The Magic Of Transforming Culture Into Business Success With Todd Duff
Transforming culture for the betterment of a business is indeed a huge task to undertake. Everything that has become commonplace in your company doesn't necessarily mean that they must be tolerated, especially if they are clearly dragging you down. Keynote speaker Todd Duff joins Chad Burmeister to talk about his mission of bringing business culture to the next level in a unique way: doing magic tricks. He explains how putting a bit of flair and mystery into his presentations allows him to easily send his message across to different teams, guiding them to a better path towards success. Todd also shares how he deals with the small speed bumps in his life, how he sees himself three years from now, and the role of his faith in God in moving forward without hesitation.
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The Magic Of Transforming Culture Into Business Success With Todd Duff
I've got a cool guest, Todd Duff, not to be confused with my brother, Todd Burmeister. Todd Duff has been the Founder and CEO of Innovations Branding House for over 21 years, he's got a team of over 10 or 11 people. They have figured out a way to combine a little bit of magic with what they do when they go into their customers. We're going to peel into that and understand a little bit more about the company and a little bit about how Todd brings magic into his business. Before we do that, we're going to get to know Todd a little bit. Todd, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining.
Thank you, Chad.
It’s fabulous to have you here. To get our audience to understand where you come from and how you think, I like to rewind the tape and take it back to when you're younger. Think about when you're 6, 7, or 8 years old, you wake up in the morning, and you're passionate about something. Fill in the blank for the audience, what was it that you loved to do when you were younger?
Transforming Culture: Whenever people are comparing something, that's a little bit like magic
It's funny that you asked me when I was six. When I was six years old, I got my first magic kit. I have that genetic problem where every other kid grows out of it, but it sticks with me. I was obsessed. I thought it was so cool. It was partially about that magic kit that most professional magicians started down that road in that way. For Christmas or something, they got a kit. I liked going to the library, 6, 10, 11, 12 years old, my mom would take me to our county library. I would head in there and find these old magic books from the early 1900s and from the ‘30s and ‘40s. It had this smell to them, the way old books smell. I would check those things out, trawl the stuff, and be making things. I was passionate about that. When I think of six years old, it takes me right back to my mom taking care of me.
A couple of years ago, I purchased a signed autographed copy of a picture by Harry Houdini. It’s hanging in the basement. To touch that card, it's on a 3x5 and it's framed in a nicer picture. I'm sure the two didn't go together originally. It's amazing when you take it out of the frame, and you touch this card. You go, “That was one of the most famous magicians of all time.”
That guy understood beyond magic the human condition and the way to market and speak to people. He was strong in a whole different set of skills.
That’s what the funny thing is. The quote that he wrote says, “My brain is the key that sets me free.” I have to think about that because I always think mind, but I'm pretty sure it says my brain is the key that sets me free. It's true. We can get in our heads sometimes. He can not only escape being locked underwater, 50 feet down, but he also figured out how to communicate with people in a far more effective way than most of us. If you think of being a magic kid, I did the same. I did tricks with neighbors. You'd buy the $499 card trick. Nowadays, the $499 is $3,499 or probably more than that. How does that tie into the kind of work you're doing? What do you think that magic thread is from then to now that caused you to do what you're doing?
This is what I love about business and magic, the human behavior and the psychology behind it all. When it gets down to it, the tone that you use, the inflection of your voice, the timing for when certain things are said or asked. There are millions of different combinations that can come out from a performing standpoint and what people remember about it and business. That's the same for me. All that is one mishmash. You're in the conference room talking to a client about marketing or if they should do marketing or not, it’s not much different than you're always listening and asking.
We did a sales call and the rep had 45 first conversations. Normally, out of that, you would sign at least 5, 10, or maybe 20 of the 45 because we've got a low, medium, and high product. It’s high value, and yet he's closed 1 or 2. I said, “Bring me on a call. Let me listen.” The whole discovery, everything was awesome. It was all magic. He then got to the value part. He goes, “Todd, do you mind if we talk about money?” It was disruptive, a pattern interrupt. That's fine. I'm okay with that. He then goes, “Yeah. Basically, it's $5,000 for a year for this seat, and you have forums, that's $20,000, and then it's $40,000 for the other two active users, but they're active users. They can be shared and blah, blah, blah.”
It sounded like a CFO conversation, and the guy who’s walking away is going, “$60,000? That's a lot of money.” I said, hold on to the customer. “You told me your deals range from $150,000 to $1 million. Your reps are sending 1 to 2 LinkedIn connection requests a day, yet you have 1,000s of prospects. If you moved that from 1 a day to 50 or 100 a day, how many deals do you think you would get by having much more interactions?” He's like, “Yeah, a lot. Got it.” I go, “If you wanted to buy a person to do this work, you'd spend $60,000 a year for one versus only $5,000 compared to the $60,000.” He's like, “Got it. I get it. Thanks for the clarification.” It's the magic trick. To your point, it's all about performing the magic trick in a sales call, in a conference room. That's neat how that thread ties together.
Relative to what is a great question. That's what you did. Is that a little bit or a lot? I always think whenever people are comparing something, that's a little bit like magic too. It's easy. My wife and I go out and eat and drink all the time, and have fun. You show somebody a card trick out in a restaurant, they’re blown away. I always like that they go, “That is awesome.” I go, “When's the last time you've seen real close-up magic?” They'll go, “Never.” “Of course, it's awesome. Compared to what? You've never seen it in real-time." It's all about what it's compared to.
The next question I like to ask and I'll preface this with you can go as deep or shallow as you want. We all have a challenge in our life. A painful memory. It could be a car accident. It could be whatever. Is there something that you can share with the audience that says, “This was a real wide chart in the road for me? Looking back, it actually helped me in life.” What's that moment, year, week, or whatever it is that sucked at the time, but now has been a positive blessing for you?
Transforming Culture: Doing magic tricks brings people back to their childish self even for a short while.
At one point, we were in a building in downtown Paducah, a historic, old town, and everything. We're in a small building, it might have been 2,800 square feet. There are a few of us in there. We outgrew it because we have a photo studio, video, audio lab, and all kinds of marketing stuff and production stuff. We're out of room. I bought a way bigger building, a 10,000 square foot building. We moved and we come to this new building. It's not new. It's an old building too.
This is nuts. We smell that there's a stink in here. Everybody moves in, got our computers all set up, we're two weeks in, and someone's like, “It stinks." I'm being all positive. I'm like, “When buildings are closed up, that's what they do. Open the windows.” A month in, it's worse. They're like, “It smells like crap in here. It stinks.” It's bad, and there are these flies. I'm like, “What is going on?” It gets worse and worse. I'm literally pulling the walls off, the paneling and drywall off the wall and I’m thinking, “Is there an old pipe back there that's cracked?”
“What is going on? What is this?” We're going crazy. I've got all this property. I bought this. I sold the other building. It's a little bit stressful. Moves are stressful, you lose money every time you move like that. It's expensive. I hired a plumber. He's like, “I can't find it.” I hired another one. He goes, “I think it's coming from the floor.” I'm like, “Give me your circular saw.” I cut this big square on the floor of this building. I lift out this 5x6 foot square sheet of floor out, and we looked down. I kid you not, there's a cesspool of human feces, 20x15 feet.
That plumber looks at me and goes, “I’m out,” and walks out of the building. This building has apartments above it that I bought, and those old pipes were broken for years. It was raw sewage in the middle of our studio. I remember standing there and that guy walked out. I'm like, “I'm screwed here.” We're trying to run a business on too much property. We hadn't been selling because of all this. I finally found a company. They spend 3 or 4 weeks around the clock dumping lime and scraping wheelbarrows. It was a $55,000 cost.
The kicker is, I'm one of those weirdos that checks every box. I call my insurance guy and go like, “This is what happened.” He's like, “Yeah, nobody's ever covered for that.” I'm like, “See what I did.” He calls back and he goes, “You're a weirdo. We're sending a guy down.” They cut a check and everything was better. That didn't happen overnight. This was a long, drawn-out process. We're still working. I'm still selling. I got plastic up, people are coming in. I'm selling marketing stuff and websites. They're like, “What's going on?” I’m like, “Upgrading.” My dad, a Vietnam vet, comes in during that point, a tough guy. He puts his arm around me and goes, “I don't know how you're not medicated right now. You’re tough.” I'm like, “Dad says I’m tough.”
We have points that we look back on. You and I were saying, "Relative to what?" This was ‘09. The economy was tanking when we did this too. COVID happened, but all that was worse than COVID for us in our business. There are people still here that experienced that. Six months into COVID, I'm like, “This is tough. This is challenging, people working from home.” Somebody's like, “Yeah, but it's no crap hole in the middle of the lobby.” I keep going back to what's the worst thing I've been through. What's the worst stressful situation? You look back at that, you go, “I think we're going to be fine.” That's the thing that I refer back to in my brain when things get rough.
That is such a deep thought process. I think back to Peter Lowe, one of his questions. He was a top sales trainer in the East Coast somewhere, South Carolina and Florida probably. He would say, “Compared to what?” That's the question. My son had some burns, bad oil burns on his face and hands. He's cleared. He's 99% fine. At the time, you're going, “What is going on?” His face swelled. He could barely see out of his eye. It was messy.
The reason for the story is, the day after he's like, “Dad, a question for you. On a scale of 1 to 10?” They kept asking him, "On a scale of 1 to 10, what's your pain?" He goes, “Compared to what? I've never been in this much pain. I don't know if it's a 10, an 8, or a 6.” They had to define it for him. He's like, “Dad, what level of physical pain have you been in your life?” I'm like, “A broken arm, that hurt.” A friend of mine was a Marine. He said he'd been shot, stabbed, and blown up, three things, and then he had a kidney stone. He goes, “The kidney stone by far was the worst of all three of those things.” You compare pain to physical pain, but also emotional pain like the thing you were going through, it's interesting to be able to hold that perspective through life. It could always be worse. You charge your batteries at night by taking a break. Other people charge their batteries by being around a bunch of people. What energizes you? How do you get energized?
Upbeat people. If I have three meetings here at the office, which would be a lot of meetings in a day, or even two, I got to connect with them. Whether we're helping them or not, walking them through where they need to get and connecting. When I'm done with that, and I go home, I'm ready to go out. I'm ready to be around more people. It gets the ball rolling. It's like this train where I'm like, “Now what? What's going on the next day, and the next day? Keep it moving.” I get juiced from it. As you know, some people walk away from that to recharge.
I'm in the middle. I like to be around people, but I know it drains me. I do need that time to recharge, but I also enjoy being around people.
There's a name for that. I watched this sales thing on your masterclass. There was a guy on there talking about sales. It's extrovert and introvert. They said, “Which one's better at selling?” They said, “The one in the middle.”
That's me. I've been lucky with that in my life. Blessed, I guess. I’m going to goof this question up because it's different. What's the one thing you'd like to accomplish in life that would change everything for you? Sometimes, when I'm talking to masterclass people, it's like, “I'm already living the dream.” It's a trick question, but is there something that you could say, “This one thing would change everything?”
I don't want to sound like an 80-year-old here, and I don't even know if I'm supposed to be thinking in this way yet when you look at the schedule and the way people think. Legacy pops in my head. For me, legacy would mean that the people that I interact with are in a better place in all terms. I've had some people that worked for me, I had a guy rent an apartment for me. He's a young guy. Ten years later, I get a fruit basket for Christmas. I don't remember this guy's name. I think they sent the wrong fruit basket.
I look him up, and he's a tenant. I reached him on LinkedIn, I'm like, “Thanks for the fruit basket. I don't know if you know you sent me one.” He goes, “No, I sent it to you on purpose because I didn't know how great a landlord can be.” He went through what he learned from renting from me. I barely knew the guy's name. It's little things, maybe I answered stuff the right way or I let him be late on rent. I don't know, but I think back to that, I go, “If I could impact people.” That's a small way. Now, he rents or buys differently, I don't know.
If it can be that little, even on a bigger side, this is how I think moving forward. Sometimes I think like, “This guy I used to work for long ago.” Anything because we all have those people in our life, the mentors and stuff that I had. Paychecks are great. You pay employees, they go buy cars, they put kids through college, and do those things, but something better than that. What's that thought process that might reside with someone for a long time that makes their life better than it could have been.
There was a sermon one day, we went to Elevation Church when we lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. It grew to probably twenty remote locations. We went to the live one all the time. Now, I tend to watch that on the weekends. I'm watching this one, and he talked about stuff that seems big to us, like my son’s situation, that is huge on a relative scale. When you have 2nd, 3rd-degree burns or the sewer in your office, those are huge things at the time.
Transforming Culture: In life, the knee-jerk response in rough times is to let go of everything.
He said, “To God, all those are little speed bumps. The actions we take that feel small are actually massive in terms of what they actually do in the world.” You're like, “I don't even remember what I did,” but there were probably some things in there just because of how you operate as a human being. Late rent. Who knows? Maybe you painted, or he said, “I burned a tile.” In my son's place, there's lots of fire stuff all over the wall and the cabinets. He's renting from the landlord, and he has two roommates. One is the landlord’s son and one is the roommate. They're like, “Don't worry about it. It was an accident.” That little act is big. We were ready to write them a check for $5,000 or whatever it took to fix all that. The little things matter to people and to legacy. How you behave as a human being can make a huge difference to people in the world.
Talking about little speed bumps. I'm not around kids a lot, but I have some relatives, niece and nephews, that kind of thing. I remember when they were young, this ice cream falls out of this kid's cone, and he loses his bananas. I'm like, “We can get more ice cream.” I'm telling my wife or something, “Talk about not dealing with life.” She's like, “That could be the absolute worst thing that's ever happened in that kid's life.” I'm like, “If I think about the worst thing that ever happened in my life, it's the exact same.” When you say little speed bumps, they are little speed bumps.
There's another thing when you talk about business. This guy, Dan Martell, said, “You either have $1 problems, $10 problems, $100 problems, or $10,000 problems.” I look at some of the things that you deal with as a business owner, it's like, “That's a $250,000 problem I'm facing right now.” Traditionally, you'd be like, “What?” To some people that aren't used to playing at that level would look at it like, “No way could I get to that level.” You have to slowly move your way up to where you're able to withstand that level of pressure.
They’re just zeros.
Think about it's three years from now, you look back and you say, “I had the most amazing three years.” What happened in those three years?
I've been doing public speaking for a long time but doing it as I'm asked. I go and I make it up a few days before. It was good times, I got to do some magic in front of people and talk about marketing. During this COVID thing, I amped it up. This is a 3, 5-year thing that I have a vision out to that. In three years, I'm talking to groups of people in the hundreds. I'm shifting a paradigm. I'm changing the way people see change and transformation, and the differences between that.
I'm delivering a message in an interactive way. The impact of that, I've written down in the next three years is each year has a certain amount of emails or correspondence with me that comes from that audience. It says, “I never thought about it that way. Here's something that I did that created a transformation.” I know it's a little bit vague without going into the amount of detail of what I'm talking about as far as marketing brand and culture and transformation. That's the summary. I want proof that I've been able to make a difference.
At the Living A Better Story retreat, we were lucky enough to have a guy named Robert White. He was one of the early mindset transformation architects in the country. He worked for a little bit, which became Lifespring, which is one of the big ones. He came to this event with twelve people. This group of twelve had the luxury of having the Robert White with the small group. He's used to talking to 500 people.
I've been following God's path for me. I'm like, “I don't know why I'm doing this show called Living A Better Story. I don't know why I did the retreat.” Ever since, I'm like, “What do you need me to do?” We still don't know where we're going to point this super-powered 4 to 5-day transformational class, but when you come in and you leave, you're a different person. He's helped you go to your past, go to your future, and tie it all together in the way that 1.3 million people graduated from this.
You learn a thing or two when you have 70 coaches work for you, and how to do this at a level that's beyond reason. Where I'm being pulled is, what group of individuals need that transformational experience? That's where it's like, “I don't know yet.” There was a principal of a school, she has 240 kids that are all kicked out of their other high school. Now, they're in this school. Think of that, those kids could certainly benefit from a transformation.
There's this other guy in Kenya, who pulls out 100 girls every year, puts them through school, and graduates them. They could use a transformation. You're talking about marketing, brand, and company culture. I'm like, “You should talk to Robert White,” because he's the expert at transformation. He'll give you an idea or two that'll change your life. That's fun. I know we're going a little bit past. I have two more questions I'm going to go down to. We talked about magic already that you were interested in when you were younger. When did you bring that into client engagements and on the stage? How did that happen for you?
I was about five years into the business. In my brain, I always separated that. Many years ago, marketing was largely about you either had a website or you didn't. That's where we got our roots. We did a lot of website development because we'd get questions. In ‘02, ‘03, the question was, “Do you think these websites are going to stick around, or is it bad?” That's how early in the whole process it was, but I always separated that.
I was like, “I have a website company.” We build websites and do brochures, and this magic thing, I never want to mix them. It's because it's how we're taught. If you're going to work while you have fun, we're not supposed to. School is supposed to be miserable. I was like, “Forget it, I'm going to take a pack of cards to work.” You start goofing around and showing some employees. They're like, “You do that?” We're then just having fun with it.
I've never done magic during a sales pitch or anything. If they've asked me, like, “Don't you do magic? I saw your YouTube channel,” or something. I'll be like, “Yeah,” and I'll goof around. We'll laugh for a while, but it's never opening and then in the middle to make a point in a sales way, so gradually. I then identified what the appeal was to owning a business and dealing with human behavior and marketing, even if it’s, “Why do people click on this color button instead of this color button more?” On its simplest level, you round the corners of the button, people click on it more, or whatever the stat is.
The arrows pointing or whatever.
It changes. There’s human behavior there. There's human behavior whenever somebody sees a card trick. They take the card, write their name on it, put it back in the deck, then it's in their pocket. They reach in and pull it out. Good trick. The beauty is, when it clicks with them, it throws them back into this younger state as a child. They have this childlike wonder. It lasts for 2 or 3 seconds. They go reorganize that information again in their head and they go, “Card trick, got it. He’s a sneaky man. Got it,” or, “That's fun. It's a trick,” but for a little while, they're like, “Astonishment.”
You wouldn't believe how my son came to healing. His nose looked terrible. He did this surgery called RECELL, where they take a little bit from your thigh and mix it in. You can now reach out and touch his nose, and you're like, “It's all perfect.” It's miraculous. There’s no other word besides that, when you can see life from that perspective. Magic tricks, they're a trick. There's sleight of hand and things. When you see the world and its beauty, and you can stop and smell the roses and go, “It's amazing.” Even with COVID and stupid stuff that goes on these days, you still can carve out amazingness within all of it. The last question is about faith. Does faith play a role in your life? Do you have faith?
I grew up in a Christian home. I live in a Christian home now. We talked about recharging. I would say two things. It's a place I can go to recharge and slow down and try to enjoy the present moment and not think about the future. It's like if you're living in the future, you're anxious. If you're living in the past, you're depressed. I've heard it put that way before. Can you be right now thankful for the things you've got right now? My other go-to is, if life is rough, it's my knee-jerk go-to to let go of everything. I go, “Will you take this?” It's a private thing, too. We don't start the day with prayer at work or anything like that. Those are the two times, recovery and extreme fright.
When you can let go of the wheel and hand it off, that's when Robert White came back in my life, and a guy named Rich and Nick. The people at the fire pit outside of my backyard started with one person. Now it's got twelve. Now, we did the Living A Better Story retreat. That all was born out of the fire pit. It's like, “What's next? I don't even know. Show me where you need me to go.” That's a great share. I appreciate that. That's huge.
This has been fabulous. Todd, I've enjoyed getting to know you. Thank you for sharing your story with our readers. I definitely see a few action items. I need to hook you up with Robert. I mentioned this beforehand, my business, my day job is a company called ScaleX. We use automation and AI to reach out to television shows, podcasters, prospects, speaking engagements, or anything. Through Living A Better Story, we're identifying all these fabulous people.
Everybody's extraordinary in their own right. They've got a niche in the world that only their fingerprint can solve. What I offer is I've got these two virtual assistants that represent 5 or 6 extraordinary people that because my cost is near low, I can run outreach for you at no cost as a favor to help you spark that. Getting you in front of companies and speaking to audiences of 700 to help you transform them. I'll definitely follow up with you.
That's appreciated. We'll get on the horn and chat on that.
Thank you, everybody, for joining the show. You can reach Todd at InnovationsBrandingHouse.com. He's got an amazing team that does not just websites these days, but a whole marketing strategy. They're fabulous. If you're looking to up-level your strategy around marketing and branding and tools, Todd would be a great guy to talk to you. Thanks for joining, Todd.
Thanks so much, Chad.
Important Links:
Robert White - LinkedIn
YouTube - Todd Duff
About Todd Duff
From an early age, Todd was fascinated with the idea of transformation. His earliest memory of this obsession was in the way a train could flatten a penny if you set it in its tracks. His second earliest memory of that obsession was realizing that his classmates and teachers would trade a quarter for a penny.
In hindsight, it might’ve been this coin “trick” that piqued Todd’s interest in magic. After taking up an interest in sleight of hand magic not too long after, he began practicing with coins, playing cards and other simple props and created his own magic show. He worked on it all throughout high school and college, and still, to this day, performs his craft for anyone and everyone. His employees, the table next to him at any of his favorite restaurants and even on stage in front of a captive audience there to learn about a completely different topic.
Todd loves to bring his love of magic to the presentation stage. Not only does it add an extra layer of entertainment and intrigue to the talk, but it is also a tool he utilizes to illustrate the connection between people, culture and marketing your brand in the most effective way to create growth for your business.
