0:00:00.7 Wayne Brown: Hello, I’m your host, Wayne Brown, and welcome to the ET project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world, and we’re affectionately referring to as team ET. Today we’re heading home literally within Stone throw of our place on the Gold Coast in Australia, and chatting with an extraordinary individual, a man who is an international marketing enigma. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with and learning from Mr. John Dwyer. John is a direct response customer attraction expert who thinks way outside the box. His marketing consultancy business is called The Institute of WOW. And John’s mantra is that one’s marketing needs to wow prospects. He’s also the guy who shocked the marketing world some years back when he convinced Jerry Seinfeld to come out of retirement to be the spokesperson for an Australian banking institution. Jerry headed up a free vacation campaign, which broke home loan lending records and remains folklore in the global banking industry.
0:01:06.5 WB: This was probably one of the most successful incentive promotions in the world, resulting in many billions of dollars in extra home loans. John helps business owners understand how to exploit platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn by implementing incentive-based marketing offers that can be targeted specifically to certain audiences. His client list reads like a who’s who of business and includes the likes of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, 7-Eleven, Westfield Shopping Centers, Walt Disney, KFC, and BP, just to name a few. And his skills have been used by these companies because they acknowledge he is the master of creating incentives at work. He’s created, done for you customer incentive packages that businesses can plug and play, including extraordinary customer rewards like fuel savings and free vacations. When it comes to unique marketing concepts that attract an avalanche of new clients for businesses, John certainly delivers. Team, this is a special episode where you’ll come to understand the power of creating that wow experience for your clients. And oh yeah, at the end of this episode, stick around as John has a special offer for our listeners. Now, sit back and get ready to be entertained.
0:02:27.6 Speaker 2: Welcome to the ET project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor Wayne Brown as we unpack an exciting future together.
0:02:44.4 WB: Hello, team. Today I am gonna break a little bit from my normal tradition and not do the usual intro setup. You will have heard me introduce our guest, Mr. John Dwyer. And to be honest, we just have way too much that I wanna chat about with John, and therefore we’re not gonna delay it for a moment longer than necessary. So look, here he goes, we’re gonna dive straight in. Let’s look at this dynamic world of marketing with the guru himself and the mastermind behind The Institute of WOW. He’s known for his out of the box strategies, legendary campaign. So look, JD, welcome to the ET project, sir. The student is ready and the master has arrived. [chuckle]
0:03:26.8 John Dwyer: That sounded like I might have written that. [chuckle] I tell you what Wayne, I wanna meet that guy. He sounds good.
0:03:34.1 WB: John, the first time you and I met you were sitting in a car, in a hospital car park, if you recall. I’m hoping your wife is okay and everyone’s well.
0:03:44.4 JD: Yeah. She was fine. It was just a small ailment. And you know what women are like Wayne, they just complain about a broken finger now for goodness sake. I think that’s all it was. I think that’s all it was.
0:03:55.1 WB: Where are you sitting?
0:03:56.9 JD: I’m in Broadbeach. Yeah. Broadbeach Australia, and which is on the Gold Coast, I’m sorry, in Australia. And I’m the father of six children. And we lived on acreage on the Gold Coast for quite a long time, a few acres. And of course when the last one left home about a year ago, I said to my wife, listen this is ridiculous. We’re running two and a half acres. We never see each other. We had to phone each other to find out what was going on. So, it’s great to bring the von Trapp Family up on acres, but we’ve got to get near restaurants and cafes for a change. So we moved from the bush and now we’re in the restaurant and sort of cafe precinct to Broadbeach.
0:04:31.7 WB: Your journey through marketing and media, it’s nothing short of extraordinary. And I’m wondering what was the thing that first ignited your passion around this whole marketing gig?
0:04:43.5 JD: Well, it’s funny, it goes back to the school that I went to when I was in my teens and it was a Catholic De La Salle school in Kingsgrove in Sydney. And the only reason I can roll off the tongue and answer this question is because I’ve been asked it a few times, and what happened is that when you got to year 10, which means you’re probably 15, 16, you were asked to contribute to the school fete and they’d had a fete, or if you’re watching this in America a fair, they’d have a fair once a year to raise money for the school. And they’d have, throw the darts and, you’d dunk the teacher in the water if you hit the target and all that sort of stuff. And myself and a couple other guys came up with a haunted house idea, and that was that we took over the De La Salle brothers, eight car garage and we turned it into a haunted house completely out of control for 15, 16 year olds.
0:05:33.2 JD: It was just ridiculous. And we had fans in there whereby we’d got the girls to walk over a bridge and the fan would blow their dress up Marilyn Monroe style, and we’d jump out with masks and do all that. And I found that out of all of the things at the school fair that made money, this thing made 10 times the money that anything else made. Because guess what it had Wow. I look back on it now, the horror house that we built within the garage was pretty ordinary, but guess what, for the kids coming to a school fair, it had wow factor. And I thought there’s something to this. And when I left school, I wanted to be an artist, but then I could see that the digital world was coming around. We had no idea all those years ago that AI would be here, but yeah, just the ordinary digital world was coming around. So I thought, look, being an artist is not the go, there’s not gonna be much money in that long term. So that’s when I, marketing the, broader spectrum of marketing might be the way to go.
0:06:23.2 WB: Has there been somebody that’s influenced your career and your thinking like from that early stage? Or is this something that’s just grown within you.
0:06:32.8 JD: I’ve been a Disney freak for a long time. Yeah. I probably went to Disneyland my first time when I came out of school and I had a job for a year and at least had some money. I think I went over from Australia to Los Angeles to Disney, not just to Disney, I visited Disney probably when I was 20, and you can’t help but fall. If you’re creative and you’ve got a creative bent to you, you cannot help but be impressed by not just the wealth but the life and detail of Disney. I’d say Walt Disney or Steven Spielberg or George Lucas, any of those sorts of people who have been experts when it comes to creativity.
0:07:07.9 WB: My wife works at Disney, so she’ll be very happy to hear you say that, but I’m also a big Disney fan, I have to say. I was going to say, you would have given your age and my age, probably the main Disney at that stage was in Orange County in…
0:07:24.0 JD: Anaheim.
0:07:25.2 WB: Los Angeles. That would have been the only one. We look at the expanse of where it is now and I’m based in Shanghai, so this is the newest Disney park that’s opened, what? A few years ago. And to your point about the wow factor, I think it broke even. We’re talking about a $6 or $7 billion investment and I think it broke even in the first 12 months. So.
0:07:51.4 JD: Yes. In fact, I was there a few years ago and it’s just like every other Disney park, the eye for detail.
0:07:56.6 WB: It is.
0:07:57.8 JD: It’s really incredible.
0:07:58.7 WB: Yeah. Fantastic.
0:08:00.3 JD: Yeah. The only thing I’ve found with the Shanghai one is that standing on the lines, of course, to go onto the rides, because Chinese people tend to have umbrellas, you could get killed by an umbrella.
0:08:15.3 WB: Absolutely. You got into TV or entertainment after a couple of things in business and I just want to say thank you for one of the programs you brought to air, which was Dreams Can Come True. I think it was about mid ’90s, thereabout. Some of the shows still stick in my memory. I was still in Australia at that time. Fantastic, feel-good TV. It was probably the best way I can think of it. So thank you for that. Any specific episodes stand out to you still as you think back to it?
0:08:56.4 JD: Yeah. Wayne, look, just a very quick prelude to the episodes that stand out question is that it all came about because I had my own marketing business since my 20s. At one stage, we had 20 staff and somebody who was working for me when I was over in Disney in Anaheim made a big printing mistake on what we call a trading card product. So, we would take out the licenses for the Lion King or Beauty and the Beast or Jurassic Park, whatever it might have been, and we’d do the bubblegum cards and we’d put them out through news agencies and drugstores and came up. And whilst I was away, someone made a big printing mistake and lost me 2.2 million. And so, we lost everything. We lost our house and basically the bank said…
0:09:33.4 WB: Wow.
0:09:35.7 JD: Yeah. The bank said, listen, we’re going to close you up at the end of the month. And so, we cut our staff from 20 down to 10 and all that. And I said to the bank, look, I’m pitching for the Rugby League bubblegum cards, which would be equivalent to getting the NBA basketball card license, trading card license in America, that’s how big it is. And I said, look, I’m confident that I would get it, which of course I wasn’t, I was piercing. And there was five companies who were pitching for it. I said, can you keep me open till the end of the month? And this was like the 10th of the month, they were about to close me up.
0:10:01.0 JD: And they said, okay, well, we’ll keep you open till the 30th, but then we come in and lock the door. Now, I had been pitching for the Rugby League bubblegum cards over and over and over. I’d ring the guy practically every day and annoy him and he’d say, no, we haven’t made the decision, it’s between you and five other companies. Anyways, it’s turned out the guy upstairs, I go to church one morning and just said a prayer to God and just said, look, is there any chance I could just get back on my feet. And if I do, I promise that I’ll do something to inspire other people just to hang in there. And as it turned out at 10 minutes to five on the day that the bank was coming with the locks to close the door, I get a call from the Rugby League. And this shows you God has a really weird sense of humor because it was right down to the wire. It’s almost like a script itself, like a movie script. 10 minutes to five, we’re about to pick up and close up the business.
0:10:45.3 JD: I get a call from the decision maker of the Rugby League to say that I had got the license. And of course, you can imagine I was elated and talk about it by the skin of my teeth. And he said, you’ve got the license for the Rugby League bubblegum cards on one condition. I said, anything. He said, you never ring me for the rest of your life. You’re the most annoying bastard I’ve ever come across around. We’re great friends now. And as it turned out, we got the Rugby League bubblegum license. And because I’m a marketer, we gave out sample cards with the Sunday newspapers and the football show on TV, gave out samples. And we got some of the big football stars like Mal Meninga to promote them. And we made the whole $2 million back in one football season. So therefore, we got back on our feet.
0:11:22.9 JD: And I said to my wife at the end of coming back pretty quickly in one footy season, I said, look, I’ve got to keep my promise to the big guy upstairs. So we pitched the TV show to Channel 10 in Australia. And it was all about hanging in there and making dreams come true. And the show was all about you pitching a dream to us, for not you, but for someone else that you knew was needing. And as it turned out, if they needed a house, we gave them a house. And I mean that. We’re talking about big dreams like that. If they wanted to meet a special celebrity or sports star, we did it. And one that stands out was a little boy in a wheelchair, suffering from spina bifida. And he tried to kill himself because he suffered from spina bifida. And his parish priest contacted us and said, thank God he wasn’t successful in killing himself. But he’s a mad basketball player in a wheelchair. And he’s dreamed of all dreams.
0:12:10.5 JD: And by the way, he was not a basketball in a wheelchair when he tried to kill himself. But because he didn’t, someone got into his ear and told him to take up wheelchair basketball. He became a member of the Australian team within six months and scored most of their points every time they had a game. His dream of all dreams was just to get a Michael Jordan autograph. It was the last year that Michael Jordan was playing. And you wouldn’t believe it. Guy upstairs works in funny ways. I sent a fax in those days to Michael Jordan’s office and said, is there any chance if we brought him over, he could go to the game. Michael Jordan told me when we got there in Chicago that he only visited his office once every month. And that particular day, he was walking past the fax machine when my fax came out. He picked it out and read it. He gets a million requests a week back in those days. So we slipped through the net. He read it and told his secretary, make this one happen. And we surprised that little boy and took him to Chicago, not just to see a game. Michael Jordan came out of the kitchen of the Michael Jordan restaurant with a birthday cake singing happy birthday. It was a little boy’s 15th birthday, the day he met Michael Jordan.
0:13:10.7 WB: Quite incredible. Yeah. Well, let’s get back into the marketing. This is where the real fame lies. You’ve created some of the most unique marketing campaigns, I think, at least in my limited circle but… Jerry Seinfeld probably one of the biggest, one of the greatest players to fame. What was the creative process for you behind that particular campaign?
0:13:37.2 JD: Wayne, look, I come from the mindset of, whether it’s a corporate business or whether it’s a fish and chip shop, that if you don’t have a wow factor, and you are a me too business, in other words, your solar panels are very similar to the solar panels from your competitor. Okay? And in Australia, as you know, the big supermarket chains are Coles and Woolworths, they’re very, very similar. I was the national marketing manager for the Woolworths organization in my 20s. I tell you, if you basically squint your eyes and walk into a Coles or walk into a Woolworths supermarket, they’re pretty much the same. And so my role was to create artificial wow factors. Apple doesn’t need me. Apple’s iPhone, it’s got organic wow factors. There’s nothing like it. And so therefore they don’t need me.
0:14:19.4 JD: But 99% of other businesses that have a product, which is very similar to their competitors, yeah, they need my sort of thinking or someone like me. And at Woolworths, what we would do, this is pre-digital, we would actually take ideas out of Tesco in London. And it would be, for example, if every time you spent $10, you’d get a stamp and you’d lick it and put it on a saver sheet. And when you saved up so many stamps, you got cookware and glassware for ridiculous prices, right? And then we got into scratch ticket games whereby every time you spent $10, you got a scratch ticket. And of course, these days, Woolworths and Coles in Australia had borrowed from McDonald’s Happy Meal toy philosophy. And if you spend $30, you get a toy. Okay? So pest for power, if you have an audience with children, then use children as one of your agents.
0:15:03.0 JD: I can tell you, having six children and not being able to say, no, they are the biggest influencer for mom and dad. So what happened is that I had a bank as a client, as a building society, actually called the Greater Building Society. And this was some years back. And they were the 250th biggest business in Australia. So they’re not small, but they were certainly not the Commonwealth Bank. And the Commonwealth Bank in Australia is very much like Wells Fargo. If you’re listening to this in America, it’s a big bank. And so this smaller bank was a challenger brand, and if you’re a challenger brand, then you should do things differently. And I said to them, look, I’m doing some TV commercials for a travel discount company. How about what I do is introduce you guys? And instead of giving away that 1% honeymoon rate to everyone when they get a home loan, which every bank does, like everyone does that, why don’t you give that 1% honeymoon rate to the travel company and they’ll give you a vacation that’s worth double that because they’re a wholesaler.
0:15:56.6 JD: And they said, oh, smart addict, we’ll give it a shot. Guess what? In three months of coming on television in Australia, say, and online saying, get a home loan from the grader and get a free vacation, they doubled their home loans in three months. They tripled them in 12 months. We’re talking billions. Absolute. And this idiot who you’re talking to, charged a consultancy fee, set a percentage. I’m a moron. I’m a complete moron. And about three or four years into this unbelievably successful promotion, we got Seinfeld to become spokesman. And so therefore we took it up a level. And I won’t bore you with all the details of how it got to him, but and again, it was very similar to the Rugby League story. When I asked him did he say yes, he said, I figured that if I didn’t say yes, you’d never go away.
0:16:37.9 JD: And so he said you are the most annoying person. And I said, well, Jerry, persistent beats intelligence, I’m not that smart, but I am persistent. He said, yeah. So we got Seinfeld to do the ads, and once we got that. Then I’d fly backwards and forth to New York over those three years. And we made it easy for Jerry. We mocked up a greater Village Society bank in an empty shop not far away from where he lives. And he stood outside and did, stand up. But yeah, that was a really, really big curve because every TV network around the world covered it. Seinfeld, of course, had not done anything on TV for a long while. And I think Wayne, for anyone listening to this where they go, it was saying, oh yeah, but that’s impossible. No, it’s not. This guy had only ever done two advertising campaigns, one for American Express and one for Microsoft. This Aussie Bennett was a little bit smaller than those two big businesses, but because he liked the idea, we slipped through the cracks and it’s all about, for those guys who have got more money than God, then it’s all about the idea.
0:17:35.4 WB: But where do they come from? Where do the ideas come from John? I can sit here and I can brainstorm. That’s one of my passions, but coming up with that killer idea, is it innate or do you have a process?
0:17:48.8 JD: No. I think it’s innate. I think it is. And look, the thing is, that there’s only a very, very small percentage of people who I’ve met in my career that are creative, but clever creative. And I’m not patting myself on the back, I’m talking about other people. People will come up with ideas, but whether they’re practical ideas is another thing. And I have only come across a handful. And so therefore, I think it’s something you are born with. I don’t know that you can learn creativity, but what you can learn is to hang around people who are. Why not? And what I found is that, I’m trying to convince my six millennials this, I made a mistake in my 20s and early 30s where I hung around people who were accountancy operationally minded, left brainers, and every time I’d come up with a crazy idea, they’d go, “Oh, why? Oh Why would you do that?
0:18:39.4 JD: But when I started hanging around other people who were right brained, they’d say, oh, why not? Yeah. Give that a shot, JD. I think the best example of the sort of people I like to hang around with these days is that a very quick case study, we lived in a little country town in the Hunter Valley about two hours north of Sydney at one stage when we had little children, and there was a hairdresser in town who knew what I did. And she said to Gail my wife, “Listen, I’ve been here for 18 years, and wouldn’t you believe that someone’s come from the big smoke and opened up a hairdressing salon directly opposite me in this little country town.” This town was like Mayberry from Andy Griffith, right?
0:19:15.3 WB: Yep.
0:19:15.7 JD: And so therefore, you know, she said, she’s stolen all my male customers because men don’t care basically, they had $10 haircuts for men, and she charged $50 or $60 and she said, all my men they don’t care, they go to the butcher for a haircut. They’ve all gone to this other competitive across the road. And she says to my wife, can you get John to come up with one of that wow crap that he’s got. [laughter] She said, I think I might have to drop my prices to $9 for a men’s hair cup because they’re charging 10. I said, “No, don’t do that give me a day.” Anyway, to cut long story short, two days later, we put a sandwich board outside her shop, which got every single one of them in back again, and the sandwich board outside her hairdresser opposite the one that was selling customers said, we fixed $10 haircuts.
0:19:58.6 WB: I love that. I’m wondering how much does culture shape marketing strategies as you move around with different clients?
0:20:08.2 JD: Pretty much not at all, pretty much not… What would happen is that, if I was dealing with a franchise business and let’s just say it was a carpet cleaning franchise, and we would give them one of these Happy Meal toys sort of ideas, get three rooms of your house basically cleaned and we’ll give you a free vacation. And let’s just say it worked, just head off everywhere else. But the guy up in Townsville, north Queensland said, oh, look the reason it didn’t work here is because of the demographic profile of the… I’d get the violin out, that was just all crap. It didn’t work because he was a lazy so and so, and he didn’t do it properly. And the thing is, look at McDonald’s, you can get a hamburger from McDonald’s anywhere in the world, and it will look and taste the same, they’ve been able, and most franchises are the same thing. So the culture doesn’t have a lot to do with it really, at the end of the day, someone in China or America or Australia is still going to get excited about a wow factor, and most of the time the wow factor’s gonna be a Happy Meal toy.
0:21:13.6 WB: I was going to ask you about networking in the collaboration side, but I’m guessing the answer is gonna be very similar. Networking for you is not a big issue as well. It’s all about this ability to create the Wow.
0:21:28.1 JD: Yeah. Look, I have to say that I’m, I’ve been a terrible networker. I’ve got some skills. I’m not really a normal man, I feel embarrassed to say that I would go to Bunnings, which is a gigantic hardware chain in Australia, that if you’re watching this anywhere else, you won’t know what it is. But it’s like a Costco, but a hardware version, because I’m the opposite from MacGyver I don’t know what to do with a hammer, I don’t know how to fix a hinge on a door. I just go to this Bunnings Hardware store on a Saturday and walk around for an hour just to feel like a man. Okay. So therefore, I’m just hopeless and my wife will back me up on that. I’m absolutely hopeless. And I’ve been hopeless at another thing, and that is networking.
0:22:10.8 JD: I have to say to you that I’ve become in the last six months, excuse the language, but a podcast slut. I’ve done more podcasts than I’ve had back dinners in the last six months because it’s a wonderful way of, and now I enjoy them because having a host like you, it’s very comfortable. It’s conversational. It’s not like a webinar where you go to the next slide, on the next slide, they run, know they’re gonna get something at the end. I just really, really enjoy it. But I’m not good at networking. I wished I had been, but I’ve got no excuse other than, because if you’ve got six kids, it was difficult to probably take a lot of time off to go to all the breakfasts and things like that.
0:22:46.6 JD: But one I did join in America, which was good, it was called the Joe Polish genius Network and that was very good. They had a lot of really sort of cool people involved there, it wasn’t cheap, it was 25K US to join. So my wife was real pleased about that, because we live in Australia, I had to fly to Phoenix, Arizona three times a year, she was so happy. But I have to say to you, for anyone watching or listening, don’t make the same mistake that I’ve made, join as many of these networking groups as you possibly can, because as the saying goes, I think it was Jim Rohn that came up with the saying, and that was, “You are the average of the five people you know around you.”
0:23:26.2 WB: I mean you’ve had so many amazing moments, you’ve met so many global superstars, you’ve had some massive accounts, Seinfeld being one of those, but it was there a standout moment so far in your career? I mean, your career’s not over by any stretch, but so far in the career has there been something that really stands out?
0:23:47.2 JD: I think that TV show, there’s no question, we all have to earn money to have a nice lifestyle and put food on the table and all that sort of stuff, but there’s no… There’s no thrill like that give back thrill. I did that because I had asked the guy upstairs for some help and took about a quick comeback from couple million down in just one football season, so I had to pay back. And I have to say to you, the thrill that I got out of that was like, we were Santa Claus, who doesn’t wanna be Santa Claus?
0:24:16.1 WB: Sure, for sure.
0:24:18.1 JD: And it was just wonderful. And one thing that does stand out is not necessarily the Michael Jordan Grand. There was one, which we had Meat Loaf involved, and it’s just a wonderful, wonderful story. I’ll just cut it down to 30 seconds. A little girl, five years of age was in kitchen at her home and spilled boiling hot water on top of herself. She lent up to get something off the kitchen bench, and it came up and she had third-degree degree burns everywhere, and they put her and the burns here in the hospital, and this poor little girl was screaming and screaming and screaming. Hospital did everything to try and stop her from screaming, whether it be Disney movies or the Wiggles cartoons or whatever it might be. Nothing stopped her screaming until one day the nurse mistakenly pressed the button on the tape recorder, and they played a Meat Loaf song, [laughter] and the little girl stopped screaming because of Meat Loaf song, probably many years later, you would argue people were screaming because of the Meat Loaf song. But anyway, this little girl.
0:25:11.8 WB: Exactly, exactly.
0:25:12.8 JD: It was miraculous, you heard about the Melbourne grand Final too. So anyway, as it turned out, her mother wrote to us and said, is there any chance we could get a Meat Loaf autograph? Well, you wouldn’t believe it, the following week, Meat loaf was in Australia doing concerts. So we contacted him and told him the story, and guess what this guy did? He said, bring that little girl to the backstage, it was in front of like 20,000 people in the stadium. And just before the show started, we took the little girl backstage, and it’s ’cause she was out of hospital by this stage and the cutest little 5-year-old you’ve ever seen, he picks the little girl up and she looks at him and we captured all on camera and she looks at him and says, “Oh, thank you, Mr. Meat loaf, you made me feel better.” And tears came to his eyes and he said to her, “Darling, you are now making me feel better.” Doing that TV show where you surprise people with homes or cars, or they’ve met relatives like 20 year. We went through a fortune in Kleenex, but the cameramen who are big, bulky guys, they’re all crying, it was just a wonderful, wonderful part of my life, I loved it, yeah.
0:26:17.7 WB: Probably on the back of that, how do you actually measure success?
0:26:21.9 JD: Yeah. And it’s not money, the thing is, is that we all know that it’s handy to have a nice bank account because you can go on that nice vacation and you might be able to spend some money on some nice things. But really at the end of the day I think success for those of us who have got children, success is having a look at them as they grow up and when they do grow up following a nice, if you like rules of life. And last time I checked, none of our six are in jail just yet. So therefore, [laughter], I think we did something right. For those people who don’t have children, that it would be probably friendship and those that they have around them that’s a gift of course, which is wonderful. But I think if I was to speak for most parents I guess the success to all parents is seeing their children grow up and turn out to be nice people.
0:27:13.2 WB: You, mentioned earlier in the conversation, we were talking about some of the challenges and the trading card issue was one of them. Everybody has their ups and downs in careers, was that the biggest challenging moment throughout your career so far?
0:27:30.1 JD: It probably was the biggest, but there’s been a shit load of others, challenging, I think is every entrepreneur’s middle name. Look it’s been a rollercoaster ride it’s never a merry ground. There was a story which I saw some years ago, and it was just a wonderful story for all of us entrepreneurs. And, it was about Winston Churchill when he was Prime Minister of England. He went back to the school. That he went to when he was a child, and the little boy asked a question and said, Mr. Prime Minister, any advice for us kids? And the kids were all nine or 10 years of age. And, so Winston Churchill, gave a speech, which is known as the never give up speech, but the essence of it was that he just said to this little boy and all the kids in the classroom just remember as you go through life, you’re gonna get kicked in the guts, okay?
0:28:16.3 JD: But just never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give up and I’ve grabbed that little saying, and I think there’s lots of motivational posters around the world. You probably see with that particular saying in it. I’ve given that to a number of my friends when they’ve been kicked in the guts, and they’ve all been very appreciative of it. Because really at the end of the day, no matter what happens to you, if you never ever, ever, ever give up, then there can only be one result, if you keep on… I always liken it to when, and you probably grew up at this way as well, is that big deal when I was an eight or nine or 10-year-old, where they’d blow up Fred Flintstone sort of, dolls that just had air inside them and you’d punch them and they’d come back up again. [laughter] And, they were like a vampire, you could never keep them down. And, as it turned out I always say to people, look, if you don’t give up, like you never ever give up, and I know it’s hard, it’s not easy, but if you never, ever give up, the heck [0:29:08.4] ____. You got to come out the other end sooner later.
0:29:11.3 WB: We have a lot of small business owners listening. Where can they get some of your passion, your wow moment? You have programs, you have packages, I’m sure.
0:29:22.0 JD: Yeah, we do. But look, I’m so rich these days, Wayne I got own private island, my own airline, that I don’t need to think about any website URL [laughter] It’s, you know what I love about these people, when you see some of these podcasts and it’s complete BS and I know because I’ve met them behind the stage when you’re doing seminars and conferences and stuff, but they go, oh, look I’m wealthy, I’ve got all of these motor cars and I’ve got my private, I’m only doing this to give back and you go, “Yeah, right” [laughter] That’s right. No, look I can certainly, invite anyone if they’d like to have a look at my stuff. Go to basically theinstituteofwow.com and, when you go there, not only can you watch little five minute segments of that TV show if you want to get a box of tissues, because if you look at the menu bar and where it says JD Bio, my name’s John Dwyer but you get JD the Wow TV show is there.
0:30:17.0 JD: So if you ever wanted to, just feel good about life and you wanted to watch a few of these little episodes of dreams coming through, then that’s there. But the page that you should go to is the case studies page. Because what I’ve done, Wayne, is that I just figure that the best way to measure anyone is by their history, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re 21 or 81, have a look at their history, because that’ll probably give you an idea of what the future might be like if you do stuff with them. And so therefore, I’ve got a case studies page on theinstituteofwow.com that goes on forever. There would have to be, I don’t know, just dozens and dozens, dozens and dozens of case studies. And so therefore, it’s a swipe file from Heaven if anyone’s looking for an idea.
0:30:57.4 JD: But I probably would say to you, if anyone was watching this, whether they’re a small or large, business, I would like to give them now an idea where they don’t have to gimme a cent by the way, this is just a free piece of advice. It’s using Facebook to get leads and you know and I know Wayne, that when you’re dealing with social media now, because the big boys, the corporates have got involved with Facebook and Instagram, then of course the price went up. Back when we were growing up, the little newspaper that got thrown over the fence, it was basically a butcher and baker’s in their advertising. But when Woolworths and Coles and all the big businesses got involved, the advertising rate for that newspaper went up, and that’s what’s happened with Facebook now, of course, Zuckerberg is charging more on a cost per lead because [0:31:40.2] ____ on there now, and I’ve worked out away by accident, by the way, wish I could take credit for being smart.
0:31:47.7 JD: But this was an accident, of using Facebook and getting more leads than you can handle every single day of the year. And, what it is, is a contest formula and it came about because a guy saw me speaking at a conference who owned a aluminum fence business, aluminum fence if you’re in America and he comes up to me at the end and he said, “Oh, JD look, I’ve got aluminum fence business, which replaces all the old painting fences that are falling down with old homes, but this Facebook stuff doesn’t work.” I said, “well, let me have a look at your ad.” And sure enough, Wayne, he had a picture of an aluminum fence in other words, features not benefits. I said mate, if you know features were to sell stuff then the weight loss companies would just show a bowl of rice.
0:32:26.5 JD: They don’t, they show the lady who’s overweight and then four weeks later, she looks like a super model. You wanna get out of the way, we’ll fix this. So he got out of the way, and we held on Facebook a contest to win an aluminum or aluminum fence, we could zero it in on all of the older suburbs that had 30-year-old homes and their back fences are falling over and we just ran the ugliest back fence in Australia contest, you had to take a photo of your falling down crappy fence and post it to our page for the chance to win an aluminum fence. Mate, he got six months worth of leads in three days, we’re talking… And these people are not just leads, they’re red hot leads, they put their hand up, took a photo of their crappy fence. So we started doing that for kitchen renovations, the ugliest kitchen in Australia or America, wherever it might’ve been.
0:33:07.5 JD: And the thing just took off. So what we’ve done in the last six months is created a program for businesses whereby we either show them and they do it themselves, if they want us to do it, we can do it whereby they hold a contest on Facebook and they basically give away their product or service, so if you’re a dentist, for example, you give away Invisalign, the invisible braces, you are only gonna get people with crooked teeth who are gonna enter that contest. So they’re not leads, they’re red hot leads. We had one last, fortnight only two weeks ago, it’s a walking frame business for older people and they’re wheelie walkers, they call them, I was insulted by the guy who owns the business. He asked, did I wanna do a contra. [laughter]?
0:33:49.1 JD: I said to him, “I hope you die in your sleep.” So anyway, what we did is we ran a contest and still running it, ’cause it’s gone nuts for 70 and 80-year-old people. Guess what we ran the contest, would you like to win a Wheelie walker, which is like a $500 walking frame thing for seniors. He got 822 leads in the first week at wait for it, $40 spend a day, that’s 35 cents a lead. 822 leads in a week. All from people in their 70s and 80s who were screaming, I want a walker. So guess it is like, talk about a hot lead to follow up, he said he can’t get to them. So we’ve got an AI robot ringing on now to follow them up and say, look, you didn’t win, but we’ve got a special deal for you this week. The robot has a 32% close rate, so therefore the robot’s getting a better conversion rate than a human. And by the way, just if you don’t mind me giving a plug, if anyone wants to see how this works and you don’t need to give me any money, it’s just is explained how it works. Just go to fbcontestformula.com FB for Facebook, of course, fbcontestformula.com. And again, you don’t need to give me anything, the idea is there with case studies and case studies, you can just swipe it and do it yourself if you want.
0:34:56.3 WB: You showed me a book just before we hit record, it’s probably the biggest book that I’ve ever seen John. But, typical of you and The Institute of WOW, you have it handy there, you can just pull it up and…
0:35:09.4 JD: Yes I’m sorry. I’m a show off, but I’m also an idiot because, this is the book. I can’t help, but it’s ridiculous and a buddy of mine, when I was doing the seminar circuit, and these days, it’s more podcasts and webinars because, you don’t have to jump on a plane to reach people now. But he said to me, “Listen, if you’re gonna write a book, I guess you better do something different.” And that stuck with me and I thought, yeah, okay, well, it’s called The Institute of WOW, so I better do a wow factor book. This is ridiculous because it’s 300 pages of successful, what we call direct response, which is what we are, we’re a direct response agency. So it’s got, 300 pages of examples in there that have worked. I didn’t put the ones in here that didn’t work.
0:35:50.0 JD: I thought that would not be real smart. And so, we’re gonna give this to you, by the way. So therefore there’s 300 pages of this thing, it’s the size of a tabloid newspaper. And, I’m gonna give you the digital copy and I’ll give you the URL in just a second. But when we used to give this away with our coaching program way, just for a joke, I got them to sign a disclaimer, which said that if they were reading it in bed and fell asleep and broke a rib, they wouldn’t sue me, it’s pretty damn heavy. And this book here costs $420 to print, so I can’t give you the real book. But just go to wowmanifesto.com/gift as in Christmas gift. So it’s wowmanifesto.com/gift. It’s a swipe file from Heaven, I know I’m showing you off, but you’ll see that there’ll be ideas in there that you can just swipe and use for your business. And by the way, Wayne, the reason I’m doing all of this is because, my Auntie Teresa told me to live to give, and you would know her as Mother Teresa, but she was my auntie, and she said look live to give.
0:36:50.6 WB: We’ll definitely link, everything that you’ve mentioned in the show notes and to your website. The website is an experience in itself, so anyone listening, make sure you go to the link that we put in the show notes and have a look at John’s site, it’s truly an experience. Where do you see the future in particular for marketing with the current digital explosion?
0:37:11.8 JD: It’s unbelievable, it is really unbelievable. And even for baby boomers like me, jump onto it. Obviously I’ve had to jump on it from the beginning because regardless of whether I’m a baby boomer, the thing you sort of marketing agency. I’ll give you an example just yesterday, Wayne, I had a company, one of our clients who is a tradie company, and he provides electricians to put air conditioning into a house, and he provides plumbers and so forth, right? And he said to me yesterday, listen, is there any chance at all you could give us an idea for an animated logo? He says something like Bob the Builder, and he said, that’s what we want. And I said, “Yeah, sure okay.” And just to show off, I just felt to ChatGPT of course, just the prompt that I gave it was look I’m looking for a Bob the builder sort of cartoon character.
0:37:57.7 JD: It needs to be wearing high vis gear with a hard hat, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And of course, as you know, 15 seconds later, the best Disney style animation you’ve ever seen, I send it off to this guy who’s about my vintage. So he can’t spell AI, he wouldn’t know what it is. And I think he had a heart attack. I got him on Zoom, he’s only just learning how to get on Zoom. And I said, here it is, like we’re talking five minutes later. And he goes, what? How did you do that? I said, because my middle name is David Copperfield. Alright, so therefore… So that’s just how strong it is. We have just set up, four tradies, would you believe? ‘Cause that’s, yeah… Tradies cannot answer the phone, they’re on top of a roof putting a solar panel in, or they’ve got the hand down the toilet, they cannot get to the phone.
0:38:40.0 JD: And so we are just launching now, we spent six months on it, but we’re just launching now what we call, Aigenie. And we searched on, crazy domains and everywhere of course, to see we, you come up with a unique AI name, but good luck. But ours is called Aigenie and what we do is that we answer the phone for, it’s a market… No you might say, well, you’re a marketing company, how’s this marketing big time? Because we can answer the phone for these tradies when they’re on top of the roof. And, not only will the robot answer the phone, and of course it sounds like a human, you know, nine out of 10 people would not have a clue, it can sell. When someone rings up to electrical services, for example, and they can’t answer the phone, then our Aigenie will answer the phone, it can be a man or lady. And, let’s say it’s a she and she says, “What can I do to help you?” And the person says, “Look, I need an air conditioner and two ceiling fans.” And she will book the appointment for whatever the calendar availabilities are. And so when that tradie gets down from the roof and checks his messages, not only has she answered the phone, she’s booked in three appointments for tomorrow, and she’s booked the appointments close to each other geographically, so that he doesn’t lose time going from one to the other. That’s how smart it is.
0:39:45.8 WB: Is it released yet, or are you still in the…
0:39:48.8 JD: We’re releasing it actually next week and it’s called, it’s basically just aigenie.com.
0:39:58.4 WB: Future aspirations. John, what’s the future look like?
0:40:02.3 JD: I wanna become an American and take over when Trump throws a towel in just for fun, because that election was just so much good for… It was really, when people ask me with my marketing hat on, “How did that guy make a comeback?” I say, “Oh, come on, it wasn’t even a contest.” The Democrats, God love them, but the marketing was just woeful, it was just awful. This guy is a marketing machine, you can love him or hate him, he’s a terrible show off. And there’s lots of his personality traits, which you just don’t like because no one likes to show off things, you may say that no one likes to show off. But yeah, just from a marketing point of view, it was just game over long ago, he’s just a marketing machine. So yeah, I’d love to go to America and be involved in that, that would just be good fun. But in all seriousness, yeah, my aspirations are look I can’t throw the tail in and retire because the thing is, is that I don’t like golf. I hate jigsaw puzzles., if I’m reading a book that’s not an autobiography, I’ll read the autobiography about Walt Disney or Richard Branson or whoever it might be. But if it’s a book, like my wife will throw a fiction book in front of me.
0:41:13.1 JD: I’ll just go to the back couple pages and find out how it finishes something, I’d say to her, “I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish. I’m not gonna read a book unless it’s an autobiography that’s obviously going to be inspiring.” So yeah, I’ve got ADHD on steroids, so therefore, there’s no use me throwing this in. I enjoy doing it and as you can tell, because there’s a bit of sarcasm and whit with it, I enjoy the performing as well. So, yeah I think I’ll stick with this for a while and none of our kids have gone into this game, they’ve all become school teachers, or they’ve become accountants and all sorts of other things, so it’s not like I’m gonna hand the baton on, but I quite enjoy it, so therefore I’ll probably stick with it for a while longer.
0:41:53.5 WB: Any legacy that you’re hoping to leave behind with the actual institute, like the business itself?
0:41:58.6 JD: Yeah, look, I haven’t, as you can tell just even in this relatively short interview, because my attention span is so small. No, I haven’t even thought about that, I have not thought about that. [laughter] Isn’t that terrible? Well, you want some inspirational quote from someone who you’ve been talking to for 45 minutes thinking no, I don’t have anything inspiring to say. I think probably though, all sarcasm and jokes aside, what I’d love to probably leave behind is that everything, everything, everything starts with the big idea. And I said this on another interview I did recently, when they asked a similar question, I just said look AI is brilliant and it is fantastic, but unless you’ve got Elon Musk style thinking, it’s useless. Because if you don’t prompt ChatGPT or Midjourney or whoever it might be, whatever platform you’re using, if you don’t provide it with the prompt, then you won’t get the answer at all.
0:42:55.3 JD: So AI is brilliant, but it’s only as brilliant as the person who’s actually giving it the task. And, I found that if I had said to that ChatGPT yesterday, I need a logo for an electrical company, I would’ve been still there now because it hasn’t worked out. If I said to them look it needs to be like Bob the builder, it needs to have a hard hat, it needs to have Hi Vis, and sometimes I even do a quick sketch, then of course everything then comes back the right way. So I would say that, you know, if you’re in business or you’re running a business, really at the end of the day everything, everything, everything starts with a big idea.
0:43:32.3 WB: Where’s the best place for people to go and connect with you and understand more about what you’re doing?
0:43:41.0 JD: Look, I’ll give my personal email address, Wayne, because, you know, that’s the best way to reach me. So that’s John@theinstituteofwow.com, and obviously John is J-O-H-N. So John@theinstituteofwow.com. And of course, you know, again, that website, if you wanted to go and have a look at the website, then it’s theinstituteofwow.com.
0:44:04.4 WB: So, I truly have enjoyed our conversation, thank you so much for being a guest on the ET project.
0:44:10.0 JD: Thank you very much, it’s been a lovely conversation.
0:44:13.0 WB: All the best, John.
0:44:14.2 JD: You too. See you Wayne.
0:44:17.0 Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us on the ET project, a show for executive talent development. Until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars and blogs@coachingforcompanies.com.
