CHAPTER 5


Criticism Will Come; Thick Skin Is Required

by Forrest Walden


We were having a great time creating and running all of the different campaigns that we were building. They were returning anywhere from 200% to 400% ROI a month, and we were thrilled.

However, there was a small problem. My wife hated the ads, and our clients kept telling me that the advertising didn’t reflect the quality of the program and the quality of the brand. I was told our advertising was “unprofessional.” I had many heated conversations with my graphic designer, who helped me develop the mark and logo, about how bad the advertisements I was running were. Everyone (including our investor) was telling us that nobody would ever read the 30-page free report that we were mailing out and that we were wasting so much money using snail mail.

I’ll never forget talking to a surgeon, who was an absolute raving fan of our service, and hearing him tell me that he wasn’t proud of our brand when he saw the advertising. I was deeply troubled. As I asked him more and more questions, I realized that he had actually come from one of those very same ads, requested a free report, and read it cover to cover. As Dan Kennedy says, “Buyers are liars!”

Our advertising was “crushing it,” and we started opening more and more locations in Birmingham, using the same campaigns and adding even more urgency, leveraging the fact that we had literally sold out two locations and had waiting lists.

We knew that we had to have more than a prototype to show that we had successfully replicated our model and that we needed to establish a true system that was ready to franchise.

When we opened our third location and started finalizing the franchise process, we started to realize that we had a raving fan base and a true brand that was being built. However, we also knew that when franchisees look to purchase the franchise, they were going to want some strong branding campaigns as well as the “tried and true” direct-response campaigns that we had been building and testing so effectively.

I remembered the story from Dan’s Renegade Millionaire audio CDs, where the CEO from Weight Watchers said that Dan’s stuff out-pulled his advertising agency’s work easily, but he could never use it because it was too ugly and his board as well as the franchisees would turn it down.

We needed to start creating some campaigns that not only had direct-response elements, but also could leverage our rapidly growing brand. Unfortunately, we thought we had to go out and find an advertising agency to help us pull that off.

I am describing an evolution and maturation of a business’s identity and brand, and of its relationship with its tribe, that is very sensitive and hazardous. Giving your tribe what it wants and needs to feel proud and eager to recruit customers for you and making your brand more recognizeable as a brand while staying true to the marketing principles, strategies, and tactics that got the business to success and that are required to fuel its sales is like being a blind tightrope walker on a windy day. It’s easy to stumble here, and we did. And we learned from our mistakes.

One thing is very important: Critics will assemble around you and may get more vocal the more successful and visibly successful you become. I believe you have to listen to all voices—but unemotionally. You have to listen most to your actual customers’ voices. Ultimately, though, you must listen to your own voice.

Go to www.IronTribeFranchise.com/NoBS to watch Jim Cavale and Forrest Walden provide commentary on this chapter and see real Iron Tribe marketing samples.