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Connect with Hiett
Hiett@HiettIves.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiettives/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

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Introduction: [00:00:00] Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

Russ Johns: [00:00:10] And welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™. Hope you're having a wonderful day, week, evening, afternoon, whatever happens to be in your time zone. And whenever you listen to this, like, comment, subscribe all the social shenanigans that needs to take place in order to accomplish a goal of getting this out there and sharing it with people. So today I want to share a couple of updates from Hiett Ives. Hiett has been a long time friend and somebody that I knew in Houston and hanging out in Houston and welcome Hiett. How are you doing?

Hiett Ives: [00:00:43] Excellent.

Russ Johns: [00:00:44] It's amazing to think that we used to do the, I think the main street chambers when we probably first met and creating courses and I was doing workshops with Marian LaSalle and some of the things going on and you, when we last connected or when we first reconnected, you started a program  around the Boomers.

Hiett Ives: [00:01:07] Yes.

Russ Johns: [00:01:07] And you were doing a show and we were talking about it and you were producing it and putting it together. And I wanted to get an update on what is taking place with that program now and what are you doing?

Hiett Ives: [00:01:20] Thank you, Russ. Yeah, it's a packaged program. You can get the sizzle reel on it at boomerconnection.tv and basically it is four half-hour programs with four interviews per program. And these are interviews with people like Greta Loughlin and Zina Garrison, and Hank Experts in a number of areas looking at, and also people that were... and Kim Hegward in the senior law and Termite Watkins, the boxer.

Russ Johns: [00:01:54] Oh yeah. Termite. I know Termite.

Hiett Ives: [00:01:56] Termite,  he held on to his life story for 15 years. Wouldn't let Hollywood habit guess who bought it? Sylvester Stallone. And Stallone is going to do the movie. He won't star in it, but he is the producer of the movie. And the reason he did, he said, it is the first time I will be doing something about somebody that is actually alive and a real person. We interviewed Termite for one of the sessions and now he will be doing a launch party at his gym in early September and we will be a part of that.

Russ Johns: [00:02:33] That's fantastic.

Hiett Ives: [00:02:34] So these level of people and what we've done is we put together a package of the four programs and I say half hour, they're actually 22 and a half minutes each of interview. And it's basically five and a half minutes per interviewee. So 22 minutes of interviews, It leaves you space to put 30 and 60 second ads. And  Earl Heard, you probably remember Earl Heard. He's the owner and editor of Fit magazine. And he is now retired, but he is giving back. And one of the ways he is giving back is putting together this series. He funded this whole series and produced it. And we're now offering the four series package to any organization that has seniors as their market, be the senior daycare, BSA, a retirement center, whatever. And we will give them all four episodes to show at their leisure to their audience and we'll show them how they can get sponsorships of those through their vendors suppliers and so on. And so if anybody in your audience has that audience or has knowledge of people that have that audience,  come to me, it's yours. And we're anxious to get this out to as many users as possible, which is why they're a senior audience as possible.

Russ Johns: [00:04:09] Did I connect you with Bill Gaffe?

Hiett Ives: [00:04:12] Oh, yeah.

Russ Johns: [00:04:13] Yeah, because you're already connected with Bill Gaffe, you're going to be utilizing that with seniors.

Hiett Ives: [00:04:16] Yes.  I am part of that and I announced that to the group.

Russ Johns: [00:04:20] For those that are listening and paying attention, the platform we're talking about is an amazing platform and mutual client of ours. And Bill is building a community around the boomer community. Health care caregivers and people that provide support and care about the elderly people that are in retirement and a resource for everything that is taking place in that arena. Because like myself, I'm a caregiver for my folks, and sometimes you wonder, okay, who does this kind of work or who can help with X, Y, and Z, oxygen or medication, or are walkers or home checks and things like that.  That's going to be an organization that's going to be out there.

Hiett Ives: [00:05:04] And a plug for him, he is a real estate guy and he specializes in the senior market and he was having people ask him, do you know somebody that can help me package all this stuff upand auction things off that can put together my will and paperwork and decided to put together the senior estate concierge. And it's not a networking group. It's a resource. It's a resource. And we meet... in fact, he's got a couple of chapters now and a couple of parts in towns.

Russ Johns: [00:05:35] Three in Houston right now.

Hiett Ives: [00:05:37] Three?

Russ Johns: [00:05:38] Yeah. Three chapters. And then Marian who's a networking queen is going to be out there and she's amazing. She's going to be going out there and supporting the groups and helping get this established because she's in that same field as well. So a few find friends doing some great work. And I just wanted to give a shout out for that. So the boomer, the videos, if I understand you correct Hiett, there's going to be multiple interviews and then the business can take those interviews and add and insert commercials into those interviews and then package that up and use it. Where would they place this content? Where would they want to use it?

Hiett Ives: [00:06:22] It would be to their senior audience. For instance, I was on a zoom call  a couple of days ago and one of the senior centers here in Houston that is federally funded, but provides a program for seniors.  I will give this to them and then they can put it on every Thursday at two o'clock or work it into their program of events and content because this is educational it's inspirational, it's fun. And  if they choose to, they can just simply show it as it is and have their own white label to themselves, or they can go to  their suppliers and vendors that might have products or services for the seniors to bookend the session. And we'll let them keep the... where we're going to make money is once the seniors, the audience sees the four, they will be given an opportunity to ask for additional programming. Can you do one on schemes? Can you do one on ...they bring that request back to us, and then we produce that at a cost, we will charge them for the next session. It's the selling the sizzle or give them the product free. And when they get hooked on it, then they'll be buying more.

Russ Johns: [00:07:47] Fantastic. Elize is in the house. I want to give you a thank you so much for being here. Good morning, Russ, Hiett, happy weekend pirates. Is it already the weekend? Holy cow. I can't believe it. Luis, good morning, Hiett and Russ. Thank you for the groovy show. Love you, man. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Kurtis Tompkins. Kurtis, what's happening? I love that you're here. Thank you so much. And Lee Jones is in the house. And I think I saw Sarathy, yes, is here from YouTube first. You're awesome, Sarathy thank you so much for being here. Hiett, this all comes down to, and I want to enforce and support this because you've helped Marcia and working with her Amazon. She's getting back on Amazon and it all comes down to presenting yourself. And video is such a powerful tool and I'm an advocate for video. I'm an advocate for putting these kinds of content pieces out, because it's really about how we can connect with our audience, ask open ended questions and ask the better questions and get the engagement and allow people to understand what we're looking for and what we're accomplishing. So you want to talk a little bit about that and how presentation works in your business and how you've used it in the past and how it's helped you grow your business?

Hiett Ives: [00:09:25] Thank you, Russ. I can't remember when I first learned about open-ended questions, but it was many years ago. And it took me about a year and a half to change from asking yes/no questions to open-ended questions.  And it's to the point now, and I would literally have to stop in the middle of asking a question and rephrase it in my mind. I've got so good at it now that it's, who, what, when, where, how, and it's Russ, how do you use this in your operation? Who in your operation is responsible for this? What application do you have for this product? When was the last time you used this product? Where in your operation does this product fit in? It comes natural to me now. And it is actually the the core of this thing right here.

Russ Johns: [00:10:15] Yeah. Eighty-Eight successful event strategies.

Hiett Ives: [00:10:21] Success is the open-ended questions. I will guarantee people qualified leads from any business to business trade show, guaranteed. And the reason is because I know the right open-ended questions.  In fact, I had the president of a company that we were on a 20 by 20 booth. He was on one aisle, can I show you my widgets? Can I show you my widgets? No, and I was on the other aisle, how do you use widgets in your operation? When was the last part enough to know that he needed me, he couldn't make the switch, but I did. I had other presidents that got it. And I was at a trade show in Vegas with the president of a Mex... I was, I've got a loud voice. I would say how comfortable are your work boots? And I was broadcasting out 10 or 12 feet in front of, he was around beside me, hey how comfortable you were with, he was getting  20 yards down. So it's I have fun with it and it is the key, open-ended questions, the key, the open ended question is the addressee has to answer it with something other than yes or no. They are unable, when I say Russ, how do you use this in your operation? When was the last time you used this in your company? And the beauty of that open-ended question is if it doesn't work, you can change it. That boot manufacturer, we started an oil patch shows. Sure. And he had a beautiful Mexican work boot that was comfortable. Yeah. Oxymoron, comfortable work boots. There are people in the audience that are not...  so my question at the oil shows was how comfortable are your work boots? How comfortable are your work boots and we got immediate... I took him to the magic show in Vegas, which is the world's largest apparel show and in multiple venues. And we were in the shoe venue, which was a whole hotel grand ballroom. I was asking that question as the audience, how comfortable are you? And I was doing what are you talking about? I was too deep down the funnel. These are people that own manufacturing plants for everything from kids shoes, the lady high heels, I had to back up and say, yo, who was your boot manufacturer? Who was your boot management? And then when they said it's XYZ. What percentage of his boots are work boots? I had asked two open-ended questions to get to the right audience, asking how comfortable are your work boots was way too deep for that.

Russ Johns: [00:13:03] Way too deep, Randy McHenry's in here. Randy McNeely, chief kindness engineer. Good morning. Pirates Russ. Good morning everyone. He says Randy McNeely if I can talk today. Tongue twister. I love the idea Hiett that we can actually ask open ended questions and actually discover because part of business is not necessarily selling to everyone, but selling to the right person. So you can have a win-win situation and it's providing value. It's providing this situation where everybody wins and qualification is so important. So asking those questions is qualifying if it's somebody that you need to talk to or someone that is not even in your audience. And going to a trade show or an expo or something like that, there's a lot of people coming through that have no use for your product. And you don't know until you ask the questions, right?

Hiett Ives: [00:14:01] Yep, absolutely.

Russ Johns: [00:14:03] And there's so many things. Sidebar, remind me after the show to talk about distributors. His distributors are really... they accumulate a lot of different products and they represent a lot of different products in a vertical arena. So how would you go about connecting with distributors that might be looking to expand their brand or their business? Would they be at trade shows or would they be business to business?

Hiett Ives: [00:14:32] I say one in the same. You've got trade shows and trade shows. If you've got business to consumer trade shows, which are your lawn and garden shows, your cat shows, your that you're talking to the end buyer. Now the business to business trade shows are products and services that you never see on the shelf anywhere. In the oil patch, I was selling blowout preventers and Christmas trees. You're never going to see those. And some people would say, what the hell are you...? What's a Christmas tree in the oil patch?

Russ Johns: [00:15:00] It's not a seasonal thing.

Hiett Ives: [00:15:01] But anyway I recommend to my clients, if you are looking for a person or a particular thing, I'd say, where do you go to find out that information?   I've got a client in the oil and gas vertical. And let's say it's the drilling vertical within that. And I want to get others in that same vertical. I will say to my client, where do you go? What events, what association, what organizations do you attend on a regular basis to interface with your peers, to get information on the growth of your vertical? They'll tell me. That's why the association or the so on and so forth, then that's where those are the shows that I will go to find other people that are to where I can say, how do you use this in your operation? You do know that the XYZ company is my client. And in fact you can talk to them. So you talk to your existing clients, you tal to your prospects if you don't have a client in that vertical. A couple of people that you'd like to be your client, ask them, where do you go to get information? Where do you go to buddy around with your peers in the industry and then go to those shows, be an exhibitor at those shows and focus on the one or two products or services that are specific to that market.

Russ Johns: [00:16:34] So it's really about connecting the dots and introductions and the connections that are made between point A and point B.

Hiett Ives: [00:16:42] Yep.

Russ Johns: [00:16:42] And then brokering those conversations. I think it's so important that people understand that.

Hiett Ives: [00:16:46] And the other thing, you've got trade shows where you got attendees where just anybody could come in. They may have to be a business person, but  they're not discriminated against or they're not focused on, so the whole business community can come to a business trade show or some of these traveling business shows. Now the other are delegate shows where the human resource association of Houston is having the show starting Monday of next week or week from this coming Monday. That is a restricted audience. HR people can be there. So they are delegates and you want to hit, then there's two levels of delegates. They are decision makers, the ones that signed the check, but then there are the influencers. If the chief R and D guy comes into the engineer BP and says, this is what I need and here's what it's going to cost. The BP of engineers is going to stop the purchase order and be done with it because his chief influencer, the guy that he trusts, that guy never signs the checks, but it's his word.  It's his decision as to who to go with.

Russ Johns: [00:18:03] So what you're saying is influence the influencers.

Hiett Ives: [00:18:06] Oh yeah.  And if you know that your product is  with the decision of the head of R and D who may not have signatory power over a trade show, but, if he says, we need to be at that show, the vice president of operations or whatever. So you need to be looking for both influencers and the decision makers.

Russ Johns: [00:18:33] Are you seeing trade shows starting to open up again?

Hiett Ives: [00:18:37] Yes. Yes. In fact I'm a part of putting one together that's going to be in October of 2022 in Orlando and it's going to be a part of USA, global tv.com. USA global TV  Dr. Jacqueline Kerbeck who just authored a book behind the green screen, she left her corporate business world where she was extremely successful, left it just before COVID to put together a broadcast operation live TV, radio broadcast, which she has. And Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, she does up to 18 interviews in that three-day period. And yeah,  I'm a part of her inner circle, if you will. I have already recorded 12 different 15 minute lessons on trade shows, on the use and abuse of the English language. That I'm also the author of that little book right there, That Ain't Not Right. The use and abuse of the English language. And that's a whole nother story.  But I am helping her put that together and put together the educational sessions with speakers and the exhibitors. So that's a whole nother area. And if anybody is interested in becoming a part of that operation, get in touch with me or go to usaglobaltv.com

Russ Johns: [00:20:11] Yeah, you'll have to introduce me, we'll have to have her on on the show, promote that. Absolutely tongue tied today. Russ tongue tied today. I'm tongue tied every day, Randy. Sometimes I have some good moments. Sometimes I had some good moments and I have been known to abuse the English language to Hiett. Yeah. Oh, it's it's such a wonderful time to get caught up  and just chat about these ideas Hiett, because I think a lot of people, the more we can expose people to different concepts and ideas and get them thinking about other ways that they can promote their business or produce results in their business, or think about how they're doing business, I think it's important and it's really making yourself aware of what's going on around you. What are the possibilities? And you've been doing that for so many years and helping so many business owners. So is there anything that's come up as a result of the last 18 months that has really surprised you and something that you're going to take away and move forward with as events start opening up?

Hiett Ives: [00:21:18] Funny, you should ask cause I was visiting with Mike,  who heads up Ali plus which is a life ever evolving channel out of Connecticut. And he's a former ESPN veteran and we're looking at trade shows and he said the old adage, everything old is new again. All of the principles of doing trade shows  are coming back and coming back into focus and is asking the right open-ended questions. It's doing the right follow-up. It's the pandemic has allowed us to focus or either allowed us or forced us, however you want to look at it, but we're finding ourselves. Being more precise and being more attentive to taking the right steps in the right order. We got a little slip shot. It was a little too easy. We could cut too many corners and still get by. Now we've become lean and trim and it behooves us to get back to doing the basics and simplify things.

Russ Johns: [00:22:31] So basically just trim off anything that no longer serves us.

Hiett Ives: [00:22:35] Yep.

Russ Johns: [00:22:36] Focus on what's important.

Hiett Ives: [00:22:39] The old 80/20 principle, coming from 20% of your output. So focus on that 20%. And then when you get good at that, do an 80/20 on that, and you can end up doing more business with fewer clients because  you've got not just users. You've got aficionados. You've got fans. You've got people that are promoting you to their inner circle.

Russ Johns: [00:23:02] Yeah. One thing that  I've always admired of you is your ability to ask great questions and the the ability to go out, reach out and connect with people and make sure that those questions are asked because you've always done a great job at it. And you're not shy and you're not afraid to go out and meet people and start a conversation. So it's always great to be able to connect with you and hopefully, we can actually share continued stories. That's one of the things we do on the#PirateBroadcast™ and highlight. And if you're not connected to Hiett, go out, make the connection, make the introduction, let him know that you're a pirate. And if you're listening to this in the future, I would love the fact that you share it with somebody that needs to know, a business owner that might be struggling with how to introduce or trade show comments or conversations, anything like that. Hiett has a lot of experience that he's willing to share and always a helpful hand.

Hiett Ives: [00:24:07] Well there's a written word, Marcia with Staywell copper, I totally redid her collateral materials that she took to a show in India and it and I'm working with two or three people that I have met through the #PirateBroadcast. So thank you for the quality of people that you have. And I just wish Arizona had gone on to daylight savings time. Cause it's a whole lot easier to listen to you at eight o'clock then at 7 O'clock.

Russ Johns: [00:24:34] We'll be back soon. We'll be back soon and this is true. We'll change back. And we'll only be an hour difference. Thank you so much for being here. I wish you the very best in all your adventures because you know what? #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. And for everyone out there, thank you so much. Like, comment and share and #enjoytheday. Take care, everyone.

Hiett Ives: [00:25:01] Thank you Russ.

Russ Johns: [00:25:02] Take care. Bye.

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