[EO Orange County] Building an Eight-Figure Company With Scott Empringham of Empringham Media Group

Scott Empringham is the Owner and CEO of Empringham Media Group. For more than 21 years, his passion has been helping Fortune 50 companies to break through the clutter using digital marketing and social media to drive results in areas that matter most — customer retention and acquisition. Scott’s mission is to share his digital marketing and social media expertise to drive new business, retain current customers, and conquer the competition. He is also a member of the Orange County Chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO).

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Scott Empringham recounts the memory of shutting his office down
The game-changing advice Scott received from David Meltzer
How asking for and taking help allowed Scott to start over
Scott shares his eight-step marketing plan
Why you have to identify your ideal customer and the problem you solve
The people that helped Scott hone his speaking ability
Helping small businesses figure out where to start
Classic mistakes people make in the marketing process
Why technology is a double-edged sword

In this episode…

If your business has to shut down and you leave empty-handed, how do you pick yourself up and start over? What is the first step you have to take? Today’s guest was at his lowest point and found a way to pick himself up and rebuild. What are his secrets?

When faced with calamity, it’s hard to know where to turn. Scott Empringham decided to reach out for help which was the turning point he needed to start over. With a broad history of working in various industries around the world, Scott leverages the power of his experiences to help companies and business leaders break through the clutter and focus on the direction they should take. Scott formulated an eight-step plan using digital marketing and social media to drive results in the business areas that matter most: sales and service.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, Jeremy Weisz sits down with Scott Empringham, Owner and CEO of Empringham Media Group, who shares how he regained his position after closing his office and leaving with just a phone. He shares how he started over, steps he took to move forward, and the value of asking for help. Scott talks about honing his speaking skills, learning valuable lessons from others, and highlights the common mistakes people make in the marketing process and how to avoid them.

Resources mentioned in this episode

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Jeremy Weisz 0:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I am going to formally introduce Scott Empringham in a second of Empringham Media Group. And Scott, I always like to point out other episodes, people should check out of the podcast and one person in particular, Todd Taskey, who has the Second Bite Podcast, check it out. But he talked about how with agency owners, he pairs private equity with agency owners and help them sell and sometimes they make more on the second bite than they do on the first and that’s a really fascinating conversation of valuation how he thinks about selling, also had Duncan Alney has an agency in helps food and beverage companies. And so check that out. And we’ll talk about niches on this podcast. And before this episode is brought to you by Rise 25. At Rise 25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that we actually help you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for someone to launch and run their podcast, we do accountability strategy, and the full execution. And Scott, we know each other a little bit. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. And I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I’ve found no better way over the past decade to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on, like Scott. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to rise25.com to learn more. And really, John Corcoran, my business partner, introduced me to Scott and the cool things he’s done. And let me just introduce Scott. He’s got a tremendous background. I have Scott Empringham. He’s founder of Empringham Media Group, and in 2018, after 20 years of building an eight figure agency and just put yourself in his shoes for a second. All right, Scott lost it all. He was off with no office, no staff, no customers, and beyond that, to make matters worse, $500,000 in debt, and he had 90 days to turn around. I mean, he had to pay that debt back. So what he did is he turned to social media, and he actually shared his story, which is great. A lot of times when we go through hard times we want to hide it. We don’t want to share with anyone. And sometimes it’s hard for people to help if you don’t share it right. He shared his story, His plan and His goal to get it all back in 90 days or less. And he actually did an ADA days, which is crazy to think about. But Scott is recognized digital marketing social media expert with over 20 years of expertise. He’s helped over 1000 entrepreneurs, small businesses and fortune 50 companies get customers with social media and AI. He’s worked with virtually every major OEM, Ford, Toyota, Cadillac, GMC, Honda, and many, many more in over 2000 dealers. He’s also worked with owners, CEOs, marketing departments of insurance companies, plastics, financial, and a lot more you can check him out. He also has, you know, he is really one that I see carries on relationships and is a giver. And he has an on demand social media certification course and a coaching program to just to help teach people because some companies can’t afford his services. Right. So you can check that out smart90social.com. Scott, thanks for joining me.

Scott Empringham 3:43

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate being here.

Jeremy Weisz 3:46

Yo Scott some people for motivation when they’re working out, listen to their favorite music, okay. I listen to people like you. And late last night I’m, I’m thinking I need to, you know, I like to do research. It’s, you know, tenant night. I’m like, I need to listen to a bunch of Scott’s interviews. And so I went and I did a workout and your story pumped me up because it’s just a story of comeback. And it’s a story of just hard times. And just take me back for a second. Take us back to your daughter. Right, your daughter’s on your lap. Just paint the picture of what’s happening.

Scott Empringham 4:30

As I assume you’re talking about when I shut the office down. I think you’re gonna take it take me right back there. Wow, you were right right for it. So you did your homework, you really did your homework. I’m closing my office. And my attorney has just informed me that I can’t take my laptop because it’s an asset of the business now. The business is gone. The customers are gone. The employees are gone. Public faceplant on social media. And I know that I deep underwater. I don’t know how bad it is, but it’s bad. And the attorney and my daughter and my son go back to the office for the final time my office in Newport Beach. And I’m taking one final look around as I’m about to leave the office for good knowing that I’m walking out with nothing. And I’m sitting in my office, and I started to fall apart. i My stomach was in knots and I was sinking. And I just felt beneath so far beneath the waves. I didn’t know how it was going to come up. And I started to cry. And I’m looking out the window just thinking about everything that I’d lost. And my daughter walks in. And as a dad, I wanted to pull myself together not to freak her out. And she said, Daddy, are you crying? And I said, yeah, yeah, these are these are happy tears. Everything’s okay. Everything’s okay. And she sat on my lap. And she said, What are you going to do now? And I looked at, I said, we’re gonna start again. We’re gonna start again. I said, Great. And you know, kids don’t understand the gravity, and the enormity of maybe what a dad or a mom is feeling when they’re going through something like that. And I said, we’re going to start again, sweetheart. She said, Great. I’ll help you see what’s the name of your company. And I hadn’t given it any thought. And I said, it’s Empringham Media Group. And she said, Great, let’s do your first social media post. And it was exactly what God nature designed for me in that moment. And it gave me that it helped me turn a corner. I got out my phone. And it was the last piece of property I had for my business. I had free social media accounts, and it was a great reminder of what I still had. And so she said, great, what is it going to be and if you go on my Instagram account, you can see it’s like June 18, or June, I should know the date that it’s in June. It’s a very first post. And it’s something about when things fall apart, we start again, and we found a quote, and that was my very first posts for Empringham Media Group. And it’s on there today. And it was the very first step to rebuild. And you know, the optimism of a child, right? She says, Great, well, let’s go get some ice cream. I walked out, I took one final look at the office. And as she walked out, I had the foresight to just take some pictures as she’s walking out. She’s in her jammies in her Ugg boots. And she’s walking out and I still use that picture. Sometimes in my, my campaigns today, or in my videos today, to say this was the last day in my office. And it it doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t matter what happened. It doesn’t matter how deep, you might be underneath the waves, taking one step at a time, you can you can accomplish some amazing things. And I’m pretty good proof of that

Jeremy Weisz 8:08

How old is she?

Scott Empringham 8:12

this was in 2018. As by four years ago, she’s like nine or eight, eight or nine, something like that. Wow. Yeah, I’m

Jeremy Weisz 8:21

like doing squats holding dumbbells last night. I’m like, if he got through that, I could do a couple more reps. So I appreciate that. But you know, at that point, you had built up an eight figure agency. And it we’ll get to kind of a little bit about what happened. But you got some really key advice from David Meltzer. Yeah, yeah. And can you talk about that? Yeah, he’s been on the podcast, too, is a really cool story. Great advice. So

Scott Empringham 8:57

yeah, he gave me a great piece of advice. Now, this is just after I shut everything down. And I was feeling particularly desperate. The clock was ticking. It was one of the very first meetings I had after I’d shut everything down. No money in the bank. Half a million dollars in debt, really just starting to figure out a plan. And when I went to him, he asked me, how’s business? How are things and he didn’t know anything about my story. He probably looked at maybe my social media and saw the old company. And I decided to be perfectly honest with him. I said, I’ve lost everything, David. I lost everything. I’m starting completely from any so at that moment, that the whole interview because I was sort of interviewing him and it took a turn and a lot more honest, a lot more real. And he sat up in his chair and he leaned forward and he said, I’ve been there. Can I give you a good piece of advice? Can I share something with you? I said, Yeah, I said at that point, by the way, I’ve been humbled, and you know, there’s never a better place to start. Then by being an open vessel, you know, when you don’t know everything, and at that point, believe me, I felt like I didn’t know anything. And that’s how I was, I was open to advice. And he said, I want you to do something for me. And this changed everything for me. And he said, I’m going to share with you the concept, the concept is gratitude and service. And I said, I know they’re just words, but let’s put it into practice right now. I said, I’m familiar with obviously how important gratitude is. And I’m familiar with how important services because yeah, but we’re gonna put it into practice. He said, I want you to do me a favor, think of a meeting you have today or tomorrow. And I need you to think about how you can serve, before you go to that meeting, it could just be I want you to be in a peak state, it may be thinking about how you can serve that person, how you could bring value, how can you add value? How can you add 10 times more value than anybody ever could possibly expect. And then be willing to take $1 dollar back as offered $20 worth of value calls, like the 20 to one rule, offered $20 of value and take $1 back be be confident and be appreciative of the fact that you deserve $1 back if you can offer somebody $100 for the value of $20 with the value, but the concept is be thinking about service. He goes, What’s the next meeting you have? I just been asked to join the board of a group called Entrepreneur Organization here in Orange County. And I said, Well, I’ve got a meeting today. And there’s a meeting and it’s the board meeting. He goes, How can you serve? How can you serve massive value to everybody don’t worry about getting, because because the key is right now you’re going to be thinking about how do I get wrong energy to put out in the world, if you really want to get energy back, if you want to get wealth, if you want to get abundance, you want to track that? You have to be that. And the way to be that is go and serve, go and contribute. So he said, what could you do? I said, Well, I know it’s a brand new board. I can take my phone, my only piece of digital marketing equipment at the time. I’m going to do interviews, and I’m going to post them on social they probably want to promote their businesses, they they’re proud to be on the board. So I did interviews I got there. I lined everybody up at odd times I did interviews, and I just served and then I posted that on the channel. I didn’t do a video of myself. I didn’t post anything about myself. I didn’t do a selfie, but I did videos of everybody and they were like, wow, I really appreciate what do you do? Again? Tell me what you do. And I literally came back I thought to myself that night is that a special prayer for for David Meltzer because two out of the eight board members said, Hey, let’s talk on Monday. I think I could use your services. You know, I really could use some help with my digital marketing social media isn’t. I’d be delighted. It’s not only like in a Ford. Yes. If you could afford me. You can afford me. I’ll figure it out.

Jeremy Weisz 12:35

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Scott. I think, you know, I hear a lot of people ask questions. Hey, if you were to start with nothing in a laptop, what would you do? I mean, you didn’t even have a laptop, right at the time. And not only that, you know, you had to pay back this debt. Okay. So you started there? What were some of the steps you took next to? Again, it just feels insurmountable?

Scott Empringham 13:04

Yeah, at the time. Yeah. The first step I actually took, you know, I was gonna go right to the first step I took, which is identifying my target audience, I promise I’ll get there. And I’ll make this as short as I can. The first step I took, was asking for help. And there was a point in June, early June, after after I’d shut everything down. I was in a really dark place. It was about a week after that. I was medicating myself with sleeping pills and alcohol just to try to get through the night because I was just so anxious every night with my stomach in knots thinking how I was gonna get out of this. It was like being in a box that I couldn’t see I was gonna get out. And it and now was July 4. And if all my good friends were all on trips with their families and their wives and their significant others, and somebody messaged me on WhatsApp and said, How you doing today, Scott, and they knew that I just shot my visit on it. And, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in this place, or anybody listening has ever been in this place where somebody asks you how you’re doing? And the real answer is not good. Not good. Not good at all. Now, there’s two kinds of goods not good, the general not good, and really don’t want to bore anybody with it. But then there’s the not good, which is where you need help. Where you’re in such a dark place, when it’s probably better, that you just admit to a good friend or a colleague that you’re really not good. And I had the unique good fortune of the wisdom to tell my buddy not good. And as he was Anthony djerassi. And, gosh, you’re really you’re really asked some good questions here. And Anthony was at a party in Laguna Beach, and a holiday party. And he sensed from my whatsapp response that I was really not good. Good. And I dropped off the WhatsApp group in about 45 minutes. Although he was at a party, he left everybody and banged on my front door. And out when I opened it, he looked at me and he realized I wasn’t good. So he sat down. And we talked. And I asked for help. That was the first step. You know, and I’ll tell you the two things that really made a big difference is number one, I asked for help. And then number two, I took help, he gave me some good advice. He said, it’s not what you lost Scott. It’s what you still have, that you’re not recognizing. It’s what you still have, that you’re not noticing. It’s what you still have the you need to step up and deliver for it. He took a picture of my kids off of the desk behind me. He showed me the people that were still counting on me, he reminded me that you’ve got 2020 years of working in this industry you helped for generate a billion dollars worth of sales. What if you could do for you what you did for them, which is get customers with digital marketing, social media, and all sudden he got, I felt like Superman. He got me to look at what I still had as assets. And I started noticing all these amazing things I still had. That then helped me get back on my feet. I went for a run that afternoon after he left. And I came back down and I wrote down an eight step plan. It’s the same eight step plan I’ve been using for 20 years that I learned in Guerilla Marketing from Jay Conrad Levinson, way back in the day, you’ve probably heard of I see you nodding your head, right Jake seven sentence marketing plan. I made some tweaks to it over the years. And I wrote down my plan, my target audience, my goals, my budget, my messaging, segmenting how he’s gonna do that. I wrote down a basic plan that I teach in my workshops, I teach in my course. And I took massive action. I mean, I didn’t, I was relentless. I was absolutely relentless. When I say relentless, I just after I got that plan, I knew the only way out was through. And every single day, I just took massive, massive action. But ironically, it started with just taking asking for help. And taking help. Taking advice.

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Jeremy Weisz 17:14

I’m gonna circle back to this in a second Scott. But I want to go through a little bit about the plan and a set plan because you you actually teach this to people, you have a free workshop. You also teach this in smart 90 social.com. And, and we can link up Scott ebrahim.com Because they can find all that stuff there. Or they can go directly to the website, but there was a boutique that you worked with. And you took them through this place. Yes.

Scott Empringham 17:41

Yeah. The boutique. This is one of my favorite stories is COVID hits. And a woman comes into my workshop. And she starts taking my course and she said now I need a lot of help. COVID is wiped out all my traffic. I’ve got to stores and zero traffic. I’ve got overhead. I’ve got bills to pay. How am I supposed to do this? And I said, it starts with step one. It worked for me. I promise it’ll work for you. It works for Ford Motor Company, professional services coming podcast doesn’t matter. Step one. You’re like I’ve been there. Always your ideal customer. And what problem do you solve? And she’s I know ideal customer. I everybody. I said no, no, go go with me for a second. Who’s your ideal customer? And what problem do you solve? And she said, and she started using kind of marketing what she thought would be marketing languages and no plain English and she said, mom’s in Laguna Beach. It’s a great Mazel Laguna Beach. Why mom’s living because it is that you’re kind of your ideal customer. You picture somebody coming in and buying all the stuff from you and said, Yeah, ideal. ideal customer would be a mom’s in Laguna Beach says great. What is their problem? What is your problem right now? And she has her real problem right now. Yeah, she’s stuck at home. She’s bored. She misses her friends connected with a friend and she’d probably love to do a little bit of shopping. But you can’t run out because she’s stuck at home. I said, Great. Where does she live? Second one was about your ideal customers. Where do they live? Meaning not necessarily geography geographically, but online. She said Well, she’s she’s about 40 Plus, so she’s probably on Facebook and Instagram is a great Did you know there’s a little thing called Facebook Live. What if you were to do a live event and a virtual fashion show? Would that not solve her problem? She said you know what a virtual fashion show would be really good at what’s the cost and zero. And so I walked her through a couple of strategies on how to set up the virtual fashion show using Facebook Live, how to promote it with email, which is also free how to share it on all of our personal channels which is also free He had to invite other partners from that local market area to musicians and people who are going to bring some drinks, all that. And she was able to do these virtual fashion shows, zero cost, lots of promotion. And not only did it save her business, but then she ended up picking up business from outside of Orange County, outside of California, outside of the United States, and across the world and around the world. And for the first time, she had calls coming in and emails coming in people from Italy and other parts of the world that said, I’ll take that blouse, I’ll take that dress I’ll take this wasn’t record shattering numbers. But it was enough on a zero budget to keep her alive and help her thrive during a time when everybody else was shutting down and closing. She was making sales, paying bills, and building your business and building your brand. When everybody else was contracting, using some basic principles, identify your target audience. What problem do you solve for them? Or can you solve for them? Where do they live, so you can meet them where they live. She also promoted into Facebook, Laguna Beach, Facebook groups and community groups, she then share that those are some of the strategies, those are two of the strategies. And there’s six other steps. She did probably four out of the other six steps. But it was more than enough to get her moving forward and building your business again. And then most importantly, she had control again, she felt like she was in control of her destiny again. And as somebody who’s felt like they’ve lost that, before in my life, I think that part of that part of that mental game is really important to make sure you feel like you’ve got momentum, you got control. And that was something that I was really proud to be a part of. And it was exciting to see her grow.

Jeremy Weisz 21:46

Yeah, and kind of going back to what you said, is asking for help in taking that help. Like she had to kind of admit herself and go on your program and ask for your advice and how it was the first step and some people just are frozen, and they bury their head in the sand don’t want to deal with it. And the problem stays there. It gets worse.

Scott Empringham 22:07

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s it’s that concept of you can’t fill a full glass of water. And part of it was many of the folks that come through my coaching program and the online course they have to unlearn some of the things they think they already know like it’s impossible to promote my business during COVID. It might be impossible to promote your business but it’s not possible to serve. David Meltzer got me to look at a totally different way, you know, and part of step one that I teach is people ask the wrong question. Everybody says it’s how do I promote my business on social media? That’s not the right question. The question is, how do I serve? How do I connect? How do I teach? How do I educate my ideal customer on how to solve their problems, you get in front of a room of 1000 of your best customers and you help them solve some juicy problems. There’ll be to beat a path to your door. And that was a big shift. And sometimes it’s difficult to see that David Meltzer. Got me to look at that differently. Anti djerassi got me to look at that differently.

Jeremy Weisz 23:09

Scott, if someone’s listening to this, there is a video of this. And I love for you to talk. There’s two pictures of Muhammad Ali behind you and talk about the significance

Scott Empringham 23:24

of that. Ah, sure. These were in my office when I had my when my head by opposite Newport Beach, but when I was a little kid my dad was my hero. Maybe a lot of young men’s, similar, their dads, their heroes, my dad worked a lot. And he provided a great living for my mom. And my sister and I, he was enormously successful in business. And it took them away from home a lot. busy working night and day, and I got to see him on the weekends. And every once in a while on a Saturday. We’d be sitting there we’d watch Muhammad Ali. And that was a great bonding experience because he would talk to me about Muhammad Ali and some of the things that he believed in and he stood up for that it was a great experience. And so it was a wonderful bonding moment between my dad and I and that was happened to be one of my first book reports when I was probably like eight was on Muhammad Ali and the story of cashes play and Muhammad Ali and it was a it was a great way to bond with my dad when I was a kid.

Jeremy Weisz 24:34

What did he do your dad?

Scott Empringham 24:35

My dad was he started out as a as a money manager giving a speech and a group called YPO Young Presidents Organization. And after a speech one day on financial management, a woman by the name of Joan Irvine, the third came up to him said would you manage my money and that’s now the city of Irvine, or that Irvine family here in Orange County and then in other gentleman, Anthony Moiso came to him and said, Well, I like what you said. How would you like to move to Orange County and helped me build a city and be the Chief Financial Officer of Rancho Mission Viejo and build the city of Santa Margarita? And my dad said, I think that day when he when he came home, we lived in San Fernando Valley. He came home and said kids were moved to Orange County a little place called Laguna Beach and Emerald Bay. And I dragged my feet I didn’t want to do it. And then we got to Emerald Bay and I said, Ah, this is gonna work. Private community right on the beach. It was beautiful. He was a very successful CFO of a company where they don’t the city. It sounds like speaking

Jeremy Weisz 25:41

helps his career a lot. And I know I was watching videos of you and you’ve really been honed in on speaking can you talk about another one video? I think you went to a retreat and people were coaching you. So I love to hear some of the advice that they gave you that you took to heart with your speaking Wow, yes.

Scott Empringham 26:04

And entrepreneur organization which if you are a business owner, and you are interested in surrounding yourself with other business owners who have similar challenges, similar problems that you can level up with. I would highly recommend it inside that organization is something called Global Speakers Academy. Global Speakers Academy is run by a gentleman by the name Pat Quinn. And then several coaches coach Jimmy Hays Nelson he’s on the Grant Cardone TEDx circuit, Renée Marino also coached to Grant Cardone Tony Robbins, Danny Brassell, Diana Swillinger you have basically five or six of the best public speaking coaches in the world. With you for five days you come in with a speech that you think you want to give, which was my case, I said, I do this all day long. I know exactly what I’m gonna do. Diana Swillinger In the first five minutes said, I’m out. You’re giving this much information. I want you to give this much information which had cut it by 75%. Pat Quinn identified the single most important thing that I needed to do when I got in front of a customer which is this, who is my ideal customer? What problem do I solve? I went in to this workshop talking about why this course I want to help people do retargeting and drop pixels. They said Stop, stop, what problem do you really solve? And when I was done, I understood that I actually helped smaller businesses. Figure out where to start. And I’ve got a thing called the authority framework, it’s it, don’t talk about that. Just tell them, You’re gonna help them where to start, you’re gonna teach them what to say. You’re gonna teach them how to say it. And the fourth and last thing you’re gonna do is you’re going to teach them how to get it all done when they’ve got all these other things to do. And I said, Wow, that makes a lot more sense. Instead of getting into the weeds of retargeting, and authority frameworks, all these different things. So once I win it, once I left that environment after five days of refining my presentation, my keynote. Now I talk about, it’s called rising from the ashes, a 90 day comeback story, fueled by social media and AI, and I will teach you where to start, what to say, how to say it, and how to get it all done in less time. And that’s it and it took off. Once I trim things down and reformatted it, it was a tremendous experience. And every day, they just teach you and refine, help you with the opening help you the closing helped me with the structure, it was like Bootcamp for public speaking.

Jeremy Weisz 28:44

Is and I didn’t see this online. But Scott, is there a book of the same name yet or rising? Oh, nosing from the ashes?

Scott Empringham 28:53

No, but I was approached, I’m looking at putting something together. And I think it’s a it’s a 2023 goal or 2024 goal for sure.

Jeremy Weisz 29:02

Yeah, well, well, well,

Scott Empringham 29:03

Rise 25.

Jeremy Weisz 29:05

I’ll be buying it. Hopefully there’s an audible version. So let me know when it comes out. Will I remember I had a guest Martin Greiff of site tuners. And he’s conversion rate optimization expert in he picked apart our site live on there and I’ll say, Oh, I think our site is pretty good. You know? No, he tore to shreds I totally get you came in now that I think I got this down and then the experts just shred it in a nice loving way. That’s helpful.

Scott Empringham 29:36

Yeah, it was. You got it right on the money. They were they were encouraging. They were supportive. They were awesome. And they were also direct at times. They just said timeout and I knew that I could. I was open to it.

Jeremy Weisz 29:51

Love it. You know, I want to get into again, you built this eight-figure company and obviously did some amazing work there. And I kind of highlight what you do. I mean, again, you do this for huge companies like Toyota Ford Cadillac, and he also helped small, you know, bring those same concepts to small businesses. I’m talking about what you did with Ford.

Scott Empringham 30:14

Ah, so with with Ford, it was a, it was just an enormous opportunity as it is. Growing up in marketing, first building the business and working for smaller businesses. I always read books like thinking grow rich. And I always read about Henry Ford. And it was always a dream. And so one day I found myself having an opportunity to work with Ford, I flew back to Dearborn, I landed late at night. And as I was driving by the world headquarters, I’ll never forget, it was late at night, going to my hotel room, the first time I was in Dearborn, Michigan, I stopped writing for the world headquarters and said, One day, they’re going to know my name at Ford, they’re going to know what because I’m going to do great, I’m going to do great things. And I don’t know if I ever did great things. But one thing I did do was, as I went to work on campaigns, I focused on sales events, because I knew that if I was able to create a campaign that could amplify the sales events, I could have a big impact on their marketing. And I iterated and I built a essentially a social media software. And I created a Sales Event campaign that portable. And all it was was a sweepstakes, essentially a vehicle an online vehicle sweepstakes register for a chance to win. But I did one thing that was very, very unique. I made it portable, and I offered it to Ford Motor Company. So they installed it on their website. And then I offered it to all 38 dealer groups around the country, same infrastructure, and it was activated across all the different dealer group websites, all 38. And then I did something else. I made it available to about 1000 dealers at the time. So imagine this, July 1 of a 60 day campaign, July 1 through August 31, the sales event kicks off. That one promotion was live on all those properties. Imagine if you’re fishing in a boat, instead of having one rod and reel, you have like 1000, your chances of catching fish club geometrically. I got a call from my CTO, and I got a call from Dearborn, Michigan, a gentleman in Dearborn, Michigan named Venkat. Nada, who is an IT person in Dearborn. He said, Scott, I believe your program has been hacked. And he’s and it was like a four in the morning. And I said, Why do you say that and I’m brushing the sleepers. atomize. He said, because we’ve now gotten, like, 20,000 30,000 leads just in the first hour that the campaign has gone live, something is wrong. I wake up my CTO, and I said, Oh my gosh, this is bad. This video is Oh, Van cat says, our system, Ford Motor Company system is crashing. And I’m thinking my career’s over. I’m like, somehow this has gone horribly wrong. I call my CTO. I wake him up, he calls me back and he says everything’s working actually fine. He goes, it’s working. Scott, we’re, we’re literally live across like 1000 dealers 30, dealers of Ford Motor, crushing it. So I call Ben cat back and I said, it’s working. These are all legitimate leads from, you know, people that are registering for chance to win we’re collecting leads at a massive rate. And so we had to quickly reprogram the sweepstakes to only allow leads at a certain metered pays, we had to write a program instead of let them all register real time and go into Ford Motor Company system real time we had a meter them out, which is fine. We throttled it back, we had a max across time. By the end of the campaign, we’d set all the records by the end of the year for it and roll that out to now 38, dealer groups had 2500 dealerships. Within 13 months, we generated a million leads plus for Ford Motor Company, we finally did what’s called the sales match. We took all those leads, and dumped them back into Polk which is connected to the DMV. And we found out that we helped them sell over 30,000 vehicles match back to this program that we did, which is over a billion dollars worth of cars and trucks and SUV. That campaign that idea, that singular idea to create a portable promotion like that was on the map. Chevy noticed us I started speaking in front of groups, and again, we use social media, we use technology, but it’s still to solve some basic fundamental marketing challenges. But that one campaign put us on the map.

Jeremy Weisz 34:38

I love I love the idea of a sweepstakes. Yeah, right. Um, what are some mistakes people make? If they’re thinking of you know what, I should be doing a sweepstakes of some sort. Oh god for mistakes and what some must haves.

Scott Empringham 34:55

So here’s a classic mistake. I love this one because Um, here’s a classic mistake. We had, I won’t even say the client was a car client, a car client called us up. So I love what you do with the sweepstakes, I want to do something different. I want to give out $50 for a test drive. And we said love it. But you have to be very careful with the technology. Now we came up with the technology to to allow us to offer it on Facebook, but still make it exclusive. We called it pinpoint technology, a lot of technology behind it to offer exclusive Tesla’s non transferable. This gentleman was from a from a car company. So no, we really need to drive sales for this vehicle. Let’s just give anybody who wants to test drive a vehicle 50 bucks, what could possibly go wrong? Right. Famous last words? Yeah. I said, Sir, we don’t want to do that. It’s gonna go viral in two seconds, and people are gonna be coming in, left, right. So that’s okay. That’s on me. It’s on me famous. Also last words, but I’m the vendor. And I’m saying Yeah, but I’m the one that’s building this contraption that’s gonna go horribly wrong. He said, Thanks for your input. I’m the client, you’re the vendor, let’s make it done. I was broke, I needed the money. I said, Okay. You’ve been warned. We put it online. Within an hour or two, again, my CTO, same CTO. This is years later, this CTO called me and said, we have a problem. This time, we really did have a problem. And so many people have downloaded this, we broke the budget in two seconds. You know, in just two seconds, it was over. I call the clients and we’ve had a lot of downloads, how many 14,000 downloads and isn’t shuttered off. 15 dot $50 has 14,000 downloads a lot of money, we shut it off. They went back, they they shut it down, they the people that came in and did the test drive, they ended up funding, it was a disaster. It was an absolute disaster. And it’s funny, as an automotive with an automotive marketing background, every once in a while. I’ll be online, and I’ll see Chevy or GM or I shouldn’t pick on I’ll see some random car company offering a $50 test drive and I look at I go Oh, somebody’s gonna be getting a call. I’m glad it’s not me.

Jeremy Weisz 37:11

And it’s a mistake. No qualification is that the

Scott Empringham 37:17

I think there’s just two mistakes there I think is you don’t always want to listen to an expert. Sometimes you got to listen to your gut and you take good advice. But when somebody knows more than me about podcasting or something, I have to be willing to say, Listen, that is your area of expertise. Tell me more why that’s a bad idea and then be open to it. But this particular gentleman was just so bullheaded, I said, Sir, here’s why I was articulate. I was clear. I was specific. He said, got it, do it. Okay. So he didn’t listen to good advice. And then too, yeah, for sure. For sure. Technology is a double edged sword technology can really fantastic and get your message out. And it can also absolutely go viral in the wrong ways. And we’ve had a handful of those go go viral in the wrong ways. And so yeah, in that case, there was no technical qualifications. offering some incentive, you have to be very careful about offering incentives online, because incentives. If there’s a loophole, people will find and there’s websites dedicated to exactly that bat wallet deals.com. You know, there’s all kinds of online communities that do nothing else. Then find, you know, the toaster and the refrigerator and the car. They’re online looking for these loopholes, and they’re very smart. They’re very smart. You know, they’re clever, and figuring these things out.

Jeremy Weisz 38:46

Yeah, I had a guy on my podcast, Josh Linkner, who started ie prize and that they sold it. And I think that’s all their company did was help companies with sweepstakes, right? Have you heard a

Scott Empringham 38:59

tremendous? Uh, yeah, I definitely heard of a we model a lot of things we did. We did work with the prize in the early days. And we saw what they were doing and we model it and just did some tweaks. He did a great job. I remember he prizes a very powerful company. Very short.

Jeremy Weisz 39:13

What are some, that was a mistake, a bad offer? What are some good offers you’ve seen out there from a sweepstakes perspective, or ones that you helped create or ones that you’ve just seen?

Scott Empringham 39:25

So, so one twist we did on the sweepstakes was, I’ll give him a give him a shout out to his credit. There was two gentlemen, Dave Spindler, and Scott Mani over at Ford Motor Company. Scott money was the global social media person over Ford. And they basically looked at our sweepstakes, and they said the problem with the sweepstakes is we are not teaching them anything about our vehicles. We’re not showing all the wonderful things that f1 50 could do or a Ford Fusion or whatever it is a bronco. And so we reinvented it. We said, well, what if so, this is actually a marketing, I think, a marketing idea, or there’s a lesson here, rather than just take no for an answer. I said, the problem you’re saying is with a sweepstakes, you liked the idea of capturing data, but you don’t like the idea of not being able to teach them anything about the vehicle. You said? Yeah. So what if we could teach about the vehicle before they registered for a chance to win? Does it you might have something there. So we created a thing called a watch when platform and the watch share when platform was Dr. Weiss goes on the website and says I’d like to win an F 150. And when he clicks, I want to win an F 150. He watches a short 15/32 video about the F 150. The interior, the extra the towing, and he learned something he registers and then he says By the way, you could win five more chances to win. It’ll only take you a moment. Watch a couple more videos on the interior and exterior. And you get those five and then you go Yeah, I got I got another minute. So you watch the videos. And now you’ve learned about the interior, the exterior the towing. And then right when you’re done it says last thing you want by doing a double your bonus chances are you got me for this law, what do you want me to do? Just copy this link, just copy this link and post it to Facebook. And you’re gonna double your, your thing, your your your chances? All right. So you do that what we’ve just done is essentially quadrupled or quintupled the length of time on site. We’ve doubled it tripled or quadrupled the amount of information you know now know about the interior and exterior, the port, and now you become an advocate for Ford. That was the secret sauce in that simple sweepstakes platform that really blew things up because not only were people entering to win, they were watching videos, they were posting the links online. And so we had this geometric impact on the market for years for three or four years. We did that for sweepstakes,

Jeremy Weisz 41:59

Scott, you what kind of budget does someone need to do that? I don’t know if I see as many smaller companies out there doing it. Are there any smaller company examples that you’ve seen?

Scott Empringham 42:10

Sure, sure. There’s, there’s some small programs like a lot of people will go to Facebook, really small companies will do book giveaways like, I happen to be really I’m excited. I’m speaking with Tim Grover. Tim Grover is one of my heroes. In my darkest days I would read relentless is just a way to get out of bed in the middle

Jeremy Weisz 42:31

obviously be in shock being from Chicago. You’re telling Grover is yeah, I’ll let you you say what he already believes. Yeah, please. Go ahead.

Scott Empringham 42:41

Yeah. Tim Grover, would coach Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, tons of basketball, great greats, had a had a gym called attack athletics. I think he still has that athletic facility or he’s he you know, he’s a coach and at attack athletics. He wrote a great book called relentless. It’s about the mindset of getting into the mind of somebody like a Kobe Bryant, or a Michael Jordan, and it’s next level. I mean, these guys are the best of the best of the best. And what does it take? Well, it doesn’t take just, hey, you could do it. It’s a relentless attack, Next Level mindset of sacrifice to do this. And that was what I needed at the time. That’s what I still am trying to strive for today. And and so I’m speaking of relentless with him. He’s an incredible guy. There’s an event it entrepreneur organization sponsored by Anthony djerassi, who’s also a member of entrepreneur organization. So it’s in ranch in Rancho Mirage may 4, fifth and sixth in there in Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage. And I’ll be speaking with Tim Grover in relentless they’re doing a bunch of giveaways on that Facebook page. Really simple. When signed books by Tim Grover, their giveaway two books, and there’s only three secret formulas number one is the algorithm Facebook algorithm loves when people comment right away. So first one to comment with the word winning, we’ll get a book, then one random, why one random, because the more people comment, the better. And if when you stack all those comments up and give one to one random, you’ve now created a reason for people to then comment on the page winning, winning, winning, winning and when you get a bunch of those, Facebook says wow, there’s a popular post and share it with more people. And the third one is tag a friend who you think could benefit from this book. So now Dr. Weiss goes on and says you know, Scott’s a big Tim Grover fan. I’m gonna I’m gonna mention him. And you have some of those people do the do the marketing for you. So relentless is a good example. They’re promoting this event. They did a couple of book giveaways. The cost was two books. Easy peasy right? And they’re having everybody else comment, do the legwork for them.

Jeremy Weisz 45:00

I love it. So in this situation, looking at rewarding the activity that you want, and like you looked at what is going to make this go to more people and rewarding that those specific activities? Yeah,

Scott Empringham 45:13

exactly. And, And rule number one is get back to where we exact exactly started. So many people look at marketing and look at what they don’t have. The real answer is start to take, take, take stock of what you do have, if you’ve got a Facebook page, you can go live today. If you’ve got an Instagram account, you can go live today. If you’ve got a tick tock, you can go live today. I mean, there’s so much you can do with the resources that are right in front of you. Most people just don’t take a moment to look at what they do have what they could use right now.

Jeremy Weisz 45:48

Scott, who are with the and I people can check out empmediagroup.com, which is your website? Who are ideal clients for you through that?

Scott Empringham 46:03

Yes. Oh, thank you. Through every media, we work a lot with automotive companies, large franchise companies, anybody with a franchise, whether it’s mobile homes, motorcycles, SUVs vehicles, we work a lot with larger companies on the embryo media side on the agency side, with 20 years of working with companies like that, we’ve become accustomed to the two or three major problems that they have. So for example, if you have a large company with franchises, there’s some nuances that an agency needs to be aware of, to navigate some of those challenges. And those unique challenges that the master company has versus a franchise company, and navigating that and aligning those things are really, really important. After 20 years of making lots of mistakes and making lots of innovations, we figured out some creative ways to get everybody aligned around key events and then amplify everything. The key with companies like this, like the Ford Motor companies, the Chevy’s, the car companies, or companies with franchises is how do you align their interests and get them focused on one thing, sales events, service events, test drive events, to the extent that you could do that and truly align them, you can create magic, the perfect example would be the example that we started with a little while ago, with a billion billion dollars worth of cars, and 13 months, it was all about figuring out alignment, I’ll share one other thing. When we first started that campaign franchises said, You will not put a promotion from the mothership on my Facebook page or on my website. Well, why not? Because all the leads are gonna go back up to Ford Motor Company, or Chevy or whatever it is, I’ll never see them. And we found out that was a problem franchises many times, as much as they are excited to be a part of that entire system, they get screwed. Their interests are not always aligned. And so they don’t want to do what the factory or the manufacturer somebody else really wants to do. But if you can figure out how to align those interests, set of business rules that support both of them, and get them aligned from marketing perspective. One plus one can equal three, one plus one can equal five. And it really is it’s fun to work. I love that environment. It’s a very fun environment.

Jeremy Weisz 48:21

In Scott, who’s a good fit for I know, You’ve training a smart, 90 Social dark, calm, who’s good fit for this training.

Scott Empringham 48:30

99.9% of the companies we help are between 20 and $50,000 and say two or $3 million, or $4 million. If somebody says, I don’t know, I know I need to get on, I need to do more digital marketing and social media. But I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to say I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to get it done in less time. This course is for them. It’s literally a ondemand social media court that teaches them exactly where to start, what to say how to build their ads, step by step by step by step. It’s an annual license. So you get it for the entire year, you could share it with your entire team, share it with your marketing manager, your intern, your overseas virtual assistant. But that course can be shared with anybody on your team and anybody that’s listening to your podcast. If you use a save 90 discount code, you also will get access to monthly coaching for $1. For $1, you can go on and use that course. And for $1 you get 30 days of coaching. It’s a weekly live call with us and we’ll walk you through exactly how to get the most out of the course. We’ll answer your questions. It’s myself, my creative team, my development team. It’s like having an entire agency over your shoulder launch your first course for a buck. That’s a pretty good deal. And so there’s two there’s two. There’s two discount code sorry it’s smart 90 and save 90, but smarten it and save 90, plug those in. And you’ll get that 90% discount, as well as that coaching for a buck. And that’s really what it is. It’s an on demand course to just get you started and get you going and then also have the coaching.

Jeremy Weisz 50:14

Oh, well, thank you for the um, I do want to mention you do have a software as well. Yes,

Scott Empringham 50:20

yes. So, we invented the software again, people in our course said, Okay, now I know where to start. I know how to do my advertising. The one problem they had, like, let’s say the the boutique boutique, she said, Okay, I want to do a virtual live fashion show. I gotta write the copy for my facebook event as it come on. We just told you the idea. It’s all you got to do write the copy of your Facebook event and converted that to an email, maybe do a blog and do some Facebook posts said, I don’t want to. I don’t have time. Ai content Pro is a software that sits on top of chat GTP 3.5. Turbo ChatGPT? Three, you answer five questions. Five questions, your business radio audience a couple other questions. If you could do Mad Libs, you can do AI content Pro. And you answer five questions. We it sits on top of ChatGPT three inputs the information into GPT three, parses it out and spits back an entire 30 Day done campaign. You get four emails, well, social media posts, and you get 12 social media posts and ads and a blog all done for you. So it’s literally 30 days of content. And it takes you two minutes. You don’t have to master technology, you don’t have to master cheat and ChatGPT three AI content pros basically a thing we go on, you answer four questions, and you get the entire 30 Day campaign done.

Jeremy Weisz 51:51

Um, Scott, I have one last question. And I only we only have a few minutes. And but I do want to mention this piece. But I do want to point people to all your websites, and they can, you know, check those out. We mentioned them on here. There’ll be in the in the notes and also on the video. But last thing I just want to point out and mention is to add fuel to the fire during this whole hard time. You’re also going through a divorce. Yeah. Personally, yes. But there’s a very small percentage of people that kind of it spins out positive on the other end. And so can you can you I know we only have a minute or so just take me through just a shortened timeline of that part up until today.

Scott Empringham 52:46

In 2018, I was in the middle of the divorce in the middle of losing my company, my entire life was in freefall. By the end of 2018, my company was done. That entire chapter was closed, I was rebuilding. By 2019, my divorce papers were signed, and I was divorced. through that period of time, I’ll call it a period of refinement, a good friend of mine, Skylar Lewis, he runs a men’s group. It’s a Christian men’s group, but it’s just a group about building four pillars of your life. And he had an enormous impact on me, and I’ve got to give him a huge shout out. He called on me to help him start the marketing for right rise up kings, his men’s group. And in that he said his four pillars that he believes a man should strengthen if he wants to provide well for his family, spiritual life, relationship with his wife, physical body, and financial life. If you have four pillars strong, and you work every day to strengthen those four pillars, you can start to build as he calls it, your kingdom. And marketing with him. He had a tremendous impact on me and I looked at areas of my spiritual life that were, I wouldn’t say weak, they were just destroyed. Certainly my relationships were destroyed my physical body I was drinking, and using sleeping pills to get through the night and my financial life was in ruin. And so as I was working on his marketing, I started to really take a look at those four pillars. The last four years have been of my life been cleaning up, strengthening, and focusing almost exclusively, ruthlessly on those four areas. I’m happy to say I was baptized, my kids were baptized. I quit drinking. And I’ve just been relentless in pursuit of those four things during that process. One of the blessings that came back as my my relationship with my my now my, my fiancee. On on, on Valentine’s Day, I asked my former wife to marry me again happily, she said yes. But one of the blessings was I think she saw such changes in my life and we both changed and we just grew back together and So on Valentine’s day I asked her to marry me today. The movers will be here probably in two minutes. And this house is going to be all in uproar. We own a couple of houses while she’s got her house. I’ve got mine and I’ll be moving back in. And we’re reuniting the family. And I’m extraordinarily grateful for that. So I can say, through just focusing on what I think are good fundamentals. Life can really be amazing.

Jeremy Weisz 55:23

Scott, I’ll be the first one to thank you. Thank you, everyone. This has been really an episode of gold. Check this out. Other episodes out and I want to be the first one. Thank you, Scott.

Scott Empringham 55:37

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

Outro 55:40

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