve got all that resonates with me. It’s crazy not to niche, but it’s also crazy to niche down to something you don’t truly want. And 

[00:32:39] Emma-Louise Parkes: who as an introvert doesn’t want to be clearer rather than louder, because I think the idea of going out and trying to be the loudest person in a very, very loud online space is less than appealing.

Matthew. I could listen to you all day because of all that passion coming through, but I’m going to have to wrap it up. So obviously I’m going to ask you before I let you go, which book would you recommend? At joint audience of ambitious introverts who are looking to grow and scale their businesses.

[00:33:06] Matthew Pollard: Absolutely. So you know that I don’t promote my own books. So I’m going to tell you, my publisher hates me when I say this, but you do not need to buy one of my books. Um, I would always recommend that you download the first chapters. Um, now you can get the first chapter of my introverted book on sales.

The, at the introvert’s edge.com there you’ll be able to download the first chapter that will, firstly, it’ll get you. The psychological barrier that stops you from believing that you can sell as an introvert. And by the end of it, I have no doubt that I’m going to make you believe that you actually can outsell the extroverts.

Then it will give you a seven step process that literally, if you do nothing more than grab what I, uh, you know, the seven steps put what you currently say into it, you’ll quickly realize. That you well, that you perhaps don’t fit. You know, some of the things you say don’t fit into the boxes, throw that out.

You shouldn’t be saying it to clients, then you’ll realize there’s some things out of order fix that. Then you’ll realize there’s some gaping holes. We talked about story. That’s usually one of them asking the right questions is usually. If you do nothing more than fix the order, get out the stuff you shouldn’t say and fill in the gaps.

You’ll double your sales in the next 60 days. And if you’re like, if you’ve got lead flow and you’ve got clients to sell to, that is the book I’d start with. If you’re in a career in sales or you want to pursue a career in sales. Cause that’s the thing that drives me nuts. We’ve you know, we’ve got all this literature out.

You know, that talks about being spot, be inspired as an introvert, but for some reason there’s been this poor you’re, you’re an introvert and you can’t succeed. Let me show you how to survive in an extroverted world. And that’s allowed people to be inspired as coders and writers, but it’s like, some people truly want to be in sales.

If you want to be in sales, read this book, that’ll get you there. Now if on the other hand, you do not have a ton of leads coming in and you need to get that lead flow up. And you’re confronted with the new world we live in where you’re trying to make digital interactions to get leads, or you’re just trying to get a new job.

Then what I would suggest is start with the introvert’s edge to networking, because that will allow you to get the messaging, right. Start to tell stories whether it’s in interviews, whether it’s in virtual networking, whether it’s getting the messaging right. To get people, to actually come to you through social media.

That’s probably the book that I would, I would start with and, you know, I would go to the introvert’s edge.com forward slash networking. Again, there I’ll help you realize that you can network. And the reason why you hate networking is you’re doing it wrong. And by the way, everybody’s doing it wrong.

They’re either doing transactional networking, which is kind of like, do you want to buy it from me? What about you? What about you? Which everybody hates by the way, the extroverts hated as well. They just feel like they’re better at. And the other people are doing endless networking where they just go.

Yeah. Yeah. I have a couple of shallow conversations. Don’t want to really sell you. Ask me what I’ll do. I’ll say, well, my day job is because I don’t want to, you know, big note myself, but that’s terrible. You walk out with a bunch of business cards that don’t really like you and you don’t really like them.

You’ve got these shallow conversations. You’re never going to call them. They’re never going to call you. Right. I introduced strategic networking. The full steps on how to do that. And again, if you do nothing more than follow the steps, again, you’ll massively improve your ability to network. So I’d start with the free chapters because the psychology shift to believing that you can, in my mind is the most important milestone.

And then after that, just knowing that there’s a strategy, a lot of times can get you halfway. Perfect. 

[00:36:09] Emma-Louise Parkes: Well, I’m going to drop those links in the show notes. I’m going to drop all of your other links so people can connect with you all over the internet. And Matthew, thank you so much for sharing all of your introverted wisdom with us today.

[00:36:20] Matthew Pollard: It was my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me on.