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You, Meth-Heads & Pink Envelopes.
What do these things all have to do with each other?
Well, we’re going to cover that today.
Hi, I’m Brian Pombo welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live. Coming to you live everyday. Today we are back at the head quarters for brianjpombo.com. We’re here in Grants Pass, Oregon.
So wanted to tell you a quick story and a really interesting marketing tactic that is based on principles of human psychology and go through that in a second. It all starts back, Oh, probably 15 years ago.
I was working for the government down in California State government. So working for the state assembly at the time, which is in the legislature. And it was just a short period of time that I’ve found myself working in the government, which I recommend for everyone to try out just for the education. But regardless, we’ll get into those stories another time.
But this specific story, I believe it was some form of class being put on for government employees by, I believe it was the state highway patrol. Which is in California, it’s called the CHP, the California highway patrol.
They were putting on a class all about, identity theft, which at the time was, was kind of a really hot buzzword that had started coming out. It was becoming something that was being much more widely talked about, especially with the internet, that had just started firing up and getting popular and everything.
So everyone was really freaked out about it.
Identity theft and what’s it all means and where’s it all, you know, how do you prevent it?
I learned some things there that I haven’t heard often enough and I’m not sure if it’s all still true, but at the time they were saying that across the board, that the highest amount of people doing identity theft, at least in California at the time, were drug dealers of some sort.
They were the ones taking part in an identity theft.
So what they do is they would grab either mail straight out of somebody’s mailbox. I mean, they honestly would grab shredded documents from the trash of businesses and so forth. Shredded documents.
They’d take it back and these guys were so strung out on meth that they needed something to do and they need somewhere to put all this energy. And they said they’ve gone into these places and found it time and time again where they had someone sitting there and placing the shredded papers back together and taping them back together piece by piece.
Now this was before cross shredded shredders were as common, but that was one of the things they were recommending and said they’re not going to do that with it’s cross shred. It’s just too much.
But if it’s just a big long piece that they could take that and put it together and all they’re looking for is an address, an address and a name that they can tie together.
If they can intercept that mail, then they can create an identity or they can use the identity that’s already tied with that mailing address.
So how does this all tie together?
Well, I learned back then and that from that point on I started cross shredding all my mail. Especially the envelopes that have the information on the outside with your name and your address and that, which is a funny thing.
I never would have thought it would have been necessary, but for some reason that it really was a huge way that they were at least at the time stealing identities. The other thing I did was I went out, I lived out in the country at the time and I’ve got a locking mailbox.
Well, fast forward it years later I didn’t have a locking mailbox at my last address. We’re actually going to be putting one in here at the new address. But the old address, we didn’t have one and I was friends with somebody that ran a private mailbox in town.
So we started getting all of our stuff at this private mailbox. And to this day, I still get a whole lot of my business work and everything through this private mailbox.
It really does cut down on the identity theft, because she’s very careful about the people she hires and everything else.
So I haven’t had an issue with identity theft since having all my mail go there. Not that they can’t get it somewhere else online or otherwise.
So how’s this all tie into business and everything else?
I’m getting there. I’m getting there.
One of the things that happens is if they we’re out of town and didn’t to the mailbox often enough that things start piling up. So I ended up with two of these letters and I’ll show you, I’ll show you the other side so you can’t see my address.
But you got these two envelopes that were bright pink and they had the same address on them, but they had the same return address on them, but there were two different dates.
Well, I’m like, what is it?
And I looked at who sent it. These were sent by Michael Senoff.
Michael Senoff is a fellow that I’ve mentioned previously. He runs HardToFindSeminars.com you can check out any of his stuff. He’s a famous interviewer, interviewed tons of marketing people and business people and all of these different issues that he has an interest in.
He’s gone out, interviewed these people, and then produce products based on this wide range of interviews, you know, 400, 500 interviews plus or however many he’s had through the years.
He’s had the website up since, 2002 I think, and fabulous material.
I definitely recommended anything you get from Michael Senoff, but I open these envelopes and they’re empty.
Why do I have two empty envelopes from two different dates?
Well, it turns out that I had purchased two separate things from him and these are were sent automatically, so I send an email out to them.
I say, what’s the deal with the empty pink envelopes?
What’s going on here?
And he comes back with a form letter that you could tell that it was a link. It was an email that was to a link. You go to this website and it says, Oh, obviously you’ve gotten my empty pink envelopes.
Let me tell you what it’s all about. I ended up with a bunch of these envelopes that I needed to get rid of and I figured what better than to just send them out to people that I’ve already done business with.
Now, he has all digital products.
Let me just say this part, he has all digital products.
How did he end up with my email address?
While he does all of his work through PayPal.
So if you purchase anything through PayPal and they’d give you access to the addresses of everybody that you’re doing business with.
So that’s where he got my address, my business address.
So he said, if you’ve received one of these and you asked about it, I’m going to give you a special offer specifically for people that asked about the empty envelopes. Now I could have let this go and just seen it as a flub.
And I imagine a lot of people do, or I say, oh, that’s interesting.
I wonder what that’s about and forget about it and never go back to it, but I had to know. I send them, I said, I got to know what this is about because I knew there was a reason behind it.
I won’t end up with two separate ones.
So it was a sale. It was a specific sale.
Now what’s the point of all this?
It’s a tactic for one thing. It’s a tactic. It’s a way to get your audience, your customer base to respond. The more you respond, the more you can intrigue them, the more you tie them in and you make them a part of your family.
It’s a very simple concept, but it’s all about demanding action. That’s a huge lesson that I get from these is demanding action.
Now there’s another thing that you get out of it, and that’s the concept that we’ve talked about in, How to Amazon Proof Your Business.
You know in that string of videos, you’d go watch those or read my upcoming book on it.
But it’s that concept of being different, just showing up in a different way, doing something completely absurd, completely different standing out. This is standing out. Simple, simple, simple. I mean, it’s nothing but a simple forever stamp on there. It’s nothing major.
This didn’t cost that much to send out, but it draws you in and it demands action.
Now most of the people, I guarantee you, most of the people that get these, nothing ever happens with them, but the people that do are tied in even closer to him and what he provides than anything else and was a great deal he offered to, it really was, I jumped on it.
I jumped on it, I did. I took advantage of it. I’m happy. I did already.
The material that he has is so good, but that’s a tactic.
It’s a simple tactic, but if you understand the psychology behind it, it’s huge and if you take something like that and do it at just the right time with your customer base, you’re going to draw them in and make a huge difference.
Make a big splash.
That’s all I got for today. Hey, you have a great night. Get out there and let the magic happen.