On The Level Podcast
Some people think Freemasonry is on the decline, not if we have anything to say about it! Join On the Level Podcast as we explore that Esoteric side of Freemasonry. We talk about the inner workings of our Fraternity, how to apply it's teachings to your every day life to become a better man, and general current events. Join our host and guests as we explore Freemasonry together and bring our ancient craft into the modern age!
On The Level Podcast
The Digital Evolution of Freemasonry with Jonathan Greene
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Embark on a journey to a galaxy far, far away and the final frontier with our latest episode, where we ignite the debate between Star Wars and Star Trek. Feel the rush of nostalgia and inspiration as we reminisce over the heroic fantasies of Star Wars and the societal insights of Star Trek, tying them back to the meticulous craft of masonry. We also savor the art of cigar appreciation, unwrapping the layers of a quality smoke, and revealing how these simple joys artfully weave into the fabric of our lives.
Joining me is Jonathan Greene, an entrepreneur and author who masterfully dissects the art of marketing and the psychology behind consumer behavior. Jonathan highlights the counterintuitive success found through embracing failure, drawing wisdom from his books "The Fail Formula" and "Virtually Unstoppable." I'll share tales from the trenches of A/B testing, the crucial emotional connections in marketing, and how nurturing client relationships mirrors personal ones. We're also lifting the veil on modernizing Freemasonry's communication, laughing at my own initiation blunders, and debating the potential of digital platforms for a fraternity steeped in tradition.
As we close, we ponder the challenges faced by Freemasonry in the digital age, discussing the power of storytelling to redefine its public image and contemplating the potential of Freemasonry in fostering global unity. Whether discussing SEO for Masonic lodges or the universal themes of risk-taking and mentorship, we connect the dots between the personal journey and the broader currents of change. We're not just examining the craft's symbols and rituals; we're strategizing its evolution in a world that's constantly moving online. Tune in for a heartfelt, thought-provoking conversation that just might inspire you to take your own leap of faith.
#Freemasonry #podcast #bluelodge
We have to decide what to do with the time that has given us. You've reached the internet's home for all things masonry. Join on the level podcast as we plumb the depths of our ancient craft and try to unlock the mysteries, dispel the fallacies and utilize the teachings of pre-masonry to unlock the great within each of us. I have you now.
Speaker 2That was nice man, that was nice I like that new little intro there. I like the Darth Vader line in there. I don't know if you can see it, but I got Darth Tater right there. He's a potato head Darth Vader Right there. And right there is Mastur Yoda, also a potato head.
Speaker 1You got a Stormtrooper Lego head.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1I got my own in the row.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's the Stormtrooper Lego guy.
Speaker 1I have like three legs.
Speaker 2Oh no, I got you dude. Wait a minute, here we go.
Speaker 1There it is.
Speaker 2I'm just going to turn on. If you do one of these Apparently, you have to be 1% smarter than the lifesaver, so anyway.
Speaker 1Mine's on a display stand with my Sith name in neon lights and the holder. Yeah, super nerd.
Speaker 2If you don't have Star Wars stuff within arms reach of your desk, I'm not sure we can be friends.
Speaker 1So this plaque my officers gave me at, you know, at the next guys and at the worship all Zach Wheely's installation, and it says Chris Sith Burns, and there's light sabers on the left and there's a Star Trek phaser on the right and it says I'm standing there.
Speaker 2Yeah, Are you more of a? Are you more of a Star Wars or a Star Trek guy?
Speaker 1I'm an equal opportunity lover of sci-fi and fantasy. I get down on both the equally man. I can't say one's better than the other.
Speaker 2I think on a visceral level I like Star Wars better, but Star Trek is this like really deep commentary on the nature of humanity? You know it's like social commentary big time.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, and it's a snapshot in time.
Speaker 2You know it's like a time capsule for me.
Speaker 1Yeah, Star, Star Wars appeals to the child in us. It's like that fantasy of like I want to save and be the hero and it's really a Western If you look at it programmatically right.
Speaker 2Yeah, it sort of is, whereas Star Trek's more of this running commentary on the nature of humanity it used to be.
Speaker 1They have a. I don't know if you watched, is it just Star Trek Discovery? Where they go way in. I just can't with that. I like tried so hard and it's like this one woman saves the universe. Every episode I'm like get out of here with this crap Like I can't do it and I was almost giving up on it. I'm like I can't do it with this modern Star Trek stuff.
Speaker 2Give me William Shatner, like overacting, bouncing off the rails any day, you know, spock.
Speaker 1There's something on the way. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I dressed as Kirk one year and I talked for Halloween all day as Kirk and it annoyed everybody around me.
Speaker 2I love it Nice.
Speaker 1Outstanding Thanks for having me back man. Yeah, man, welcome back to the show, the new on the level podcast. You've been on the whole thing.
Speaker 2I think you brought me back because of my obvious charm and good looks, now that you've gone to the video format, yeah. I mean, who else are you going to get this? Going to wear a spinous, to work out a tire on them on the podcast.
Speaker 1So I mean, all we can see is your shoulders. So there's no, you know, there's no judgment here. I see a little bit of a tattoo coming through there under the sea.
Speaker 2Yeah, I got a few, you too.
Speaker 1Oh, you got a lot more than that. Does it go all the way around the back in the front?
Speaker 2No, I haven't. You know, I've been saving that space but I got a pretty gnarly like Masonic chess piece coming up. Oh, of course it's all going to be hermetic symbolism, so even most pre-mations will have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. But it's okay, it's all right.
Speaker 1Well, well, I'm glad that you came back. The reason you're back so soon is because we didn't get much time. In our first interview we were actually on location in DC. There were distractions. We actually had to go to an installation so we were trying to ram it in there because we just met you and we knew when we left it would be difficult. So we just got a quickie in there and I think we touched on marketing a little bit and that short interview that we did. I think it might have been mostly marketing that we talked about.
Speaker 2And cigars.
Speaker 1And cigars yes. My favorite thing is the guard, the cigar stuff's really got some interesting things happening, but we'll talk about that when I can talk about that.
Speaker 2No right, Can't talk about it yet.
Speaker 1But our primary sponsor is the three Ruffians. They fund some of the software we're using, so appreciate that.
Speaker 2And.
Speaker 1I hear that I don't smoke cigars very often, but I hear they make a pretty good stick.
Speaker 2Well, I've had all of theirs now, I believe.
Speaker 1Oh, you did. I tried them all. Yeah, I really liked the one.
Speaker 2I don't remember the names, but I liked the one with the blue band the best. It was like a medium. To me it had characteristics of like Honduran tobacco. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what it seemed like to me.
Speaker 1It's Cuban leaf, Nicaraguan grown, I believe.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was really nice it was. It had a bit of natural sweetness like almost a milk chocolate. Nice, it's berth, it was good.
Speaker 1To me every cigar is the same. They smell the same, they taste the same. I got to develop my palate for sure.
Speaker 2You know, in the beginning I was that way but I tend to be intentional about things that I'm interested in. So what I did is I got like a bullet journal, a little pocket sized bullet journal, and started taking and like a glue stick and put it in a fanny pack you know like so be riding under my clothes, like I was real serious about it. So I would go smoke a cigar, I would take the band off, glue it, stick it in the bullet journal and I would write down my impressions of like what I thought the flavor notes might be that I was experiencing. And then later on I would go Google it and match whatever I thought with whatever the internet said.
Speaker 1Yeah, and over time.
Speaker 2I started to like make the connections like, okay, that's earth that I was, that I was tasting, or that's dark chocolate or raisin or whatever. Yeah, I still don't have like a huge vocabulary, but I can get pretty close, like close to you. You know what I mean to.
Speaker 1I hear you're talking about that and I also hear wine drinkers talk like that and I just know good and bad. You know, I've had a $600 bottle of wine and I like my $7 bottles more, you know. I don't have enough palette, I guess, to be kind of like snoozy. What's the word I'm looking for? Like snobby, like a snobby. Yes, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2Yeah, Like if it costs more than $14 at Publix it probably ain't happening. But and my vocabulary for wine like pretty much tops out at like grapey or dry. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's kind of like the fruity stuff.
Speaker 1I want it to be like bitter, almost like a salad dressing.
Speaker 2That's what I like yeah, like you're punishing yourself like drink this and like it All life is about that.
Speaker 1I'm going to punish myself. That's why I smoke marble reds. If I'm going to smoke, I'm on a men ball. Come on no there's vaping stuff.
Speaker 2If you're going to do it, get cancer.
Speaker 1My God, get cancer and make it taste like a, like a bear's bugle.
Speaker 2That's what I go way off track already Like this is. This is what happens.
Speaker 1It's called rabbit holes man. Everybody that listens to this show knows about it and that's why they don't listen that often probably. You know it's like God damn it. We're going to talk about marketing and then talking about tasting bears, but holes eight minutes.
Speaker 2Well, I know, I know that you and I have both been doing marketing since probably about seven AM this morning, right?
Speaker 1So yeah, I, right up until we started recording yes, today, I think.
Speaker 2I heard somebody speak about you the other day. I heard the tail end of a conversation and he was like don't believe what they said. I know what it was. We're starting to see the candidates for the grand south like go around and do their spills and I heard a spiel and it had some marketing components and he was like referencing this worship master from his district who's a professional marketer. And this I knew it was you. I knew it was you right away.
Speaker 1So there's a few of us out there in Florida actually that are kind of known as marketing guys that do stuff in the fraternity.
Speaker 2So we should make a club or something.
Speaker 1You know, the thing is like most of us are loners. You know that's why we're doing what we do. We like to, we don't like to work with others. We know we're smart and we know we can help people, and so we pretty much tell hey, if you talk to anybody but me, you're an idiot, because I know what to do, Like I'm the smartest guy in the world.
Speaker 2We all practically required to be a professional marketer, that you believe in your own legend, right? Like you how else are you going to be like oh yeah, I'll spend your hundred grand a month on ads. Like you just have to believe that you're the guy. You know what I mean, of course, yeah. Or else, what are we doing here? Like yeah, it might be successful with your hundred?
Speaker 1grand. No, like absolutely not. Okay, I tell you what I'm going to do my best with a hundred thousand. Okay, I'll do my best. No one wants to hear those words. They want to hear.
Speaker 2I don't know what kind of budget you guys work with, but that's a reasonably small budget for me, like I usually do.
Speaker 1Oh, we do it all, man. I have people that spend. I have some franchises in the franchise. He spent a hundred dollars a month on Facebook and I managed that. And then this is.
Speaker 2we definitely should not discuss this on this podcast, but I'm interested in your model Like how do you staff up to do that profitably?
Speaker 1Yes, presumably you have to have 900 of those people.
Speaker 1So with a, I look at uh, actually, this is a great time. This is great time because Freemasonry is essentially a franchise model. If you look at it, it's a business. We have the Grand Lodge of Florida, which is our franchise, or every blue lodge is a franchisee, and we're supposed to operate under the same guidelines. The franchise or gives us right and our job is to sell the product. That's why we have franchise licenses, aka warrants and charters that allows to sell product in our areas. Now I dig it right. It's exactly a marketing. It is a hundred percent of marketing thing. And the way I look at the franchise model is it doesn't make sense until you get to scale.
Speaker 1Thank, thank you, if you absolutely if you run a marketing program like like the Grand Lodge marketing reimbursement program at five watches, one Lodge is gonna do great and four might suck because they do it differently right, but if you had hundred and fifty lodges running it, I think that you would see that this is a massively successful program over yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2It's all like. All marketing in the modern ages is operates on the law of averages. Yeah you know what I mean. Like I'm, I think, what you would consider to be an elite tester and peripheral split tester, sort of my claim to fame, and I'm really good at it. And you know, for most clients over in due course I will get like, if they come in with a 5% conversion rate, I'm gonna get them 10, you know I mean, but I still fail six out of ten times.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean the process of iteration in the law of averages. I always win because I'm tenacious and and I hypothesize. Well, and isn't that true?
Speaker 1about almost everything in life. It's the guy who overcomes the obstacles and gets good at overcoming the obstacles that becomes the most successful.
Speaker 2Yeah, like I sit down with clients that I'm onboarding and I say, look, we're gonna fail a lot and we're gonna achieve your goals like we're gonna fail on to your desired outcome. But it's all about intelligent iteration in it, you know other people call it a B testing.
Speaker 1That's what a lot of people are. I'm gonna a B test, I'm gonna a B test and I hear it all the time and even from my own team will be on meetings. So we're gonna a B test this and that and I get off the call and the clients on and I'm like have you ever made a decision for this client based on a B testing? You've got no Right.
Speaker 2Well, I think the vast majority of people don't know how to do it correctly, and I have a graduate level. Education is statistics, so like if you want to get an A, b testing will run everybody off your podcast.
Speaker 1I'm just telling you right now, nobody cares.
Speaker 2I was telling you, if you want to mess them up next time, just be like Okay, what was the level of confidence on that? And if they can answer that question, then say, well, what was the statistical power? And they'll immediately melt down because they have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 1Yeah, when you know what you're talking about it, you really don't have any fear in your, in your market because, like with in marketing and I don't know that every industry is this way, but marketing is a bit of a commodity. You can get it almost anywhere and the the quality is really hard to judge for the consumer. They really don't know. They're basing it off testimonials and what you tell them.
Speaker 2The only way is yeah, I can go through my Facebook DMs and pull out 900 testimonials. All marketers definitely, definitely are not created equal, absolutely no definitely not.
Speaker 1So we're but um you, we both have the same when you're in marketing. Rarely are you getting a first-time customer that's never done marketing before ever it happens sometimes, but very rarely. Usually you're taking someone that has been abused by another marketing company and.
Speaker 1I Often compared to new teammates that come into my company that look, you have to look at this as an abused wife Relationship. This person has been abused for years and now, anytime you move quick, they're gonna get twitchy. They're not gonna trust you. You're gonna have to over explain like, okay, I'm gonna put my hands on your shoulder now, this is a friendly. That's how you got to treat these people as a marketer. Like, look, I'm gonna spend the money over here, don't worry, this is safe, it's good. Like you said, we will make mistakes, but you're gonna wind up on top. You gotta let me do my job.
Speaker 2Yeah, and ironically, approaching the craft to spend money on marketing is just like that, even if it's going to get reimbursed. They're like you know, it was like whoa, I don't know.
Speaker 1Guys, it's he's gonna reimburse. So this started because most horse-whisper foster cornered me to grandmasters visit before he was the grandmaster. Someone had said my name probably someone that I'm from my lodge or something and he's like I want to do a program like this. And I said alright, I only have one requirement. And he said I can't make a new committee. I'm like I don't want a new committee. You have to pay for it. But don't worry, everything's gonna be trackable and it's gonna be cheese no more than six hundred dollars. And he said okay, I'm in. Because I thought in my ignorant mind that if they paid for it, everyone would do it. Right, where's the risk? If they're paying for it Like there's no risk, why wouldn't everybody do it?
Speaker 2It's so funny to me, literally like I'm. You know I'm gen X, like I was born in 1980 on the line. So I'm gen X, but I'm Jim Y right, I'm like the elder millennial for real, you know.
Speaker 1That's my sensibilities. Generational Down syndrome. You're missing a chromosome or you have an extra.
Speaker 2I'm weird, I straddle both things. So, like I, I definitely remember what it's like to drag the curly phone cord across the house and oh yeah, oh I talked to a girl. I definitely remember that, and the rotary dial, I remember that, but I'm also equally comfortable with technology. Yeah, right, so.
Speaker 1Well, yeah, I can't casting. And we were young when the internet became a thing. I was still playing Mortal Kombat, actually, you know like yeah 100%. We were hungry for that stuff when it came out, so we absolutely.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, it revolutionized everything. But if you're, if you're below a certain age, you sort of went with it. If you're still young enough to have been malleable and ductile when it started to happen, you sort of swam upstream and and I'm okay. I'm okay with podcasting, I'm okay with the internet. Whatever the internet scares the hell out of the craps, like it's a dark chasm of misunderstanding. Yeah, so I, like I'm sort of dedicated to, or at least one of the things that I'm passionate about, is sort of helping the craft understand that this is actually having tages to us. It's a benefit, it can be a boon if we approach it correctly, and so that's why I'm super appreciative of the things that you're doing with podcasting, etc. So some of these modalities begin to be adopted. They can raise the tide for all ships.
Speaker 1You're fairly new to the fraternity. How long now have you been a master mason?
Speaker 2So eight months raised a mate, a master mason eight months. And you got to keep me out of trouble, by the way, in this conversation, because I'm so new, I'll offend somebody guarantee?
Speaker 1Well, undoubtedly, we both will. Don't worry, that's not a time thing, that's just a personality thing.
Speaker 2I was at the lodge. We were looking at the signs out on the outside of the lodge and I was like that sign looks like hell and obviously the guy standing next to me was a dude. They're like hand-painted, the sign. I'm like.
Speaker 1Yeah, I stood in lodge and I said I'd like to make a motion that you let me redesign our pin. And then the past master Popped up that designed the pin two years ago. It was like what are you talking about? This is brand new design. I was like, oh I, it's beautiful, I just make you have options for the pin, not redesigned it. You know, no offense.
Speaker 2Yeah, but I'll give you a prime example. So it's it's um election season or getting ready to be for the Grand South, right? So they're starting to travel around and do their speaking thing and I'm not gonna name any names just to be safe, but I've already heard one speech where the guy came in hot on marketing. He's like we need to do better with marketing. I like lean forward, mm-hmm Good. Did you ask questions, did you?
Speaker 2get him to no by the time he was done talking, I could tell it was absolutely pointless to ask questions. Okay so, but he's like. So what we need to do is we need to get blurbs for the things we're doing in the community and our local newspapers Impossible impossible and irrelevant, impossible.
Speaker 1So when I became the first position I held, that got me all excited and freemasonry. I was a district committee man for public relations and publicity. Go look up the definition in Florida For what public relations and publicity's job is. You're supposed to contact the news and get our, our local stuff, whatever is going on at your lodge in the news. Two years, every stated meeting, every call communication, any spaghetti dinner, anything we did, nobody returned to call, ever, ever, ever, ever.
Speaker 2After the newspaper, after the news channels, nobody well, you know this because you're a marketing guy. But, first of all, pitching for PR is hard. There are people who that's their entire life, um, and they have Formulaic, rigorous approaches to pitching and like actual PR professionals when they want to place media. You know they'll send out 10 000 pitches, they have a whole curated list and and they'll spend days like work, shopping what they're saying in the pitch and and deriving value and Portraying interest, because the news needs to feel like people are interested, right. All of which is is a reason why it probably Isn't going to work at scale. But the more important reason that we shouldn't care Is that nobody has read a newspaper for 15 years. Right, like, nobody. Like, if it depends on who you want, right. If you want, then look, I got no problem with boomers. Love you guys. If you want boomers who are going to be in the paternity per five years before they can't walk up the stairs anymore, let's do newspapers.
Speaker 2If you want everybody else on planet earth, I don't read a newspaper. I read a feed reader, like I get. You know, I get my feed directly from AP and it comes directly to my phone. I haven't touched the newspaper. Newspapers are complete waste of energy. To me, and I think Most people in our generation or younger Do you have no concept. It's like the rotary phone. They don't have any concept of what this is, and so, ergo, chasing that modality of communication is A complete waste of time.
Speaker 1It is. It's one of the many outdated things that we're still clinging to as an organization and you know that it's like.
Speaker 1It's like Our leadership. In these jurisdictions it varies, but in the state of florida, if you look at the average age of our grand lodge officers, it is representative of the membership. It's an earth crowd Right now. I was doing a lot with Texas recently and the grand lodge officers in Texas Aren't like that. You got guys in their 30s that are grand lodge officers in that state and I believe that's just because they have different thinking about recruitment and we're trying to get people thinking more about recruiting Because, as you said, the people that we're trying to recruit, whether they're 20 years old or they're 45, 50, 60 years old, probably aren't reading newspapers. They're probably reading social media 100%.
Speaker 2So if you, if you really wanted to like in terms of return on effort right, let's not. Let's just ignore money for a moment, let's just talk about return on effort If you really wanted to raise the tide for the craft, the way to do that is not Pitching PR. That's going to get small placements and community newspapers at best and where major news outlets are really not going to care. There's a whole impression based ecosystem out there when you can deliver tons of information in a concise format that people care about Very, very cheaply. So if you, if you really wanted to do PR for your lodge, get a line item expense of 50 a month.
Speaker 2Yeah and shoot videos and photos of what you're doing in the lodge in the community and boost it. Boost it for, you know, two dollars a day and watch what happens like it will work far better. And so look, when it comes to marketing, I come off hot because I'm an expert at what I do, like it, unassailably, I make a living. I, you know I run several businesses on the CMO of another business, you know.
Speaker 1So, like I come off hot, but I'm sympathetic marketing officer for people that don't work in marketing, like what the hell's this? Tmo.
Speaker 2Yeah, um, so I come off hot because I'm passionate about it, but at the same time I understand the reticence, particularly of the more aged pre-masons, to sort of adopt these modalities. And I get that. It's scary and and that's always true of things that we don't understand, sure, but, um, the ways in which Freemasonry has traditionally spread, um, don't exist to a great extent anymore.
Speaker 2We're talking about the nuclear family, which is famously Disintegrated in this country, um, and we're talking about the backyard barbecue, right, and I don't even know my neighbors like I, really, I mean, I mean about them but you know, like these, these things don't exist anymore, and so at some point in time, we're gonna have to think about more intelligently the way that we're gonna approach this problem, and so maybe better than talking about the marketing reimbursement program, which is already out there, it is and and works, like you've done it in Sarasota. It took great effect. I intend to do it as soon as I can get the lodge cleaned up. Um, so it will work. It is a it's a perfectly good program.
Speaker 1Sure, um, there's more than one way cat, though right, that's all we know about marketing. Yeah, there's definitely not only one silver bullet to anything. No, there's so many different things you can do of varying degrees of effort and money and time. They're gonna net you a positive result, whether it comes to awareness, building positive vibes in your community or Bringing in membership, like yeah, and we should probably give people some concrete things that they can do in their lodge, like the average show that doesn't have a, that isn't an expert in marketing like you are.
Speaker 2Uh just things that brothers can do with a moderate level of computer Ability because that's the problem on a nutshell, like like you and I look at it and go, okay, it's a, it's a video lead ad on facebook. It couldn't be easier.
Speaker 2It's stealing so easy for a brother that, like, probably, is a late adopter of email. You know what I mean. Like to to get online and get into facebook and get into like, you have to be able to create a page. You have to be able to create a business manager. You have to be able to link the two things. Yeah, right, you have to write an ad. You have to upload a video. You have to get the ad approved. God help you have any sort of compliance issue? Right, like well, there are significant barriers to entry to the craft, to doping.
Speaker 1I will walk anyone through creating an ad. It should take 15 minutes. I have spent an hour and a half on a call with brothers Trying to figure out how to download a video or find a file they downloaded on their computer. Like that's the level of like computer. So that's the level of expertise we're talking about here, with many people that are in charge of the things that Are requiring some technical expertise. Yeah, so it's like we really have to think as marketers that are masons. We really have to find a way to like communicate with those people and get them to understand what we're saying, because when we use big words, they just shut down. They're not even listening anymore.
Speaker 1They're just tuned out. It's like this guy's he thinks he's so smart, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, whatever I get it, I get it, 100 get it. That's why I kind of stopped talking tech. When I would talk to lodges, I would talk emotion, like your lodge is crumbling, it's gonna be gone in 25 years. Nothing here. And you're here right now for a short time. You can do something about it, are you not gonna do something? You get them all whipped up emotionally and they're like, yeah, what do I gotta do? And now we can have the conversation.
Speaker 2See, I go about this the wrong way, because I think it's foundational to understand why right and this works well in business and it works very poorly in Freemasonry, so to understand why it is that you need to do this thing. So I like to lead with. This is how algorithms operate and this is why Facebook, or this is how Facebook, makes money. And if you understand how Facebook makes money, then you understand what you need to do to get syndication in this platform. Yes, like it ain't gonna work, I'm gonna have to do what you're doing you used several words that have multiple syllables in them.
Speaker 1Okay, you gotta trim that down.
Speaker 2man Like less syllables you know less word, but I don't think the craft is stupid, I don't. I think that they can play if they wanna play.
Speaker 1When you're talking algorithms and you're talking, you know it gets complicated for them, really complicated, and, like I said, it's not that people can't understand this, it's that they tune you out.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a fact. They can't understand it Absolutely.
Speaker 1they can understand it if they just listen.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1That's the key. You gotta get them to listen somehow, because that's how See, I'm committing marketing mistake number one right which is not leading with pain. That's right.
Speaker 2People only respond to pain. They only respond to inconvenience and pain in their own life, and if you don't lead with pain, you're irrelevant. Nobody cares what you have to say, because you're not solving any active problems.
Speaker 1They already know you're smarter than them, especially in this area. So for you to come in that way, like they're-.
Speaker 2Why you gotta go in on North Florida man. What's up with that?
Speaker 1I mean, you know, I really care about the fraternity, I really do believe in the tenets of the fraternity like at my core and that's why I'm willing to do whatever it takes to try to do my part to help me succeed and thrive and grow. And that's why I have zero tolerance for masons in name only. If you're not a real Mason, then I have no time for you. I don't care what title you have, I don't care what position you have. I'll respect the title because I am a Mason. But I don't have time for you in my life and we need to bring in more people that care about the tenets of the fraternity more than they care about the titles and the honors and the accolades, because I think, we have had a period of time.
Speaker 1There was a period of time when we were on World War II where we peaked and those guys just wanted brotherhood man. They just wanted structure, because they had brotherhood and structure in the military and they were seeking it in this.
Speaker 2Well, I get that because I'm military, so I have the military background and it is a really great replacement for the camaraderie of people that you served with. What happens is you spend some time in the military, you make these really deep, abiding friendships and then they're dislocated, and you know what I mean. People are all over the place, so, like I have lots of really great friends, none of whom I ever see. You know what I mean Because they're.
Speaker 1It gets gathered to the winds after you're in the military.
Speaker 2So I needed that out of Freemasonry. I needed camaraderie with men that you can believe in or worthy of respect and trust. Right, you know? And for the most part, that's what I found here and one of the reasons why I think I'm in the same boat as you. Like, I love the craft, I'm not. I come off hot because it's a fact. For one thing, people don't notice about me, I'm a stone cold introvert, like I do not enjoy being around lots of people or in front of people, the irony being that I do marketing for a career and I'm always in board rooms, so like. So I've learned how to marshal my energy together and have presence and fill a room with my energy if I want, but I'm not naturally gifted at interpersonal relationship, and so when you get me on a topic that I'm passionate about, I come off hot, like you know, and I'm just passionate, and so sometimes like socially retarded, you know, almost.
Speaker 1That's good, though. People need to see the passion. They need to see how, like this little fire into this guy, I better you know it might make them pay attention to you. If you're really passionate about what you're saying, they might actually get their focus for a minute.
Speaker 2Look, you messed up. You made me a master Mason. Now you gotta deal with me Like I'm here. We here now. So no, we need brothers like you.
Speaker 1I mean there were brothers before me, I'm sure, doing trying to get more marketing into the fraternity, trying to utilize better practices, less waste, streamline. You know I'm sure there were. It didn't feel like it to me because I felt like I was on an island, all by myself, fighting against the ocean.
Speaker 2And we had that conversation.
Speaker 1you felt the same way at the beginning. Like you're screaming into the void no one's listening. Like look at my lodge, look at what's going around to me. Like does anyone care about the big picture?
Speaker 2Does anyone? I think I just figured out what this episode's gonna be about really. It's not really about marketing. It's about leadership, because you accomplished a thing in terms of getting the marketing reimbursement program set up and creating the scaffolding, if you will, and creating a process.
Speaker 1That's how I see it. Exactly like that. I hope that I provide. I was really sad when you told me about your experiences because I was like damn it, I was hoping people like you would come in behind me and not have to fight quite as hard, like be a little bit easier for you to get to pick up the ball and run it further down the field, basically.
Speaker 2Right, yeah, Unfortunately I don't think it's reached adoption in the consciousness of the craft yet.
Speaker 1It has.
Entrepreneurs and Marketing
Speaker 2But what's really interesting to me is like I think it's probably certain that there were people who tried before us to do what we are doing, oh yes, absolutely, and yet you managed to do it and they didn't. And you're gonna balk at it when I say this, but you're a naturally gifted leader. Like you, run a company, you have all of these skills. So talk to me about that, because I think you're a lot better at that than I am Hold on now.
Speaker 1now, this is my podcast. I do the interviewing here. Sorry, that's not fair. I think we share a lot of common traits and I think people that own their own companies and our entrepreneurs often do we're crazy. We're not normal people. We do things that are-.
Speaker 2Certainly not rational at all.
Speaker 1No, you have to be willing to take risks. Right that normal people don't have the fortitude to tolerate the risk and, like you said earlier, you're gonna fail a lot You're gonna fail, so you have to learn how to make the failure part of the success.
Speaker 2It's a normal part of the process to fail right, I wrote a book called the Fail Formula and that's exactly the book right there. Like how? Do I iterate onto success. Yeah, it's on Amazon. You wanna check?
Speaker 1it out, I wouldn't. The Fail Formula by Jonathan Green on Amazon. Check it out. I'm gonna get my copy. I wanted to autograph next time I see you.
Speaker 2All right, I just released another book last week that was, like it's called, virtually Unstoppable and it's about online instruction and pedagogy for like delivering course instruction online. So I just write books. You don't have to. Definitely don't read them, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1That's the academic background.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1I think you were probably steeped in it. So long you can't stop, there's no stopping that.
Speaker 2There's no stopping. Don't feel like you need to read them, like if you did, you'd be the one I'd know all right away I'll read them.
Speaker 1I love reading, especially stuff from people that I know, because I get to know you better as a person when I read your work.
Speaker 2Yeah, if nothing else I could do that I guess probably last year I released another one that was called Copy Savant. It's like Copy Savant how to write conversion copy that works, and so one of the problems that I was experiencing in marketing was that there's and this is probably true of basically everything now that YouTube has been proliferated at large right, it's like there's so much information about how to do absolutely anything yeah, that people will go and start researching how to write good copy from my business ads, right and there's just so much information that it's almost disinformation.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And they end up collecting best practices, because the delivery format of 99 out of 100 YouTube videos is like here's what worked for me in my specific vertical. Entrepreneurs grabbed that information, say I'm gonna do that, and they go and they write their little ad and it flops and they're like why Different?
Speaker 2verdict I don't know why, do you think? Right, because it was a different audience and a different product and a different vertical. And so what I wanted to do and this is, if you wanna know me, this is the way my brain works right? I wanted to reduce how to write effective, converting ad high converting ad copy to a series of first principles of consumer psychology, right, like, what actually causes people to take conversion action. You buy a thing, you don't buy a thing, right? And so I really worked for a really long time at reducing let's throw all the best practices out, let's reduce it to first principles, because if you understand the first principles, you can become your own walking best practice.
Speaker 2You put me in any vertical, any product. I'm gonna be able to synthesize what is the right thing to do based on the principles of conversion science and consumer psychology, right, right? So, making a long story short, and this is relevant to the craft, the reason that people decide to do something or not to do something invariably is because the intrinsic value of the thing is greater than the cost associated with attaining it. Very simple. So, for instance, you know, I they have this, this really dope new air fryer. It's got two chambers, I don't know, but like two chambers and an air fryer. Come on bro.
Speaker 1So you can do your french fries and your green beans at the same time my dino nuggies and my like in my Arby's french fries at the same time. Really fries.
Speaker 2Yeah, is there any other kind?
Speaker 2So you know, I don't know Two chambers. So I go into Walmart I'm like I'm gonna get this thing $228, okay. So now in my mind there's a rubric of this running and it's the same as what runs in your mind when you make, when you make any purchase decision. It's the same is what happens in anyone's mind, regardless of culture, situation. It's always. Is that is the utility of that thing? Great enough that I want to part with $228? In my instance, yes, it is because you don't understand how much I love my dino nuggies.
Speaker 1All right, but you know like now. Have you ever heard of a product called nugs?
Speaker 2Nugs yes, yeah, yeah. The plant-based chicken yes. Their marketing is amazing, right? Oh my god, it's so good.
Speaker 1My wife got those nugs and I liked them. They were cool, especially put a sauce on them. But when I saw the marketing, that's when I got impressed I was like, yeah. Somebody knows what they're doing over there for sure talking about marketing, guys go look at nugs online Check out what they're doing. That's amazing branding that they got going on.
Speaker 2I'm. It's funny. I've never spoken to a marketer about nugs that didn't geek out with me on the quality of like their go-to-market strategies. Primo is so the one.
Speaker 1I like I got a bidet from Tushy. Look at Tushy. Oh man, it's good, it's hilarious. I used to.
Speaker 2I used to break down when. When I was trying to intro people to YouTube advertising, I used to break down purple mattresses, youtube videos.
Speaker 1Purple mattresses? I'm not purple mattress.
Speaker 2Yeah, like, go look at their YouTube videos. It's classic high shelf, like video advertising. It's entertainment but super high converting. I know the guy that ran them. His name is Bryant. I mean, he's a genius, like seriously genius guy, but it's all it's infotainment. But somehow they've done it in such a way that it still causes commitment action, which is, yeah, it's really great.
Speaker 1That's the best. That's kind of where we need to be as mason's like we need to entertain but also sell our product Right like, and when you talk about cost versus value, people don't know the cost of getting involved in a fraternity. Yeah, it's easy for there are multiple kinds there.
Speaker 2So there are multiple kinds of cost. Think about this for a minute. There's fiscal cost yes, how much money do I have to exchange for it? It was also mental cost how hard mentally, how rigorous is it going to be? And there's time cost All of the opportunity. Some people will call that opportunity cost, some people call mental cost friction if you're a marketer. And then there's fiscal cost. But all of those are different cost types, and so if I, if I'm a marketer and your value assessment of Whatever it is I'm asking you to do is not high enough that you're just gonna obviously say yes, Then the tools that I have to play with are Modulating the perceived cost. So I got to figure out a way to message about the fiscal cost, the time cost, the mental cost, until value outstrips cost. And then then they do it.
Speaker 1Right, unless the only thing that can mess up your formula is emotion. Yes, when someone's emotions get involved, all that logic is out the window right, they're either definitely gonna do it no matter what, or they're definitely not gonna do it no matter what. Based on motion.
Speaker 2For a point conversion. Yes, like at a fixed point in time. Absolutely, emotion will, and that's why and now we're coming full circle. So hopefully people after I say is people will understand why I'm so anti billboard, so anti newspaper. Right, oh, me too. How then, without, without the benefit of narrative, of storytelling, how then are you going to convince people to overcome their, their mental approbation to Freemasonry? So they've heard, like almost everybody, and can we talk about it? Is it okay? Almost everybody that I've talked to about Freemasonry has said a bunch of old white dudes who are racist and, you know, don't have any sensibility about the world.
Speaker 1Yeah, I get that 9 times out of 10. That's what I get.
Speaker 2Yeah, or the ironically, two out of our three past masters in our lodge are people of color. Good for you, you know, definitely not racist. I mean, okay, there are some places right where in the south? Yeah, but I see that as being a challenge that Mostly the craft has overcome or is certainly working towards reconciliation. And then, you know, that's sort of like the square old white guy Visage, right, and it's powerful to people Not obviously I'm an old white guy, so like fine.
Speaker 1I know I do but?
Speaker 2but it's powerful to people, it's a powerful approbation, and so the only way you can overcome that is with messaging, is with narrative. Yeah, right, so the same thing when we wanted to get women involved in the NFL, that spans the gridiron was not enough for them. Like you know, at the time when this started to be a Conscionable strategy on the part of the NFL, women were watching morey povich and soap operas and the NFL says Ricky Lake, and what if we craft some narrative around these games? What if we create some drama? Right, and you saw the news cycle take that and they spun it up right and it started to be.
Speaker 2It used to be when I was a kid, you know, cowboys versus Eagles Saturday at 2 pm, you know, and if you were a football guy, you would go watch that. Now it's like Jalen Hurst squares off with Dak Prescott for all the marbles, you know, and it's like this, this, this infotainment narrative. Yeah, why? Because people had hard Approbation to adopting the NFL as a product, people who are not football people and they needed a way to engage them.
Speaker 1That's a perfect metaphor for what we're trying to do here, like it's really the only sport that has Experienced so much success, and it is probably due to the market.
Speaker 2Yeah, to the point that Taylor Swift's going to chief games. I just saw an analysis that she's generated.
Speaker 1She's dating a player right. Is that Travis?
Speaker 2Kelsey.
Speaker 1Yeah, okay, see, I'm not a sports guy and I'm not a Taylor Swift guy, so I'm kind of well reading headlines. I'm not really reading this story.
Speaker 2The chiefs are playing that smartly, and so is the NFL. People are pissed that they cut to her face every 30 seconds. But I just saw an analysis. I just saw an analysis I think it was by Forrester or somebody like that that she's created the equivalent of 350 million dollars in intrinsic value for the franchise ending NFL In the last eight weeks but somehow this has become political right. I don't know, I don't, I don't miss. Like politics on that level is not my thing, yeah there's some.
Speaker 1It's political somehow. I've seen that like the right is trying to do something. I, like I said I don't know the story, I've only seen the headlines.
Speaker 2I couldn't.
Speaker 1Don't get me started on the right, let's just keep it moving well, I Don't mind talking about anything, just so you know this is about marketing, so I'll try to bring it back. I want to give, I want to let people have a few really simple things you can do that can help you lodge From a marketing standpoint, like I don't so good as you said it's probably. Don't spend your money on dumb things. Don't get a venture, a billboard or an ad at your local movie theater. Like, don't do that. You, if you're gonna spend money, send it very, very wisely, because you, unless it's your money, you have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that it's gonna make an impact. We're gonna spend money right?
Speaker 2So I can give you like a brief checklist like where to spend money and where to not, when it comes to marketing, if you're talking about the craft Right, let's do it?
Effective Marketing Strategies for Freemasonry
Speaker 2bullet item number one on the checklist Are people able to engage in the format that you're spending money on, and what do you mean by engagement? So here's what I'm talking about. Like we, the craft in Florida spends, as far as I understand, a great deal of money on billboards, for instance, or we have in the past. If I'm in my car driving past that billboard is 60 miles an hour, what do you expect me to do? Right, what is it that I'm supposed to do? Can I type that URL into my browser while I'm driving? Not, unless I want to get into our rec. Like is there a QR code I can scan on it? Nope, am I gonna call a phone number? No more over. I just left work and I've got the day's business on my mind and I'm stressed and I'm not paying attention. It's a bad modality. People can't engage with it, right?
Speaker 1Yeah. So no engagement means You're expecting someone to be able to take an action based on whatever you did. That can lead to the outcome you want. Now, right, the billboard example you gave. I Want to go back to the franchise model. That is an acceptable form of advertisement for the grandmach.
Speaker 1They should be spending money on changing the public perception of Freemasonry, and a billboard can do that. It can. Yes, someone sees it every day. Maybe they start to think off remasons yeah, I got I know there's a lot because I have a billboard like they don't fear it as much because it got into their consciousness. Now, that's not the kind of advertising a lot should be doing. We have to be thinking transactional. This is the franchise model. They should be spending the money in the way that's gonna help us get more conversions when we spend money.
Speaker 1Right make sense right.
Speaker 2Yeah, branding the concept of branding is based on. There's a threshold of preeminence that you have to be beyond before it makes sense. Right, like Coca-Cola Spends a great deal of money on top of mind advertising, right.
Speaker 2So when you're thirsty, the first thought that comes to your mind is Coca-Cola. The the neophyte Marketing neophyte the person who doesn't understand marketing thinks that that's what all marketing should do. That's absolutely not what we need to do at the large level we got. We got to put a decision in front of people that they can make in real time In a format that it's not so egregious for them to do it right.
Speaker 2Right. So like this is why I love social media because you're on social media goofing off anyway, yeah, so like the mental barriers that I have to jump through to gain your attention and hold it are way less, but then almost any other format because you're on there. If I say something interesting and compelling, you will stop what you're doing and engage with it. Yeah that that Situation doesn't exist in almost any other format.
Speaker 1No, and the cost is actually very affordable compared to more traditional, larger scale marketing platforms.
Speaker 2You know like it's super targeted. Think about waste for a minute. Let's just go back to the billboard example. I agree with you. I think the grand launch should do that, but let's assume for a minute. Or let's talk about paid placement in a newspaper At the lodge level. Sounds like something we would do, right.
Speaker 1No. That you know that it doesn't.
Speaker 2It doesn't meet those requirements like it's, it's, it just doesn't work.
Speaker 1But you know we Hopefully you, because I feel like I'm I'm older than you, I've been used up and abused more than you. You still got the fire. There's some miles left in this guy right here. So, yeah, I'm looking at you and other people like you can get us on a more comprehensive relationship in marketing with the Grand Lodge of Florida, and the law does individual units or franchises. You can, first of all, got to wake them up that their job is to sell the product. It's what we're here to do. Sorry, hate to tell you, and that's not those sole reason we're here, but we have a charter for that purpose.
Speaker 1And if you're an officer of the lodge, you have a responsibility to grow your watch deal, and the Grand Lodge needs to supply us with the tools to do that. And they are. They're starting to, at least they're trying. Yeah, we're making progress and they can spend money too. And Like billboards isn't bad for them to do. They can do display advertising, just buckshot free masonry everywhere, so people are seeing it all over the place and then when we spend our money it's easier for us to catch the fish person.
Speaker 2But but here's the thing Like the again, the top of mind advertising, even at the Grand Lodge level, assumes that there's a favorable and sufficiently valued opinion of free masonry for people to then take action on that. If the situation in reality is that people do not have a sufficiently favorable opinion and they don't, I don't then we have to find Narrative formats. Yes, we must. This is why the, the reimbursement program, is so brilliant, because it's video advertising and it's literally Answering the questions what are you guys doing? Why? What benefit does it have in the community? What benefit does it have to the individual man? And a tight, succinct minute, 30 second format when people can then understand that, yeah, this is intrinsically, inherently valuable, yeah, the man, and to the community and they, that is hugely important.
Speaker 1They can visualize themselves in the story. Right, that's the really important thing. Like I really want to have friends like that, that I can high-five at the pool table, I'm smoking a cigar, drinking a whiskey. That isn't a fantasy, that's. That's really what we're selling in the fraternity. It's real and we do it all the time. Does anyone take a picture and post it on the lodge page?
Speaker 2They should well, so let's get back to the things you can do, because you're you're, you're on the hunt now and we're getting close to yeah, unlike the last time, we've spent an hour basically already, so this is going pretty quickly. But let's get back to what you can do and I'll throw out some ideas Go get work.
Enhancing Lodge Visibility Through Social Media
Speaker 2I actually funny. I created a course, an online course, that literally lists out these things. Here's what you can do to help the craft. If you want to help the craft but you're not a tech, something they can find online somewhere. Well, yes, but I sent it to the Grand Lodge and they were like yo, we're gonna watch it and we'll get back to you and me. Being me, I have analytics and I know that nobody's watching, so I'm sorry, man Don't lose hope.
Speaker 2I'm not, I'm not, I'm just gonna keep. I'm gonna keep knocking on the door.
Speaker 1Yeah. The thing is. I told you this and it's very true in the fraternity, everyone wants to be part of the winning team. Nobody wants to do any work.
Speaker 1Yeah you're presenting requires them to learn stuff and they're not about that. Okay, that's a lot of work, but when you come with results or somebody else comes with your results, that can't avoid it. They have to listen, right? We've been doing the Grand Lodge marketing reimbursement program for three years in Florida. You, there's no way you can get a Grand Lodge person that can explain it to you, right? They don't know how it works. They don't understand it. All they know is it it can work and it doesn't. We got to do it, you know, and it only happened because they were getting reports from different DDGMs throughout the state that heard stuff. Yeah, that's how I got their attention. I had to do it grassroots, from results. Nobody listened to me. I had a PowerPoint deck I was sending to High up people and, like you, I don't. I don't know that they ever got looked at by anybody.
Speaker 2Well, I know, because I I built analytics into my course that I created, so I know exactly who Washington, who hasn't, and so I already know. But it's okay, I am at, you know, it's just it's early, get back to your list.
Speaker 1I alright, here's what you can.
Speaker 2If you want to help the craft, here's what you can do Go to the local lodges in your let's just say, in your district. Follow all their Facebook pages. That will help. Okay, when they create content like, I'm gonna explain how Facebook works in a very short, without using any massively big words.
Speaker 1I'm not gonna use the a word.
Speaker 2We're not gonna do it. All right, facebook, not just Facebook. All marketers make money on attention. Yeah, the tension is the currency that we use to do what we do. Attention is super valuable If you think about why. Does LeBron James make the money that he makes some people go? I don't understand why this man makes this money to play a game. If you think he's making the money to play a game, you are a fool. He's making the money because he's a super athlete who people cannot look away from. He's making the money because he's a locus of attention. You see, attention is the whole game, because attention can be monetized. Ultimately, right, we turn attention into money. That's what we do. We're good at that.
Speaker 1So Facebook you platforms.
Speaker 2Yeah. So if Facebook wants to make money, what do they need? They need attention. Attention. On Facebook looks like people scrolling down the timeline, right? You understand? Every every fifth or sixth post you see on Facebook is an ad, right? If nobody's scrolling there's, there's nowhere to put an ad.
Speaker 1Tell the average layperson how they can tell it's an ad, because they probably don't even know they're looking at them.
Speaker 2Well, it says advertisement on the top corner for one thing sponsored right there.
Speaker 1But people, you know, psychologically they they kind of doing it out. They don't even see the sponsored anymore. They just don't know that it's an ad.
Speaker 2Right so, but to any extent, this is why Facebook cared so much about you. When you get their quarterly reports, I'd advise you, if you don't understand Facebook, to buy one share of Facebook stock so you get access to all the all the information that comes out quarterly reporting, filings with the IRS, etc. Etc. They focus really heavily on on viewership, like amount of time that people spend on the platform, why, if I'm scrolling, I'm creating ad inventory. If I'm not scrolling, no ad inventory. They make their money exclusively almost on advertising, and so if you want to raise the tide for your lodge, what you need to do is you need to convince Facebook that the content that your lodge is putting out is valuable and interesting, and If they assume that the content is valuable and interesting, they will syndicate it to the. Well, I did it again. They will push it out to everyone, because more engagement equals more money. You see, it's simple.
Speaker 2So what do I do, jonathan, if I want to help my lodge become more visible in the community? You like and follow the Facebook page, everything that they post. You do three things like comment, share, yep, right, so you like it. You hit the little thumbs up button a lot of you guys are great at that. I thank you for your effort. I really do. But if you like a post and Do not do anything further, you never comment, you never share. Actually, what you're telling Facebook is that this is interesting but irrelevant.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Because likes are a throwaway metric to Facebook. What they benchmark on very heavily are comments and shares, because it requires you to do something. There go. It's a great proxy for how interesting and motivating and engaging is this content. So if you're just that guy who's who's either lurking and by lurking I mean you scroll all day, you laugh Very funny, brother, but you never hit the like button start doing that. And if you're got, if you're the guy that only hits the like button Like taking 30 seconds to make a meaningful comment and you can't just be like good job, yeah, the algorithm knows what you're doing. Okay, it's a very smart. You have to be like I really enjoyed XYZ about. Your post takes two minutes to do. If you will do that, you will find that your lodge Achieves what we call organic syndication, which means that Facebook is pushing it out there because it's interesting and engaging and people are gonna see that and engage with it. They're gonna stay on the platform longer. They're gonna scroll longer. Facebook's gonna make more money.
Speaker 1You're. You're essentially making your lodge an authority.
Speaker 2Yes, and you're lending your consumer authority to your lodge by liking, commenting, sharing. That's all you got to do. Just do that. Let's start there. You're like engage.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you know there's a lot of Facebook groups out there, Guys, where you can get a lot of really good information. Articles are getting published all the time on Facebook groups. People are. You know there's a. I interviewed a guy that has a Facebook page called past master's thoughts. He just whenever he's sitting outside having a drink and smoke in a cigar, he writes down some thoughts and that's his field.
Speaker 2It's awesome.
Speaker 1It's not a huge in-depth research article, it's a. It's like a little tidbit that every day you can, like you know, start a conversation around, and so there's tons of interesting stuff out there. And you know it's that Facebook has a little search bar in the upper left-hand corner. You can search keywords there like like Facebook Florida or Freemasonry Florida, for example, and you'll see all kinds of pages that exist that cater to you, a mason in Florida, and I like the page. You're gonna see the content. Like the content, comment on it, share it with your lodge.
Speaker 1Now, you're not a person getting more information right, like, yeah, you know creator does Ecosystem here?
Speaker 2just got to engage. Find things you're interested in. There's a niche, like for everything you know, but definitely the thing for the, for the particular lodge, that will raise the tide more than anything. Just engage with what you know. If you've got a guy like, I'll almost stop posting All my large Facebook page because no, it's crickets, you know I mean. So the return on effort for me is like really low and if people just like common and share, we would become preeminent in this community very, very quick.
Speaker 2Yeah you know, and they are seeing it.
Speaker 1You know they're seeing it, we're just not they're just not doing the action right.
Speaker 1You know there's. The other thing is like people to tell the story. You have to tell the story, you got to do that. So if you're in lodge doing catechism, instruction, instruction is just you and three guys. What a waste of opportunity to not take a picture and post that and tag those guys in it. If you can Look at how to tag somebody in a post, because then it shows up in their feet and all their friends and family see it.
Speaker 1A Lot of people just saw that your picture, one picture, and then if you tag three people, that's you know Large, even larger sets of people that are seeing it's viral marketing.
Speaker 2There's a core of guys who are really good at this. Almost all of them are under the age of 45. Yeah, which is why I created the training product, because I wanted to help brothers who are interested in knowing what to do, know how to do it. You know what I mean, but we'll get there.
Speaker 1We should build a massive resource page. It's like how to like a wiki with video tutorials on everything like a messonic video wiki Time to start me. Get all these results of videos to answer your questions.
Speaker 2I'm into that. Actually that's a cool idea, like a knowledge management sort of thing.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it gets aged out, so you got to constantly be updating, but it's worth that, for I think if we can help these guys.
Speaker 2That alone would would probably garner a significant amount of 10.
Speaker 1Wikis are great for SEO and you know brand building and all those things so, getting back to the marketing, what you said is great for the everyday average. Mason, you don't have to be a lodge officer to do that. You don't even have to be going to lodge to do it. You can do it from the bathroom toilet, which hopefully you have some time there. You might as well be in there.
Speaker 2That's all it is. You just got to get super effective with your downtime, right yeah, but if you're a large officer, I think you need to elevate your consciousness a step and start thinking about creating these content.
Speaker 1The thing is you are creating the content, you're just not capturing it and sharing it. Those officer meetings, when you have a minute and if you're a loner like me, I make those minutes where I can be alone doing my own thing. I look up and I see everybody having a great time. Boom, snap a photo. That's real.
Speaker 2That's super important. We always want to talk about benefits and cost analysis and value differential between value and cost. People, honest to God, want to have fun. Anytime you're doing something fun and you don't have a million pictures, you miss an opportunity.
Speaker 1It's not staged. Those candid photos speak volumes to people that aren't masons. Yeah. To see a group of guys having a good time on a Tuesday afternoon yeah. No alcohol or strippers in the picture, like what. Even the wife's are going to be okay with this when they see what's going on.
Speaker 2Right, you're going to eat so much green beans that you're going to lose 20 pounds, like the wife's going to be happy.
Speaker 1No, you're not. You're going to have some jelly and mashed potatoes. Yeah, there's no healthy food in those. I think I've ever had a healthy meal at a lodge I visited ever.
Speaker 2I just cooked up a pot of beef stew over here. It's getting ready to go down as soon as we're done recording this.
Speaker 1But would you serve it in the lodge?
Speaker 2Oh well, yeah, but I don't know if it scales, because my beef stew is not like peasant food, it's like so I start with some olive oil and I saute some onions in there, yeah, then I take my beef tips and coat them in flour and drop them in potatoes and make almost like a base for a goulash or something like that. Then in goes the red wine and we do a red wine reduction.
Speaker 2A roux Is that what it's called. It's a roux. Yeah, I wasn't going to use the word because I didn't think anybody knew what I was talking about.
Speaker 1I love the code man.
Speaker 2It's a roux. So yeah, I start with a potato onion roux and then I add my beef tips which are coated in flour, do a red wine reduction on that and then go all the other vegetables and everything and seasonings and then it's legit like primo.
Speaker 1I would do it in the lodge but, I want this beef stew now, damn it.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's not going to be any left, I promise.
Speaker 1Well, you'll have to invite me over and make it for me one night. I'll definitely. Yeah, man.
Speaker 2If you're, you got to come through. I know you still go down to Sarasota. Yes, you got to come through Jacksonville to get there.
Speaker 1You're only a you're like three hour drive from me. Maybe.
Speaker 2Yeah, we need to make this happen.
Speaker 1Well, we got to get a private plane first of all. Then it becomes a 20 minute trip Easy. I'm working on it.
Speaker 2Let me continue to scale my business over here. I may be able to do it.
Speaker 1So here's one more thing. We cannot leave without talking about the fact that mason lodges should have websites. Okay, this is a problem, though, because most lodges don't have anyone that can maintain a website or build a website, so what I'd like to see in the future and you can work on this is the Grand Lodge has its own website, and I believe they should set up little micro sites under that Grand Lodge website for each lodge, and they should maintain.
Speaker 1I put it there already updating the officers every year. Why do I have to update the officers to?
Speaker 2You want to get wild and crazy with a couple of modifications.
Speaker 1It looked different than the one down the street, completely different. It's not a consistent brand, so 100%.
Speaker 2If you want to get wild and crazy, we have this whole database that everybody's in. If you took a few small steps, like uploading headshots for each individual, you could push all that information out. You wouldn't even have to maintain it. Like you change it in the database, it changes on the website. I'm not going to explain how that works because people's heads will melt down, but I'm going to be in. Well, I just wrote a book on online training in pedagogy, so I think that the crap wants to go in the direction of more of an on-demand MLT, and Linwood Thomas is going to be the state guy.
Speaker 2So but the database that we have is super good, but we're not using it at all, so I'm hoping we can make some progress on that.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean they have all the data to make it easy for the lodges and not have to think about it or worry about it, and have all the content there.
Speaker 2You guys don't like WordPress or Jumla or what is this.
Speaker 1This is a WordPress website for Sarasota Lodge.
Speaker 2And it's easy.
Speaker 1It's exactly what you're talking about. You got pictures. You got where you're from. You can email the person in the description of what the heck they do. Yeah, every lodge should have something like that. I agree. What is Freemasonry and a little bit of history. Everyone loves to tell about the presidents or the founding fathers that were Masons. Put it on the website, because the website's not for Masons. The websites for those people who are just doing research about Masonry and they're just having a problem.
Speaker 2So you're getting into SEO. Now You're going to cause the crap to have a meltdown.
Speaker 1I mean, this is important, seo is marketing, yeah.
Speaker 2SEO stands for search engine optimization, if you didn't know. So when you have a website and you begin to put lots of content on the website, like for me, I would want to make a post about every event that we do, everything, all of the Masonic leadership training stuff that you're doing, masonic education in the lodge If it's non-tiled, I'd be making posts about that stuff, because when the website starts to have a critical mass of information about a given topic, google assumes that it has authority and knowledge about that topic and it starts diverting people to your site who are looking for specific things.
Speaker 2So if you're curious about Freemasonry, and I have a website that talks about Freemasonry in great depth, the chances of me showing up as a result of a search about Freemasonry are good. Well, they're better.
Speaker 1They're better.
Speaker 2And over time, as you accumulate those things, you become more and more of an authority. And what happens in the long run? If you do this well for a long period of time, people just start showing up on your door Like, yeah, I saw your website and I read all about this and that and the other thing and I'm interested, and obviously that's much easier than going out and finding people, and so we call that organic marketing and that's based on SEO, which is search engine optimization. It's complicated, fancy, just do it. Don't worry about why, just do it.
Speaker 1Well, I have members of my lodge. I have a Warshful Master of my lodge and it's a master because we had a website. How about?
Speaker 2that.
Speaker 1He was looking for Freemasonry. He found two websites about Freemasonry near him and he called the one that looked the most modern and professional. We got a Mason because we had a website and I'm pretty sure that happens all the time if you have an updated website, because it's not very competitive Not a lot of people trying to rank for Freemasonry in Pinellas County, okay.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1You're going to be at the top if you just have a website. You don't have to know how to do SEO. You just got to put it there and you have to up.
Speaker 2Dude, I think we're making progress. It's slow progress and at times it's frustrating, but I think people are beginning to understand that we got to do something a little differently, and I'm here for it. It's going to continue to be a little bit of an uphill battle, not because of the people that are listening to this podcast Predominantly they're on board as tech adopters but to the people who, to the brothers that were still mailing out the Trestle board. You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1I'm still fighting with my own lodge. We spend $2,500 a year mailing Trestle boards. Every month, the 350 members.
Speaker 2Bro, get an email address Like what are we doing? So it's not the people who are listening to this podcast that are slowing the progress by any stretch. No, it's the rest of them, and that's okay. I don't want to come off like I'm down on the craft. I'm passionate about the craft, which is why I care. Otherwise I got a million other things that could be doing. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1We. I think you're onto something. You said that we need to kind of get together and form a mastermind group, and I think we should. I think we should get us people that are mason's, that are in the marketing and we should start a group and we should start coordinating efforts together, because that's probably how we're going to get faster results than us independently working in silence. It's easy to silence one guy, yeah in a corner.
Speaker 1It's not so silent 15 guys that know what they're talking about and are getting their act together and sharing resources and organizing.
Speaker 2It's always that you know that piece. I mean, I just feel grateful to you personally for all that you've already done in that vein. You know, because you really did the legwork Like it was so easy for me. It was still a bit of a fight, but it was way easier for me to go into the lives and say here's what's happening. These are data.
Speaker 1Did you do?
Speaker 2that I did yeah you did.
Speaker 1How was it?
Speaker 2I had a few detractors, yeah, but they were predominantly speaking from a place of lack of understanding and fear. Fear, it's always that fear, yeah. And so it was brilliant because I was able to say well, ultimately you know, I hedged it in terms of risk management Ultimately, what are we risking? We're risking $600, which I just heard the Treasurer's report, we have it right and it's going to get reimbursed. So what is the risk really? The risk is that it doesn't work and I get embarrassed. How does that personally affect you? You know what I mean.
Speaker 1I think the other major fear I've heard over the years is that you're going to let in a crazy person. We're going to get crazy people and they're going to.
Speaker 2I don't know what they think they're going to use. It's still a process. We're going to do a background check. We're going to make them hang around. You know what I mean. So if they're not going to come to family night and come get introduced at the Lodge meeting after the flag ceremony and then we invite them to kick rocks, all right, if they're not going to do that kind of stuff, they're not going to get in any.
Speaker 1So which is exactly what.
Speaker 2I had to do. I don't really see the risk.
Speaker 1Yeah, and luckily you went.
Speaker 2Right, and I always said I wouldn't be a part of any fraternity that would have me. But here we are.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2I don't, I don't mix with those kind of people.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, same here. Yeah, we got to stay an outsider within the fraternity. That's how I justify it. You know, not really connected. I don't really know anything or anybody.
Speaker 2Well it's. It's a promised land. I've already been to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. You know. You understand what I'm saying, chris. It's like I've I've been to the promised land of like demand generation, which is ultimately what we're talking about. How do you create demand for the crafts? That's what I do all day, every day, and I'm good at it. I make a lot of money to do it, and so when people are like conceptually fighting you, it's like I know this works, like I know that I know and I know how to do it. It's not just that I know how it works or that it will work. I know exactly what to do and what order to arrive there.
Speaker 1Yeah, and repeat that action.
Speaker 2Yeah, Right, you know you're a woodworker, you know, and you do woodworking for a living. And I come in and I'm like I don't think you really need to use a bandsaw on that. You're going to be like, why are you talking to me and it's some of that, and like I'm having the like. Honest to God, I don't want to be that way. I'm trying not to be like arrogant or hotty about it. You know what I mean, you're turning in masonry.
Speaker 1You were meant to be tested, man, this is this help you circumscribe your passions. Go on.
Speaker 2It's a great way to put it. Yeah, I'm a mentor. I always shout them out.
Speaker 1with Thomas, my mentor, you know I met him for the first time when I met you and my impression of him and I think I'm pretty good at first impressions when you're an introvert you're a people watcher. I watch people way more than most people and I found it to be a really authentic, genuine person and that's right away.
Speaker 2Yeah, just an amazing human being, like someone for whom I have a deep amount of respect. He won mason of the year last week in our district yeah, in district eight, that's right.
Speaker 1Worseful Linwood Thomas.
Speaker 2No, just worseful.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're not even right.
Speaker 2Worseful, yet I think the man can do whatever he wants to be honest with you Like, if you're listening to him on your Florida.
Speaker 1What district are you in? I'm in district eight, district eight, linwood. Thomas needs the title of right Worseful. He's got some light to spread in that district.
Speaker 2Come on, he's going to be the head of masonic leadership training in the state this year, and so he's going to have a bit of a platform there. But, honest to God, like he's already, like it doesn't even start until, I think, june or May or something like that, and he's already got it organized. Like he's got all the information, he's already identified opportunities for improvement, he's got a plan, he's got a process for how he's going to do it. He's leveraging me on the tech aspects of it, which is smart.
Speaker 1This is what he's a killer.
Speaker 2He's a killer Like he's completely capable. He's one of those people that if you give him more, he will do more with it.
Speaker 1Good leaders put their aces in their places. Good leaders, let people fly right. Your tech guy knows that he needs to get you into that role because you're making him his job so much easier, and a lot of people just plug in their friends into these roles. That's like a reward system. Like I got it, I got to give my buddies their jobs. No, freemasonry is about who best can work. Put the right people in the right jobs and watch We'll fly, man.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I'm waiting for it. I haven't heard any negative stuff. Like to get his own job. Like I'm the only person on the MLT list on the whole roster. That isn't worse for right. Worse for, you know, the only guy Now. Which is not to say I'm unqualified, right. Like I was a master training instructor in the military. I just wrote a book about online training and pedagogy. Like I have two graduate degrees, I can do the job and will. I will execute on it. 100.
Speaker 1So it goes back to I made a post that wasn't 100% positive in the comments. Imagine and I didn't write it, I don't know where I got it, we'll have to look Imagine if we didn't introduce people by their titles but by their character, ooh. Imagine if we didn't say this is a brother, jonathan, he has no titles. We said this is Jonathan, who served the military for X amount of years and his lost friends in combat and, you know, struggled and overcome with this and has achieved this level of expertise in that, like, how much better will it be than saying, uh, he's a worship, oh, worship yes, worship yes.
Speaker 2Like I'm going to tell you right now right, right, worshipal is as right worship will does you, just because you were that guy at a point in time in history, and in all due respect to people who have done things for craft that I have not done but then you got to perpetuate that title, like I'm going to call you right worship. But there comes with that a mandate to be a real human being and to help the lodge and the craft. Um, worship, right worship. All these titles. So like I'm not in a super big hurry to get them, because to me that means now I got to catch another gear, I got to find another level, um, and I'm, I'm giving to the craft as I am capable of doing, yeah, um, but I'm still a working man, I'm still in my working prime. I'm working 60 hours a week on top of you know what I mean. Like I think I did 15 degrees, like my first six months.
Speaker 2Like nice you know, just sitting in various chairs because I'm hungry to learn it and I want to know about it. Um, you know, I was. I was just senior warden and an enter apprentice degree night before last and that was good fun because it was a Callahan Lodge. And I'm going to give another shout out to my, to my brother, chase, from Callahan Lodge, who was the senior deacon, chase who I stepped. Uh crap, I can't remember his last name.
Speaker 1No, we're just a senior deacon from Callahan Lodge.
Speaker 2He's got a glorious mullet. You'll know him when you see him A mullet. Oh yeah, it's Callahan Um, but but you know he was. He stepped up to be the worship master for the degree Um and I was the senior warden, and so everybody, or at least the primary positions um, were filled by young mason's who were who are out here doing it. You know, um, and it was just really refreshing to me to to be a part of that, because the, the uh, the older, more experienced guys were there and this was a beautiful environment.
Speaker 2Mistakes were made, Um, but nobody was cat calling like domestic from the sidelines. You know what I mean. Nobody was doing that. Everybody was like if, if the young man had a moment where he couldn't recall, everybody was quiet and just waited on it and gave him the love and the support and, and you know, and he got through it and he did, he did the work and I'm super proud of it. You know, to me that's the crap. That's what the crap should be. It's all about the love, support each other. You know, lifting up yeah.
Speaker 1Always lifting up.
Speaker 2Yep. Anyway, I don't know how we got on that, but um, I'm shouting out people from my district now, yeah.
Speaker 1Well, listen, you and I, we got to start rallying the troops here. We got to get a cabal of uh marketing gurus that are masons together and we got to start working together. Instead of load, I'm going to do it. Uh, we'll start with a Facebook group and let's see where it goes. I'm building an app right now. This is what I'm saying and, uh, you just said you were in X degrees and X amount of time, but nobody knows that.
Speaker 2Yeah, Nobody knows that.
Speaker 1We need an app where you can, every time you're in a degree, tally, tally, tally it's on your profile If you can see what proficiencies you have, what parts you know on what degrees. Imagine if you have a degree and you need a senior deacon because he dropped out yesterday. An app where you could be like I need a senior deacon, and it gives you a list of names of guys in the four lodges next to you. You can message him in real time. Yes, I can make it tomorrow. Boom Done, come on.
Speaker 2Yeah, that would be cool tools for real nascent right. So almost like an expansion of Amity, like if you were to build social on top of Amity or something tomorrow.
Speaker 1I'm recording with Jerry Jeremy Barnes, the, the. I don't have any and I've been talking to him.
Speaker 1I've been talking to him about this for four, maybe five years, but he's going from the top. He's making connections with grand jurisdictions, he's working on recognition right. This is where he and I'm talking about the bottom, I'm talking about the brothers. Every day, masons need tools in everyday life. So I think we can, we can really meet in the middle. There he can, he can cover the top and we can come up from the bottom and if we can combine somehow at some point, it's going to be a good day for masons.
Speaker 2I really have a vision for that platform, which is ironic because it's not mine in any way. He doesn't have, jeremy, you have no, you need not listen or care about my vision, I will not be offended but a tiled network on top of Amity where you can have posts and discussions. You know about tiled material and esoteric material at depth, knowing that everybody on the platform is a pre-mation, is a master mason in what that would do for the general level of knowledge and understanding of the craft. Oh, it would be tremendous, wouldn't it? I mean, I would, dad, I would do daily, I would write every day, because I'm over here writing articles and stuff and posting them is like crickets, Nobody cares and I can't really write about the good stuff because it's tiled, tiled information.
Speaker 2Right, I mean yeah, you got a private.
Speaker 1Facebook group. You just you don't know who's controlling it, or vetting, or right. You know what I mean. You still might get into trouble, even in private Facebook group. I never shared anything, even in the private Facebook groups that I think are, if you just because.
Speaker 2I'm. I will 100% get into trouble. I'm magnetic. I don't know why, but people pay attention to me, Like, so I got to. I got to really really focus on what I say and do. Yeah, Um, you know I have that burden, so it is what it is.
Speaker 1Well, that's your energy man. You know, it's definitely. People are attracted to positive energy, and you?
Speaker 2positive vibes. I try, I just intentional. It's intentional Like I came out of the wars like deeply cynical and wounded, you know, and so it's something I've spent a lot of time and energy on, like sort of leveling up the way that I project and it has business implications, like I was struggling in business at first because of this negative, cynical energy, you know. So I got to I have to focus on projecting and horror of you know, benevolence, but you're a smart guy too, like uh.
Speaker 1I was at um Tom McCrack installation with uh Jonathan and uh, like I said, I'm a people watcher so I kind of vampire it into a corner there and I saw you observing before you engaged. You spent some time serving the room watching the situation. I watched you observing before you engaged and you started finding some people to talk to your pick your moments and who you were going to engage with.
Speaker 2So I got to see who's who first right I can see that it's an intentional effort from you. Yeah.
Navigating Relationships With Intention and Compassion
Speaker 2To to that way it's survival right. Like I said, I am an introvert so I have I have a limited gas tank for that sort of thing, so you got to make account who we're going to engage with today and why, and try to have strategy, like I don't want it to seem like fake, because I think most of those engagements are organic and and, um, you know, are real. They're real engagements, but I certainly don't, you know, if I know who's who, I'm not going to wasting time on fools.
Speaker 1You know what I mean.
Speaker 2Right, so it is what it is. I don't know if that's cold or not. Um, certainly I respect and appreciate every brother, but there are some people who are not my people, you know.
Speaker 1I had a gym class, and that was young, and the gym teacher said his theory is we're born with a specific number of heartbeats and so his idea is you exercise to elevate your heart rate so that it rests. It's a lot lower, which is what you should be at most of the time, thereby saving your heartbeats and living a longer life. And that's kind of where I'm at with my time.
Speaker 1I only have a small amount of time and, uh, with a time I have, I'm not wasting it with empty conversations that I know are fake or meaningless or pointless, like I just don't have time for that anymore because I'm more aware of my time as I get closer to the end of it, and so I want to maximize what I do with my time, and that includes not having dumb conversations that aren't going to work. I say that, but I don't know how many hours of me are on the internet right now talking about fart jokes and stuff, so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite. It's a story I tell myself. Well, I appreciate you being on, jonathan. This isn't going to be your last time, I hope.
Speaker 2No man, we got. We got more stuff to discuss next time. It can't be marketing, though. Everybody wants to discuss socioeconomics with me.
Speaker 2Um, you know, economics is a beautiful quasi science, but you know you're making decisions for the lives of millions of people based on economic principle, which is not really principle, it's it's all supposition. You know, economics uses statements like on average, all else equal, right, because it's a quasi science, right? And so we're making like we got to get back to humanism a little bit, to get to achieve our potential as a nation. I think it's a. It's a nation of people. No, and if you're going to do that, then you have to ask yourself the question and this is where it gets tricky If we're a nation of people, what's Mexico, Exactly? What's Ukraine? What's Palestine? Yeah, they're just people, man, Right? Um, all these arbitrary separations that we put between ourselves, like those, are our brothers and sisters. We are all connected. If you don't feel that, if you don't resonate on that level, you know, this is how we don't have a lot to talk about, you know you're absolutely right and you.
Speaker 1That's why I was sharing the story, because if you can start your conversation from a human standpoint, you can have that conversation. But if you just want to come in with Ukraine is the most corrupt country in the world and doesn't deserve aid, we can't even have the conversation. Because you're not looking, you're not, we're not talking about the people of Ukraine Now, you're talking about the, the 25 guys that run the country, but and that's not the conversation we're trying to have here about these people in their country Uh, got to start from a place of humanity and love and compassion a little bit.
Speaker 2And unless you want to say that you know, unless you want all Americans benchmarked off of AOC and Nancy Pelosi, in which case go ahead with that narrative, because that's the reciprocal Right. Yeah, I have no problem with that because, again, I'm fairly liberal, but there are a lot of conservatives listening to this going, oh God, no right, but that's the point.
Speaker 1It is the point because they like, they liked you before. They heard that and now they're like ah, f this guy. Now you can't say, f this guy, he's still the nice guy that you love, he's still a military guy that fought for his country. He is all those things.
Speaker 2I know, I know it's an unpopular take that we're not the greatest country on the earth. I don't know that there is a greatest country. It's. It's a overly simplistic statement. Every country is great in some way and every country has detractors and things that are not great. Right, Well, that's my perspective. Like I, I can't walk past the problems with the United States.
Speaker 1Like there you go there, you go there, it comes. You know that's, that's the. That's the crux of the thing is that you live here, so you see all the problems because you care and you're not going to bury my head in the sand. There's a solution and we want to do something about it. Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 2Right, that's where I'm at. Um, not, you know, not to say that that anybody who sacrificed for this country did so in vain. I don't believe that. I believe it's infinitely worth sacrificing for in it and for what it is. I think it's the purest expression of what is possible.
Speaker 1You're speaking to not just the state of Florida now. You're speaking to the whole world, I think from the world. What would you leave them with?
Speaker 2I think free masonry can save the world if we let it Honest to God, like I think. I think that, um, if, if we could get Israelis and Palestinians in a lodge together, we could squash it Right. And because, inherently, we're going to move past all the religion and all the politics and we're going to look at each other as men and we're going to find a common ground and a way to move forward. I think free masonry can save a whole world, um, and that's why I'm so passionate about getting it in front of people.
Speaker 1That's a good way to send this out. I love it. Love is the answer. Thank you, Jonathan Green. We'll see you next time on on the level podcast. Thank you for listening. You made it to the end.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
