How do you know when you need help with your marketing?

Nov 3

What does the next season of your life look like?

It's hard to talk about business today without talking about the pandemic, it has changed the way we think about and do business and for some, it gave us time to stop and think. Time to stop, a luxury many of us have never had before. Time to stop and ask yourself:

Does the work I do matter?
Regardless of what I do, would I still want to work with the same people?
If money were no object, would I still continue to do what I do?
Is the work I do worth it?

Dan Cumberland, founder of The Meaning Movement and host of The Meaning Movement podcast has created a community of people seeking to answer these questions and find more meaning and purpose in what they do. Cumberland has been helping people find their place since 2011 and recently started looking at his branding and how his website is performing. Unsure whether he was experiencing a product or positioning problem, Cumberland decided it was time to reach out to Fruitful.

On episode 6 of the Growing a Fruitful Brand podcast, StoryBrand Certified Guide, Raj Lulla sits down with Cumberland to talk about The Meaning Movement’s brand strategy, quantifying what meaningful work is worth in your life and whether or not Raj is going through a midlife crisis.

Join us for an exciting and inspiring episode wherever you enjoy podcasts and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!

Ep.6: The Meaning Movement Brand Strategy Session

Automated Transcript

Ben Lueders:
Have you ever wondered what happens in a brand strategy session? Today, we get a sneak peek at what a brand strategy meeting looks like here at Fruitful.

Welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand, where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees.

I'm Ben Lueders, Founder and Art Director of Fruitful Design & Strategy. On this episode, my co-host and Brand Strategist, Raj Lulla, is interviewing Dan Cumberland, Founder of The Meaning Movement and host of The Meaning Movement podcast. Raj listens to Dan and gives him strategic advice on how to better position himself and his organization based on story brand principles.

This show was actually recorded a while back and a lot has changed with Dan since it was recorded. If you'd like to hear more of their behind-the-scenes strategy, check out Raj's additional conversations with Dan over on The Meaning Movement podcast. We'll make sure to link those shows in the episode notes. I hope you enjoy this candid conversation with Dan Cumberland.

Raj Lulla:
Dan, welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand. Thanks for coming on.

Dan Cumberland:
Thank you so much. I am pumped to be here with you, Raj.

Raj Lulla:
We've been friends for a long time and I've been connected to your business, and your project, The Meaning Movement. And I would love if you just take a minute and tell everybody who's listening and watching, what is The Meaning Movement?

Dan Cumberland:
The Meaning Movement is a resource for anyone who's looking to increase their sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, purpose, and meaning, when it comes to really all of life, but with an emphasis on work in particular. The questions that I help people wrestle with is, what am I going to do with my life? What am I going to do next? What does a meaningful engagement in this next season of my life look like?

It exists primarily as a podcast at this point, but there's a handful of resources that are related, blog, a course called The Calling Course, which I know we'll talk about a little bit later. I do trainings once a month, helping people wrestle with different ideas, career crises, burnout, and all these related ideas.

Raj Lulla:
Awesome. Let's just jump in right there.

Raj Lulla:
Is the podcast what drives your revenue, or do you find it somewhere else?

Dan Cumberland:
The main revenue driver is The Calling Course, has been The Calling Course. I was doing one-on-one coaching. I have not been doing that as much as I've been focused on other adventures. But we're currently in the process of retooling that because as you know, it just hasn't been converting well. That's one of the things that brought us to this conversation is that I got to this point where I felt like the project is something I'm very passionate about. It has not been the main revenue source for me and my family.

I have a small portfolio of projects that I work on, but I really want to see what The Meaning Movement can do if I really apply some more resources, and bring in some smart people to help me with that. One of the questions that we've been asking, I've been asking with you is, what should the revenue driver be and is there a different offering? Is there a different product? Is there a different marketing or sales strategy that we should be implementing in order to increase revenue?

Raj Lulla:
You're talking about how The Calling Course isn't providing the revenue that you want, and that caused you to send up the signal about six months ago to say, "Hey, I want to revamp this. I want this to be my main thing." Let's talk about the genesis of it a little bit because a lot of times, we get our head around something that ... I remember I used to work in Christian nonprofit and there was a fundraising letter that I got for a clown ministry. Part of me is just like, ". Maybe, if that's what you're called to." But I also don't know if this is an economically viable valuable offering.

Raj Lulla:
I don't think this is that. I don't think The Meaning Movement is that, or The Calling Course is that. How did you validate that there is really something there, and how do you square that with the fact that it's not producing?

Dan Cumberland:
I started The Meaning Movement coming out of grad school. I'd gone to grad school after leaving the ministry and went into an interdisciplinary program around psychology, formation, and culture, really a place to figure out how people become who they are. I went in with questions around vocation and purpose and these existential questions of, why we exist. Coming out of that program, I decided to start The Meaning Movement as the focus of that work. I packaged all of that into The Calling Course and it's such a dense season of life.

I was splitting my time between working at a pizza shop, starting a photography company, and then building The Meaning Movement. My wife was pregnant with our firstborn and we were living in a house that was shared with another couple that was going through a divorce. And then I got really sick and was hospitalized for the better part of a month, right before our son was born. I got out of the hospital two or three weeks before he was born. In those two to three weeks, between my stay in the hospital and when my son was born, was when I released The Calling Course.

The first day, I had no buyers and they always are like, you'll get a few up front and then you'll get 75% of your purchases right before you end your launch period. I'm like, "Okay. Maybe I need to adjust my expectations." And then the launch period closed and I shut down the cart at midnight, at the end of that period, and I hadn't made any sales at all. At least I thought that. I remember going to bed just so distraught, and a part of this was I literally had a six-inch open wound.

I didn't say this part, but I had this major surgery. They had to literally take my intestines out and rearrange them and put them back in, down my abdomen. Can't even sit up on my own. I'm in bed, woke up in the middle of the night, and was just ... I've never had this experience, but woke up in tears, so distraught over the fact that the reality of what ... I thought I would be in a different place due to this launch and all this effort that I had been applying and there weren't any sales. I was just so, so profoundly stuck.

In the morning, I logged into my email and saw that some sales actually had come through, but the notifications hadn't. I had three or four sales, which is good. In perspective, it's a good start. It's a start at least. But because my expectations were so high, and I think because of that pressure cooker environment that I was in, it was just a really emotionally charged experience that I feel like still, even to this day, even in the conversations that you and I have, I carry that with me. And the question of, can this project actually be what I want it to be? Can it be the main income for my family? . All of that.

I think your question is, how do you validate that this is the right idea? What I can validate, the data that I have is that I know that this is a need. It's a felt need in my life. People come to me for this, both people in my network, the people that I went to grad school with. I know a lot of therapists that have clients that they send my way. They're like, "Hey, go check out Dan's work. This is his thing." I know that there's a need, but I also know that it's a really hard place to make money and I think I've shared this story with you.I had a conversation with Jeff Goins who wrote the book Art of Work, I don't know, five or six years ago, which is all about these big questions. It's a fantastic book. I definitely recommend it. But I had a conversation with him not long after he launched that book and he had released a parallel course going through the same material, which is often how authors will do it. They'll release their book and if you want to dive deeper and really have a personalized experience around that material, you take the course. He shut it down after six or so months.

What he said is, "You can tell someone that you're going to teach them why they're born, show them why they're born, but they won't pay you any money for that. Or you'll have a really hard time getting them to pay money for that." That's really been true of my experience is that I know that this is a need. I know that it's something that many of us feel, but at least talking about head-on as purpose, calling, life, and these major life direction questions might not be the best way to talk about it.

The questions I've brought to our engagement around these things is, how do we take this material that I know is really helpful, that the people who've been through the material found to be incredibly helpful, but reposition it in a way that is more attractive to buyers? What's the messaging that needs to be in place? Who are we talking to? That's also, I think, one of the major questions. It's like maybe it's just too broad that I'm not hitting a specific enough pain point for a specific enough audience.

Those are many of the questions that I feel like I've been talking for a long time around your question, but that's the big mess that I'm bringing into my engagement with you and the Fruitful team.

Raj Lulla:
A few things that stand out in what you talked about and in our other conversations is that this content, this framework has worked one-on-one. That's something that we look for in trying to decide if this is a clown operation or not is, has it ever worked? We know for sure that there's nothing wrong with the content, the material. It works in person. It works one-on-one. There is something difficult-

Dan Cumberland:
It also works in the course.

Raj Lulla:
Exactly.

Dan Cumberland:
The people going through the course get fantastic results and have a very low refund rate. People who get into it, they like what they experience. They have good outcomes from it. We know that piece is good. That's getting people into it.

Raj Lulla:
That's getting people too.

Raj Lulla:
That's so important because it shows that it's not even the switch to virtual that's the problem either, or self-guided or any of that. It's really more of a sales and marketing problem, a positioning problem than it is that the product itself is not good. Because we know that the product is good.

Dan Cumberland:
Yes.

Raj Lulla:
Like I said, you raised this flag earlier this year that it's like you just need help because this is not going the way that you want it to. How did you come to that moment of being willing to ask for help?

Dan Cumberland:
It has felt like it just needs to go one way or the other. I have three kids, six-and-a-half and under and I'm at the point in my life where I really have to be wise, and careful about how I'm spending my time. It's not a face of life where there's a lot of space for passion projects. I think what has brought me to that point of saying, "Okay, I need to bring more people into this and I need to get help with this," is just the desire that I either need to blow it up and say that was a good effort and it's sad and disappointing that it didn't work out, but it is what it is, which would be really hard and I would have a lot of feelings about that, or I need to resource it and put more pressure on it. And put more time and effort into it and see what can really happen. That's when we started talking more intentionally about this whole process.

Raj Lulla:
We're honored to be involved in these conversations because I know how personal it is. People put a lot of trust in their marketing and branding agencies to weigh into the things that are most important to them. Again, we're honored to do that with you.

Dan Cumberland:
Well, I just want to say just one thing on there because I think that's what you guys have just even on your ... I forget where it is, on your homepage, just how your focus is mission-driven organizations. The reason why it makes just so much sense, it's a no-brainer for me from my side is because I feel like you're exactly the team that I would want to be doing this with. Also, Raj, you and I have connected over the years.

I wouldn't do this with just any agency, but it's the fact that I feel like you guys get it, and you get it because you've been a part of the project for so long. I think that's the piece. As you said, it's that personal piece that I really want to make sure that whoever I let touch this thing, they respect where it's come from. I think you guys, have the people to do that with.

Raj Lulla:
Well, thank you. Making me blush over here. Let's talk a little bit about who this works for then. Because you mentioned you validated it in one-on-one sessions, and that it does work for people. But that was more about what am I going to do with my life? It sounds a little bit like a younger crowd. But then when you're trying to sell a course online, that may not be your most faithful audience, and they also may not be the audience who's got the most money in their pocketbook. So, who does this work for now?

Dan Cumberland:
The primary demographic that's found the most success, and I think some people in their earlier career, the quarter-life crisis folks, have had success with it, but the primary places where I think people feel the most powerful outcomes are the midlife crisis folk. And then the empty-nesters/retiree space people. You think about those major transitions and the major presenting questions of, I've been doing this for X number of years and I'm not satisfied or fulfilled in it for various reasons, and I need to figure out what else to do. That's that midlife space.

Or I've been doing this for a long time and now it's over, and now I don't know what to do next. That's the later career or empty-nester space. Folks who, they've been primary caregivers, they've been focused on helping guide their children into adulthood, and now their kids are out of the nest and doing their thing. Now, they're asking these questions. Okay, so what do I do now? Similar parallel to that is people who've been working a career and that career is coming to an end, and they want to figure out how to spend the rest of their time.

The presenting problem on the younger demographic is more like I said, I guess the quarter-life crisis. It's like I went to school, got my degree, got into the field, and I've been here for two or three years and this just doesn't feel good. I think the later demographic, it's riper I guess for this work because there's more life experience to draw from. That's a big part of the course is looking at your past experience, defining what is meaningful for you, and where fulfillment and satisfaction come from. You just have more stories to put to that work than you do when you're in your younger years.

This isn't to say it doesn't work for those folks, but I think that the more powerful results, the more clear outcomes happen for folks that are in their mid to later life.

Raj Lulla:
That reminds me of things like Gallup StrengthsFinder, those types of things where when you take them when you're 25, it's like I scored high in everything or in a lot of things. Because it's like I can imagine myself being that. Like you said, you don't have enough experience to know. But now, I feel like when I take personality tests or anything like that, I score much more defined results. Because it's like they asked you questions about things that you do or don't like and it's like, "Oh, I definitely do not like that."

Raj Lulla:
Just your openness to imagining that you might be able to be that way just shifts as you get a little bit older. You used the word midlife crisis and that one is funny to me because the midlife crisis is not one time, and it's not in the middle of your life necessarily. It's for 10, 15 years surrounding the middle of your life, and you go through multiple versions of it.

If there are people out there like me who may be the term would be applicable for, but we don't resonate with it at all, what kinds of questions would you ask somebody to help them identify if they are in that season? What would The Calling Course or The Meaning Movement ask to help you identify if you need to do this work?

Dan Cumberland:
That's such a good question. Similarly, I just turned 40 not too long ago. I have a lot of hesitancy to say that I'm in midlife, let alone in a midlife crisis, right?

Dan Cumberland:
I don't know that that's quite the right branding or marketing positioning. But to your question, what I think of it in terms of is, when you look around at your life and ask the question, is the terrain that I'm in, does it align with where I thought I would be and where I want to be going, and when I look ahead at the path forward, is it taking me to the places that I want to go and do I know what those places are, and if the answer to any of those is no, I don't like where I am, and no, I don't know where I'm going or how to get there, then that's the work of The Calling Course. That's the work or The Meaning Movement. That's the work that I want to help people with.

For some people it presents as like, I need to just blow up my whole life and I usually say, "Let's not blow anything up until we know where we're going." Don't quit your job till you have a really solid idea of what your next step is. But it also could be that people who are in a space where they're like, "I have a job, a career that I've been developing over the last 10, 15, 20 years that I'm really good at, it pays me well, I'm broadly happy there, and yet I feel like I have more to give, and I want my work to add up to something more than what it feels like it's adding up to right now."

I think that is a super interesting space to be in and really so ripe with potential because there's so much that you can do to increase your sense of satisfaction, increase your sense of fulfillment, and increase your sense of purpose and meaning, even in roles like that. I think that's how I begin to diagnose people who are in the space where they're looking for this kind of thing. I think there is also the flip side of that is the bigger life questions of, "Okay, I just went through a divorce and my whole life is falling apart. What do I do?" Or, "I just got fired," or, "One of my parents just got diagnosed with cancer," and it totally reframes the way you think about life.

A lot of times people end up in this space due to those external forces, so I think that's a helpful way to think about it. There are the external forces that drive the question or there are the internal forces of where am I and where am I going that drive the questions. Often it's a combination of, because we're complex beings and it's not just ever one thing.

Raj Lulla:
I love that idea of looking at those external forces because everybody talked about in the pandemic how it was accelerating everything 10 years forward. Mostly, they were talking about E-commerce and the internet and buying things online, contactless payments, that kind of stuff. But I think we really neglected that it was also moving a lot of things forward socially and personally, 10 years because we had the time to really reconsider a lot of things. For the first time, definitely the only time in my lifetime, people were ejected from all of their social relationships, from their faith communities, from their physical workplaces, and they were given a lot of time to just think to themselves.

When that happens, then major change takes place. If you would've kept going to that same church for the next 10 years, maybe you would have become decreasingly less satisfied with it Sunday after Sunday, after Sunday. And then it pops back up again because some wonderful wedding happens there or a meaningful funeral. Or you see somebody take a step in their faith that you had a part in, so it brings some meaning back. But other issues still remain and you keep going and going and going until eventually you go, ", I don't think this is for us anymore."

But when you unplug completely from it and then you have to decide whether or not you're going back, that's a totally different scenario and it puts a lot more amplification on those questions because you've had time to think about it. You've also had time to see if it's really adding anything to your life. We've worked with a fair number of churches. A lot of churches dealt with attendance declining by 40 to 50% right after. Some of that's come back, but people have really reconsidered the relationships with some of the most important things in their lives.

I would argue that I'm late 30s and so it felt too soon to me to have a midlife crisis, but part of it's because maybe these are questions I would be wrestling at 48. But because of the pandemic at 37, 38, I was dealing with them instead.

Raj Lulla:
I like that idea of external forces. There are these moments that make you reconsider.

Dan Cumberland:
I also wonder about just the generational change that's happening, that I think people in our generation just think about work and career differently. These questions don't just present themselves when you're at 48 or whatever it might be because we're used to the fact that you're going to change jobs more often, every three, four, or five years. Statistically, people are having seven to 12 careers over the course of their work years. I do think there's a generational piece where I think maybe we're more comfortable with it due to internal forces. Also, like I said, due to the external forces of a career change, job change. That process, going through those reps creates more space.

I know personally, my dad worked the same job for 25 years until he took early retirement due to downsizing of the company and then he took a job at another, basically the other big player in his space and was there until he retired. It's like, he had one job for 25 years and then another job for another 10 years or whatever it was. That was the entirety of his career. I look back at the other people in my family who are a generation or two above me, and that's how it played out for them. They were at the same place for a very long time.

I think that's a piece of where that narrative has come from around these career crises, because there isn't that space to really think, to think of and to train into something different. Then we medicate it with that sports car that you're shopping for or whatever it might be.

Raj Lulla:
It won't be a sports car. It might be a Tesla, but it's not going to be a sports car.

Dan Cumberland:
Same. Same. Love it.

Raj Lulla:
Say somebody is in that spot where, I liked how you said it about generally you're happy with your job, but maybe tweaking that even a little bit of generally you're happy with the work that you do. Because I would maybe argue that if wouldn't be struggling with this if they were truly happy in their job. But it's more that, "Hey, I feel like I've found something that I'm competent at, that it provides value to other people. I don't mind doing it every day and yet, I'm unhappy."

Dan Cumberland:
I love that. Well, I think the first thing is I love how you frame it as separating work from the job. I think that's a really important distinction to make. There are four different categories from my research, one-on-one with clients and years of doing this work that I found where people find the most satisfaction, and the most fulfillment. My assumption would be that one or more of these are not aligned in your current job, your work expression, or whatever it might be. The things that are not working, it's going to be one of these four things. Those four things, all start with P, the four Ps. I know you've heard this material before, Raj, but for listeners.

So the product. It's the product of your work. It's four Ps because I used to be a pastor, so everything needs to alliterate. The product is the thing that you're building, the contribution that you're making, what your company does, and the problem that it's solving in the world. It's really easy to talk about in terms of helping professions, that you're solving the hunger crisis or you're providing mental health support if you're a therapist or whatever it might be. But it also might be the smaller problems of whatever the app that you're building is helping people do, or any of those kinds of things. The product and that's often where we stop the conversation about impact, about what are we doing. That's the easiest place to look.

But on top of that, you have the product, you have the people. So the people that you're serving, the demographic that you're helping, the people you're working alongside, the people you're managing, the people that are managing you, all the people in your life that you're interacting with when it comes to work. That could cross over into talking, and thinking about culture, cultural fit, the social aspects of what you do. But you can find a lot of satisfaction, a lot of fulfillment from the people that you work with. Even that piece alone can make a job a really good job, just because you love being there, being a part of that space.

Then there's the process. I imagine for someone who's in this space, if they say that they like their work, that they like the process of their work, the process is the actual day-to-day doing of the work. For the developer who just loves to code, they just love to get into the code, get into that space where they're just in the zone, in the flow, making the thing that they make or whatever it might be. Or for people who they're managing and they just love that managing piece, that might cross back over into the people category, but it's the actual day-to-day doing of the work. And then finally, it's the profit.

We have the product, the people, the process, and then the product, or profit rather. The profit is what the work does, what the job does for you. What it gives back to you financially, what it gives back to you as far as lifestyle benefits, all of those things. When I encounter someone who is in a place similar to what you described, where they like their career, they like the field that they're in, they like the work that they're doing, I assume that there's some alignment when it comes to the product, what it is that they're building or contributing to. And then probably also the process, at least to some extent, that they like the actual doing of the work.

And that there's some misalignment when it comes to either the profit, maybe their pay, maybe their benefits, maybe their lifestyle, maybe the hours, maybe something else there. Or the people, which is the cultural fit, the coworker environment, the people that they're managing or that are managing them, et cetera. What I would invite people to do is to use that framework, look at where they are through that framework, and even just brainstorm around what is working well and get as specific as possible. Like, "Oh, I love my coworkers," or, "I really don't like my coworkers." Get as specific as possible and then what's working well, and then also what's not working.

And then start thinking about going back to that idea of experimenting. How can you experiment with solving that problem? What often will happen is people will say, "Okay, I can see that my relationship with my coworkers, that's a big part of the problem here." Then your options are, okay, move to a different team, move to a different company, or invest in your coworkers and create some more connections. Take some social risks so that you can make your space, make your work environment into something that's more in line with what you want to be a part of. That's hopefully a helpful framework for people as they think about what they're doing and what's working and what's not.

Raj Lulla:
From a branding perspective, I'm going to issue you a challenge.

Dan Cumberland:
Let's do it.

Raj Lulla:
Like you, I've got three kids. I'm mid-career and I'm tired at the end of the day. I am tired at the end of every day, and sometimes I don't even make it to the end of the day by the time I get tired. It's like, would you like to buy this course for 29.95 to contemplate your existence? No, I really don't.

Dan Cumberland:
I don't want to contemplate my existence even without paying you money to do it. Right?

Raj Lulla:
You and I both used to work in churches. That's free and it offers you the opportunity to contemplate your existence, and it's still hard to get people to go. . That's not a great brand position. But what is a great brand position is saying, "Hey, if you don't feel like the work that you do everyday matters, if you don't like the people that you're working with, if you don't enjoy what you do every day, even though you may think that the work you do matters and that the people you work with are great, but you don't like the actual functions of your job, or if you feel like one or all of those three are aligned, but it's just not worth it in terms of work-life balance, compensation, any of those things, then you need to take time to recalibrate."

Those are immediate needs because we know that the result of those things, the stakes of not figuring out those things is burnout. It's stress, which takes a toll on your physical health. I started to experience actual physical injuries last year. I tore my rotator cuff. I still am suffering from tendonitis in my elbow and I'm pretty sure it's because my cortisol levels were so high from stress that my body finally just started going, "Hey, man, you got to slow down or we're quitting."

Dan Cumberland:
Yes. Yes. Totally

Raj Lulla:
I think that is part of the midlife part of it too, is just that when you're 25 and you're burning the candle at both ends, you can get away with it because your body is more resilient. When you start to get to this age and you have kids who wonder why daddy's at the office until nine o'clock, or who complain about not being able to get new shoes or go to the school that they want to or those types of things, and you also need those full eight hours of sleep or whatever, you start to have limitations in your life that focus your effort. And that is a real and immediate need for people.

Contemplating your existence is not an immediate need. We plan to take care of that problem on our deathbeds probably, and most of us would rather die before getting to that point of just like, "You know what? I'll go quietly in my sleep and the afterlife can figure out that. I hope that I'm okay afterward."

Dan Cumberland:
Totally.

Raj Lulla:
But if we can make it more about this immediate need of again, that product, people, process, and profit, and our satisfaction level with those things, then we know how sick those questions can make us, how sick workplace drama can make us, how sick a sense of not doing meaningful work can make us, how sick hating the office space level tasks that you do every day. Just dreading the TPS reports or whatever it might be, or feeling like you work too hard to get this result for the profit.

Those are all immediate needs that people know they need to solve. Especially even if it takes a little prompting to go, "Hey, are you experiencing mysterious physical problems? Might they be related to your stress or your burnout?" Those are questions that will actually get people to buy. Part of the reason for it, anybody who's listening, that we ended up in this place is because we know that the product works one-on-one and we know that it works online. There's nothing really wrong there. Sure, maybe a little optimization, but it's not in need of major overhaul.

The big question then is, why is it not connecting with the audience? It might be the price point. But again, people have paid for it and asked for very few refunds, so we don't think it's the price point. Instead, it's probably that we're not clearly connecting with the audience because there are 5,000 subscribers to The Meaning Movement email list. There are 5,000 people who have said, "Yes, I experienced some version of this problem." But it's not clear to them that the next step would be purchasing The Calling Course or whatever it ends up being called.

Again, that's something you and I have discussed maybe just the naming of it doesn't explain that. Because even The Meaning Method that you talked about, which you called one-on-one, might be better. That might be something that we need to explore of how do we get people to infuse this meaning back into their work and identify the four areas that might be causing the problem? I would also argue that we've talked a little bit about this, that your Instagram needs to be asking these questions every week, and different versions of these questions.

Let's go with the people issue. Do I like my coworkers? Sometimes we can bend ourselves to, ", I don't." Whatever. But asking a question like, is there a coworker that you dread having difficult conversations with? Okay. Well, now, when you put it that way ... Or is there a coworker who you enjoy personally, but they make it difficult to get your work done? I'm the only one at Fruitful, it's very weird, but I'm the only one who has a private office because I'm extremely introverted and most of my job is either writing or doing brand strategy for people.

Dan Cumberland:
I love it.

Raj Lulla:
The designers can talk while they're doing their work because it's all visual and physical. I cannot talk while I'm doing my work because it's all verbal, and so I needed to be separated from the rest of the team for the majority of my work hours, so that I can do my best work. But when you start to ask these questions in different ways, people have that moment where they go, "Oh, actually I'm maybe not as happy with that as I thought that I was." I would challenge you, again, on your website, on your Instagram, by asking these questions in different formats over and over, and over again, to help people identify that they are actually having this problem.

I would also then if I were you, I'd be digging into the results of these problems. If people are experiencing burnout, if they experience a relationship change, like divorce, like you mentioned, if they left a job that and they maybe don't even really know why, but they just had to get out of there, those types of things, there should probably even be specific landing pages and lead generators to those seasons of life or those external things that will actually cause people to deal with this internal stuff. Like I said, I've seen the inside of this product and the content is really, really good.

Dan Cumberland:
Thank you.

Raj Lulla:
We know it's not a product problem. We know that people will buy it and it's not a price point problem or anything like that. In fact, I would actually argue that with a little bit of personal coaching from you, then it should actually be worth more. Because in marketing, we talk about a one-to-10 rule of, do you expect to get a 10-time return on what you invest with us? If it's $100,000 you spend with us, then do you expect to make a million dollars off of this? There are a lot of businesses where they go, ", that would be eight major sales," or whatever the number is for them.

Dan Cumberland:
Totally.

Raj Lulla:
They go, "Doing a whole new website should better get us that. 100%, we agree with you." I think it's the same thing with the people that you're serving. If they’re spending even $1000 with you, if it would save them $10,000 worth of therapy, if it would help them get a job that's $10,000 more lucrative, if it would save them $10,000 in medical bills from stress and overwhelm, if it would give them $10,000 worth of meaning and I know that's a little bit relative. But again, if you think about I would pay $5,000 to go on vacation to Aspen, Colorado. Okay. That's because I'll pay $5,000 for that experience. We do actually have-

Dan Cumberland:
We have numbers.

Raj Lulla:
... a mental framework for numbers related to meaning. Because I know for me, it's not about the Airbnb. It's not about the rental car. It's not about even the view. It's about the memories with my family. Since I only get a certain number of summers with my kids, then I will invest in those things because I know that they'll carry those moments with them their whole lives. I can quantify how much meaning actually is worth in my life. Those are the kinds of things that as we continue to work together, we're going to be pushing those things on social media. We're going to be realigning some of those properties on social media. Definitely asking these questions in an email.

I think that when you developed that lead generator, sending it out to everybody who's been with it for five years, or sorry, for eight years, but if you asked me these questions in the right way at the right time last year, you would've got me. Always putting these types of things in front of people to allow them to identify if they're back into one of those seasons, again, we should do this every two or three years, that if they're back into one of those seasons where they need realignment in relationships, in the direction of your work, in the process of your work or what you're getting out of it, then I think this is going to really increase sales for us.

Dan Cumberland:
I totally, totally agree. I think that articulating in terms of those problems, those presenting problems, it just brings us so much more present. And gives it so much more of a clear deliverable, which I think is one of the major lacking pieces. I'm really pumped. I'm really pumped to have more clarity around that and to see where it goes, to see where it takes us.

Raj Lulla:
Dan, as we wrap up today, if you could, just maybe summarize. For anybody who's listening, who's experiencing a similar problem, how do you know when you should approach a brand strategist or messaging for problems with sales? How do you identify that moment?

Dan Cumberland:
. . . For me, I'll talk about it from the standpoint of, my experience is that just paying attention to conversion rates, make sure you're tracking your numbers to know really what's happening there. What I could see happening is growth in my overall list, so people who are following along for some reason, but then the stagnancy or lack of correlation, whatever that is, whatever the right word for that is, between that growth and the growth in revenue. And looked into the numbers of the conversions rate every time I did a launch. How many people went to the sales pages, and how many people bought from those sales pages? Or how many people attended training, and then how many people bought when I had an offer on that training?

The numbers, like I said before, it was less than 1%, a little bit more on the live training, but as far as the launches and everything. I knew that growth is happening here, but the growth is not happening when it comes to the course and to the sales. That's what the marker was for me. I guess the real reason deciding to solve it, to seek to solve it in this way is knowing that I feel like I'm too close to the problem to really to be able to think about it creatively. My lens is clouded by my past experience and I need someone who has an outside perspective to see the things that I'm not seeing. Honestly, a benefit too is I just feel like I need company. I need someone to bounce ideas off of.

I have so a team of part-time folks that edit my podcast and help me with social media posts and that kind of stuff, but they're not doing strategy with me. Someone to be able to say, "Here's an idea. What do you think? Here's a direction we could go. What do you think?" And so I don't have to make those decisions just in isolation. Or trying to get my wife to step into that role, which she often does, which is great, but needing more than just her as a part of the equation.

Raj Lulla:
If you know that your product is good, if you know that people aren't asking for refunds, but you're having trouble connecting with an audience to actually get to that conversion, then you need to clearly define and communicate what problem you solve for your audience. It has to be one that they're experiencing immediately, not an "I might deal with this on my deathbed someday". It's a problem they're experiencing right now. That is going to increase your sales.

Dan, thank you so much for joining us, and for being our first remote guest on the Growing a Fruitful Brand podcast. We look forward to continuing our work with you and talking again soon.

Dan Cumberland:
I love it. Thanks so much for having me, Raj.