Memorable Messaging and Portable Stories with Clay Hebert

In This Episode

• • [01:52] – Stephan introduces Clay Hebert, a marketing strategist and master storyteller who has contributed to raising over $100 million across 2,000+ crowdfunding projects. Clay recounts his origin story and journey into the marketing industry.
  • [06:15] – Clay and Stephan delve into the art of strategic naming and branding, citing examples such as Lululemon.
  • [11:38] – Clay outlines strategies for purchasing domains, including tips on leveraging brokers.
  • [20:31] – Clay and Stephan explore AI tools designed for generating creative ideas.
  • [32:00] – Clay underscores the importance of effective messaging in marketing.
  • [37:54] – Clay reflects on his shift from offering definitive answers to posing thought-provoking questions, influenced by Seth Godin.
  • [42:38] – Clay highlights Portable Stories as a powerful sales tool, sharing examples that have achieved remarkable success.
  • [49:36] – Clay concludes by offering ways to learn more about his work and gain further insights into his wisdom and expertise.

Jump to Links and Resources

Clay, it’s so great to have you on the show.

I’m super, super excited to be here. Thanks, Stephan.

Yeah. So I would love to start with your origin story of how you got into this marketing world because you didn’t just wake up one day as a little kid and say, “I want to work at Accenture,” when everyone else in the classroom is saying, “I want to be a fireman, and I want to be a policeman. I want to be a consultant for Accenture.” So, how did you end up where you ended up?

Yeah, for sure. The earliest memory I can remember of anything to do with what you and I do in the marketing world is when I was young. I was selling those fundraiser candy bars for the elementary school, and I would drag them up to the local grocery store, which now, looking back, I don’t think parents would let their kids do what I did. I think I crossed eight highway lanes, soggy moon boots in Wisconsin, and the slippery snow. I grew up in Wisconsin.  In the winter, I would slug all the boxes of candy bars up there, and it was pretty slow going. I don’t think I had a very good sales pitch. Then, the product and the pricing inside were much better than I was.

I was selling overpriced candy bars outside. But after doing it, after struggling and not selling too many for the first four or five days, I realized that the same people bought over and over. So it wasn’t my pitch, scarf, or anything else. These people were maybe a flicker of the first kind of insight about marketing and humans, but it wasn’t that I had the best product, the offer or the price. It was the right person. And then I did something.

It’s not that I had the best product, the offer or the price. It was the right person.

My first marketing lesson, which was sort of an unethical marketing thing, was only hours later. I went home and got a bunch of clothes for my older brother and found another sort of outfit or costume to change into. Once, many people bought a candy bar and went into the grocery store. I put on my brother’s clothes, ran to the exit on the other side of the store, and sold candy bars to the same people leaving the store if I realized they were the people. So that was the first lesson of figuring out how to double my sales by wrapping myself in a different costume and selling candy bars to the same people. But, yeah, I’ve always loved humans.

I’m good at fishing these days.

Yes, exactly. Fishing in Wisconsin, too. I grew up ice fishing. I’ve always been fascinated by it. I don’t know if it started from that story, but humans and why we do what we do and our choices. When I started at Accenture, Accenture was sort of a reason to. I hadn’t decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. Consulting after business school seemed like a good way to kick the can down the road and not make a decision. In the recruiting for Accenture, they sort of promise you, “Oh, you don’t have to commit. We have industries, healthcare, government, and finance. You can jump around.”

That sounded pretty good to me because I wasn’t sure which industry I wanted to stick with. I realized that’s only true if you’re not very good at what you do because then that partner doesn’t want to work with you, and he kicks you into the next industry. But if you’re any good, that partner wants to keep you, whatever industry. And then. So I ended up staying in healthcare for the whole 10 years I was at Accenture, but it was a great place to begin a career, learn how to serve clients, create deliverables and travel.

And do wear a suit.

Wear a suit, yep. When I started, it was still Anderson Consulting. It was a couple of years before the whole Enron Arthur Anderson split. What was interesting was that when that was going on, the consulting partners were in a sort of big lawsuit, with the accounting partners wanting more profits because they were first. The consulting partners wanted more profits because consulting was more profitable.

If you think about naming things, think about how long it will be around and how much patience you have to build a brand.

Basically, the judge ruled, “Okay, you can split, but you have to change your name from Anderson Consulting.” And we were all kind of sad, like, “Oh, we’re going to lose this legacy brand name that’s so valuable.” And then the Enron stuff hit, and we were all like, “Never heard of him.” You know, I am happy to change the name at that point.

Accenture is a pretty good name. Some of these dot-com names were absolutely stupid. One I remember is Accompany. Can you imagine getting a sales call? Hi, this is Joe Smith at Accompany. Okay, which company? Accompany.

Oh my gosh. People really don’t think through this stuff. Yeah, you and I are both kind of naming geeks. Naming is interesting because you can name a company that will help you more on day one. So, if I were doing SEO consulting in Austin, Texas, I would call myself austinseoconsultants.com, and the name explains what you do, which is slightly helpful on day one. But very quickly, it becomes very limiting if I ever want to broaden past Austin or past SEO. So I always tell people, if you think about Amazon, brilliant or great name because Jeff knew he was building a 30, 40, 50-year company. Before Bezos, the Amazon was a river or a tribe of people. But it’s phonetic, and it only has a few syllables.

And now, of course, that’s what people think about. But if you think of Lululemon, that sounds like a girl’s fruit stand or something on day one. But now, when you say Lululemon, everyone thinks of the Athleisure brand. Right. So when people are thinking about naming things, I think it’s worthwhile to think about how long it will be around and how much patience I have to build a brand around it. And if so, you can go a little less on the nose.

Yeah, I’ve named some companies for clients and named some podcasts and come up with book titles and things like that. One of my go-to resources for doing this, or has been for years, even before ChatGPT, has been these big domain marketplaces like Sedo, hugedomains.com, buydomains.com and Afternic putting in the keyword or the topic and then seeing what comes back as far as available domains, Aftermarket domains to purchase because everything good is already taken. So don’t try to get a $10 domain because that won’t happen. If you’re willing to spend $3000- $5,000, something like that, then you have a lot of opportunity and potential for names that are pretty darn cool. One name I came up with for a client who was selling self-installed home security systems, and the brand that I came up with was Sky Cover. That’s pretty cool, right?

I like that. That’s really good.

Skycover.com and came up with a podcast name for him as well. Safe House. It’s kind of a play on words because Safe House is like a CIA spy haven or whatever, and it kind of infiltrates the enemy and puts up a safe house. But you also want to have a safe house in which you live.

So yeah, you really hit it with those. That’s kind of the holy grail of branding, which is something that’s sort of that Goldilocks level of a little bit descriptive and not super on the nose but also very flexible and memorable and not too many words or syllables. That’s really great. That’s a very smart tactic to start with the domain aftermarkets and kind of back into something. I’m going to have to add that to my arsenal. That’s a really smart way to do it because you usually spend some cycles on possible good names, and then, of course, you go search, and something may be taken. So yeah, that’s a smart way to back into it.

Portable stories are simple, memorable, powerful, and sometimes contrarian narratives that facilitate word of mouth. Share on X

Yeah. Some of these tools allow you to filter and say, “I only want to check.com; I’m not interested in .info or .biz.” Some tools will allow you to force the keyword to be at the beginning or at the end. So you could say, “Well, I want something that starts with the word sky.” And then something like huge domains will support that capability.

Oh, nice, that’s cool. I’ll have to try that. That’ll probably save me some cycles. And yeah, I think it’s fun when you can. I made a list of the different ways you can combine two words. Blue Origin, which is a great name for what he’s doing. But nobody’s ever combined blue and origin in that way. But once you hear it, it kind of just rolls off the tongue, and it makes sense.

Once you build the brand, it becomes pretty memorable. Or even like SpaceX, it’s like a word and then a letter. There are so many other things you can do there. So, I think naming it is tricky, and not many people are great at it, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. But, like a lot of things in marketing, it requires taste. I feel like it’s one of those things that would be hard to teach you to choose a good name. You could teach the tools and the SEO domain tricks and maybe teach people examples, but it’s a little bit like copywriting, where there’s no shortcut to knowing what a great name is. That land is kind of in that realm of having a taste, which takes some time. 

And sometimes you’re not going to be able to get the domain, or maybe it’s years or even decades later, and you finally get it. And that was just a big bonus. My book, The Art of SEO, was published by O’Reilly because it had a whole art series like The Art of Project Management. I love The Art of War by Sun Tzu and gravitated towards this new title, which started as the SEO Cookbook. It’s just Rand Fishkin and me writing it, and then we partnered with a couple more authors, and the title became The Art of SEO. I didn’t manage to get artofseo.com for 15 years. Or 10. Yeah, 12 to 15 years after the first edition came out of The Art of SEO. I mean, the fourth edition just came out last year, but that was a nice little win, and it was, I think, 500 bucks, maybe 600 I paid for that.

Oh, you got it cheap. Especially years later. And someone selling a domain understands SEO, right? Domain World is kind of right next to SEO World, so I’m surprised. That’s great. That’s a big one.

A lot of people own domains that they just have a portfolio for, and they know it’s just going to sit there for another 10 years and probably not sell. Maybe they sell 10% of their inventory over 10 years. That leaves 90% of those just sitting there and paying $15 a year for it. I recommend to you and our listeners that if you are looking to buy aftermarket domains, you just use a broker and not try to fake out the buyer, I mean the seller, by using a random Gmail address or whatever. Don’t try to play games while hiding your identity. Just use a broker.

Okay.

You can be completely bored, and you’re dealing with a broker, and the broker keeps your confidentiality. They also know all this inside information because they have access to domain tools. And if it’s like an afternoon broker, I use this guy, Bryson Krueger, at Afternic.

So they’re a good one. Afternic is a good one.

Yeah, it’s owned by GoDaddy now. For any GoDaddy domain, he has super intel on who the owner is, even if it’s super private information, and then he can knock on the door of that owner. Another broker may not be able to get that information because he’s a GoDaddy employee, and it’s a GoDaddy domain. So that’s my go-to.

Oh, that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that. That is a question I had because in the world of domain brokers, it’s not maybe as bad as some industries, but it seemed like it was one of those sorts of potentially shady. How do you choose a good broker and give these people money, escrow, or whatever? But it makes sense that, I mean, Afternic has built a great brand name, and I didn’t know GoDaddy owned them. That’s a really smart trick. Are there other domain marketplaces with brokers underneath them? Like Afternic is inside of GoDaddy.

You can use Afternic. As I said, Bryson is the guy I use at Afternic Godaddy. And it doesn’t matter who the owner is; it doesn’t matter what marketplace it’s being sold on. If you want to, just cut out the broker and buy directly. If it’s got a buy-now price on hugedomains.com or Sedo or something, you can just go ahead and do that if you don’t want to mess around trying to get the price down. You’ll probably pay 20% to the broker for his fees, so it might be a wash by the end. You’re not likely to get much off by negotiating with a domain listed on Buy Domains or Huge Domains. Probably 10% is, at best, what you’ll get off.

I guess it’s worth an email to get 10% off if it’s a $5,000 domain, but you can just buy it.

Like you said, if  Afternic or if they’re inside GoDaddy, the transfer once you do get it is a lot cleaner once you technically take care of all that. So certainly.

Yeah.  But it’s handled really seamlessly if you’re buying it directly. For example, you won’t get snookered using a reputable marketplace. You’ll probably use their escrow, right? Whatever they’re using for escrow, if it’s escrow.com or their own company, they’re not going to screw over their customer base. So they’ll hold the money, get ownership of the domain, and then transfer it to you as soon as you’ve put the money in their account, and then they put the money into the seller’s account, and everybody’s happy.

I’m learning a lot.

I’m supposed to be interviewing you, not the great.

You know, all the tricks and tools. It’s always helpful to get the right domains for the company and, ideally, the matching social handles and things like that. I might have to use their tricks on a new project I’m working on, so that’s great. Thank you.

Yeah, you bet. So, let’s talk about how to come up with a tagline or a value proposition positioned for a homepage. I know you’ve got the “verb your noun.” What is that framework? I guess I love that idea. I’ve told a number of people about it and always credited you whenever I tell people about “verb your noun.” So, do you want to share a bit about how to come up with a compelling and emotionally relatable tagline slash value prop?

Yeah, absolutely. The “verb your noun,” which you’re referencing, is a simple framework I came up with. It’s actually the end. The last piece is when I teach the perfect intro, I teach people how to better answer the questions. So what do you do? And the framework for that is I help people. The last part is to achieve a result. However, I realized that if you can frame the last part, you can achieve a result using this framework. Verb their noun, so when I used to do stuff with Kickstarter and Indiegogo and help people raise money on those platforms, I would say I help entrepreneurs fund their dreams.

And so the “verb your noun” just changes. You just change the there to yours; it’s a great headline. We talked about naming; I don’t think you could sell someone a short naming course and have them be really good like you and I are at naming books, podcasts, companies, etc. There’s a bit of art and a bit of science. Similarly, with copy, you can’t take somebody in 30 minutes and make them a 10-year Don Draper copywriter. But what I found is most people’s website headlines or names of their courses or books or things like that.

The magic of the “verb you noun” makes it about the customer instead of making it about yourself. So when I was doing the crowdfunding stuff, I could have said I’m a Kickstarter expert or an Indiegogo guru, but that makes it about me. And that’s as we know in the world of copy and marketing, it’s bad. You want to make it about your customer. So, the word you automatically make about your customers because you’re talking about them. 

The magic of the ‘verb your noun’ makes it about the customer instead of making it about yourself.

The magic of verbs and nouns is that they allow you to do what is most great, like marketing courses, books, or whatever. Who’s your customer, and what are they struggling with? These are the fundamentals of a lot of great marketing, right? “Verb your noun” is just a sort of blending value prop or copy headline with what your customer is struggling with. So, to stick with the Kickstarter crowdfunding example, when I would say fund your dream, the dream sort of did double duty because I would talk to some people who were trying to fund a film, others who were trying to fund a drone, others who were trying to fund a widget or a hoodie or whatever.

But when I said dream in their mind, they’re like, “Oh, Clay gets me. He knows I’m trying to fund my dream.” But dreaming is this kind of all-encompassing thing. So, to them, it was their dream. One guy was a Hoodie, and the other guy was a drone. The fund is what they wanted. So a lesson for your listeners is whatever your website headline is or, particularly or maybe, your online course name, what the noun that your customer wants is verbed. And then what is that verb? So, in this case, they had a dream, and they want it funded, and then you just stick the word you’re in between it.

So, fund your dream. Now, you can use other adjectives and modifiers. So, let’s take an example, like a personal trainer, right? What do people want when they work with a personal trainer? It could be many things, but let’s say that maybe results. 

Results. 

Right, results. But every personal trainer is going to say something about results. So let’s say it’s working with men or athletes wanting to have a six-pack. So it could be six-pack, and then use the word “your.”

What’s the verb to do the six-pack? It could be built, but most people have a six-pack underneath all the other stuff. So it could unlock your six-pack or reveal your six-pack or something like that. And the nice thing about verbs is that your noun is to reveal your six-pack might not be the top level. Maybe you come up with that, and you’re like, “Man, that’s pretty good.” But that’s kind of like module 3 or 4; “verb your noun” can be down your page and maybe reveal your six-pack as the seventh step in your training process or program. At the top, it might be to build your best body, reveal or unlock your health, or build something, and then you can model and realize again.

Realize, develop. And, like your handy tools that you mentioned, there are great websites that if you just say, “Show me all verbs that begin with B,” if you want to be alliterative, if it’s like “build your body” because that’s nice and alliterative with the letter B, you can quickly lookup a list of a thousand verbs that begin with the letter B and see what might work. You can’t turn people into copyrights.

ChatGPT and Claude are really good at this sort of stuff, too.

Yeah. I think, as you and I know, it’s all about how well you prompt them and how you have a taste for knowing if the result is good. I will say I’ve seen more bad copies come out of ChatGPT and Claude, but then I have a good copy, as I don’t think Don Draper should be too worried about the AI stuff. I think it’s a great thought partner. I think it’s great to try things, and like you said, “Use verbs that begin with B.” It’s a great tool, but a super sharp samurai sword doesn’t make anyone a sushi chef. I don’t think ChatGPT makes anyone a copywriter. But if you know what to do, if you’re already a great sushi chef or you’re sort of trained, I think it’s a great thought partner.

But I’ve seen many people actually see a presentation at the Mastermind that you and I met at, where they basically said you could fire your marketing team. They were just doing a live prompt to throw me anything, and I’ll jam it into ChatGPT. I wasn’t very impressed with the answers, nor was Dan Sullivan. So in the afternoon, by the time it came to give my talk, I sort of gave the counterpoint of what AI is not good at yet and showed some counter-examples of just jamming into Claude or ChatGPT. So, I love the tools. I’m not anti-AI, but I think if someone didn’t know how to craft messaging beforehand, the tools might not get them there, either.

Yeah, it is a great thought partner and can help you unstuck. If you’re trying to come up with some alliteration and can’t figure out the right synonym that makes it work, then you can explain in a prompt: I want alliteration in this tagline, and I’m stuck with this. And this is the emotion I’m trying to convey. This is the best keyword I can come up with, and it’s not starting with the correct letter. Help me out here. And you’d be surprised. 

Even if ChatGPT doesn’t give you the right answer, it could be that Claude has the right answer for you. I was just using it a couple of hours ago with my wife, and ChatGPT gave her a lousy set of suggestions, saying she’s going to self-publish something, and we need an imprint name. So, let’s come up with a cool imprint name that’s not already taken. And Claude ended up being a great partner for that. There were three really great suggestions. We’re going to pick one of them. But all three were quality, and the ChatGPT output was just ‘meh,’ yeah.

Contrarian messaging can make your story stand out and encourage discourse and sharing. Share on X

That’s great. And I’m thrilled to hear that. I prefer Claude and Perplexity. Seeing how quickly these things come out and get spun up in these different models is fascinating. Right? And there are different tools for it seems like it came on the scene even faster than, I mean, you’re the OG SEO guy, and you’ve seen all the tools and the evolution of the space over the years, but it feels like AI, it’s much more accelerated with better tools, faster tools, and going from like you said, ChatGPT evolving to Claude and Perplexity for different things. But having that taste, when you guys search for an imprint name, what does a good name sound like? You’ve got kind of that taste. But it’s so good.

Yeah, you’re right. It’s such a good brainstorming partner if you’re stuck in the beginning or need to outline things in frameworks. I think it’s kind of like when I think Canva came along. What, 2011 or so? And so Canva has been around for 12, 13, 14 years, and there’s still horrendous graphic design everywhere. Right? Canva is not a replacement for a really high-end designer, but it should take you from horrendous to not terrible or pretty good. Right?

But just because a tool exists, people aren’t necessarily patient or don’t have the taste. But I think with these AI tools, it should almost be mandatory to teach younger people prompt engineering or how to think about the stuff or how to prompt it. Because, as you said, I don’t know if there’s any other tool that is, I suppose, anything with code. Right?

When you’re trying to change the world, your messaging matters so much.

If you have a semicolon in the wrong place, the whole thing doesn’t work. But the difference between a mediocre prompt output and the output you can get with a great prompt is that a great prompt might just be two or three more sentences, right?

If you’re trying to do things like marketing, messaging, and advertising, like we’re talking about, you can tell it who to act like. You can say, imagine you are Don Draper from the movie Mad Men. And you know how to spend a few more minutes crafting the persona of who the AI should act, talk, and be like. I think it’s fun to tinker with, too, because you can say, “Write me a joke about blueberries and the voice of Bill Burr.” And it actually does a pretty decent job of that. It may not be the funniest joke in the world, but it will be about blueberries in the voice of Bill Burr, and then you can kind of refine it from there.

Yeah, I hear you. I don’t think it’s necessary.

As much as I would have agreed with you maybe six months ago on that, I would say now I’d argue with you that you don’t even need to have a good prompt. It used to be, you know, the adage of garbage in and garbage out from the programmer days that would apply to prompting, but they’re so forgiving now. My prompt took about 10 seconds to write the one where I asked for imprint names for this book series and gave it a few keywords. I said, “Use this, this, this, and this as potential themes,” and it gave me ten bulleted options. It’s in concise mode because the Claude infrastructure is overloaded with queries right now, so just give me short responses. But three out of the ten were really good.

That’s great. 

It was not. I didn’t have the top and tail and all that sort of specialty stuff for the prompt engineering. It was just like a quick stream of consciousness: Here’s what I needed: 15 words or something, and boom.

A lot of people trying to do good work need help to give their work wings.

That’s super impressive. I have a question for you. One of the startups I’m working on is a pickleball startup here in Austin that has to do with cameras, videos, and replays, and the office that I lease has a pickleball court attached to it. We also built a tiny framer website, which is good enough for renting out event space.

We have a couple of folks who rented it for a different board meeting and a birthday party. I asked one of the guys at the board meeting, “How did you find us?” He said, “Oh, I typed into ChatGPT, where’s a pickleball venue in Austin?” And so I realized, I mean, I kind of knew it existed before, but I know basically zero about it. Teach me about the SEO of ChatGPT or how we show perplexity in these tools. I think I’ve seen one SaaS startup that’s focusing specifically on this, but what’s the SEO Godfather’s opinion on what to do to show up in these tools?

Here we go. You turn the tables on me again. Some of the tried and true best practices of SEO apply to any search engine, including ChatGPT and SearchGPT. So you have to have good keyword-rich, relevant, and engaging titles. Even if that basic thing is often an afterthought or is not even considered, you have a good title tag on your homepage. Keynote speaker, marketing strategist, and storyteller Clay Hebert. But how many other people are doing the antithesis of the SEO homepage? Or just Clay Hebert? And that’s it. That’s pretty typical.

And so getting the basics right of thinking about how am I going to show up in a search, or if somebody’s going to if it’s an LLM or it’s a search engine that’s going to excerpt something from my page, such as a title, such as a meta description, is it going to read well? Is it going to create a curiosity gap? Is it going to promise a value proposition, or what? So that’s pretty basic, but if you also make sure that your pages are search engine optimized and friendly to spiders and crawlers, some mistakes are made there quite frequently. And if it’s unfriendly to Googlebot, it’s going to be unfriendly to OpenAI’s bot, too. 

Then, some people actually block the AI bots because they’re concerned that their content is going to be used for training data, and it’s like it’s a violation of their IP rights or something. Well, they just need to get over that because that’s been happening for years with Google and Bing, and they didn’t raise a fuss about Google and Bing using that information. So why is there a big difference now with whatever, you know, OpenAI or Anthropic? Just get over it. It’s pretty basic at this point. There are no specialized secrets to becoming a recommendation from Claude or from ChatGPT. It’s just kind of tried and true best practices for SEO at this point.

That’s good to know. I didn’t realize it was basically the same playbook and a lot of the stuff you’ve taught over the years, 

Google’s actually more advanced at extracting information out of the page, like HTML, using structured data markup and understanding relationships between keywords, because they pioneered this whole thing of structured data markup and creating a whole knowledge graph of connections between all these different entity types and everything. So Google probably has a leg up in terms of search. Certainly, they have a leg up in search. But I would be concerned if I were Google about Anthropic and about OpenAI. I think if they’re complacent, those companies are going to eat their lunch. Yeah, no, I think going to eat Google’s lunch. Yeah, it’s a fun time to be alive. It’s definitely interesting.

In today's digital age, offline word of mouth remains crucial and often overlooked in favor of more modern strategies. Share on X

It’s fascinating to see how fast all these things are being built and how fast you can build on these models. I have one client who wants to build an internal LLM. They do legal work and are kind of high, not necessarily high profile, but complex financial litigation. And they’re only on the plaintiff side, but they want to build, load it with a bunch of internal data that they have access to, and basically make it a thought partner that says, here’s the case, here’s what we do know. I will use everything we’ve done for the last 15 years, including the judges in that jurisdiction and state, the judge’s prior things, and give me an idea of what it could be like.

So you shared a really cool “verb your noun” from your Kickstarter days: “Fund Your Dream.”

Yeah.

On your current homepage on clayhebert.com, you have “Unlock your perfect story.” That’s a good one, too. On my agency website, my SEO agency website, netconcepts.com, I have “Amplify Your Mission and Message.”

Oh, nice.

If you’re willing to polarize and be hated, the more impact you’ll have.

I want to work with mission-driven change makers who are lighting up the world and not just making more widgets. I used to be really into getting the big brands as clients. I had Chanel, Sony, Zappos, and Volvo as clients, and then I finally realized that was my ego. It’s just like, what am I doing? So now I’m very particular about who I work with. That they make the world a better place.

That’s great. Yeah. I think that’s where messaging matters so much. When you are trying to change the world, do your part and have a purpose. I think that’s why the work you and I do is important. Because most people trying to do that do good work, they’re doing good work. But to give the work wings, whether it’s through SEO or messaging or whatever, to get it. I don’t love the phrase people always say. I just need to get the word out.

And I’m like, what’s the word? And who are we getting it out to? Like, let’s be really specific. About one thing I’ve started to do with clients is there’s this great older video. It’s less than a minute long, but it’s from this guy named Bill Simmons. He used to be a beat writer in the Boston sports scene a long time ago. And he’s kind of grown up. Then, he worked for ESPN and launched a Whole site called Grantland, which was a big, medium publication kind of thing. And just a very back in the day when I suppose they still do the regular AM radio shock jocks and the sports guys, the Monday-morning quarterback kind of AM radio type of guys, or the newspapers used to just recap the game. And it was the same thing over and over.

It’s just whatever market you were in. And he would bring a whole different thing. He would talk about how Tom Brady parallels his career to Taylor Swift, or he would bring in pop culture all these things. So he had a show on HBO called Any Given Wednesday. And there’s a trailer on YouTube. It was the less than one-minute trailer for this Any Given Wednesday HBO show. But it was basically, “Hi, I’m Bill Simmons, and this is what I believe.”

There are all kinds of contrarian beliefs out there, but his kind of stake in the ground. So now, when I work with clients, instead of talking about customer avatars, marketing, and messaging, I start with something like, “What do you actually believe?” This video is a good prompt to get them to say things they believe, to permit them to say the things they believe that are a little bit unique, a little bit interesting, or a little bit contrarian. 

And it works really well because even if they’re not a sports fan or anything else, here’s this guy stating some beliefs very passionately. And then I’m like, “Okay, your turn.” That’s usually a fun place to start. We can always modify it with a “verb your noun” or things like that. But I like to get to the what’s the fire in your belly? And like the clients you work with. As you said, “If you’re changing the world, what do you believe?” And it’s a fun place to start.

Yeah, that’s awesome. And that reminds me of another video I think is really great about this. It’s a little bit longer. It’s from Casey Neistat, who was a big YouTuber, and it does what you can’t.

I love that video. I just watched that last week.

Oh, really?

Such a good video.

Yeah, that is ages-old. It’s Maybe eight or ten years old or something. And you just watched it last week. It’s an example of there being no coincidences. This is a completely rigged game; this thing is called reality.

We’re in a simulation, for sure. I love that video because he hangs from a helicopter and all this stuff, but it’s very much a personal belief video. Because with him, it’s like personal belief combined with an origin story. And someone told him, you can’t do this, you can’t do this, you can’t do this. And he just almost took the list of what other people told him he couldn’t do as a to-do list. And I think that’s an interesting way.

So inspiring. It really is inspiring. And it is a great positioning tool. Yeah. So, when you talked about Bill Simmons in that trailer, that reminded me of Casey Neistat’s trailer. That was a great one. And I think it’s important that our listeners understand that the more willing you are to polarize and be hated, the more impact you’ll have. So if you have these watered-down kind of manifesto statements that nobody is going to disagree with, you’re just not even taking up space in the world.

Yeah, I think you make a really good point: we all want to stand out for our client’s personal brands, speakers, and authors. We all want the benefits from someone like Gary Vee or Seth Godin, and those all accrue from being willing to say something different or something interesting. So we want those benefits, and then we look over our shoulders and look on the Internet and try to do everything like everybody else. We claim that chicken breast is a healthy protein. You’re literally invisible. And then you probably experience the same thing. People say, “Well, if I say that, then some people won’t like me.”

I’m like,” good. “You know, Seth Godin has the great.

We all want to stand out, but then we look over our shoulders and try to do everything like everybody else.

Dr. Mercola will definitely not like you because he completely disagrees with that. The acid is off the charts, and chicken.

Yeah, exactly right. And if you’re not saying anything interesting, Seth has the great phrase; he boils so many things down so tightly. But he says, “If you don’t have outsiders, you don’t have insiders.” So starting with your outsiders or those who will not resonate with your message is fine. I was talking to a woman once, coaching her a little bit. I said, “How many clients can you work with at one time?” She said, “12, 15 max.” And her niche was brilliant. As a starting point, it was reversing type 2 diabetes through intermittent fasting.

So, it is a very specific target customer and modality. She was worried about that being too niche. And I showed her a quick Google search; millions of people have that problem, and she can only serve 12. And so I said, “Don’t broaden your focus or scope. Stay with what you said because someone who has type 2 diabetes wants to reverse it, and you have a proven methodology and testimonials.” She didn’t need any more marketing. She just needed to use your point, not dilute it.

I think great marketing and messaging is a perfect espresso. I’m a coffee guy, so I love a great espresso. And then trying to make it for more people is just pouring hot water into your espresso and pretty soon you just have this terrible espresso-flavored hot water, you know.

Yeah. And I don’t like coffee, so I totally don’t get that analogy. But yeah, I do get it.

Yeah.

What are some of your other favorite Seth Godinisms? What pops into your mind? He’s brilliant. I love him. By the way, my interview with him is one of my favorite episodes on this podcast.

He’s so smart. I was fortunate. When I left Accenture after 10 years, I was fortunate enough to apply to a program he offered and get in. So I sat in his office for six months, and he cooked us breakfast every morning and then put us through the wringer. And really, the content that he taught us was nothing that he didn’t talk about in his books. I have one, his latest one here, This Is Strategy.

So he went a little bit broader than marketing and gave a bunch of prompts and riffs. It’s almost like now what he talks about is as many questions as answers or statements. So I think he used to sort of teach like this is the way it is. And now it’s more provocations and getting you to think about who you’re serving. But yeah, his book, This is Marketing, is such a great hit of his stuff. Right? He used to write books about one topic, permission marketing, which was building your email list. He wrote that in 2003 or 2008 or whatever it was, and a long time ago.

And now everyone’s saying you should build an email list. It’s like he was decades earlier on that.

He was definitely way ahead of his time. The Purple Cow is classic. I mean, this idea that you need to be remarkable, worthy of remark, and not just the best at something that doesn’t cut it is just so foundational.

Yeah. And then, I will discuss the work that you and I do around marketing, SEO, and things like the best marketing and the best way to be found. And the one that happens the most is offline word of mouth, how we refer people and recommend people. Two things, restaurants and things like that. And we don’t really think about that too much. And architect that too much.

One of the simple, foundational, and one of my favorites for him is choose your customers, choose your future, not choose your customers, choose your website, not choose your customers, choose your billboard, choose your customers, choose your future. Because if you choose to sell to, let’s just say, Vineyard Vines, wearing Hedge Fund Bros and Martha’s Vineyard in Long Island, your future will look a certain way if you choose those people to be your customers. 

One, there’s a recent one like you. I sort of like studying business models and how different businesses work. And there’s a great one that was literally the massive success of this business, which was based on their choice of customer. It’s called chief.com, so maybe they used your back-end SEO trick at some point to get a really good domain name. But they did get chief.com six figures for that domain, I think. So, yeah, that’s a pretty good one. But their customer is executive women. So think about Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000, and then the next level down, Chief Something Officer, if you’re a woman, well, in many of these rooms and boardrooms, it might be 11 guys and one woman.

And the guys might be talking about golf, the country club, hunting, fishing, or whatever sports. And the woman’s probably like, “Okay, can we get this meeting started?” So they realized Chief’s big insight was that these executive women were disconnected. Nobody had built the country club or the online. The Mastermind for them specifically and their challenges. And I think they launched either right before the pandemic or right as the pandemic was starting. The numbers are kind of fascinating. It was a mastermind, like you and I met through Genius Network. But this was only $6,000 instead of $25,000 a year.

Genius Network is 35,000 a year now.

If you don’t have outsiders, you don’t have insiders. – Seth Godin

Genius Network, so 35,000. But Chief is just 6. But they got up to 13,000 members, so 90 million in revenue for Zoom and Slack. Eventually, once the world opened, live events and things like that would happen. However, the customer’s choice was the number one insight into their business. It wasn’t their SEO or great website, and it’s fine. But if you think about it if you’re a VP at Netflix or a VP at a smaller company. $6,000.

You’re not even paying your own money. You’re just swiping a corporate expense credit card, so the sale doesn’t have to be super hard. And it’s like, don’t you want to be connected with other executive women struggling with that? So that’s one of those where years ago, Seth Godin said,” Choose your customer, choose your future.” Then, Chief.com chose a customer who made a $90 million business seem easy to pull off.

Yeah, that’s cool. And they’ve got a great “verb your noun” for their homepage, “Raise your leadership game.”

Yeah, that’s a good one. Excellent one.

Awesome. So, if our listener wanted to create a book and create a movement around it—maybe it’s a manifesto, maybe it’s a fable or some memoir or whatever—what would be some of the best ninja tips that you wouldn’t hear on other podcasts about how to do this and make a real splash?

Yeah, for sure. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at books and marketing and why certain things work. One thing I’ve reverse-engineered is a bit like a “verb your noun.” And we’ll figure out a little URL to put this. I don’t have it on a public blog post right now, but it’s called Portable Stories. The reason James Clear’s book sold millions of copies and Simon Sinek’s book sold millions of copies. People see the viral TED Talk and James’ million-person email list, and whatever; that’s how you sell about a million copies. To get to 10 million copies, you need.

We talked about that magic word of mouth, and I’ve kind of reverse-engineered and codified how the word of mouth for those books happened. And I think it’s this framework I call Portable Stories. So, the Portable story example for Simon Sinek is people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. So it’s simple. There are some specific elements of a portable story. Simple. The most complex word is people.

There’s not the word methodology or anything like that. So, a portable story has to be simple, which makes it repeatable and memorable. It’s powerful in making the person saying it sound how they wants it to. So, for a decade at New York cocktail parties, someone would be at a cocktail party talking about how they’re not selling enough widgets or products or services, and someone else got to sound smart and say, “Well, Stephan, that’s because people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” And they may have referenced Simon and started with wine and all that. Maybe they didn’t. Similar to James Clear. We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems.

Well, he just repurposed an old military quote and changed a few words, but it’s got that same sort of sing-song. People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems.

Don’t broaden your focus or scope. Stay with what you said. Because someone who has a specific problem wants a proven solution.

The key thing with books is that you’re going to sell however many you sell through your audience, marketing, podcast, launch strategy, and everything else. With James and Simon, that was about 5 to 10% of the books sold. After that, this word-of-mouth sort of wildfire started, not because the body copy text on page 167 was so insightful. Write a great book, for sure.

Then, spend an hour or two thinking about how people will talk to their friends about this book. How is it going to get referred? And I think of this in terms of the shape of marketing, which isn’t seeding the clouds and raining on everyone. It’s what’s the bullseye. Seth calls it the minimum viable audience. What’s the ten or a hundred or a thousand people that, if they had the right book in your hand, wouldn’t stop talking about it because your sales force for your book is the existing readers? But then you need to give them a sales script, which is your portable story. And that’s where James Clear is positioned. One of the elements of a portable story is contrarian. It’s got to be something like we discussed earlier, a bit contrarian.

James said we don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems. Well, in a few simple words, he just positioned against probably what billion dollar goal setting industry, all the journals, all the books, everything about you should set goals. And he said, “No, you’ve got the same goals as the kid working the drive-through at Chick-fil-A. He also wants a $4 million mansion. But you have different daily habits and systems in preparation. If you’re writing a book and you want to sell a lot of copies, of course, build your email list, go live on podcasts, find your audience, launch to those people, of course, all those things. But make sure that there are three to five portable stories in your book, and then take a whole page, blow them up and make them a full page. Make that quote.

We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems. Make that a full page so people can see it. And then that’s how you got to reverse engineer how people will talk about your book. Because if you don’t know how it will spread, it won’t.”

That’s good. And you could probably apply this concept. If you’re not an author but you’re, let’s say, a podcaster, YouTuber, or blogger, you could create a bookend sort of thing, like a podcast. So let’s say that I wanted to put out in the world this portable story that everybody is psychic. Everybody is psychic. Not just intuitive, but actually full-blown psychic. So everybody is psychic, and that is something that I might create a whole YouTube playlist or maybe even a channel.

Maybe I’ll create a series, like an interview series or some sort of webisode-type series. Maybe I’ll create a microsite just for that. And if I have three or five of these, I’ve got those portable stories that I don’t need a book for.

Yeah, it can be packaged in any medium. I think the key is what you just described, like the YouTube playlist and stuff, which I think is underrated. More people should be leveraging things like YouTube playlists. That’s sort of the rabbit hole for people to fall into. And the portable story is the sign outside that says, “Rabbit hole, step inside. VIP rabbit hole.” You know, VIP rabbit hole.

I like that register. VIPrabbithole.com.

Yeah, snag that one. Because at a cocktail party, as I said, people don’t always say, “As I learned from James Clear, as I learned from Simon Sinek, they just want to sound smart.” Maybe they referred, maybe they give them credit, maybe they don’t. It doesn’t really matter. Everyone is psychic and very clever when it’s such a good portable story. If I were to think about the structure of a portable story, for that, I would want either a clever little phrase or, in that case, if there’s kind of a live parlor trick of showing someone how they’re psychic at the moment, even a little bit psychic.

You don’t have to prove that they are a medium or anything like that. But if I could say, “Okay, think about this, or think about this, I know, there’s something where it’s like if you do a certain thing, you think of an odd number or a carrot or whatever.” The trick is, if I was trying to convince somebody that they were psychic, I would seed the best kind of mentalism. What’s mentalism 101, where you could turn everyone into a very lightweight version of David Blaine? If I wanted the phrase or the concept that everyone is psychic to spread, I might do that and show people. Like that may be a show, not tell. And how could I show people that this kind of basic mentalism tricks?

I’ve got a trick. I’m not going to share it right now. It’s not really a trick, but it’s a really powerful exercise. I’ve used it with some Genius Network members.

A portable story has to be simple, which makes it repeatable and memorable.

Oh, nice. Yeah, that’s how I would make that one spread.

Yeah. Cool. All right, well, I know we’re at a time here. How do we learn more from you and get more of your inspiring wisdom and genius?

Yeah, we’ll tell you what: I will publish the portable stories thing. I’ve kind of got it prepared, and we’ll throw it up on some URL, maybe clayandstephan.com if that’s available, or something like that. And we’ll send your folks, teach them about portable stories, and give them some other good resources. We’ll create a little landing page just for your listeners.

That’s awesome. Your main website is clayhebert.com. Do you have any room for consulting or coaching clients, or are you full up?

Yeah, for sure. I do a lot of speaking and then a two-day workshop on helping people build their brands and marketing strategies.

Awesome. Well, Clay, this was fun, inspiring and illuminating. Thank you so much for sharing your brilliance with my listeners and for all your awesome work. Since I heard you talk at Genius Network and give your frameworks and stuff, I have been like, “This guy is awesome.” So I’m so glad that we finally, years later, finally have you on my show.

I’m so glad of you. I’ve enjoyed your work and learned so much. Not only do I learn SEO, but when I can’t reach something from the top shelf, I stand on your book and reach it. So that’s how much insight it’s packed with.

It’s a great doorstep.

Yes. Yeah, it’s great. Thanks so much. For all the work.

One of my friends would say that it’s better than Ambien. So having trouble falling asleep?

Oh, that’s wonderful. No, thanks so much for having me. I super appreciate it and I love the work that you do to help people with big purposes be found and spread their wings even more.

Thank you. All right, well, that’s a wrap. So, listener, please go out there and do some good in the world this week, and we will catch you in the next episode. In the meantime, have a fantastic week. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Transition from providing answers to posing questions. This shift will encourage deeper thinking and more engaged discussions, fostering innovation in my marketing strategies. 

Create portable stories that are simple, memorable, and powerful. These stories drive word-of-mouth marketing and elevate my brand. 

Focus on my minimum viable audience. Tailored messages resonate deeper and work more effectively than broad, diluted campaigns. 

Emphasize contrarian messaging to stand out. Challenging conventional wisdom can make my message more compelling and sharable. 

Use the “verb your noun” framework for impactful taglines. Ensure my message focuses on what the customer wants to achieve, making it both relevant and powerful. 

Craft concepts that stick. Memorable phrases and ideas drive engagement and ensure my message is retained.

Ensure smooth and trustworthy transactions. Implement tools like escrow services to ensure seamless and secure transactions.

Leverage AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude for brainstorming and overcoming creative blocks. Use AI as a thought partner, not a crutch.

Apply traditional SEO practices to optimize visibility. Even in AI-driven searches, keyword-rich titles and search optimization are crucial. Stay optimized to stay visible.

Visit Clay Hebert’s website, clayhebert.com, to explore his work, reach out to him for consulting and coaching opportunities, and inquire about attending his branding and marketing strategy workshops.

About Clay Hebert

Clay Hebert is a marketing and branding strategist, speaker and storyteller. He loves words and believes we make marketing harder than it needs to be. For a decade, Clay led teams at Accenture, the world’s largest consulting firm, solving complex problems for global Fortune 500 companies. He escaped corporate America to attend the most selective MBA program in the country. He was among only nine people to learn directly from marketing expert Seth Godin for six months.

Clay’s work has been profiled in the books Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, Entrepreneurial You by Dorie Clark, and Deep Work by Cal Newport. He’s helped over 2000 projects raise over $100 million total on crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Forbes called him “one of the next generation of business and media influencers,” and he was recently named one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs, along with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

Today, through his Perfect Intro, Perfect Brand and Perfect Exit frameworks, Clay helps leaders, executives and entrepreneurs tell better stories, grow and sell their companies, fund their dreams and do work that matters.