Show Notes
Last week, Scott had two back-to-back calls. Two sellers. Same market. Same product. Same economy. Completely different results.
Seller A: "It's slow. The economy. Infrastructure costs doubled. People are scared." Views were flat. Leads weren't converting. Copy was thin—same thing repeated over and over.
Seller B: Same county. Same headwinds. Scott introduced them to the DREAMS framework in March. They applied it. Views exploded. Leads exploded. 4x growth in three months.
The diagnosis: Seller A blamed the economy. Seller B changed the ads. The economy was the same for both.
The real problem: If you've never experienced the highs, you don't know when you're in the lows. You accept bad as normal. Then you blame things you can't control.
The market is always talking to you. Views without leads means you're not connecting. The market isn't the problem—your message is.
Clickable and convertible: Two steps. Are people clicking? (Views.) Are they converting? (Leads.) If you're getting views but no leads, change the message.
The controllable reframe: You can't control the economy. But you can control your ads, your copy, your delivery, your close.
The challenge: Where in your business are you giving things a pass? Where are you blaming something you can't control? Pull it back in. What can you do differently this week?
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:19.551)
Last week I had two back to back calls. And what was interesting about them is that these two individuals, separate individuals, they were operating in the exact same market. They were selling the exact same thing. But yet they both saw the world. They both saw the last three months completely different. They had completely different results, completely different experiences.
And it really got me thinking, like, why is one struggling and the other isn't? And over the last few days I've been really digging into this and I want to share with you the one thing that was super clear in walking away from this. So welcome to Fix My Business. I'm your host, Scott Todd. I have built multiple seven figure businesses after leaving my Fortune 300 VP job.
And I want to help you do the same thing. I want to help you see your business in a different light. So what happened was, let's just call them seller A, basically came to the call and said, Hey, it's slow. I know it's the economy. you know, these the the infrastructure costs that my customers are gonna have to pay have doubled. People are scared. you know, nothing's working.
So here's what I saw. I pulled the data, and the one thing that I noticed is that really within their results, you know, of views and you know conversions, nothing had changed. It was basically flat all I don't know, the last six months, flat for them. Now there was a little bit of a decline, but generally speaking, it was flat.
The one thing that I think is important that we always understand, and the one thing I keep telling my team as well, is that the market is always talking to you. Okay? The market is always talking. Now, the problem is that we may not want to listen to them. Or we may not really trust what they're saying, but it always is. So let me give you example. If you are, and I'm gonna use an example for my own business, if we're cranking out ads.
Scott Todd (02:39.696)
And we're not getting responses. We're getting views, that's the eyeballs. If we're getting views on our listings or our properties or ads, whatever it is that we're marketing, but we're not getting conversion. And what I mean by conversion is that we're not getting leads, okay. The the ad has to convert. If we're not getting there, then the market's telling us that, well, basically what we're putting out there is not connecting with them. So we have to change the story. We have to change what we're doing.
Because you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result. So if we're just continuing to do what we've always done, we're gonna get the exact same result. So if we wanna change something, it's easy to blame the economy or it's easy to blame the world or tariffs or whatever it is that we want to put the blame on, but we then
Also have a duty to change. Now, this is the message that I give to my own team. So when I looked at seller A's ads, the one thing that I noticed was that the copy was extremely thin. There was really nothing that was there. Okay. And that that's really hard to hear because sometimes we get so lost in our own markets that it's hard for us to even imagine what could be. How do you say the same thing over and over and over again?
And that's probably one of the greatest challenges of marketing in general is how do you say what you want to say over and over and over again? And just understand that you may say to yourself, I've said this a billion times. They're not listening. They're not listening. People are not remembering what you say. We're busy, we're slammed with lots of different messages. So you have to find what connects with people and just say it over and over and over.
over again. Okay. So that was kind of seller A's experience is that they were seeing these they were basically writing the exact same copy over and over and over again. It wasn't converting. And then the way that they justified that is saying, let's blame the economy. Now I'm not s I'm not trying to I'm not trying to shame them because basically we do it all the time. We all do it all the time in different ways within our business.
Scott Todd (05:03.315)
Well, then I hopped on a call with Seller B. Okay, and seller B is in the exact same market, same exact product. And back in March, when I had a call with them, I introduced them to the Dreams framework. Now I shared the Dreams framework with you last week. And it was just a way of thinking about how to write better ads. We analyzed 10,000 property listings.
We identified, hey, this is what moves the needle and makes a property listing or any type of listing convertible. Now, let me go through these words again. Clickable and convertible. We live in a digital world where there's kind of a two-step to every process or a two-step to every type of advertising. The first thing is that you need people to click on it. Okay. Is it clickable? Are you going to get them to the exact next page?
To the next step where they can go deeper. And when they're there, is it convertible? Is it converting into what you want leads or sales if you're an e commerce play, whatever it is, clickable and convertible? So this is the way that I think about things. So the Dreams Framework's design is to help you get both. It's designed to help make it clickable. So you get the eyeballs, the views, the eyeballs on the copy.
And then the Dreams framework is the copy framework that should make it convertible if you're kind of connecting with what they want to hear. And you can write an ad through Dreams framework and still not connect with people. Because if you're not solving the problem that, well, they're looking to solve, then you have a disconnect. The market's talking to you again. But this one seller, seller B, they took it to heart and basically they did it. Their views exploded, their views, their leads exploded.
Okay, they were they were for Xing everything from where they were just six months ago or March, not quite six months ago. So ultimately, two different sellers, two different worlds. Okay. So the real problem here is that seller A ended up kind of blaming the economy, the market, external factors, while seller B, who worked in the exact same market, who had the exact same, you know, headwinds, if you will, basically had a completely different experience.
Scott Todd (07:29.494)
One was positive and one was well not positive, negative. Okay, so the sellers that that kind of change things up and understand that it's always a test. Marketing is always a test and we have to change up our approach. We have to change the way that we're saying things. Those are the people that kind of are able to ride through the the bad economies. Because there's always a bad economy. There's always something in front of you in a business. It
Th there might be some tailwinds. I mean, there's some times where the the world was just easy, everything was on sale and everybody was buying. But that's not always the case. And if you haven't experienced some of the highs, then understanding when you're in the lows is hard because we want to be in this kind of systemized world where things just operate systematically. What I mean by that is it's so easy to wanna just say, hey,
AI do this for me, or people do this, and follow this formula, follow this exact same framework. And while you can use it, you have to change your approach. If something's not working, you have to change your approach. Because doing the exact same thing, writing the exact same type of copy is, well, it's not going to work. It's not going to solve your problem. So the challenge that I would have for you right now mentally is I would want you to think about.
If you're thinking that the economy is slow, and I'm not saying it is or it isn't for you, but if it is slow, there are still buyers out there. This isn't this isn't like you know a dust bowl. It's not like there's no buyers. You have to find the buyers and you have to find what's important to them and what problem they're trying to solve. And then you have to attack that and you have to try it. You have to run a hypothesis. We talked about a hypothesis a few weeks ago. How
Businesses are a series of test. And that applies to your ad writing too. Now, this also brings up another point because this is I've talked about the traps, the f the four traps that hold businesses back. And in a previous week I talked about the visibility trap. And the visibility trap, and like I don't even love the name visibility trap anymore. I I'm kind of like changing it more to like data trap or
Scott Todd (09:52.396)
lack of data track, we gotta change that a little bit because the visibility trap might give us a a false meaning. Data trap, later lack of data trap, I don't know, something like that. But see, here's the thing. When you're in this trap, you do not have the visibility to make the proper decision. And so if you're kind of kind of be if you find yourself guessing, well, it's probably the economy, it's probably this, it's probably that, well then
You're somewhat missing data. You're missing that reference point. And then what happens is you begin to diagnose the wrong problem. So again, let's apply this. Let's say that you're you're feeling like, hey, it's slow because of the economy. okay, well, that's a lens that you're gonna start to paint everything through. And then when you paint it through that lens, it becomes something that you can't control because you and I can't control the economy, right?
So what we have to do is we have to somehow reframe it to say, what is it that I can control here? Because I can't control the economy, but I can turn around and say, okay, what is it that I can control? Can I control my ads to make sure that they are clickable? Well, you sure can. Remember, clickable is getting views. You sure can. You're not at the mercy of anybody to get more views.
Can you make sure that your ads are convert convertible? I mean, are you getting leads from those views? You absolutely can control that. Because if you're not getting views, that means that you're not going to get leads. And if you're getting views but you're not getting leads, the market is telling you you're not connecting with their problem. So what you really want to do, what I really want you to do is to take to heart is think about in your business where you're giving things a pass.
Where you're pushing that that problem off to something that you can't control. And you have to pull that back in. You have to identify what is the controllable here. I may not be able to control, I can't control if people do X, Y, and Z. Like if I have leads and you know, I'm giving it my best and they're still not buying, well then I can control that because I can control my my delivery. I can control my close.
Scott Todd (12:12.465)
But there might be things that truly you can't control, like cost rising. You can't control that. However, you can do something different. And that's the whole point is what can you do different to jumpstart where you are? If you're not getting what you want, I want you to think it think about it. What can I do differently this week so that we can jumpstart and get get things re-engaged and moving the way that we want it to?
And with that, I will see you in our next episode.
Last week I had two back to back calls. And what was interesting about them is that these two individuals, separate individuals, they were operating in the exact same market. They were selling the exact same thing. But yet they both saw the world. They both saw the last three months completely different. They had completely different results, completely different experiences.
And it really got me thinking, like, why is one struggling and the other isn't? And over the last few days I've been really digging into this and I want to share with you the one thing that was super clear in walking away from this. So welcome to Fix My Business. I'm your host, Scott Todd. I have built multiple seven figure businesses after leaving my Fortune 300 VP job.
And I want to help you do the same thing. I want to help you see your business in a different light. So what happened was, let's just call them seller A, basically came to the call and said, Hey, it's slow. I know it's the economy. you know, these the the infrastructure costs that my customers are gonna have to pay have doubled. People are scared. you know, nothing's working.
So here's what I saw. I pulled the data, and the one thing that I noticed is that really within their results, you know, of views and you know conversions, nothing had changed. It was basically flat all I don't know, the last six months, flat for them. Now there was a little bit of a decline, but generally speaking, it was flat.
The one thing that I think is important that we always understand, and the one thing I keep telling my team as well, is that the market is always talking to you. Okay? The market is always talking. Now, the problem is that we may not want to listen to them. Or we may not really trust what they're saying, but it always is. So let me give you example. If you are, and I'm gonna use an example for my own business, if we're cranking out ads.
Scott Todd (02:39.696)
And we're not getting responses. We're getting views, that's the eyeballs. If we're getting views on our listings or our properties or ads, whatever it is that we're marketing, but we're not getting conversion. And what I mean by conversion is that we're not getting leads, okay. The the ad has to convert. If we're not getting there, then the market's telling us that, well, basically what we're putting out there is not connecting with them. So we have to change the story. We have to change what we're doing.
Because you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result. So if we're just continuing to do what we've always done, we're gonna get the exact same result. So if we wanna change something, it's easy to blame the economy or it's easy to blame the world or tariffs or whatever it is that we want to put the blame on, but we then
Also have a duty to change. Now, this is the message that I give to my own team. So when I looked at seller A's ads, the one thing that I noticed was that the copy was extremely thin. There was really nothing that was there. Okay. And that that's really hard to hear because sometimes we get so lost in our own markets that it's hard for us to even imagine what could be. How do you say the same thing over and over and over again?
And that's probably one of the greatest challenges of marketing in general is how do you say what you want to say over and over and over again? And just understand that you may say to yourself, I've said this a billion times. They're not listening. They're not listening. People are not remembering what you say. We're busy, we're slammed with lots of different messages. So you have to find what connects with people and just say it over and over and over.
over again. Okay. So that was kind of seller A's experience is that they were seeing these they were basically writing the exact same copy over and over and over again. It wasn't converting. And then the way that they justified that is saying, let's blame the economy. Now I'm not s I'm not trying to I'm not trying to shame them because basically we do it all the time. We all do it all the time in different ways within our business.
Scott Todd (05:03.315)
Well, then I hopped on a call with Seller B. Okay, and seller B is in the exact same market, same exact product. And back in March, when I had a call with them, I introduced them to the Dreams framework. Now I shared the Dreams framework with you last week. And it was just a way of thinking about how to write better ads. We analyzed 10,000 property listings.
We identified, hey, this is what moves the needle and makes a property listing or any type of listing convertible. Now, let me go through these words again. Clickable and convertible. We live in a digital world where there's kind of a two-step to every process or a two-step to every type of advertising. The first thing is that you need people to click on it. Okay. Is it clickable? Are you going to get them to the exact next page?
To the next step where they can go deeper. And when they're there, is it convertible? Is it converting into what you want leads or sales if you're an e commerce play, whatever it is, clickable and convertible? So this is the way that I think about things. So the Dreams Framework's design is to help you get both. It's designed to help make it clickable. So you get the eyeballs, the views, the eyeballs on the copy.
And then the Dreams framework is the copy framework that should make it convertible if you're kind of connecting with what they want to hear. And you can write an ad through Dreams framework and still not connect with people. Because if you're not solving the problem that, well, they're looking to solve, then you have a disconnect. The market's talking to you again. But this one seller, seller B, they took it to heart and basically they did it. Their views exploded, their views, their leads exploded.
Okay, they were they were for Xing everything from where they were just six months ago or March, not quite six months ago. So ultimately, two different sellers, two different worlds. Okay. So the real problem here is that seller A ended up kind of blaming the economy, the market, external factors, while seller B, who worked in the exact same market, who had the exact same, you know, headwinds, if you will, basically had a completely different experience.
Scott Todd (07:29.494)
One was positive and one was well not positive, negative. Okay, so the sellers that that kind of change things up and understand that it's always a test. Marketing is always a test and we have to change up our approach. We have to change the way that we're saying things. Those are the people that kind of are able to ride through the the bad economies. Because there's always a bad economy. There's always something in front of you in a business. It
Th there might be some tailwinds. I mean, there's some times where the the world was just easy, everything was on sale and everybody was buying. But that's not always the case. And if you haven't experienced some of the highs, then understanding when you're in the lows is hard because we want to be in this kind of systemized world where things just operate systematically. What I mean by that is it's so easy to wanna just say, hey,
AI do this for me, or people do this, and follow this formula, follow this exact same framework. And while you can use it, you have to change your approach. If something's not working, you have to change your approach. Because doing the exact same thing, writing the exact same type of copy is, well, it's not going to work. It's not going to solve your problem. So the challenge that I would have for you right now mentally is I would want you to think about.
If you're thinking that the economy is slow, and I'm not saying it is or it isn't for you, but if it is slow, there are still buyers out there. This isn't this isn't like you know a dust bowl. It's not like there's no buyers. You have to find the buyers and you have to find what's important to them and what problem they're trying to solve. And then you have to attack that and you have to try it. You have to run a hypothesis. We talked about a hypothesis a few weeks ago. How
Businesses are a series of test. And that applies to your ad writing too. Now, this also brings up another point because this is I've talked about the traps, the f the four traps that hold businesses back. And in a previous week I talked about the visibility trap. And the visibility trap, and like I don't even love the name visibility trap anymore. I I'm kind of like changing it more to like data trap or
Scott Todd (09:52.396)
lack of data track, we gotta change that a little bit because the visibility trap might give us a a false meaning. Data trap, later lack of data trap, I don't know, something like that. But see, here's the thing. When you're in this trap, you do not have the visibility to make the proper decision. And so if you're kind of kind of be if you find yourself guessing, well, it's probably the economy, it's probably this, it's probably that, well then
You're somewhat missing data. You're missing that reference point. And then what happens is you begin to diagnose the wrong problem. So again, let's apply this. Let's say that you're you're feeling like, hey, it's slow because of the economy. okay, well, that's a lens that you're gonna start to paint everything through. And then when you paint it through that lens, it becomes something that you can't control because you and I can't control the economy, right?
So what we have to do is we have to somehow reframe it to say, what is it that I can control here? Because I can't control the economy, but I can turn around and say, okay, what is it that I can control? Can I control my ads to make sure that they are clickable? Well, you sure can. Remember, clickable is getting views. You sure can. You're not at the mercy of anybody to get more views.
Can you make sure that your ads are convert convertible? I mean, are you getting leads from those views? You absolutely can control that. Because if you're not getting views, that means that you're not going to get leads. And if you're getting views but you're not getting leads, the market is telling you you're not connecting with their problem. So what you really want to do, what I really want you to do is to take to heart is think about in your business where you're giving things a pass.
Where you're pushing that that problem off to something that you can't control. And you have to pull that back in. You have to identify what is the controllable here. I may not be able to control, I can't control if people do X, Y, and Z. Like if I have leads and you know, I'm giving it my best and they're still not buying, well then I can control that because I can control my my delivery. I can control my close.
Scott Todd (12:12.465)
But there might be things that truly you can't control, like cost rising. You can't control that. However, you can do something different. And that's the whole point is what can you do different to jumpstart where you are? If you're not getting what you want, I want you to think it think about it. What can I do differently this week so that we can jumpstart and get get things re-engaged and moving the way that we want it to?
And with that, I will see you in our next episode.