The Takeover with Tim and Cindy

Never Lose Another Customer! How to Master Customer Focus Like a Pro (ft. Ivy Johnson)

• Tim and Cindy Dodd • Episode 58

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Tired of losing customers to your competition?

In this episode, we're talking with Ivy Johnson, CEO of Results Solution Works, who's cracked the code on how to master customer service.

Ivy shares how he went from selling cars to building a multi-eight-figure company by prioritizing personalized, human connection and investing in his people.

In this episode, you'll discover the data-driven strategies Ivy uses to DOMINATE sales, including:

-The incredible impact of his handwritten letter technology

-Why genuine, personalized customer service is more important than ever

-Actionable strategies to create a people-first culture within your organization

-How Ivy's innovative approach can elevate your customer service game

-The key to turning one-time buyers into lifelong loyal customers

Join us as we dive deep into the art of customer service

Connect with Ivy Johnson: https://resultssolutionworks.com/
And https://johnsonads.com/

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Tim’s Instagram - @timissocial / https://www.instagram.com/timissocial 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TimAndCindyDodd

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About The Hosts:

  • Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

  • PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

00:00
The idea is I can make money and be successful if everybody else is successful that I'm helping. If they're successful, I'm going to win, right? It's real easy. It's not a complicated formula. People out there listen to me. If you overcomplicate it, if you can help other people be successful, you will win too. I'm just telling you, it's that simple. I stand behind everything I do. So if something doesn't go off the way that I envision it, and I've got pretty lofty expectations, I mean, this is my baby. You may have an expectation, but I promise you, whatever it is, I'm higher than that, okay?

00:28
And when I don't feel like we met expectations, you know, I'll redo it. I had no additional charge. I'll refund money. And what's happened over the years is I've had to do that at times when maybe we were late on something, right? We had a project that had a specific date range and the machines gave us a tough time. And so, you know, when we were growing or people didn't show up for work and we missed the deadline, I'll call them up and I'll give them extra mail or I'll put out, you know, no charge on me, on the house, extra mail. You want extra? I'm gonna do extra because I didn't.

00:56
achieve or exceed the expectation that I have for the project. And when you treat people that way and it's not about money, it's not about a sale. Listen, we make money again, because if they win, I'm going to win. And so when we apply that principle and then you stand behind what you say and do, it's really the right formula. And again, I sleep good at night. I lay my head on my pillow at night, knowing that I've done everything today to help my clients or help my friends, if you will. And that's a great place to be. I can assure you. Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate.

01:26
every area of life and business. Let's get with you. Welcome back to The Takeover, where we show you how to dominate every area of life and business. Super excited to have Ivy Johnson today with Results Solution Works. This man is personally responsible for over 2 billion in sales across his career. Now, I think what's most impressive about this, and we're going to dive into it later, is that you actually have the data to track and prove that it's not just the number you threw out.

01:55
but I can tell you're obsessed with data. You're incredibly good at what you do. You have a really, really unique solution. I think listeners, why you wanna listen to today's episode is because Ivy has built a multi eight figure company and a lot of his business comes in through partnerships, partners that actually send him the business. So excited to dive in. I'm sure we're gonna go a lot of ways. I've seen the way that you interact with your team and your company, your culture is great. It seems like you really value people.

02:23
You've got that like hustle mentality, whatever it takes to win, which is our audience. People come here because they're resolved to win. So welcome to the show, brother. Thank you very much, Tim. And I want to thank you for having me on. I'm excited to be here, man. Let's rock out. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm excited to have you here. I mean, maybe we just kind of start with a quick brief, a little bit how you got into your current business, because I know it started back. I mean, you're a sales hustler when you were just young selling cars. So give it just give our audience a little bit of your background.

02:52
dive into what you're doing right now. I've had a lot of U-turns, a lot of 180s. I've had a lot of left and rights, right? So sort of like everybody else, probably out there. We've got a, you know, everybody's got their unique story. My story started back in a situation where I got myself in trouble in high school based on my grades and I was 17, eight years old. This is probably a story people are gonna resonate with. You know, it's pretty impactful. I got myself in trouble. I was an athlete. I was very competitive, clearly.

03:18
I like to win and so I have a lot of fun doing that, of course. So I was very competitive and I got myself in trouble with my grades. Well, when I found out that I was going to lose my opportunities to pursue football in college, that was my goal. You know, when that happened, you know, I was devastated. And of course, not having a real sense of the real world and what happens in the real world and what it really takes to make it in the real world. You know, I was an 18 year old kid, 17, 18 year old kid.

03:42
that thought I knew everything. I think everybody can relate to that, right? You know, back when you go back and think about it. And so what happened was I decided I was gonna leave school and go be, you know, successful in life and in business. And so I walked out of high school. So I was a dropout, going back and got a GED a little bit later. So I remember going in, yeah. I remember going into my first, you know, I was dating this girl, really sweet family, really nice people. They're really good to me. We're still friends to this day.

04:08
I remember going into her mom's living room and her mom looking at me going, it's time to get a job. Right. And so I, you know, I pulled out the newspaper on Sunday. This dealership not far from us was running an ad for six figure earnings, potential, you know, no experience necessary and all that. And so I remember going in there and it was real excited about that interview. I called them up and went in there and they gave me an opportunity. And so I remember going in my first day and rocking and rolling in my first month. I was the salesman of the month, the dealership.

04:36
I had a lot of people that were kind of set in their ways. I didn't know a whole lot. I was excited to be there and had a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm. They took me under their wing and really developed me in that sales capacity and that catapulted into everything else. Your goal was to play college football. Was it to go professional? Was that the long-term dream? Well, listen, when you're young and you don't really understand how it all works, the best 1% of high school athletes play college and then the best 1% of those, I think it's the number.

05:05
go to the pro level. And so, but when you're a kid, you think you're the best thing in the universe and you don't really have a good temperature on the whole scheme of it. Right? I thought I was the best thing to slice bread. They were going to, you know, my grades didn't matter because they needed me and I was pretty good. And, you know, I had a lot of talent, but the talent did not weigh the things that were necessary that were the academic side, of course. So yeah. What's interesting is like, I think a lot of entrepreneurs can resonate with not doing great in school. Like some can,

05:35
A triple plus in every class. Oh, I can imagine, man. She's starved. But like, but like me, it was definitely, you know, I have, I graduated, but it was really because my mom's like, okay, you're felon, let's homeschool you and I'll do all your exams for you. Right? Right. That's great. That's awesome. But I think what was cool is like just seeing that, like there's like a lot of success people, they're able to like, when something doesn't work, it's, there's not like a woe is me. It's like, okay, like, let's figure out the next thing. And it sounds like

06:00
You dove into sales, which is interesting because when I was 20 years old, I was actually really, really shy, but I was like, I hated it. So at 20 years old, I got into sales. I'm like, I just want to be super good at sales. And I would love to hear a little bit about like how you transitioned from doing sales to kind of where you're at right now with. I know your business, you got some incredible stuff I'm excited to share, but how did you get into what you're doing right now? Well, it's real simple. So I started on automotive sales.

06:28
Really fine tune my skill set there. I wanted to be a dealer, young and early. I really felt like that was the pathway for me. I wanted to own dealerships. I wanted to own a lot of them. I love the car business. I love interacting with people. I'm a people person. That's one thing we transitioned to business, we'll get that later, people helping people, right? It's a passion of mine. But I was excited about that, that opportunity to get out there and do that. We did that. I had a lot of success doing that. But what happened was while I was there,

06:54
I started seeing chinks in the armor. I started seeing things that need improvement from a marketing perspective. I happened to work for one of the most successful car dealers in America. One of my mentors I learned a lot from was Mr. Rick Case out of South Florida. And Rick and Rita, tremendous, tremendous people. I mean, I can't tell you enough about the opportunity they gave me and the times they had to professionally pat me on the rear end and get me back in check, get me back on the straight and narrow, right?

07:22
They didn't throw me out. They didn't say, you know what, you're not mature enough. They helped me develop, you know, the Kevin Cole, which my mentor that I worked with for so long taught me this industry at a high level. And when I was doing that, one of the things that I loved about Rick's story, and I don't want to get too far off track, but Rick's story, Rick was the PR marketing guy for Evel Knievel, right? Was he really? Yeah, man, you gotta read his book. Anybody listening, if you don't know Rick Case, is like, he's a big deal with car dealerships here in Florida. And Mr. Case passed away a few years ago.

07:51
And just, you know, Mr. Case and his daughter, Raquel and Ryan, her son, their son, they run the business now and they did tremendous jobs. So nothing but respect for them. Matter of fact, they won time deal of the year, this past NADA auto show. So they're doing great, man. They're doing great. But I learned a lot from that family, working for a great organization to just, you know, great culture, treated everybody respectfully. Rick and Rita would come in the dealership and they would start in the back of the dealership. When they would come visit, you know, Atlanta, I was in Atlanta.

08:19
Atlanta division. They had Cleveland, Ohio, Atlanta, and they had South Florida. And they live in South Florida. So Kevin Cole ran Atlanta. But when Rick and Rita would come to town, they would start in the back of the business. They would start back there where the detail, the porters, the people in the back that were working hard seven in the morning before the salesmen, the managers and all that came in. They would start there and they would go through, they would shake everybody's hand. They would thank everybody for their services and how hard they're working for them. That's culture, man. They knew people by name, man. Every one of them,

08:49
How does Rick and Rita remember everybody's? Because I can't remember everybody's name, right? I had to really work at that. Because I was like, I want to do that too. I want to be just like that. Wow. And so just, they were so impactful. They didn't even know this. I hope Ms. Rita Case has an opportunity to watch this because they're instrumental in my success. Kevin Cole, my mentor that ran Atlanta, he was instrumental in my successes. And so just really taught me a lot. Listen, they taught me a few things. I'll tell you a couple quick. No parts bigger than the whole, right?

09:15
No part of the vessel, no part of the team is bigger than the whole, everybody has a role and every part matters. And then the fish rots from the head, right? So, you know what I'm saying? So pretty impactful stuff that obviously had a significant impact in my life. And so- You know, so see the way you interact with your team, people are listening to this, like I see, I'd be like, even before this, you know, as you're talking to your staff and people are setting up your tech, you're like, hey, appreciate you, thank you so much.

09:41
You really do care about, so this is starting to make sense. You saw this from very, very, very successful entrepreneurs. You saw this early on them shaking hands with the detail. I used to own a detailing shop, though, so I'll always appreciate that. That's awesome. And all the way through. And so that makes a lot of sense. And Cindy and I are huge on culture, like really, really valuing everybody in your team. And so that's kind of where you, that's where you got that from is from your. Yeah, I just, I just saw them and it's like, you know, I just respect them so much.

10:11
I mean, knowing everybody's name. I mean, we had hundreds of employees in Atlanta, hundreds of employees, and they didn't miss a beat. It was unbelievable. It was like, wow. So how did you transition from doing that and having the mentors? And we could do a whole episode on how the heck did you get mentors? But how did you transition from that into what you're doing right now? So essentially, I was working for the CASE organization, Mr. and Ms. CASE, and Kevin Cole, my direct supervisor.

10:37
And I worked through the ranks, you know, I'd gone from, you know, a salesperson to a finance manager, to a sales manager, to a general sales manager. And then I became a general manager and I was running my own dealership and we were ultra successful in our specific brand, one of the top in the nation. And so we really just, we really rocked. And the whole time I was doing that, and the reason I wanted to mention Rick's story about Evil Knievel was he was crazy promotion guy. Like, wow. Like.

11:04
Like we had this campaign that we would do every August. And I remember it specifically, Race for the Record, right? We wanted to break all the sales records for the organization in August. He would spend money, he didn't care about profits. He was all about being number one and taking over and having market share and doing that. And so it was unbelievable. I mean, I can't remember, we spent millions of dollars in one month advertising as our little group of stores. We had like three stores there.

11:29
And I remember working with Rick and being on the calls and hearing like the thought and the direction and why, the why we were doing it and gosh, he was so good, man. And so that's when I really became passionate about marketing and advertising. And I realized not only is it culture, but if you don't have, you've got the right culture, but you don't have the right opportunities, then you gotta have both, right? And so the culture is something I learned from them is, you know, in a young age.

11:54
management and they you know, they beat it in your head down there man It was really really impactful and then you take the the piece of what he was able to do with evil Knievel as example all he did was parlay that into automotive Yeah, right and I don't want to get in the weeds about their situation and how they did it him and his wife and they came Together and the organization they built but that but for you that was an impact to see Yeah, just to see somebody that incredibly successful putting so much focus in one area

12:22
And that was probably that got you intrigued with the marketing. I know for me, it was the opposite. I was really good at marketing and sales. I built a company really fast, but I was bad at team and culture. And so so business crashed super quick. And then you and I built the same back up. But I was about to say, that's the thing you met Cindy. And then she fixed. Yeah, right. It was a mess. And Cindy, Cindy's like the order to chaos. But for you, you got interested. You're seeing this going on. The gears are turning in your head. Right. Right.

12:51
This is bigger than selling cars to me. It was bigger than selling cars to me. It's like, there's more here for me. And I really believe I can help people. The culture of helping people, you know, I grew up in a family that just loves people. On Sundays, my grandmother and my great-grandmother, we would have people come over for, you call it brunch, if you will, every Sunday after church. And we would get together and there'll be.

13:13
countless people that you wouldn't even know them. It would just be people showing up and it was just awesome. And we just serve one another and had fun together. And so that's how it was raised. And so when I met the cases and I went to that piece, it was like automatically a perfect fit, right? It was like, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. And then the marketing side that Rick brought to the table with the evil can evil story and all that, it was like, man, this guy is really good. And by the way, he's really good. He was really good, clearly what he did.

13:38
And so, I mean, it's a national brand now and a time dealer of the year just won that last year. So, or this last year. So what happened for me was like I wanted to be more on the marketing side. So I got really passionate about coming up with different, we call them hooks in marketing, right? We are passionate about coming up with hooks and different things to lead with to really do it. And we got really good at it. And I spent a lot of time with Kevin and Rick on that. And it became very impactful. And so we saw some really good numbers.

14:04
in that. And then, you know, I like people, so getting up and talking to people. But what happened was for me is I felt like, you know, I either had to make a decision to go one way or the other. I had to decide to either I want to be a dealer and I want to be in the corporate side of it and do it that way, or I needed to look at doing it the other way, which is helping dealers. And so I felt like, you know, I'm one person, I can be at one place, but if I'm helping people, I can be all over the country.

14:28
And so that was really what prepared me and made me say, you know what, Mr. Case, Ms. Case, I wanna go out on my own and venture my own. And that's what I did. So that timeline, 18, you start selling, you start mentoring a shippable. About what time is this in your life? Well, the mentoring happened throughout the business plan. We had meetings consistently. It wasn't as much to me. I wasn't sitting in Mr. and Ms. Case's living room getting an hour report at night. It wasn't like that. But just being around it and being in the culture.

14:56
You know, the first thing they could do is read the book. You gotta know the book so you can convey the message, right? So just little things like that. But what happened for me was- What's powerful about that, Ivy, is how many other people were in that room, though? You know, how many other people had that opportunity but didn't see it like you did? I'm just thinking, how many people were in that worked for his dealership? 15, 15, 15, 16 people probably, yeah. Yeah, right. So you have like 15, 16 people. And then when I'm hearing your story,

15:25
It was like a personal journey where you were soaking it all in. And just to see you to see your success. And I know your story a lot more. I'm excited to get into what you're doing right now. Like that's really cool. Just the way you even speak about it. I mean, listen to this. There's a lot of times big opportunities will be right in front of you. But like because it's not exactly what you're looking for, like you can miss it. And it sounds like what you are doing is you're being a student of not just how can I be successful in my role, but you are being a student of like.

15:53
How is this company being run? How is the Case family running this? How are they building this, the marketing, those pieces? And so you transition, you're at this fork in this road. How old are you when you're at the fork in the road? 24, 25 years old right there. So this is like, this is not a big, it's like 18, you're crushing it, you're doing, you're moving up. I was a GM in 22. Leadership, GM. And then, I was a GM. I was the only manager of a multi-million dollar dealership at 20 years old. Yeah, for them, so.

16:19
Yeah. And then you're at this fork in the road. I'd really want to move into like how we got to, because I've seen you walk me around your operations. You've got, you've got thousands of machines that are handwriting letters, because you're sending out personalized letters. It's not printed. It's literally a machine that's handwriting the letters. And you guys got to see his factory. He's got this huge, huge warehouse of just machines handwriting letters. And so how did you go from where you're at to specializing?

16:48
There's only one other, like you're one of the only people that has this. Yeah, there's only a few of us. Yeah, there's only a few of us in the country. Well, you know, what happened was, you know, I was able to spend Rick's money, right? Remember, I worked for him. I was able to spend Mr. Miss Case's money to see what worked and what didn't work. We spent a lot of money. We found a lot of things that didn't work. More things that didn't work, the more things that worked, right? That's the way business is. But when we found some things that worked, he was like, you know, man, this is great. And so I was able to take those when I decided to go out on my own. I was able to take those items.

17:17
and use those for the dealerships. You know, I was taught different terminologies and how to operate a store. So I wasn't only a guy calling, trying to sell you some print and marketing or whatever. I'm actually done. You knew the game, you knew the game. I've done it, I've done it. I know how to run a financial statement. I know how to run a car dealership. So when that happened, I was really a resource for these people. And I've got some lifetime friends now that we were able to help, that I was able to help. And they've helped me too in life, you know. And so...

17:43
We've been really, really good and close and it's just been great. But back to your point or back to your question, I think that all of that culmination of the beginning of it with Rick and Rita and all that coming into the marketing piece of it was what it happened because one day I woke up and I said, you know what, I want to help people. And that was my story. And so I felt like I was hindered from helping people. If I was at one dealership when I could help the whole country. So that's, that's really powerful. I heard this study that was done and it showed like a lot of people.

18:13
that are like Bill Gates and these people that create these really big impact, they have a motivation that's like, it's not just about like helping that one person in front of you, they're like, how can I expand my impact really, really large? And so I think that's really interesting because you see a lot of very, very successful people, they have those forks in the road. It's like, well, hey, if I put my time and energy here, the maximum impact can be bigger. And I think that's the ultimate like people that love entrepreneurship, they get excited about how can I expand my reach? How can I?

18:42
How can I write it down? Yeah. So what did that look like? When did you start? Did it start off with you were doing print? Were you going and getting the jobs and deals yourself? When did you start getting into like doing partnerships? What does that journey look like? Well, so when I started up, it was just me. And I called a friend that I'd worked with in the past and he came and helped me, his name's Roger. He actually is with me today. So he runs operations for this business now. And we just a blessing in our lives. His wife, Taro, phenomenal friends.

19:12
And we've been together a long time and we've had some breakups. We know not, not bad breakups, but he, he had an opportunity to try something different for a minute, you know, and, and he became a car dealer for a while. And they decided, you know, he divested and got away from that space. He sold his portion of the business back or to someone else. And then we were able to put things back together here for us. I'm a little selfish because I appreciate him so much, but, but he helped me get this when my original company off the ground many years ago, he helped me get it off the ground.

19:37
And what we did was we went in and I was doing training and consulting for dealerships on how to do the things that I'd learned from the cases to do, right? From Kevin Cole. The things that I learned that were so impactful in such a great organization, the dealerships across the country were just missing the boat. There's so many of them that were just off track. And you talked about culture. Goodness gracious. I mean, some of the things you walk into, you're like, managers coming in at the store opens at nine in the morning, right? The managers showing up at 945, 10 o'clock. You've got an hour in the morning before when the day starts.

20:05
You don't even have someone there if a client or a customer in service or someone has a question about a car or, or a service that you provide. And so it was just like, wow, to me, you know what I mean? I had an owner company that is a marketing. I'd gone back into retail, was working at a high level with an organization out of Florida. And I came home, decided that I was going to take a break for a little while. We were good financially, clearly. And you just want to take a little break. Well, my wife was kind of a funny story. My wife looked at me, she went online.

20:31
together we opened a company and she says, go get them tiger, she's tired of looking at me, I guess, on a daily basis. So, you know, it's like time to go back to work. And so this was in 2017. And so in 2017, my wife launched Johnson Advertising, Johnson Inkworks is the company that, the parent company. And so that's the company my wife owns that I represent, I work for. And so that company started then. And then today, you know, obviously the print facilities is Johnson Inkworks.

20:56
which is obviously my wife's business, I'm the marketing side and the sales side. My company's Result Solution Works. So that's the two company variations. But my wife does all my printing. So it's unfortunate, it's like a monopoly, right? If she finds out I send an order to another printer or another designer, which there aren't many that do what we do, clearly it's gonna be trouble for me at the house. She gets, she's got a captive audience. Yeah, for sure. So tell me about Result Solution Works. Yeah. How did you, cause like when I, when you walk me through your factory and your operations,

21:26
I was blown away, man. I was taking pictures and I'm blown away at that. How did you get into that? Cause you're one of the only companies with this technology. How did you get into that? And tell me about this technology. Hey there, we're going to be coming out with a lot of new content to help you level up in all areas of life and business. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you're listening so that you get immediate updates as soon as a new show is released.

21:54
Well, it's always a need-based thing for me. I'm a trend person. I like to pay attention. I get up in the mornings, I read. I've got a regimen that I do every day and try to understand what's happening around the world, especially locally and in this country, in the United States of America. And I try to get my hand around it and try to follow it and try to project things in the future that may be impactful for small business owners. I wanna help. Like I told you earlier, my idea is I can make money and be successful if everybody else is successful that I'm helping. If they're successful, I'm gonna win, right? It's real easy.

22:23
It's not a complicated formula. People out there listen to me. If you overcomplicate it, if you can help other people be successful, you will win too. I'm just telling you, it's that simple. And so that's what we obviously pride ourselves on. So what happened was during COVID, okay, we were doing some direct mail, we were doing some marketing, we were doing a lot of social media advertising, website development, a lot of consulting work, going out to stores and dealerships and telling them, hey, you're doing it all wrong, let me show you how you do it. Let's worry about your customer's satisfaction. How do we really boost that?

22:52
How do we have a great experience with all those things? And so that's what we focused on on the consulting side. And so what happened was I was doing all that. When COVID hit, we basically stopped dead cold in the water, like so many businesses out there. Because you couldn't advertise. What was advertising when we all were locked in our homes and told we had to stay six feet from each other? If you owned a business, you couldn't even have people come into the business. You had to schedule appointments. It had to be a needs-based product, like what they called it, essential.

23:20
You know, like a service department. You couldn't sell cars. It was crazy. Yeah. So I mean, we all lived through it, right? I mean, it's nuts, but what happened was, you know, we were in a bad spot because we had a lot of expense, a lot of things going on. And I wasn't going to take a failure on the chin. Basically what happened was I was sitting in my house and I was mapping out things. And I'm a big whiteboard guy. So I had whiteboards everywhere. I'm mapping out what's this, what's that, you know, different things to consider. And then I got this mailer in the mail piece, or this mailer in the mail, and it was terrible to be fair.

23:49
It was a yellow letter, had lines on it, so it looked like a legal pad. And it was fake printed. You could tell it wasn't even handwritten, but it tried to make it look handwritten. It was just atrocious, right? And they were trying to buy my house, right? Well, this is during, this is like, we're locked in the house in like May of COVID, right, 20. And I get this letter and I'm like, people are marketing right now, trying to do business. Like, it was like, it shot me. It's like, we're over here, we can't even go outside. It's like, wow. So it hit me. It was like, you know what? This is pretty cool.

24:19
So knowing the trend of the automotive industry, which happened, obviously we all know this, we all lived it. I mean, this country, you pretty much have to have a car unless you live in a major city, right? So when there was no new cars coming from anywhere in the globe, what happened to the used cars? The values went crazy, right? Because of the supply and demand. Like I had a Jeep Gladiator Rubicon lifted, I had all the brand new. I mean, it was only had 10,000 miles on it.

24:44
And I forgot what I paid for, but whatever. Listen, they offered me $10,000 more than I paid for it used. It was like, what? I mean, I got a good deal, but wow. I was taxes and everything. I was making $10,000 over taxes. I was like, wow. So when I saw all that stuff, it's like, you know what? What would a buyback, and this is just obviously not trying to single it down, but what would a buyback letter look like in the same format? But be believable. Be legitimate. Be personalized in a way that it's like, yeah, be legitimate like they'll.

25:12
So I started studying, I found some equipment, I tried some other equipment, I started playing with this thing, and it's progressed into what it is today. And then what you're doing today, guys, anybody listening to this, I mean, it's like literally handwritten letters. This is not printed on there. Your robots have a pen in their hands and they're handwriting these letters. I mean, I sent some pictures to Cindy and she was like, oh my gosh, this is so legitimate. And I think what's so powerful about this is

25:41
I want everybody to imagine you go to your mailbox and you've got some shiny ad in there, you've got like some other junk mail and then you've got one letter that's handwritten. What do you do with the mail? With a real blue ink pen, a real one. With a real ink pen and it looks like just a personal letter sent to you. You go in the house, you throw out all the promotion stuff or it goes in your recycling bin and you open up the personal letter. I've always used that example of

26:09
Yeah, you mentioned hooks before. I love hooks. I love copy. But if I'm writing like an email, I want it to look like an email from a friend. I'll usually do lowercase. It'll be very casual. A lot of our marketing works so well because it seems personal. And I think when I saw this, you are automating something that is humanized. Because I think in our market right now, especially with AI and all these different pieces,

26:33
People are on guard more than ever before and they have such good BS detectors on, is this automated, is this real, am I talking to a real person, is this a real letter or is this fake? And I think when you're able to, in a time when people are wondering if they're talking to a robot or wondering if they're gonna, it's like if you can humanize the process where they go, oh my gosh, I have a real person I'm talking to, you can cut through the noise. And an example I think of, Ivy, is,

27:02
I buy a lot of supplements from this company, First Form. And every time I have ordered something from them, they've sent a handwritten letter to me. And literally, from when I started, I'm like, okay, these guys are like, that made a big difference and they have a really big cold falling. Now I'm like, oh, maybe it was a machine. Whatever but whatever it was, that made such a big impact on me that there was a little handwritten letter, hey, you're going to love the chocolate. It tastes like your favorite chocolate bar. John.

27:32
warehouse manager, that one humanization in a world of automation and bots will absolutely cut through the noise. And so you kind of saw that. How the heck did you even create something that was real and believable and humanized? Well, again, trends, data, we talked about, you talked about the beginning of the show, I study data. And so some things I want to touch back on what you said a moment ago, you said the mail goes in the trash.

28:02
doesn't make it in the house. People get confused production value because of the art and the colors and the graphics is so fun and great. Look, you're not selling to yourself, you're selling to somebody on the other side. And we get caught up in all this production and it's like, wait, just keep it simple, stupid, right? I mean, that's the old saying. And that's how this direct mail works in my people's and I've got the printing presses and things I can do anything anybody else can do. We can do crazy postcards and all this high production value.

28:29
But nothing responds better than personalization and that blue ink. I'm just telling you right now, I'm nothing out there. And print. Okay, clearly. So when you look at that, going back to what you said a moment ago, the 80% these are real numbers, 80%-ish of all mail, direct mail, that's printed, postcards of 11 by 17 folded in half, flyers, you know, 4 by 6 postcards, 8 and a half by 11 postcards, anything marketing related.

28:57
80% of it, right at 80% goes in the trash can, never makes it in the house. So we've also found that the woman of the house, typically, is the one getting the mail.

29:07
So if you're sending out a marketing piece, just for example, with a Bass Pro Shops boat on it, it's probably going to the trash, okay? I'm just saying, you know? I mean, I hate to make light of it. And he's like, we're not getting the boat. You're not getting the house, bro. I don't want him seeing this. They're not talking to you, okay? And then what we found in our studies, and I got a lot of data supporting points for this, is over 98% of people, when they get something that's personalized with a ruling pen.

29:34
They don't believe it. First of all, they look at it. They, they feel their nail. They like, they see if there's an indentation of the pen and what's legit. And then all of a sudden they're like, okay, it makes it in the house. So many of our clients, which is great. It's called shelf life, right? So many of our clients are like, man, you know, I sent this batch of letters out, you know, we sent out 20,000 letters and all that. And we did a great job right away. But you know, I've got people coming in and still not, you know, not, not every day, but once a month, twice a month, I think people walking in from two years ago.

30:02
with their letter in their hand going, hey, you know, I'm here to see Fred at the dealership because you know, I want to talk about my vehicle. And if they're like blown away, they can't imagine it. Because again, Frank advertising- Do they keep that? Yeah, they keep it. They put on the, listen, it was a sweet, listen, a quick story. These are actual conversations had with GMs of dealerships. One of them was up in Bristol, Tennessee, right? First time they did a batch of letters with us. We helped them, they've done a lot of letters. But one time, the first batch.

30:29
They had a professor from the university there come into the dealership, ask for the person's name that was on the letter and thank them for their grammar and that they actually sent them out a letter. Isn't that crazy? Like that was wild. Like the guy calls me like this blown away. Like, I can't believe this. Like I've been advertising. I've been running dealerships all this time. Never seen anything like that. It's crazy. That was one example. You know, we've had examples where people will then write a letter back to us and say, hey, look, we sold that vehicle.

30:57
but I wanted to take the time to write you back because you wrote me and let you know that we sold the vehicle and thank you for your letter. We really appreciate it. And they'll actually write us back or write the dealership back. It's wild, you know what I mean? But it's just really common sense when you sit and think about it. You know, it's the personalization side and it works, man, it works. It just conveys the emotion. There's nothing more powerful than automation and humanization. If you can combine those things, because I think people...

31:26
Usually we'll do one or the other. Well, but it's so rare that I see anybody do both. Well, and what I love about this is that I am obsessed about doing those things. And, you know, we do outreach, we do app, and we do LinkedIn, emails, super high scale. But if we can automate it so it's incredibly scalable, we're doing five million reach outs a month. But on the other side, make sure that every single person we're engaging with, it feels humanized and it brings them through a problem. When you can combine those two pieces,

31:55
Oh boy, it is so impactful in my mind, just the marketing mind of the data, plus the scalability, plus the humanization of what you're doing is really powerful. And who are like the main, like, so you're doing home services, real estate dealerships. But I think because you and I talked before, you can do retargeting. So this could even work in B2B scenarios.

32:20
I mean, I think there's a lot of what you're able to do in a world of everything's a robot, or if you're able to automate in your sales and marketing process, some of these handwritten letters, the potential is pretty big here, man. It's sizable. There's a lot of different rabbit trails. I'm going down right now, Tim, to be fair, where you've got so much. I mean, every day there's just opportunity, opportunity. People need help, right? And that's, you know, and as we talked before, and I hate to say it this way, because it's kind of cliche, but.

32:48
I'm really the wizard behind the scene. That's what they call me, right? The wizard behind the scenes, like Wizard of Oz, right? Everybody wants to see the wizard. Well, nobody knows that I exist. I'm behind the scenes. Like we don't market. We've talked about this. We've never done any marketing. I'm the only sales person in the entire company. I just brought two friends of mine in. Well, one's my son, which by the way, I want to give him a little plug. Logan Johnson played football at University of Georgia as two national championship rings. I'm very proud of my own man. Let's go, man. So he's still in school, which obviously I'm excited about him graduating next year.

33:18
but I'm also excited about his help. I didn't quite finish the way I wanted to, but you're gonna finish the way. Yeah, right, right, amen. That's right, amen. So at the end of the day, you know, he's a blessing. And then we've got a friend, Derek, here that's helping sales too, but they just started recently just working on the phones and reaching out. So it's always just been me, it's been relationships. So we've got a lot of big relationships with manufacturers. We've got relationships across the globe with manufacturers also. You know, we do the real estate investment. We do real estate. And to be fair, real estate slowed down a lot because the market's kind of...

33:47
stagnated at the moment. Everybody knows that, you know, things are slowing down a little bit. So that's kind of stagnant a little bit. Roofing is big. Home services are great and big. Any type of financial services do roll with us. Automotive just kills it. RVs, power sports, anything that's a big ticket item, anything that... Listen, I wouldn't suggest anyone trying to mail out a personalized letter to someone buying a bar soap. I don't think that's necessarily the best course of action. But if somebody's spending money, I mean, this is the best product for that.

34:16
in my opinion. What I'm curious about, because I don't know if anybody heard that you don't do any of the sales. Like, so tell me about how do you, because I know most of your business comes in through partners that send business from their clients. These are like maybe other marketing agencies. How did you get those relationships and how do you maintain them? Well, it's all about trust, right? And trust isn't built in a conversation. It takes time. And, you know, when you're put through the trials of fire, what you do...

34:46
and how you handle that is your character and it defines you. And I'm not gonna sit and tell anybody every day that we don't have challenges, we've not had challenges. You know, we have machines that break, right? We have people that don't show up at times that have to run machines. It's the same thing in any business, right? So with all that being said, that's how you respond to it. And so that's what I pride myself. If we're involved in something that doesn't go off the way we anticipate or I anticipate, I either give the money back or I'll redo it for them or we'll figure it out. We just take care of people because, you know,

35:16
Your reputation is all you have. That's it. Yeah, especially when you're if you're selling like little small programs and products you can kind of Do some kind of turn and burn model when you're working with the bigger companies that are sending you? They see right through it. Yeah. Yeah, they see right. So how did you like kind of curious? How did you get in the doors for the companies for these marketing because you got some you told me some of their names You got some big companies that are that'll send you like a lot of work how did you first get your foot in the door with those and

35:46
get them to start outsourcing some of this stuff. Well, it started in automotive, because that was my space. And when you're working for organizations like the CASES, you bring a little bit of credibility. Not everybody can go there and do a good job. And my reputation was doing a phenomenal job in leadership, and the numbers were always outstanding, and always the top of the mark, and accolades and awards for days. And so when you get a reputation, because then these dealers are looking for that guy, they want to have a partner, they want to have somebody come run their store, they poach you.

36:13
They look for those big organizations that have it all together and they try to grab the top leaders in those groups because you bring all that knowledge that they don't have yet, you bring it with you, right? And so they're not only buying you, they're trying to rip off the company you learned from too. So because of that, my reputation was pretty big. And when I got in the marketing side, things just started happening and going big too. And so it was really a word of mouth thing. We got a client here that did real well. And the next thing you know, he's going to his 20 group, which a 20 group real quickly is a...

36:41
a group of dealers that get together like size dealers in different markets and they share ideas, they talk about their financial statements. They just really work together to try to be better, right? It's what the intention is to improve on and what's best practices? How can we do better by the customer? That was a really good method vehicle, if you will, for dealerships called 20 Groups. And so there's multiple companies that host them. And so they bring them their 20 Groups because they get credit for the next big idea. And so all of a sudden they're introducing me as the big idea in these 20 Groups.

37:11
Yeah, we're getting opportunities. That's just the inside man, just doing a great job, crushing it, building that reputation. Yeah. I mean, it's the same with us. I mean, we go in and we work for somebody, we crush it, and then that person is spending big money, he knows other people that are spending big money. That's right.

37:27
get in with one or two and they open up to your friends. But if you didn't, if you and Cindy didn't do the right thing and honor them and do what you said and exceed expectations, you would never have that second opportunity with them. Nor would you get brought into the 20 group or to their friends in their sphere of influence. You've never, you never get that shot. So that's what it's all about. It's about people. And so we can help people and we can do well. It just blossoms that way. Sometimes it doesn't go as fast as you want it to go.

37:52
And that's when you and I started talking at times, right? We talked about it, but it's the right way to do it. It's scalable, it's organic, and it's real. And it stays there, just taking care of your people. So, I mean, we're really big on, so for outreach, like just we can scale super fast. What I love is when you mix those, when you can go out, you can go bring in clients that will, but then when you have...

38:19
like that kind of delivery and that kind of upsell. One of the most important things is lifetime value. And people don't talk about this a lot. People, I think making that first sell, selling that first program, people are so obsessed with just that. And I love that, because that's what we do for people, is we help them get that first sell. But what's more powerful is not how much money did I make in the first sell, how much is a client worth to me over a lifetime? Right, right. And when you look at the...

38:45
biggest and the best companies, they can literally lose money on their first interaction with the client because they know, hey, I might spend $10,000 to get this client and only make $10,000 on them, so I'm breaking even. But I know because this one person will generally turn into two referrals, which will double my income, and they'll end up turning into an average of a $100,000 client across the board. And I think a lot of big businesses, like Coca-Cola, their goal is to get one impression per every person in the world. That's crazy.

39:15
Right. And so, but it's because they know it's not a matter of like trying to get it, get that one client. It's like, how much is a client worth over a lifetime? And I think that's what you have down really well is seeing the long term, not just like, hey, let me just do a good job, but how can I do such a good job that they're going to want to do more business with me that they're going to want to refer me to their friends? And Tim, think about in this perspective, you step out of the marketing side for a minute, put your small business owner hat on, right?

39:42
someone's coming to you and offering you a product or service, right? And you buy that product or service based on, you know, you can gain trust or believing in than what they were saying and feel like they're pretty trustworthy. You don't buy from somebody that's a liar. So you feel good about the person, then you buy it. And then you find out after you bought it that what they said is not true, wasn't real, wasn't accurate. It didn't do the things that they had mentioned or the things they sold it to you for. How happy are you gonna be? You're not, you know, that's the end of that deal because you were lied to, right?

40:11
And so what happens on my side is list. I'm not lying to nobody, number one. Okay, I don't ever promise anything, number two. And the third most important thing is I stand behind everything I do. So if something doesn't go off the way that I envision it, and I've got pretty lofty expectations. I mean, this is my baby. You may have an expectation, but I promise you, whatever it is, I'm higher than that, okay? And when I don't feel like we met expectations, I'll redo it. I have no additional charge. I'll refund money.

40:38
And what's happened over the years is I've had to do that at times when maybe we were late on something, right? We had a project that had a specific date range and the machines gave us a tough time. And so, you know, when we were growing or people didn't show up for work and we missed the deadline, I'll call them up and I'll give them extra mail or I'll put out, you know, no charge on me on the house. Extra mail. You want extra? I'm going to do extra because I didn't achieve or exceed the expectation that I have for the project.

41:04
And when you treat people that way and it's not about money, it's not about a sale. Listen, we make money again because if they win, I'm going to win. And so when we apply that principle and then you stand behind what you say and do, it's really the right formula. And again, I sleep good at night. I lay my head on my pillow at night knowing that I've done everything today to help my clients or help my friends, if you will. And that's a great place to be, I can assure you. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, I want to do a few more questions. And one of my favorite questions to ask entrepreneurs is...

41:34
So Ivy, if you were to lose all of your money, all of your business and all of your network, and you had to start from zero, zero money, zero business, zero network, we know that incredibly successful people can lose it all and within a few years be back where they were or beyond where they're at. What would you do Ivy, if you were brought to zero?

41:58
and you had no connections, nothing, and you had to get back to where you're at. How would you get to where you're at as fast as possible? Oh, well, first of all, you've got to sell something. And that's to be fair. If you don't have resources on hand because you're starting at zero, it's hard to develop things, right? It's hard to build softwares and programs to sell like that when you don't have a lot, or at least for me it is. So what I would do is I would get into sales, man, and I would just go dial it in and enjoy it and relish it because...

42:25
whether it's automotive, real estate, there's so many things out there. And obviously, as you know, there's trends too. So depends on what it is. I mean, heck, it may be about real estate, man. When this market correction adjustment happens and things get going again, look what people did in real estate the last several years. I mean, it's been unheard of in history, in my opinion, from what I've studied. So there's just so many verticals in sales that you can get involved in. I mean, people selling pharmaceuticals, they're just crushing it, man.

42:49
crushing it. So there's so many things you can sell. And listen, I can go on Craigslist. I've done this and I did this when I was younger. I could go to Craigslist or some of these other sites and I know, okay, this thing's a thousand dollar item. I can buy it for 500. I'll negotiate it down, go pick it up. And then I'll relist it for a thousand and then just keep playing that way or drop it on Facebook marketplace now or something like that and try to pick up the extra 500 bucks or 300 bucks and make 30, 40, 50% profit. I used to do that stuff a lot because I enjoyed it. Not because I needed the money, but the problem is I don't have the time anymore.

43:19
But at the end of the day, if you could sell, man, you can do it. I'm just telling you, but it's all about hard work too. You got to go to work. You got to not feel sorry for yourself. Get yourself up in the mornings. You got to get up. That's the hardest part for people. Depression, the mental health things that we're going through this country are significant and very serious, right? Very serious out there. And so I'm not making light of it, but you can't get defeated. You got to wake up. You got to go to work. You got to get up in the morning. You got to have a plan, right? And your plan is execute.

43:48
on whatever that is. And so for me, I would sell something, man. I'm just telling you, sell something. Yeah, I agree. I agree, go out and sell. Go out and sell. It's the highest paid profession. Take that money and then go build. Do whatever, sort of like what I did, right? Yeah. Yeah. I went to sell and decided that I wanted to do a little differently. I wanted to help some people anyways, but. I think what's powerful too is, I mean, you learn the skill of selling, which will go with you for the rest of your life.

44:15
That's one thing that they can't take away. And I think that's why people are able to get back so fast, is because you look at any great entrepreneur, Bill Gates was great at sales, Sam Walton was a really good insurance salesman before he started Walmart. He was great at sales. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. One thing that most people don't mention about these brilliant business people is they're all incredibly good at sales, because you're selling your client, you're selling your talent to come on with you, you're selling your investors if you go get investors. You're selling yourself, right? Selling yourself, man. Right, yeah.

44:45
You're right. I love that. Tim, you can have the best idea in the world. If nobody knows about it, what is it? It's nothing. There's more ideas that will go to... That's the biggest thing. There's so many dreams and goals that will go to the grave because people are scared to go knock on the door like just straight up crazy. Well, last question and then I want to connect people with you because anybody listen to this, if you have...

45:10
any kind of business that could benefit from Ivy, you gotta connect with him. You gotta connect with him. We'll get you his info here in a second. But Ivy, the takeover is all about winning. Like how do you just dominate in every area of life and business? So my question to you Ivy is, what does winning mean to you? Well, first of all, God first, family second in my life. And I wanted everything I do, I want to honor the Lord with it, just to be fair. And with the business side, and obviously with my family.

45:38
Winning is knowing that my kids are going to have food on the table. Winning is knowing that we're going to have a roof over our heads. Winning is knowing that they're able to go to the right school system in school for education purposes and be able to have the opportunity to pursue college one day. That's winning to me. You know, their health, right? So the things that I do, I work so hard, is really just trying to set up the family for success. And I call it success, just being taken care of and that type of thing. So that's what...

46:07
That's winning to me. And now obviously you can't be, and Tim and Cindy knows this too, I'm sure, you can't be in business and have a little ego, right? Okay, let me tell you, so I'm the guy that's gonna bother you. And what I mean by that is you come to me, we do a marketing campaign together, we rock it. Well, you know, when I call you in three days and go, you know, we drop the promotion off here. It's already in this track here, I've tracked it to here. I see the scans at the postal facility. I know where it's at in the process. Your phone's gonna ring tomorrow, you know, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, what? Like that excites me, right?

46:37
That's about winning. That's exciting to me, you know? And so, and I do that with every customer, man. I wear them out and they're like, dude, it's 11 o'clock at night, bro. Like, you know, and I'm like, listen, this is a big day tomorrow. Let's go, baby. Get your running shoes on tomorrow's the day. And so that's what's winning to me. It's just those relationships and being able to share that with people, take care of my family, you know, do what's right in our community. And that's winning, man, you know? I don't know if anybody heard that excitement in your voice though. It's like you love business. There's some people that like love.

47:05
the small business kind of stays small because they just love just the thing. But I like consulting or I like coaching, but I think it's like you love the business model. How do we explode? How do we help people? And what I see in you, man, is you saw the results that it could get for people and you're like, oh my gosh, let me bring this to people. And now full circle, I hear you getting excited about, dude, we're about to launch your campaign, your phone's gonna blow up.

47:34
That's a win, man. And like we have, so in our company, we use Slack and we have a daily wins channel. And the one thing that gets our team more fired up than anything is like, Hey, we just took this client on and they just closed their second deal off of this. Business is hard. You have the ups and downs. You have the challenges, you know, anybody, it doesn't, no matter how great you are at business, there's going to be challenges along the way and difficulties and ups and downs.

48:04
But I think there's nothing that fuels you more than to see your employees winning and to see your clients winning. Because at the end of the day, if you're making money, if your employees and your clients aren't winning, that might be fun for a moment. And then you're like, if you have a conscious, like if you, that's not that. Like I said, going to lay my head on the pillow at night, I feel good every day, yeah, every day.

48:28
Awesome brother. Well, how can people connect with you and maybe mention a couple people that you'd like to connect with and then tell them where they can reach out and talk with your team? Well, you know, and listen, no obligation. I'd love to talk to people. Hopefully you see how passionate I am about small business. I mean, clearly, obviously, if I can just help in any way, maybe somebody needs a word of encouragement. I mean, I don't know. But you know, you can connect with me. My website is resu We've also got

48:56
That's j-o- and results, solutionworks.com. My personal cell phone is 404-493-0819. We also encourage you to go to the websites, to contact us on the navigation button. Go down, you can leave a comment, you can get all your information there. Let us know if you heard us on here, me and Tim.

49:19
Wrapping it today on this podcast to take over and we'll definitely get back in touch with you right away And like I said, you know, don't be surprised if you hear from me directly. I love connecting with people, you know, clearly I'm passionate being what they call people's the new currency, you know, I believe that so You know, i'm here to help in any way I can and love to love to connect with you Yeah, are you a robot? Are you are you an ai that just like you just plug? You know, you don't need sleep. You just like you're plugged into the wall right now

49:44
My wife, she wonders sometimes what's going on. We worked some shifts last week where I came in the shop and held the team with 30, 40 hour runs. We just had some deadlines and things to make. So you do what you do, man. You got to take your game. You don't want to let people down. It's all about exceeding the expectation. The best part is I'm setting the expectation. So I know what it needs to be. Right? It's funny because I remember I text you a few weeks back. I was like, man, you should be on the podcast. And there's like two seconds later, I get a phone call coming in. I'm like, I'm in the middle of something. Let me call you back.

50:14
You are like you're on it. Like I think that's so many people are scared to pick up a phone. They're scared to make that contact and that connection. And anybody listening to this, the one thing you got really good from Ivy is you got to do whatever it takes to win. And then they take care of people, do all that. That only like is going to grow a business as big and successful as Ivy is built his. And I do, I believe you're going real big. I see you going real big. But a lot of that.

50:43
biggest thing is Ivy is willing to just put his head down, put in the work. A lot of times people procrastinate. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, what I'm not. Just do the work. I always say, it's like, I'm just going to do the work and I'm going to trust God's going to like direct my steps. Right. And like, but you can't move a ship that's like, you can't steer a ship that's not moving. So get moving and then trust that you can make the adjustments along the way. And I think that's one of your big secrets, man. It really is that you just

51:10
Ready fire aim. There's a ready fire aim too that I love and it's been awesome to have you on this show brother There's a lot of that a lot of value from this again This is the takeover and remember domination is not a destination. It is a way of life. Stay winning