Marketing Mastery With Mostafa Hosseini

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What are the secrets in formulating the best marketing strategies to scale your business up? Join your host John Livesay as he talks with Mostafa Hosseini about lead generation, qualifying leads, implementing marketing plans, and much more. Mostafa Hosseini is an entrepreneur and business coach that could help you create and implement a one-page marketing plan in three days or less. He shares his story on why he decided to drop the digital marketing services and keep coaching and consulting. He emphasizes the importance of identifying your target market. With his top three values of growth, family business, and learning, there are many takeaways in this episode of marketing mastery. You are sure to take the leap to make a profitable business for yourself and your loved ones.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Marketing Mastery With Mostafa Hosseini

Our guest on the show is Mostafa Hosseini, who’s an expert in marketing. We talk about how nothing works when someone’s trying too many things at once and how important client retention is. That is an untapped vault of cash that people aren’t using properly. Finally, he says 70% of entrepreneurs suffer from depression and overwhelm, and he helps them solve that with a laser focused plan. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is Mostafa Hosseini, who helps coaches and consultants create and implement their one-page marketing plan in three days or less. He is a serial entrepreneur, a business coach, and the Founder of Persyo, which he’s also the host of the ‎Daily Confidence for Entrepreneurs podcast, he’s the creator of Simple Marketing Formula, and much more. He’s been coaching and consulting for many years, helping businesses in various niches and industries grow and scale. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

I would love to hear your personal story of origin. You can go back as far as childhood or college. How did you get into becoming such an expert in marketing?

I was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to Canada back in 2000. I finished high school and I was eighteen when I got here. I went to school here. When I got first got here, I did not speak English. I went to English school for a couple of years to be able to speak. I went to school for engineering for two and a half years, didn’t liked it, dropped out, got into business school, loved it, which is what I wanted to do since I was a child. I got a diploma in Marketing Management. I got my Bachelor’s in Business Management with a minor in Marketing. I went to school for a long time and I started Persyo Marketing back in 2010.

Let’s stop the story there for a second. How did you come up with the name of your company, and what does it mean?

When I was trying to pick out names, the names that I wanted were all taken, the domains were taken. I had to come up with the name. What happened was one day back in 2010, I was sitting at a food court here in a mall in Calgary and I saw this restaurant. I’m like, “What about Persyo?” Persyo because I’m Persian-Canadian. I made the name, Persyo did not exist. When I searched Google, it didn’t bring up any results. I’m like, “Bingo.” The domain was available. I went for it. I asked a few people, “What do you think?” They’re like, “It sounds good. We like it.” I started Persyo Marketing. We did full-service digital marketing along with coaching and consulting our clients.

 

Back in 2017 or 2018, it got a little too competitive for me. I’m in a hyper-competitive environment and I decided to drop out and drop the digital marketing services and keep coaching and consulting. That’s my story. I’m married. I got two boys. My top three values are family business and growth and learning. I spend 99% of my time with family, business, growth, and learning. I love nature, mountains, skiing, hiking, barbecue. I love my Persian kebab. If you ever come up here, if I see you anywhere, I’ll do some barbecue and go from there.

Now that you’ve worked with so many different kinds of clients, do you see them having similar challenges or making the same mistakes in their marketing? Are they too complicated typically? Is that why you’ve honed it down a little bit to help people focus?

The number one challenge that I asked people over the years when it comes to their marketing is not knowing what to do. They want to grow their business, get more customers, and the rest of it, but they don’t know how to do it. The other challenge that they have is they start trying too many things. They are poking around twelve different things at any given time and nothing is working. That creates a feeling of frustration, overwhelm, anxiety, and people get depressed because they don’t get results. Back in 2017 or 2018, I read three books that changed the way I think and changed my business. The first one was Zero to One by Peter Thiel, who is one of the Cofounder of PayPal. In the book, Peter Thiel talked about how competition is for losers. He says, “You got to be in a place where there is no competition or you have very few competitors.”

I had too much competition that I felt like a loser. I’m like, “I got to change this.” I had competition all over the planet. In the digital marketing world, the barriers to entry are not very strong. People wake up one day and they’re like, “I’m a digital marketing advisor.” I decided to drop out of the digital marketing services and stick with coaching and specialization. The next book that I read that made a massive shift in my thinking was The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch. If there’s one thing I wish I knew many years ago was this 80/20 principle. The next one was Essentialism by Greg McKeown on what is essential and not. I went through this phase and within 4 or 5 months. I’m like, “I need to simplify and focus.” I came up with a Simple Marketing Formula where we consolidate and simplify everything into one page.

Most business plans, especially coming out of MBA, it goes on and you don’t know where to start even with an executive summary it’s still so overwhelming and the shiny object of, “We should be on TikTok?” I’m like, “It depends on who your audience is. Not necessarily.” I like that. This 80/20 rule, for those people who may not know exactly what it is, I certainly found that useful in my sales career that 20% of your clients give you 80% of your revenue and 20% of the time you spend give you 80% of your results.

Are you spending time with clients that aren’t generating that much revenue? Sometimes, the lowest 20% of your clients are taking 80% of your time. That reframing of all of that is so crucial. Are there some myths that people have like, “If I spend so much money on my marketing, I should get this much percent growth automatically guaranteed?” or anything like that you see people thinking, “You’ve heard that, but that’s a myth.”

You mentioned one of them that, “If I spend so much money, I’m going to be successful.” It could happen, but it may not necessarily be true. One of the bigger problems that I see is if I worked hard, I’m going to see results. You talked about the 80/20, if you work on the 80% that doesn’t produce results, regardless of how hard you work, you’re not going to get there. I heard Tony Robbins said, “If you run East looking for a sunset, regardless of how hard you run and work, you’re not going to see it.”

[bctt tweet=”Nothing works when you try too many things at once. 70% of entrepreneurs suffer from overwhelm because of the lack of a plan.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I also think of the people at Kodak and Blockbuster, I’m sure they were working very hard up until the last minute.

The company doesn’t exist anymore. The strategy was outdated and what they were doing didn’t work and it got wiped up. Those are some of the biggest things.

You hinted at it, but let’s double click on what is this simple marketing formula that you’ve come up with?

The simple marketing formula was I need to apply to 80/20 principle to marketing and break it down to a few simple steps that cover 80% of the stuff that you need to do. I came up with six steps. Number one, you need to set your goals. You need to know exactly what you’re trying to build and achieve. As an example, when you’re trying to build a house, you design it, you do the dimensions. How many bedrooms, many garage doors, and the rest of it.

Come up with a plan, hand out the plan to the builders, bingo, they start building. You barely ever build a house in a city, at least, without a plan. If you do, you won’t get any insurance for it, and/or you would not put your family under that roof. You need to plan and know what you’re trying to build. If you don’t have a plan and a goal, you’re not going to achieve it. It’s pretty hard to achieve a goal that you don’t have.

It goes back to even time management. If it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t get done.

Step number one, know what you want. By knowing what you want, you increase your odds of winning by ten times compared to a person that doesn’t know what they want. It makes logical sense. Step number two, identify your target market, who do you serve and what do you do for them? Stop saying things like, “I serve everybody and anybody.” The fact is, if you try to serve everybody, you end up serving nobody. Who do you serve and what do you do for them? Step number three, your offer. What do you offer to these people? How do you connect your offer to what they want, need, and their challenges? There was a connection there. Step number four is your lead generation. How do I find leads? What’s one system that I need to master? Again, people are poking around at twelve different things.

 

If you pick LinkedIn, then don’t be spending time and money on TikTok or vice versa.

My strategy is to figure out LinkedIn and get it to a point where it’s driving leads to you while you’re sleeping, then move on to Facebook, then move on to something else. In that one platform, I’m pretty sure if, it’s the place for you, there’s so much business that you may not even need to go somewhere else. LinkedIn is massive. Lead generation. The next step is lead conversion, step number five. What is the step-by-step process to turn a lead into an actual paying customer?

That’s my sweet spot of helping people tell stories. Once they’re talking to a qualified lead that makes their offer seem irresistible.

We map it out step by step and we try to identify bottlenecks. Going back to the 80/20 principle, try to figure out what is these 1 or 2 steps that take 80% of the time. What do we need to do to speed things up and make things more efficient?

It’s anticipating a common objection so that you’re not a deer in a headlight when you get one.

There’s a bunch of things that could be happening. The fact that we map it out, people get these massive a-ha moments because 99% of people don’t have it mapped out. When they put it out there, they realize, one, “Because we visualize the process, we see what’s happening and more importantly, we see what is not happening.”

The myth is, “I’m losing my lead conversion at the end of the conversation. I’m not closing them properly.” I say, “You lost that sale at the beginning of the conversation.”

[bctt tweet=”You need to set your goals. You need to know exactly what you’re trying to build and achieve. ” username=”John_Livesay”]

Maybe before you started, that’s another problem. Step number five, conversion. Number six, client retention. What do I do to keep my customers do repeat business from them, with them, and get referrals from them?

Is that an unoverlooked goldmine? I tell people it’s just like any relationship. Friendships, spouses, anything. You can’t take relationships for granted.

By far, in years of marketing in my own business, client retention is the easiest most profitable sure-fire marketing process and action we have done. It’s like an untapped vault of cash that you have to open and there’s cash.

That’s a great image. We’ll use that as a tweet.

That’s it. Six steps.

The importance of this is trying to get a plane without a flight plan or build a house without an architecture plan. You’re just wandering all over the place if you don’t know where you are in the process and where you’re going. Is there a story you can share of how it’s helped a particular business owner?

I got probably 100 stories. I was looking around a whole bunch of video testimonials from people that we have helped. Identifying your goal, it calms your mind down. The sense of, “Here’s what I want to build.” Think about the frustration and anxiety of not knowing what you want. I call it being like a floating particle into air. I go right one second, I go left the next second, up and down, we don’t want to have consistency. It gives you that feeling of assurance and calmness.

 

Once we’re calm, we can make better decisions as opposed to making them out of fear.

It’s like, “Here is what I’m trying to build. I need to find four customers this month.” How assuring is that? How many phone calls do I need to make to find four customers? Next, identifying the target market. Again, it gives you the certainty that here is who I serve. For example, I serve accountants between the ages of 40 to 45 in the State of California. How hard would it be to go on LinkedIn and find a county in the State of California? What do I do for them? For example, I help accountants in the State of California create and implement their one-page marketing plan in three days or less. All I have to say is, “I specialize in your service,” then finding customers becomes a lot easier.

Then the secret sauce to that is what is life like for those accountants after the three days? Peace of mind, revenues start going up, they start getting the referrals, and they know who their target audience is. They’re not just an accountant for everyone.

Another way that they become more profitable is when they drop all the extra lead generation activities that are not producing, they save on costs, become more profitable, either saved the money or refocused the money few things that are producing, become more profitable, bring in more leads, and everything becomes a lot easier. At the end of the day, you can sleep a lot better, your quality of sleep goes up.

If we can keep getting research in how important that is, your metabolism, your health, your mindset, what wakes you up in the middle of the night and keeps you up, that stress. I love your analogy of when our brain is not calm, then it never shuts off. It’s trying to solve the problem or figure out, “What should I be doing next?” To me, it’s interesting because sometimes, when I’ve worked with people who sell insurance and helping them craft a story, I say, “On some level, you’re selling peace of mind to people.” You don’t have to worry about if there’s a fire or whatever. On some level, what you’re doing is peace of mind for one of the most important aspects of running any business, which is we need customers and cash.

We need to figure out how to do it in a way that works as opposed to guessing because that’s anxiety. We don’t get behind the wheel of a car going, “I can figure this out. I don’t need to be trained.” Yet some people go, “I’ll figure out the marketing on my own. I don’t need anybody’s help, I’ll figure this out,” then you’re like, “That’s an expensive, time-consuming, lethal way to do it.”

You touched on it and we talked about it in the beginning, that is the number one challenge was not knowing what to do. There are so many options that not knowing what to do affects our mental health. Up in Canada, it might be pretty closed down in the States, the chances of people experiencing a mental issue is about 1 in 5, about 20% with average people. With entrepreneurs, it’s 70%. We have a 70% chance to experience mental issues. I’m willing to bet that not having a simple plan and not knowing what to do has a lot to do with this. If I wake up in the morning and I have twenty options and I’m just poking around, not knowing what to do and not knowing what to focus on, that messes my mind up.

[bctt tweet=”If you’re going to have a plan or if you don’t have a goal, you’re probably not going to achieve it. It’s pretty hard to achieve a goal that you don’t have. ” username=”John_Livesay”]

When you’re having conversations with these lead gens, you’re speaking to somebody who has the money to pay for it and they’re having a conversation with you to see if this is the time, if you’re the right person. If you’re in that 70% of entrepreneurs or accountants that are mentally stressed out, it’s like dating. People can smell desperation, fear, and pressure. You’re like, “I need four clients this month. I don’t even have one, and the month is half over. I’m going to talk fast when I’m talking to you and hope I get you to say yes.”

I’m getting stressed out as you’re describing.

That’s my skill, telling a story where you feel like you’re in it.

It’s important to know what you want.

You can’t fake being calm. Ultimately, people buy our energy. I was up for a speaking gig and it was between me and two other speakers and my agent emailed me, “Congrats. They picked you, they liked your energy.” I went, “I forget that’s what we’re all selling.” Our energy. Money is energy and action. You’re offering a plan that takes all the energy and all the ideas that somebody has of what they could do for somebody and gets it into a laser beam-focused energy. We all know what a laser can do, cut through metal and all kinds of stuff. They do laser surgery now. If I had to describe to people why they should explore getting this one-page marketing plan done in three days, it’s the power of the laser, which then gives you the peace of mind that you’re not going to be one of those 70% of entrepreneurs who are struggling with wondering what to do next and the stress that comes with that.

One of the things that we showed during those three days is how to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack and how to almost eliminate your competition. Usually, when you ask people, how are you different? They say, “We do a good job.” That’s not different, everybody promises that. Having these pieces figured out gives you that calming assurance and the calming effect where you can be like, “Forget about everything else, just do this.”

I cannot come up with my power offer. I’m just buried in this picture so deep. People are like, “You’re a marketing guy.” I’m like, “I can’t see my stuff. Give me feedback.” What I’m trying to say is what other people look at you and talk with you, they can give you an outside perspective and it’s a lot easier.

Let’s also give out your website for people who want to find out more about what you offer.

 

The website is Persyo.com. You can also find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and all of our social media if you search for Mostafa Hosseini. Hopefully, I will be there.

Thanks so much for taking us through step-by-step the six ways that you help people get their laser focus. Any last thought or quote you want to leave us with?

Always encourage people to know what you want, have a plan to get there, implement the plan, and get support along the way. By doing that, you will increase your chances of success and odds of winning by 80 times compared to a person that doesn’t have a goal and a plan, doesn’t implement the plan, and gets no support along the way. Think about that.

Even climbing Mount Everest, those people have support, how to get Sherpas, and all kinds of stuff. Mostafa, thank you so much again for being on the show. I’m looking forward to hearing stories of how you’ve helped some of the readers.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to share my message with your audience.

 

Important Links

• Mostafa Hosseini
• Daily Confidence for Entrepreneurs
• Simple Marketing Formula
• Zero to One
• The 80/20 Principle
• Essentialism
• Facebook – Mostafa Hosseini
• LinkedIn – Mostafa Hosseini
• https://TD865.IsRefer.com/go/one/thepitchwhisperer/
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

 

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Tags: lead generation, marketing strategies, producing results, Setting Goals, social media platforms, target market