Run the standing proof streams

1. Why build it

Start with one question: if you were hit by a bus today, what would keep the business growing tomorrow? The answer has two parts.

1. List everything you do in the business. Everything.
2. Build systems that do those things without you.

One owner's list had advertising at the top (organic and paid, creative, copy, funnels) and calls, online communities and in-person events below. The bottom half could be hired and trained for. The advertising was the hard part.

What unlocked it: the bottom of the list feeds the top of the list. Calls can be cut into a customer's whole journey, testimonials recorded at events, videos asked for once people get the result, and prizes given for ad-quality videos. In that business the ads made from members' videos were soon said to beat even the owner's best direct-to-camera ads.

Why it matters:

1. A company built on your face will always be worth less than one that is not.
2. Not having to perform on camera full-time to get customers makes the business feel much more like a business.
3. Once the streams are in place, your ads will likely do better, because the ads were never really about you. They are about the customers. Put them in the spotlight.

One business went back over the thousands of ads it had made. Forty of its fifty top performers did not have the owner's face in them: eighty percent. They were its customers.

To an investor, a business that depends on its founder is risky; one that does not is less risky. The machine is said to create large enterprise value in any business, with one process checklist anyone can use.

2. How it works

Think of the machine as a checklist. Every item you check off is a reliable stream of videos, images and words to advertise with: in paid ads, content, or outreach as collateral, and in sales pitches, webinars and video sales letters. Anywhere you need to sell, you can plug it in.

There are many nodes you can turn on. Check off the ones that apply to you, and add your own; the set differs from one business to the next. Here are the ones used most often, plus some for in-person businesses, in this order:

• Lifecycle
• Social media
• Events
• Communication, communities and review-site scrape
• Bonuses, milestones and awards
• Competition
• Delivery

Grouped another way, the machine has nine components, in the order to build them (section 3) and on the one-page checklist (section 10): competition, chat and messaging scrape, community scrape, reviews scrape, social media, bonus unlocks, award unlocks, events and lifecycle. That grouping splits the scrape three ways and bonuses from awards, and has no milestones or delivery item; upon-delivery ads are set out right after lifecycle ads (section 5).

Treat the business as a machine already printing testimonials, not one you must generate them for. That focuses the team on what matters most: getting customers results and capturing them.

3. Which to start with

Do not get overwhelmed: this is the full set in a business doing $100M or more. If you're starting out, one or two of these processes can completely change your marketing. Read them all. Pick the one you think suits your business best and is easiest for you to install; later, add another. You will not make less money by capturing more proof that you are good.

If starting out, one practice here is to build them in this order:

1. Competition (SOP 126)
2. Chat and messaging scrape
3. Community scrape
4. Reviews scrape
5. Social media scrape
6. Bonus unlocks
7. Award unlocks
8. Events (SOP 124)
9. Lifecycle

The reasons:

• The competition gives you a big influx.
• The next four: you already have what you need, and it takes minimal editing.
• Bonuses and awards need you to make something to give away or award, so they may take a tiny bit more effort. Well worth it, but more effort.
• Events are a lot of work, but if you run them, they more than pay for themselves in proof alone.
• Lifecycle ads come last. They are a favorite here, but they take the most editing horsepower: very distinctive, and time-consuming.

4. Lifecycle ads

These ads use the moments in the normal conversations of the business. One business was remote, so every client interaction ran over tech platforms. It recorded every call and pulled moments from them:

• before moments from sales calls;
• during moments from support calls;
• after moments from ascension and award calls.

That shows a client's whole journey instead of telling it. The viewer sees them at the hard time and at the moment of victory, rather than hearing them recall it.

Consent. In that business every client consents to recordings of them being used for compliance, training and advertising. Even with a signed agreement, it still asks whether they feel OK about their story being used in ads. If they say no, it honors their wishes. Plenty more successful clients are said to be thrilled to share. The law on recording calls and on consent is not covered on this page.

Who	What to do
Legal	Put compliance and permission language into every customer contract
IT	Record every call: sales, onboarding, support, ascension and milestone calls (when clients get good results)
IT	Buy extra storage so no call gets deleted; switch auto-delete off
All departments	Put every call on the calendar, titled with the client's name
Sales	Each week, pass the calls with happy customers to marketing
Marketing	Find every calendar event carrying that person's name; check the names and dates against the calls
Marketing	Clip the moments: the before moment from the first sales calls; a during moment from 1–2 support calls; the after moment from an upsell, milestone or testimonial call
Marketing	Label the clips in a friendly, consistent way, so any of them can be pulled at a moment's notice
Marketing	Run them

These are among the most organic videos you can capture, and you already do it to some degree.

5. Upon-delivery ads, for local businesses

These ads only work if you have some sort of physical delivery. Think of a ribbon-cutting: the person opens their eyes on their kitchen for the first time, steps on the scale after X days, sees their teeth after veneers, or, at a recruiting firm, hears that they got the job.

Many businesses have these big moments and fail to capture them. You want the raw reactions. They become the hook of the ad, its first 3–5 seconds. Then make an ad of each one, and highlight reels of only the reactions, which are said to do very well.

Flag: must the delivery be physical? SOP 210, section 3, also counts an experience or a change the customer goes through. What each costs: the physical-only reading here sets those moments aside; the wider one runs these ads where this section says they fail. A third reading: physical work suits this better, because its result can be seen, while knowledge work is easier to capture but harder to show, and no business is ruled out, though it takes some creativity. This page does not settle which reading is right.

6. Social media scrape

• Marketing: give your community and customers a saying or a hashtag to post with. Have at least a profile they can tag.
• Marketing: put collecting tagged media from every platform on a regular reminder, especially Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook stories, which vanish within 24 hours.
  • As with stored calls, save each find with the relevant facts, under a searchable name.
• Marketing: separate the studs from the duds: a folder of its own for media that beat your usual posts or scrapes. Strong organic performance is said to track closely with strong ad and outbound performance.
• Marketing: run the top images and videos as creative, paired with copy that already performs in ads. Your own posts count too.

Turning a winning organic post into an ad is SOP 38.

7. Communication and communities scrape

You or your reps talk to customers every day. This bundles the good moments into proof. There are three places to scrape:

1. Support and account-rep chats
2. Posts and comments in communities you manage
3. Reviews and comments

Support and account-rep chats. When a customer writes in that things are going well, or that they got a great result, screenshot it.

• Build a list of the words customers use in messages that signal a win. One business's list: PIF, sales, $, profit, revenue, monthly, close, closed, leads, show, scheduled, win.
• Set up one folder all your support reps can reach.
• Put a search of their messages for every key term on a reminder, or on the team's checklist.
• Sort the results by date; screenshot any new ones.
• File them in the folder.
  • Optionally, split it into subfolders by type: sales, marketing, profit, programs, service tiers and so on.
• Remind managers, on a schedule, to note who handed in screenshots and to praise them. When you are the manager, that job is yours. Without a reward for doing it, they will not do it.
• Optional: every week, a $100 gift card to anyone whose screenshot turns into a winning ad.

Community wins and posts.

• Add a post category named "wins". Skip this if your community platform can't do it.
• Make a folder for community wins.
  • Optional subfolders by tier, program, service level and so on.
• On Fridays, prompt customers to post or comment their wins of the week.
• Put the weekly wins post on a reminder, and on the community manager's end-of-week checklist or report.
• On Monday, as part of the start-of-week checklist, screenshot the wins posted over the weekend.
• Inside the group, search for the key terms the support team searches for. Newest first.
• Screenshot the strongest and file them in the right folders.
• Bonus: screen-record a scroll through the week's wins and comments (or several weeks' worth). That is one more ad.

Reviews and comments. Same method, pointed at review sites.

• List every site where you have reviews: Glassdoor, Yelp, Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, Amazon and so on.
• Make a folder for testimonials from review sites.
• Put a visit to each site on a calendar reminder, and sort each by newest.
• Screenshot the good reviews and file them.
• Remind the manager, on a schedule, to check them and reward whoever did it (or they won't).

8. Bonus unlocks and award testimonials

Instead of just handing out awards, ask people to submit testimonials to get them. There are two small processes: bonus unlocks, and four types of award testimonials.

Bonus unlocks. Create a giveaway you charge for separately. It could be a training, a small project, one-time access or a status tier. Make it big and appealing. For one business, sales scripts or ad training for different platforms did the trick. Make it, price it, and put it on sale.

• Sell people on it. Then tell them they can buy it, or unlock it free by making a testimonial video. Put your recorded pitch where every customer sees it.
• Tell them how to unlock it:
  • send a video under 5 minutes that hits the six points (SOP 125) to the address you set up for proof;
  • use this video as a reference (put up your best one);
  • post that video in the group with your stats (you automatically get a second, written testimonial);
  • tag the community manager in the post.
• Include other keywords so the posts are easy to scrape later.

Award testimonials. If you don't already have an aspirational goal for your customers, make one. For your customers it may be a bikini picture, or a photoshoot of a remodeled kitchen. People like to be recognized in meaningful ways for meaningful results. So create an award, tie it to status, and give it in exchange for testimonials. If you do it right, one award gets you four forms of proof per person.

• Make a video announcing the new award. Make the award itself (a trophy, trinket, model and so on) something tied to your community, and big and cool. Spend some money on it; it is said to make you more back. People have to crave it.
  • One business chose a trophy its market already linked with prestige, which also matched its community's name.
• Put up a video that says what they get if they reach this milestone: the award, and public recognition at your next event.
• To redeem it, they make you two kinds of proof:
  • a post in the group showing the actual number of sales they hit, using your testimonial template (proof 1);
  • tag the community owner;
  • an email with a video, sent to your proof address (proof 2).
• Then ask them to film themselves unboxing it (proof 3).
• Then film the handover, in person or on stage, in front of the community (proof 4).
  • That means a personalized, engraved one you mail, and a generic one you present on stage.

9. What a week should produce

Customer-generated ads are said to give you more creative and copy than you can use, and so a very good chance of finding ads that win big.

Every week you should have:

What	In what form
Names of customers who got great results	A list
Social media scraped from you, your tags and your customers	Images and videos
Your account reps' chat and messaging screenshots	Screenshots
Testimonials from community posts and comments	Screenshots, videos, screen recordings of the comments
New five-star reviews on outside sites	Screenshots and scroll recordings
Bonus unlocks	Post screenshots, and videos to the inbox
Award deliveries and other customer recognition	Screenshots, emailed raw testimonials
Customer reaction videos (unboxing, first-time user, long-time user, demonstrations and so on)	Videos

Put checking the whole list on the marketing team's start-of-week checklist.

On top of that, events and competitions bring an influx every six months; schedule the testimonial competitions in the gaps between your other events. It is said that one competition a year and two events a year give a big flow every twelve weeks. Three twelve-week gaps make 36 weeks, not a year's 52. This page does not settle which reading is right. For some, this is all the ad content they will ever need.

10. The one-page checklist

Component	Capture
Testimonial competition, run on the six-point script	Screenshots of posts; emailed videos
Chat and messaging scrape ads	Screenshots; screen recordings if you have one thread with customers replying in volume
Community scrape ads	Screenshots; screen recordings if you have one thread with customers commenting in volume. Within those: record your community's wins tab, if your platform has one; or search a term and record every result, a more curated set of posts likely to be compelling
Reviews scrape ads	Screenshots; screen recordings if you have one thread with customers replying in volume
Social media saves	Your own images and stories, saved from every platform; your customers' images and stories, and their tags, searched for and saved
Bonus unlock ads	Emailed videos; screenshots
Award unlock ads	Emailed videos; unboxing videos; screenshots
Event ads	Stage pictures and video; pro testimonials on the six-point script; man-in-the-street compilations
Lifecycle	One lifecycle video cut from customers who won awards, hit milestones or moved up a tier

11. If this looks like work

It is. The alternative is being stuck on camera with an unsellable business. Prospective customers want to see real customers' results anyway, so show them. Do at least one of these; you will make more money.

If you have only a small number of customers, work for free first to get testimonials, then start the flow. Warm outreach is SOP 18.

12. What this page does not decide for you

• Physical delivery (section 5) and the twelve-week figure (section 9): for each, this page does not settle which reading is right.
• What goes in the testimonial template used for award posts. Not established on this page.

13. What this page does not cover

Proof at your own event is SOP 124; the six-point interview is SOP 125; the competition is SOP 126. SOP 109 is for making proof more persuasive, and SOP 110 is for collecting customer data and claiming what it supports. SOP 120 sets out the kinds of testimonial ad.

The law on recording calls, consent and incentives for testimonials is not covered on this page. Filming and editing are not covered on this page.