On this episode of Seeking Wisdom, DC and DG talk about the power of keeping a beginner’s mindset. Yes, even if you’re an expert. Plus they break down a single tweet that teaches more about marketing and copywriting in two minutes than you can get from reading 30 copywriting books. It’s a gold mine. Seriously. And make sure you listen to the end – DC drops a bombshell about the future of Seeking Wisdom that you don’t want to miss.
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Full Transcript
Dave Gerhardt: All right DC we’re back.
David Cancel: We’re back?
DG: Yeah.
DC: All right I’m here. I sound a little nasally, I got a little congestion …
DG: It’s tough usually the nasal is coming, usually the nasal comes on this side of the podcast.
DC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s true it does. Been traveling a lot but I haven’t been using the antibacterial like the young nephew. So something, I’m disappointed in myself I let weakness enter my body and if I was Draco I would be able to wield this weakness in my body.
DG: Can you recap, recap your travel. You had some secret but the you were on, I saw you. I was not here, I was somewhere else. You were on stage at Adobe Summit, how was that experience?
DC: I was, first I was in it, it was a tale of two worlds. I was at a high end CEO event …
DG: Very, you looked very high end.
DC: Yeah.
DG: I said, “This is not where I stay when I go to San Francisco.”
DC: Half Moon Bay, if you know. Half Moon Bay, lovely place, beautiful. But the only downside of it, beautiful views on the ocean, super almost uncomfortable high end hotel for me. But not fully uncomfortable.
DG: Yeah, you could sleep okay.
DC: Yeah, I slept okay. … but in the middle of nowhere, you know? I have to drive through a mountain pass, I have to go here, one lane here, go this, that, whatever. I was nauseous on the way.
DG: Which, is tough, cause then, you’re like, “I’m gonna get breakfast,” or you know, “I gotta get food,” “I gotta get coffee,” where do you go?
DC: There’s no place. There’s no place. The Starbucks, I had to call an Uber. It cost $17, Uber ride, one way, to go get a Starbucks. That’s how in the middle of nowhere I was. You know how in most hotels, they have a gift shop? This hotel has nothing. You cannot buy anything. I’m like, “I cannot buy,” even if I wanted to, I do not eat them, if I wanted to buy the proverbial Snickers bar, I’d have to spend $20 [crosstalk 00:02:39]
DG: Proverbial Snickers, yeah.
DC: There’s nothing in this hotel, but the reason I mentioned it, it was beautiful, nice. It’s really meant for people who play golf and I don’t play golf.
DG: I saw that.
DC: Oh, yeah. You would have liked this place.
DG: Yeah. Now, I need a couple more years. I’m not ready that.
DC: Then, I jump on a plane, halfway through the week, fly out to Vegas and then, all of a sudden, within a couple hours, I’m in a place where I can buy anything. When I say anything, I mean anything.
DG: Anything.
DC: In this planet. If I want fresh shrimp that has been fished up, netted that day, no joke, you can get it delivered that day. They just got it out of the sea that day and it’s already in Vegas. I don’t know how they get it there.
DG: That’s not even close to the coast.
DC: No.
DG: It’s kinda close.
DC: It’s in the middle of nowhere. They have fresh clams from where I live that had just been caught that day and they fly it out there.
DG: They can get a clam from Essex, Mass. to Vegas in one day?
DC: One day.
DG: However, any flight to Vegas is never … you can never get a flight like that.
DC: No, I don’t know how they do it. It’s magic. I was shell-shocked cause I was like, “I can’t get anything, now I can get everything. It’s 24/7, it’s going, it’s nuts!” … but, I went there for the Adobe Summit [inaudible 00:03:58] 16,000 people got on stage to announce this partnership, deeper partnership, a new product conversation on ABM that we launched with Marketo. People were into it.
DG: You got a lot of comments about your sneakers, I was happy.
DC: I had to wear the Jays.
DG: I didn’t say anything you brought the fours-
DC: Fours with the gold.
DG: Which [crosstalk 00:04:20] you got a lot of comments about that.
DC: Most people said that best part of my talk was my sneakers. I dunno what that says.
DG: You were on stage with Steve Lucas, who is the CEO of Marketo now has some other role at Adobe. Big role. Did he bring your energy up? That guy is an electric speaker.
DC: OH! Electric speaker.
DG: I watched his keynote before I was like “man.” And I could tell he kinda like brought you up a little.
DC: Oh he brought me up. He was just like pumping it up. He was pumping it up so much by the time I got on stage it was amazing. I got to spend a lot of time with him and the Marketo team backstage also got to hang and meet CEO of Adobe. Pretty good, 150 billion in-.
DG: Adobe didn’t mind.
DC: 150 billion in market cap.
DG: They did 9 billion in revenue last year.
DC: Yeah. That’s pretty good.
DG: That’s pretty good. Pretty good. You know what’s funny? Adobe was one of those things where… I think we do a lot of cool stuff but there’re certain companies that we do stuff with or get attached to that the team lights up more.
DC: Ummm (affirmative).
DG: Adobe was one because that’s like everybody –
DC: G2 knows.
DG: Uses Adobe right? Like the whole creative team was like “what? We’re doing some of the Adobe?” Like that was a next, next level.
DC: Yeah, Shantanu who’s the CEO of Adobe, amazing Yoda-like humble man, I think he’s been running that company for 10 years, been there for long time, since 91, amazing humble leader.
DG: Yeah that’s crazy.
DC: Ummm (affirmative)
DG: Alright well I’m glad you’re back, ’cause we can make more shows-
DC: I’m back temporarily, temporarily, I’m heading to Punta Cana.
DG: Oh yeah presidents club.
DC: Yeah, presidents club, we have presidents club here against my will, we have presidents club here at Drift and I have to go to Punta Cana which I have not on my list.
DG: It’s not on your list.[crosstalk 00:06:02] I Think its cool the way we did presidents club though, it’s cool to see people that are not on sales going on a trip-
DC: Yep, yep we flipped it.
DG: And you can tell people are excited, yeah we- [crosstalk 00:06:11]
DC: You think Michelle excited?
DG: We would tell Michelle all week trying-
DC: I can not tell if she is excited or not excited. Sub mistress.
DG: I think she’s really excited, I think she’s going to have a good time.
DC: Yeah, I don’t know can you drink the water? Do I need mosquito shots there, what’s going on?
DG: (laughs) Mosquito shots, [crosstalk 00:06:27] talk to Becky
DG: No? You’ll be okay? Okay.
DG: Alright, so today we’re going to talk about this concept of the beginners mindset okay-
DC: Okay.
DG: And this came up, because of something you actually, you tweeted out, so we put up this new Drift insider lesson, which I wanna talk to you about, a little bit later. We put out this new Drift insider lesson and you tweeted out and then our guy, our friend Lucas Walker, who is @WalkerLucas on twitter, shout out to you Lucas. He said “How many tricks were in this tweet? I can spot 4.” And basically he kind of dissected your tweet and he found 8 marketing lessons inside this tweet.
DC: Yeah was amazing ’cause to back up, I had sent out a tweet and I had basically modified some copy that probably you wrote there, with someone on the [inaudible 00:07:18] but I had added some stuff to it and I tweeted out, us announcing this insider course drift.com/insider and if you’re not on there I’m not sure what you are doing.
DG: By the way speaking of Drift insider, while this [inaudible 00:07:34] is being filmed, we are filming Broll for the next insider video. You’ll see at some point after this we’re gonna take you into the studio and we’re going to show everybody exactly how we make “Seeking Wisdom” we’re take through all the gear everything from pre-production to like how we do this, to all the gear we use, the software editing all the marketing of it, it’s gonna be crazy so if you listen to spykas and you wanna see behind the scenes, that’s gonna be up on Drift insider as a future lesson.
DC: Okay, let’s add one thing to that, [crosstalk 00:08:02]
DG: What is that?
DC: As it is in this video, we will show, one quarter of G2’s face for the first time ever. We don’t want to show the full face because we don’t want him to get his head too big, we show one quarter, okay if he continues to grow we’ll show half, and then one day we’ll reveal the whole face.
DG: It’s like an eclipse.
DC: So you’ll see probably a part of an eye. Okay so look for that in the video. But I did tweet this, back to this tweet, I tweeted this out and Lucas Walker, who we met in Toronto, part of our Toronto army.
DG: Toronto is so deep, we went to 1 trip to Toronto and the rewards from there are just like-
DC: Drift army is strong in Toronto and Indianapolis. Shout out to you Kenny, I know you’re still listening. And so he took my tweet and he was able to do something that I have not seen most marketers in the world not even marketers within our own team be able to do and he was able to break down and take the learning that he’s actually taken from this year’s podcast and apply them, which the hard part and say “here is why I think this tweet worked and what kind of triggers you had in this tweet. He was right on all of them but I guess I’ve been reading this stuff for so long and looking at it that I didn’t realize it wasn’t like I was trying to all of those in there.
DG: No, you probably wrote the tweet on your phone, like walking to get a coffee, ’cause you just like, it’s just his program by now.
DC: Yeah it’s just programed in there, Muscle memory, and then he was able to diagnose it and do you want to through what he [crosstalk 00:09:26].
DG: Yeah so, I wanna talk about that, so he goes, so number 1, so this is the tweet I’ll read it. “I just learned 5 tricks for writing irresistible copy for my friend at (Ryan Deiss) on the latest Drift insider course, if I could only recommend one copy-righting video this is the one, trust me get free access to the video here.” So Lucas goes “number 1 is ‘just’ the word just creates urgency. Number 2 is ‘learn’, learn creates curiosity. Number 3 is ‘irresistible’, that’s a $100 word, I guess that’s a scrabble joke or something like that, but it’s a great word, irresistible. ‘for’, for my friend, it creates trust in virility right? This is my friend Ryan, I’m only giving you the best stuff, I know this is good, cause I know Ryan, Okay. Number 5 ‘insider’, the name Drift insider alone, which is why we named it that, makes it feel exclusive, because it is, this is not [inaudible 00:10:14] available to the world publicly right?
DC: Nope.
DG: Number 6 ‘only one course’ in DC’s tweet he said “if I can recommend only one course”, right, this is when you ever go to a restaurant and the whole menu looks amazing and the waiter says “look I know everything looks good here but trust me get this one.” That is like what DC did in that tweet, you said this, is, trust me I’m gonna pick out the good stuff for you. 7 you said ‘trust me’ right? You said that [crosstalk 00:10:38] from an incredible source right? ’cause if it’s not good, people are gonna come back and tweet at you and give you a hard time about it.
DC: Totally.
DG: And then ‘free’ number 8 the most powerful word he said free, I love that. So that was the dissection of it.
DC: Yep.
DG: Which is pretty, this to me is like every book you fed me over the last couple of years is this tweet.
DC: Yep, these two tweets alone, if you’ve seen the before and then you see the breakdown of this tweet, the tear down of this tweet. That’s all you need to know.
DG: And I don’t want you to be listening to this and be like, “ah these guys are talking about marketing” like if you can unlock this lesson you’ll be a better product manager, you’ll be a better designer, you’ll be a better at sales, ’cause you’ll write better emails. This is the number 1, I literally just did a marketing [inaudible 00:11:22] on this topic before and you and I, you don’t know this but, you’re going yo teach a copy-writing course
DC: WHAT?
DG: 201level, next week.
DC: To a one level?
DG: Yeah the one on one level was free[crosstalk 00:11:31] but I think this is the most under rated skill in all of business.
DC: Totally this works in everything, this works internally in your career, this works obviously if you’re in sales. The only place this doesn’t work, you ready for this, the only place and Davis found this out, DG hasn’t found it out yet [crosstalk 00:11:49] is this does not work with children. ’cause there is no persuasion, ever made- Have you leaned that from Annie yet?
DG: Yes there’s no persuasion, you could say no words- Last night, she was crying, she went to sleep and she woke up crying like-[crosstalk 00:12:06] you go in there, I go in Annie’s like, she’s not talking [inaudible 00:12:09] but she’s just saying words and she keeps pointing at something, I can’t understand what she wants, what she needs, we’re just both going crazy for 2 hours we couldn’t, so non of the persuasion [crosstalk 00:12:19] works on anyone under the age of 11.
DC: No, even my daughter’s 13 none of these words work, there’s not one word here that would, if you’ve found out a word that works, please email me and let me know what word they are.
DG: So to bring this back to like the bigger theme of seeking wisdom. So we post this in our marketing slack channel and Gail says she says “hey this would be a great episode” and on your next tweet was “Most marketers will a career without figuring this out 99% of the marketers that I’ve met in my career, don’t know what Lucas figured out. PS if you believe your in the 1% it’s highly unlikely, good new you can start learning now by watching this video.” So Gail sees that and she says “you guys should do a [inaudible 00:12:58] cast because the ultimate lesson here is where I want you to take us home, is the beginner’s mindset”
DC: Yes and I wrote something for my newsletter I won’t give out the URL, you should know by now, but the –
DG: Reverse marketing.
DC: Yeah reverse marketing, you’re not allowed to learn the URL. Is the what he showed here, was a beginner’s mindset, because most marketers, most sales people, most professionals, although they still help everyone in life, but most professionals would say just read that tweet and not know why it worked. Would just say “oh it’s just a tweet, lemme check out the video” whatever, they didn’t stop at this beginner’s mindset and say “why’s he saying these words?” What works about what he’s saying, is there something I can learn from the message that he’s posting. Almost everyone would skip that over and the more experience, so here’s the trap, so the more experience you have, the more likely you are to ignore this. So that’s why you have to have the beginner’s mindset. I think it’s the most powerful thing ever.
DG: Well I think that unlocks a different thing, if you have the beginner’s mindset, you might be standing in line at the grocery store looking at a rack of magazines and find the National Enquirer which everybody saw that as trash, but you might have, wait why did they put that – [crosstalk 00:14:11] Why does it work? Why does it work? Right? I also heard something, I was listening to something today and they talked about any like, ancient Chinese, Japanese, you know Martial Arts. The process of bowing to your opponent, do you know why you bow to your opponent? Because they’re going to teach you something, so you’re bowing to them in honor of like “hey I’m bowing to you because, you’re about to help me get better. Whether I win or lose”[crosstalk 00:14:36] Whether I win I’m gonna wonder why I won. If I losT I know where I need to get better. I think the beginners mindset incompetence all that and it’s also why we talk about feedback right? I think that is the key to feed is, when you can accept, when you can learn it, you realize like, I’ll be honest like has it been easy to get all this feedback over the last 3 and a half years? Hell no, but am I a 100 times better at marketing than I was 3 and a half years ago? My god yes.
DC: Minimum. So that, you just made me think of something. G2 often tells me that he’s writing a book called the “Anticipating feedback” which is a autobiography that tells of his time with me, because he deals so much feedback. I will humbly request that in the inside cover of that book, when you write it, you have exactly what DG just told us and have a picture of a Martial Artist bowing yourself, that’s a picture of you. I actually don’t want a picture, I want G2 in a Kimono, Karate Kimono, bowing to this and say “DC thank you for these lessons I’m about to learn.” That is the feedback prayer.
DG: Okay can we wrap up?
DC: Let’s wrap up.
DG: I’m about to drop a bomb on Seeking Wisdom.
DC: You’re gonna drop the bomb?
DG: I was going to tell you a story but I will save it for later. I wanna do, I think we should hold podcast on uncle Jerry, that’s important.
DC: Oh okay, save that, that’s too much gold there. But what I’m about to say, might effect that, I’m about to drop a bomb here. Are you ready?
DC: No I have not talked to anyone here before hand, perusal[inaudible 00:16:10]. I woke up last night in the middle of the night and I had a thought, okay people, get ready I hope you’re not swerving in traffic, I hope you are at a stop light right now.
DC: Here it is Anticipated feedback. I believe that seeking wisdom over.
DG: It’s over?
DC: It’s over.
DG: Oh wow. What have you seen?
DC: I think 201 is our last episode.
DG: Woooooow. We might have to talk about this, but I like it. Okay go ahead
DC: And the reason I think that is, because I think we’ve graduated to the next level, and I think we’re putting, we have now have a network of shows that we have out there, that we’re putting our focus in on and we’re putting, we think the next level is video and we are moving most of our teachings to Drift insider and so if you wanna learn the next lessons, they’re all gonna be on Drift insider, that’s where we’re gonna put the highest quality content and, but we will continue the other individual show podcast, it’s super important they go into deep functional areas, but they will be all augmented by insider, that’s the bomb I’m dropping this might be the last episode you’ll hear Seeking Wisdom.
DG: I love the bomb cause I actually think, this is gonna allow us to say more than we’ve been able to say.
DC: Hmm-hmm (affirmative) and I think we go in deeper, go deeper than we’ve been able to do by adding video so that’s the bomb I woke up middle in the night thinking that I’m sharing with all of you today, DG does not know any of this. G2 certainly does not know anyone, this is the first time ever you’re hearing it here this might be the end of Seeking Wisdom. It wasn’t because I didn’t get enough 6 star reviews that might have something to do with it. You know the influences, it hurts. I’m only a man. It’s true La Croix didn’t sponsor, it failed us, repeatedly, it wasn’t because of all those things, although they hurt a little because I am, you know I am just a man
DG: Alright, so maybe we’ll see you soon, maybe not.
DC: anyway leave a 6 star review, hit us up Drift.com/insider, whether or not we come back or not, that is where the best content that we are producing by far is gonna go. So it’s a free account, sign up free.
DG: I’ve got a message from somebody today that said “hey just watched we only watched one, there’s 5 videos in there right now,” they said “this is like getting an MBA.”
DC: Yeah and that’s what you want, so we’ve always wanted to share the stuff that we are learning and this is a good format I love podcast, but since, you know, since we basically invented B2B podcasting-
DG: We did.
DC: You know everyone’s got a podcast now.
DG: I hope somebody tweets you on that, and tries to say we didn’t, ’cause I think we changed the game.
DC: That and we changed the game and that’s actually a line from, if you can tell me where that line is, it’s from a famous podcast from like 12 years ago. If you could tell me where that line is from, you win a prize.
DG: This is from Nick Wilkinson, shout out to you Nick, the Drift insider content is very well done, it feels like I’m getting an MBA level education every episode, blog, podcasts and social media are now the first touch connections when it comes to community building, things like Drift insider are the new way to capture raving fans and turn them into raving customers, respect.
DC: Nice, I love it, so we are you know, since we started this game, everyone’s B2B podcast now, now it’s time to take it to the next level and we wanna bring you the community with us and we wanna share everything we are learning even at a deeper level and we wanna keep G2 very busy.
DG: Love it.
DC: Alright see ya.
DG: Take care, see ya.
