Category: MARKETING

Ep 385: Online Marketing Funnel Fundamentals

RV (00:02):
I love talking about funnels, , that’s such a nerdy thing to say. I never would’ve thought, like years ago I would hear myself say it, but I love it. I love marketing automation, and it’s probably because I hated selling door to door so much , the idea of just calling on people and interrupting them and like bugging people. And so now there’s this whole world that exists of marketing automation where people who are interested can find you and they can come to you and they can self-serve their way through your content to let you know that they’re interested. And I just, I love that. I love sales too. I do love sales. I didn’t, I didn’t love going door to door because it was, it was extremely difficult. But I do love sales and I love selling, but I really love marketing automation and funnels.
RV (00:59):
And of course, you know, that was the topic of the conversation here recently with my friend Lauren. And so I wanted to share with you some of my own thoughts related to funnels and constructing funnels. And I, I thought I would start with a definition of like, what is a funnel really, because there’s a lot of, that means a lot of different things to a lot of people. But in the world of marketing automation and in brand builders groups speak, right? For our company, what is a funnel? Like to me, a funnel is just a series of automated emails with links in them that you can click on that take you to landing pages where you can watch videos which allow you to learn about something to where you might then click on something, click on another link, and then buy something, right? It’s just an automated system of nurturing somebody to making a decision, a financial decision to do business with you.
RV (02:01):
But, you know, there’s a lot of over complication that happens around funnels. I mean, at the end of the day, these are emails that you’re sending that have links in them, right? So you, what are the components of a funnel? They, they’re emails with links. When you click on those links, it takes you to pages. Those pages have videos on them. So you’ve got emails, links, pages, and videos, and ultimately that’s it, right? And then you click another link, it takes you to another page where you put in a credit card information. So the, the, the strategy matters way more than the technology. And that’s a brand builders group mantra that we talk about is, is just the strategy of, of going, how are we laying this out and, and what are we doing? And, you know, before we even get into the strategy, what I wanted to share with you, e even before that would be, is my philosophy. It’s our philosophy. It’s this part of our culture at Brand Builders Group. But our philosophy about not just funnels,
RV (02:58):
But selling online in general and, and, and selling in general, but specifically in the world of content marketing and marketing automation. And it’s, it’s something that we call the rule of 10. And it’s based on another mantra that we believe, which is this trust must take place before there’s a transaction. Trust must take place before there’s a transaction. If you want someone to buy from you, you can’t just think about what are the tactics and the tricks and the technology that I need to use to like get someone to buy. And what you really need to be thinking about, which is the bigger conversation, which like almost nobody is talking about, which is the entire sale, is that before there’s a transaction, there has to be trust. You have to build trust, they have to trust you. They have to like you, they have to believe in you.
RV (03:51):
They have to believe that you can help them. And I think maybe they don’t need to believe this, but I would want them to believe this and I would want you to want them to believe this, which is that you should want them to believe that you actually care about them. That you actually give a crap about them succeeding. That it’s not just about you reaching your hand to their pocket and pulling out their credit card and taking money from their account and transferring it to yours, but that you, you’re concerned about a transformation taking place in their life. And so you’re focused not on just creating transactions, you’re focused on creating trust. You’re not just focused on creating customers, you’re focused on creating fans. You’re not just focused on like creating conversions. You’re, you’re focused on creating transformations for people. And so we, I, I think of this, or we call this, we refer to this as the rule of 10 because you can, even if you get all the technology right, and you do the sequencing, right, and you write the emails properly, which is a big if, right?
RV (04:58):
There’s a lot of bad copywriting out there. And even people who will charge you for copywriting that really don’t know what they’re doing, and, and, and they will, can charge you a lot like and there’s a lot of people who will charge you a lot of money to build funnels and they really don’t know what they’re doing. So there, there’s a lot of, there’s a l a lot of potholes here on this journey, but like before all of that, I want you to aspire, or at least consider this to aspire for the rule of 10. The rule of 10 says that I am gonna provide to you 10 times the amount of value in advance of me charging you for something. Which means if I’m gonna sell you something that costs a hundred dollars, I’m going to try to provide a thousand dollars worth of value to you before I ask you for the a hundred dollars.
RV (06:01):
If I’m gonna try to charge you $10,000 for something, I am going to try to give you a hundred thousand dollars worth of value. And if I’m gonna charge you a hundred thousand dollars worth of value, or, or excuse me, if I’m gonna charge you a hundred thousand dollars price, right? If that’s the cost, then I’m going to aspire to make the value of what I’m providing to you worth $1 million. And I think too many people are in this space just trying to go, how much money can I get for the least amount of value? And, and you don’t have to do this. I’m not saying that doesn’t work in the short term like that. You can’t create money that way. I mean, you can, but it totally runs out, right? Like eventually, it, it’s not how you build your reputation. The way you build an incredible reputation is you charge for 10, but you deliver a hundred and, or you deliver a hundred before you even charge for 10, right?
RV (07:00):
Or you, you know, deliver 50 and then ask, and then, and then ask for 10 while you’re delivering another 50. But, but it’s the rule of 10 that people are always getting 10 times the value of what they’re paying for. And it’s just, it’s, I don’t know, it’s just a, it’s a philosophy that we have and, and it’s not the only way to make money. I know plenty of people who make lots of money from what I would consider taking advantage of people. I think it’s the opposite. They, they deliver to people a 10th of the value of what they charge for. They, they charge, they charge a hundred thousand dollars and they give them like a thousand dollars product. Like, or they charge $10,000 and they give somebody something that is like really worth a thousand dollars. I see that a lot. But that’s been our pH our philosophy is not that, our philosophy is the rule of 10 the other way.
RV (07:47):
And, you know, it’s worked out well for us. And that’s all I all I can share. And like, you know, that’s why we, we, we only teach what we do. We only teach what we actually practice. But I think part of the power of this, you know, honestly, there’s value to your consumer. There’s value to your, to your avatar, to your customer, to your prospect. And that’s a good reason to do it. But part you may not realize, which is equally as valuable, is it’s valuable to you. Because what I have found, if you’re a true mission-driven messenger, right? If you’ve found your way to this podcast, this episode, you’re still listening. You’re like following me and AJ and our team at Brand Builders Group and the stuff we do, and you’re, you’re starting to like be introduced to the philosophies that, that we have.
RV (08:29):
You’re probably a mission-driven messenger, which means there’s a part of you that goes, I do wanna make money, but I don’t wanna just make money. I’m not okay making money at the expense of somebody else. I’m not okay taking advantage of people. I’m not okay using tactics that are a win for me, but they’re a loss for someone else. If that’s you, you’re a mission-driven messenger. And here’s what we know about you, because this is us. We sometimes struggle to sell. We sometimes struggle to promote. We sometimes struggle to have the conviction to say, you should pull out your credit card and buy this because we’re so nervous about taking ad you know take not wanting to take advantage of people or overpromising and underdelivering or just, you know, not being vain. We don’t wanna be arrogant, we don’t wanna be conceited. And so, but what happens is you need to be an avid promoter in order to create revenue.
RV (09:21):
And so the way you do that is you create the rule of 10. And so you go, what gives you the confidence and the conviction to do it is because you know that it’s worth it, right? And you know, there are people who pay me a hundred thousand dollars for like a couple days of time. And I know for some of you that might be like insane cuz it is for me, honestly, right? Like growing up in a trailer park, to say that out loud is like a weird thing to go man from where I was to, to where where I I I am now or we are now is wild. But it’s because what they’re gonna learn and what we’re gonna build with them is not only worth a million dollars, but probably millions of dollars, right? Because we’re helping them construct a company or create strategy or develop a sales team or a sales plan, or launch a book or write a keynote or, or, or create a whole ecosystem for their, their their personal brand.
RV (10:18):
Those are worth millions of dollars. Millions of dollars, right? And I’m completely convicted in it. And so it’s important that you are convicted in, in what you’re selling. Now most of our clients at Bra Builder’s Group don’t pay anywhere near that amount of money to us. Like nowhere even near that. But we’re always priv providing the rule of 10. So people know that like, hey, our goal is to offer 10 times the value of what you’re paying for. And it gives you conviction to sell when you operate that way. It’s also really great for your customers, right? It’s great for your reputation, it’s great for altruism and service and impact, but it’s also great for your own conviction. And that’s part of the part of what I, I wanted the point I wanted to make. And it, it helps you increase your conversions because you have more confidence.
RV (11:03):
The second thing about funnels that I really wanted to, to share and underscore for you is have realistic expectations. Have realistic expectations. And I thought I really, you know, I I sort of threw this question at Lauren in the interview, which is a tough question to answer. You know, to put someone on the spot to go, Hey, hey, if I, you know, if I did hire you and you did all this, like, what’s the conversion here? And you know, the the, and the number I used, I said, if you have a 10,000 person email list, how many are gonna convert? And you know, I really appreciated the way she did it cuz I, I feel like she did a, a good job, like an honest, an an honest job. But you gotta like understand when, you know, there’s this like dream of like, oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna sell thousands of courses, or I’m gonna, you know, have a membership with thousands of people.
RV (11:51):
Or, you know, I might have a mastermind with dozens of people painting these top dollars. Those are good dreams. They’re, they’re great business models. We do a lot of ’em, we’ve done a lot of ’em, our clients do ’em, we know them really well. They’re, they’re great things. But what you gotta really understand here is the minuscule total conversion percentage, right? If I have 10,000 people on an email list, if I send that email, first of all, only 20% of the people are gonna open it. So that’s 2000 people, right? If I’m lucky, I would get 5% of those people to click on the email. So that’s 2000. So 10% of 2000 would be 200 people. So, so if I got 5% of those people to click on it, that’s what, what did I say? 2000? Open it. So, so then 10% would be 200.
RV (12:43):
So a hundred people click on it, which means I got a hundred people coming to a registration. Page five. If I have a a 50% conversion on the registration page, that means I have 50 people who opted in for my training. If I have 50 people who opted in for my training, if 50% of them showed up, that’s 25 people who have showed up. And of the 25 people who have showed up, if I I, or shown up, I’m not sure what the proper English is there shown up if, if 25 people have shown up for that training, even if I convert 20% of that audience, so let’s call it 25 people. So 10% would be two and a half, so 20% would be five people. So even if I con convert, quote unquote 20% conversion of that audience, that means I sold five people, but I sold five people out of 10,000, 10,000.
RV (13:38):
Like, like, notice how 10,000 so quickly becomes five. So I just want you to understand like, the reason we’re so passionate about sales in addition to marketing is because we know that if you have conversations with people, you’re probably gonna close like 20 to 30% of people that you talk to when you talk to ’em one-on-one. And there’s like an infinite, you can sell a price point of anything. Like you could sell a hundred thousand dollars, 10,000, 5,000, you know, 2000, like whatever it is because you’re having a, a conversation. So we love to create real life human conversations to people because they accelerate trust. Well, so we’d love, we love digital marketing also, right? We love social media, we love podcasting. I mean, here I am, like pouring our, pouring our heart and soul and a bunch of money into creating all this free content for you, right?
RV (14:25):
So we believe in those things, but you just gotta realize the reality of the minuscule conversion percentage of how fast those audiences dwindle. And it can take a long time to build a 10,000 person email list. I mean, like a legitimate one if they’re real people. So there’s ways to increase that. We talk about, you know, a lot about that stuff, but the real way to increase it is with trust, with adding value, right? Trust must take place before the transaction and then have realistic expectations. And so don’t be hard on yourself. If you launched something right and you had one person buy, or two people buy, or five people like, you might be getting better conversion percentages than the, the biggest personal brands and the biggest online influencers and the biggest information marketers and digital marketers and social media marketers in the world, like percentage wise.
RV (15:14):
So it just, it takes a high volume to convert. And so that’s why so much of what we do is like use the tools to automate trust, right? That’s we, we have a, a, a course called revenue engine or a topic, right? Like in our, in our coaching curriculum that we walk people through, which is building your revenue engine. And the idea is to use these tools of the day to automate trust. And then typically if you’re a small business owner, we say, Hey, request a free call because on a free call, you can then sell ’em something that costs a lot more money and you’ll convert a lot more of those people. Now, long term, that’s not scalable either, because you can only do so many free calls, but you can hire more people and you can do more. So anyways, it’s just have realistic expectations.
RV (15:57):
Is is all I want you to understand, right? So like a lot of people feel like they’re failing and and they’re really not. And again, you know, we teach this stuff and I shared on the interview like some of our highest performing funnels, a five to 8% funnel conversion, meaning if a hundred people signed up for it, like, you know, got to the page and signed up. So that means like maybe 200 people got to the page, right? We would get like eight calls out of that, but then we would, we would probably, we would our team, you know, we typically sell like 30% and that’s because by the time someone’s on the phone with one of our strategists, they already trust us. We’ve already added the rule of 10. They already have so much value. So that’s what you want to create is reputation and trust and add value.
RV (16:40):
And, and by the way, I know that these funnels are a headache for you. And we’re, we’re building, we’re building templates. We’ve been working for years. I’m talking about like multiple years creating something that we’re about to launch that’s called Instant Automation Toolkit, where we’re just gonna give you our funnels and you can just buy ’em. And we, you can have hours, like you can buy them and make them yours. You can rent them for also like very, very cheap. And like you can start using them to build your entire business gi and we’ll give you our exact templates, not like what we do, but like the exact ones and then you just swap out and change ’em. So we’re working on that and that’s, that’s coming. And the last thing I wanna leave you with here on just understanding funnels and online marketing and digital marketing in general, and information marketing, all things we love, all things we do, all things we believe in.
RV (17:32):
But another philosophy we have that’s really important. And, and again, I just wanna encourage you to try this on and consider it for yourself, but this is what we try to aspire to is, and, and we encourage our, our members, our mission-driven messengers, our members inside of our brand builders group community is to realize, and that to realize that the sale isn’t finished when the cash is collected, the sale is finished. When you deliver the result, the sale isn’t finished. When the cash is collected, the sale is finished. When you deliver the result, when you, when you and your team or your product or your service help the customer get the transformation that they wanted originally, like the job isn’t done until then. And anything less than that is just a self-centered way of operating. And so service centeredness, which is what we believe in service centered selling, is about following it through to completion, being driven and focused and, and, and being committed to helping your prospects and your clients and your customers experience a final result.
RV (18:47):
And if you do that, if you have that philosophy, if you have that mindset, if you have that mentality, all I can say is that it works out. Like eventually you will get paid. Eventually your reputation, your reputation grows, eventually people buys. Maybe it’s not the fastest way to put in a dollar in your pocket, but I’m telling you, it’s the fastest way to get rich. It’s the fastest way to build a reputation. It’s the fastest way to get famous. It’s the fastest way to become influential. It’s the fastest way to build relationships with, with people who are doing big things in the world because people trust you and there’s just no dollar you can place on compromising trust, right? There’s just no dollar value you can place on compromising your reputation. So pursue the rule of 10. Remember that trust must take place before the transaction.
RV (19:36):
Be committed to over-delivering and, and remind yourself and build a culture and a community and a, and a team. Or just carry it as a personal philosophy that you’re, that the sale isn’t finished when the cash is collected, the sale is finished when you deliver the result. I hope you’re getting results from listening to this show. I would love it if you would share this episode with someone who you think needs to hear it. Keep coming back. We’re so glad to have you. And it’s our privilege and honor to, to, to be pour into you as much as we can and in hopes that one day you will trust us enough to invest your dollars with us and trust and believe in yourself enough to invest in your dream. And let us coach you up to the next level. But in the meantime, keep coming back, sharing this with your friends, your families, your colleagues, people are important to you. We love you. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.

Ep 384: Using Funnels to Drive Revenue Growth with Lauren Cannon

RV (00:02):
So I had a very awesome opportunity for about a year in my career. So when we started Brand Builders Group, one of the clients that we had fairly early on was a gentleman named Glen Stanford. And Glenn, it was the billionaire founder and owner of exp Realty. Well, while we were working with Glen, he actually had opportunity to buy Success Magazine and he bought Success Magazine and asked me to come over and be the interim editor. A lot of people don’t know this, but I was the interim entrepreneurship editor of Success Magazine for like a year, and I really loved it. It was the first time I actually worked inside of like a traditional media company, like on the backend. I had written articles and stuff, but never like sort of seen the backend. So I was there at Success Magazine. While I was there, I got introduced to an amazing woman named Lauren Cannon, who you are about to meet.
RV (00:55):
Lauren has worked at Success Magazine. She worked for a while with Brendan Burchard. She now has her own mar. She, she now has her own marketing agency. And she does a lot in the world of marketing automation and funnels. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today because I really like her and she like me, I think is a fellow nerd, but she doesn’t look like a nerd. She doesn’t act like a nerd, but she is so smart and so brilliant at what she does. I just felt like you needed to have a conversation or listen into a conversation with me and Lauren, her agency’s called Make it Pretty. And so anyways, Lauren, welcome to the show.
LC (01:36):
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here.
RV (01:40):
So how did you get into the world of marketing automation? Mm-Hmm. , I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time. I mean, it’s, it’s not that, you know, the industry’s not that old, but you’ve been, you’ve been in this space for a minute.
LC (01:52):
I have, yeah. Almost 10 years now. So I started with project management. I just, success had brought me over and we were launching new courses and we were doing events and they needed help organizing it. And at the time, I was the project manager of all things and process engineering. I love figuring out how things work and how to make them work better and more efficiently. And through the course of doing that, I just started learning every single skill there was in marketing everyone’s role to where I developed to be able to do it. And then I started to put myself further and further into marketing positions.
RV (02:33):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. So, so you got introduced to the world of marketing automation and then I guess mm-hmm. . So, so can you just, like, for somebody listening who like, isn’t familiar with that term when they hear marketing automation, and let’s go ahead and talk about funnels at the same time mm-hmm. , because I, you know, some people are like, yeah, I’m, you know, I’m a funnel hacker and I know all about funnels, but I think there’s a lot of people who still kind of hear that term and go, you know, isn’t that what info marketers do? Or like, that’s only certain types of people. Can you just define marketing automation and funnels? Like how would you define those terms?
LC (03:10):
Yeah, I would, I would say, you know, specifically, especially with, with the world that, that we’re in, the industry we’re in as you say, the mission driven messengers, it’s a, it’s a vehicle for delivering that mission and that message in the most effective and efficient way. We wanna make sure that someone is spending more time and energy on developing that mission and developing that message and less time and energy on the delivery of it. Mm-Hmm. so funnels and marketing automations are gonna be how you can not only constantly serve people, but how you can constantly reach more people and it becomes this endless cycle of people coming into your world and into your mission.
RV (03:56):
Yeah. And I, that’s, I love that. And I, I feel like, you know, when I think about it, it’s, it’s going in a tactical sense. You’re driving people to your website or to a landing page, typically you’re offering them some type of value and now, you know, some type of a lead magnet, a free asset mm-hmm. , they’re downloading it or subscribing or, you know, tuning into a, a webinar or a challenge or something. And then they’re, and then they’re, and then they’re on your email list, but there’s a lot more between that and getting them to buy. And I think a funnels a sort of like covers the distance between, okay, I, you, I gave you my email address, but between getting their email address and making a purchase to me, like that’s where funnels live. Yes. And a lot of people don’t know, know that much about ’em cuz they’re invisible. Like you don’t, even, when you’re going through one as a prospect or a customer, you often don’t realize mm-hmm. , you’re inside of this ornately designed infrastructure and architecture. But would you, does that, would that sync up with how you think of it?
LC (05:00):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, there are so many people who, like you said, they can funnel hack, they’ll hack a funnel, you know a big launch that just happened in, in the space was Marie for Leo’s Copy Cure. She just opened that up so you can sign up for her lead magnet, get all the emails, see the sales page, and then, you know, ultimately buy or not. But essentially you have the whole email. So now you’ve hacked the funnel, let’s say. But there’s so much more that happens outside of that period of time that Marie has done to develop that sale. And so that’s what really a funnel is. It’s a whole launch system that is year round and your business delivering content in different ways and segmenting your audience in different ways so that you’re delivering value to what that specific person needs.
RV (05:53):
Mm-Hmm. mm-hmm. . So what, what do you think are some of the most like, practical examples of funnels either that you’ve seen or that you’ve worked on or that you build where you go, here’s how and where and when mm-hmm. you would use a funnel, and, and by the way, just for everyone, if you’re totally new to this term, I, I kind of think of as marketing automation as basically like the tools and the process and the science of building funnels, which are these mm-hmm. sort of automated nurture sequences to move someone from, okay, I’m on your email list to now I’m gonna buy, or I’m following you on social, but now I’m gonna ultimately become a customer. So what are the use cases, I guess, of these that you think are either the most common or you think everyone should have or just that you kind of work on a lot
LC (06:39):
Mm-Hmm. ? Yeah. We have we’ve worked on a lot with speakers who after they deliver a keynote speech, they want to leave the audience with something to continue connecting with them and build that, that relationship. And, you know, if you’re a speaker, that connection you make with the audience is one of the most valuable connections you can make. And you don’t wanna walk out the door without giving them the option to continue that relationship. So we’ll do a lot of lead generation from stage where if there’s a QR code and, and typically something that is related to your keynote but is truly of value to that audience member, something that’s gonna help them take whatever your presentation was and either apply it to their lives or accelerate their results into achieving the results you shared. So not necessarily the slides or something like that, but maybe it’s an ebook.
LC (07:43):
We’ve done quizzes and things like that. So getting these people into your email list is always number one. And then from there, it’s really inviting them into this conversation with you. So not necessarily selling right away, just say, you know, Hey, I’m so glad to connect. Here’s my best content and you wanna deliver, you know, three to five excellent pieces of value content and just get them to keep opening your emails. And you just build these nurture sequence along the way. And then as you have offers that are related to that segment, starting to build in the sales sequences,
RV (08:21):
Uhhuh . So that’s a great example. So you’re on stage, you’re doing a speech, speech comes to the end, you say, Hey, here’s a free tool I put together for you. I’d love to stay in touch, text this number or go to this url mm-hmm. or scan this QR code or whatever. And then it takes ’em to a page. It takes ’em to a page. Or it could be, if it’s a text optin, I guess they’re just like sending a message and now they’re on your email list mm-hmm. . And then like how many pieces of you, you said like three to five excellent pieces. Is there like a rule you follow of like the ratio of how much value you really should be given before you ask for a sale or when you ask for a sale? Or like at what are some of, like, philosophically speaking, what are some of those transition points in your mind where you go mm-hmm. , okay, we’re gonna shift the conversation to like, I’m building the relationship, I’m adding value. I’m, I’m basically giving you free instruction, advice, whatever encouragement to then shifting towards making a sale and asking mm-hmm. for like money from somebody.
LC (09:23):
Yeah. Typically the sequence I would I follow is they enter your email list, they saw you on stage, they enter your email list, the first email they get is a personalized, thank you, I’ve got you here. This is the tool, this is how you’re gonna make the most of this tool. And you know, I’ll be checking in with you tomorrow and see how things are going. And then that second email that is, you know, automatically kicks off in your sequence. It is gonna say, again, following up on the tool, saying, I really hope you’ve seen this and this, and the tool, here’s how, you know, I have this piece, this video that really shows how this tool can effectively make your life better. And then, you know, there might be a Ps I’ve got more coming soon, just kind of teasing that you are going to sell them, but you’re still delivering content.
LC (10:17):
And then that third email is gonna be another piece of value content that you’ve already got written if you’ve got blogs or videos. And it’s also gonna be a bigger teaser that’s like, Hey, you know, if you’re interested, I’ve got this program that I’m gonna tell you more about tomorrow. Stay tuned, keep your eyes on your inbox. And then as you get into email four and five, you can start to build that sale up. And it really depends on what your offer is. If your offer is something in the 20, you know, it’s a low ticket, 27 to 1 29 kind of offer, you can start to build that in around email three and four. If your ticket is something that’s really high in let’s say a thousand dollars to $5,000, you’re probably gonna be doing what we call lead stacking. So you’re gonna have almost another lead magnet that they’re gonna raise their hand for that’s gonna give them a little bit more of a sales sequence in it. So a webinar or something like that. And then you’re gonna put them into that sequence.
RV (11:26):
Got it. Uhhuh, . So you, you were, you were talking, one of the things you shared with me, which I, I thought was powerful, is this this relationship between the lead magnet and the offer. So talk, talk, talk us through why that, what that means and why that matters.
LC (11:44):
Yeah. It’s a lot of people, you’ll, you’ll throw together a lead magnet. You know, you need to build an email list and you know, you need a lead magnet to do that. You see opted pages and that is the best way to build your email list. But a lot of things that I see where we need to go and fix some funnels is they have the wrong lead magnet for what they offer. So you need to make sure that what lead magnet you’re showing people is going to align with your offer. Because if it doesn’t, it’s gonna create a lot of misaligned connection points in that you may not have a properly segmented audience. So y your lead magnet may attract an audience that can’t afford your offer. And then your lead magnet content has nothing to do with your offer. So some of the things, you know, I see lead magnets as a sliding scale in terms of their perceived value and how it connects to your offer. So if you have a high ticket offer, an ebook is not gonna be the best lead magnet. Cuz going from a free, let’s call it 20 page e-book into a $5,000 program, that’s a really big jump. So you wanna, the more interactive and hands-on you are in your lead magnet, the higher price your offer can be.
RV (13:06):
So what are some examples? So, so I love that. So, so basically the higher the price of the offer, the more valuable the lead magnet needs to be.
LC (13:19):
Yes.
RV (13:19):
Okay. And then when you mention, you say the lead magnets are like a sliding scale of perceived value. So if you have it, if so, if an e-book is on the low end mm-hmm. , what would be high-end lead magnets? Like, what would be, so let’s, let’s say you do have a, you know, a six month, one-on-one coaching program and it costs, you know, a thousand dollars a month, right? So you have a $6,000 offer some, something like that. What, how would you do the lead magnet differently?
LC (13:48):
I would do a live webinar, but for something like that I would do the lead magnet stacky method, where you may have someone, especially if you’re going with cold traffic, you have this six month coaching program and, and they haven’t heard of you yet. They bought into what you have to offer, what your mission is, and they, you need to build that trust and rapport still. So you may start with a quiz or an ebook, something that is on the lower end of the perceived value chain. And through that you’re gonna say, okay, I’ve given you value. I, I know this about you, and so I know that X is gonna help you even more, which would be your main lead magnet and a live webinar. The higher the ticket, I would do a live webinar. If you’re, if you’re looking at something that’s maybe 2,500, you could do an on-demand webinar, but something like 6,000, I would do a live webinar. Because what happens in those situations, one of the best ways to convert someone into something like that is a live transformation. So we have people that we see that go live on Instagram every single day and do free coaching, but what they’re doing is they’re building this, this audience that sees these live transformations happening and they can fill up their mastermind of it or something like that. So the more you can create that live experience, the more people will pay.
RV (15:25):
Interesting. So, and when you say on demand, when you say like, on demand webinar, just to be clear mm-hmm. , so you’re talking about like a pre-recorded automated, is that what you mean by an on-demand? Yes. Webinar, yes. Okay. And then, and you’re saying that you might be able to, so if you said, okay, I’m gonna give away a quiz or an ebook or maybe a quiz, then an e-book, then an invitation to a webinar, then they’re on a webinar, then at the end of the webinar, which, you know, you’re adding some value for an hour of the webinar or something mm-hmm. , then at the end of that, now you could make a two, a 1500, $2,000 offer, something like that. But if you’re, and you’re saying that could be a prerecorded webinar Yes. But if you’re gonna go north of that, then you would say you would basically invite people to like watch a live coaching and like a live coaching session of you with somebody?
LC (16:18):
Yes. Yes, I would. And I would spend that time, you know, you may say it’s a, an hour long, I would spend that time, the first, first bit of time teaching, have it, make sure it’s a, a masterclass on, you know, part of your framework. And then, then you wanna open it up to be able to interact with that audience and provide coaching transformations. And all along the way, once you get to that segment, you’re starting to infuse what you sell and say, you know, in my coaching program we go deeper into this and, and starting to, to build into that message
RV (16:59):
Uhhuh . So then that just to like talk about the funnel example. So it’s like mm-hmm. , maybe they saw you speak on stage, then you had an offer for a ebook, then you invite them to a webinar, and then at the end of the webinar you sell something or you invite them to, I guess you would invite them to a live webinar mm-hmm. . And then you, you still do, you still basically do a webinar, but you’re saying incorporating the element of like a live coaching session where they see someone go through the process would then be, is like a key thing for selling a high, high like north of a few thousand dollars?
LC (17:35):
Yes. Mm-hmm. .
RV (17:36):
Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. How do you use the funnels in the follow up sequence? So like you know, I mean, I guess I would just be curious, like let’s say you did that, let’s say you built all that out and you go, okay, I’m speaking and they’re getting this free thing, and then they’re showing up for a webinar, or they’re here live, they watch this live coaching experience. Like in your experience, do most of the people that are gonna buy buy right on that at that moment when you make the offer? Or is there a follow up that happens afterwards?
LC (18:10):
There’s a follow up that happens afterwards. And I would say from doing, we’ve built so many launches over the years, ed, there’s really this, this sweet spot when it comes to your launch. And even if you’re doing an evergreen, it follows the same type of sequence. It just turns on and off. And so you’re gonna get about 20% of your sales from that webinar. So 20% of the sales you do in your launch are gonna come from the webinar.

LC (00:04):
The rest of your sales are going to come in the last 24 to 48 hours of your launch. And that doesn’t mean that, uh, you can have a two day launch and the rest of your sales come in the next day. We actually have found the best launch timeline is 12 days. And so that creates this ability for you to share more stories and transformations as you lead into that final close down. Uh, and so in those last 48 hours, about 70% of your sales are gonna come in and you’re gonna send probably somewhere between five and six emails. A And so throughout that 12 day period, you’re sending most like an email every single day. But they’re very prescriptive. Uh, you want to tell them what they’re, you wanna focus on a feature that’s in your program, but highlighting it through the benefits language. And you also wanna have emails that act as your faq. But when you ask questions and your email marketing, you’re not answering questions like, how many video modules is this? It’s more of, this is what I have going on in my life. How is this program gonna fit in my schedule? And so you’re, you’re thinking of what are the sales objections someone’s gonna have? And you’re using those as the questions and doing FAQs through that. And then you’re sharing more case studies and stories of testimonials through that 12 day window.
RV (01:40):
Uhhuh . And did I catch that? Yeah. Did I, did you say that you think that roughly 70% of the sales will come in like the last 48 hours?
LC (01:49):
Yes.
RV (01:50):
Yes. And then, and you said you send something like six, six emails in the last 48 or out, so usually like two emails on the second to last day and then like four emails on the, on the LA on the last day, the day of,
LC (02:02):
Yes. Yep. Mm-hmm. . And it’s a lot, it’s a lot of emails and you know, if you’re out there funnel hacking, you’ll notice like there are some that send 10 emails on that last day. But, you know, part of what we talked about earlier with the funnels there, it, it’s a lot of what happens outside of that window. So they may, someone may be on your list and receiving all these emails and you’re gonna get a higher number of unsubscribes during that period. That’s naturally gonna happen. But what you do outside, once that’s finished, what you do outside that period is you’re building that list back up so that when you come back around to launch a significant high ticket, you have a new list of people. And then you also have this list of people that they really enjoyed the messages, they really enjoyed the emails with the stories that you shared, but they just weren’t ready to buy yet.
RV (02:58):
Ah-huh. . Yeah, I mean that’s, I mean, to me that’s really encouraging and such an important thing for people to know. Like, cuz you do this webinar, right? You like, put all this effort into it and then a couple people buy, you know, if you have mm-hmm. , you know, if it, you have a couple people buy and then you’re just like totally deflated and defeated. Like it doesn’t work like this whole thing and you have to have the follow up part of it to pull this all, to pull this all together. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Um, and so, so in a 12, you, you know, using that like 12 day sequence, so basically is it basically like the first two or three days are getting people to show up for the webinar and then on like day four you run the webinar and then day five and six is like a replay of the webinar and then basically like five to seven days of like, here’s a case study, here’s a question, here’s a story, here’s an extra bonus. Um, if you sign up and then, and then it all ends with like, there’s a deadline. And on that, on this deadline, you know this, there’s four emails on that day. Is that kind of the rough Yes. Arc of it?
LC (04:10):
Yeah. Yeah.
RV (04:11):
How many
LC (04:12):
Yeah, exactly like that. H
RV (04:13):
How many, uh, I know this is a hard question to, to ask and to be pinned, to be pinned down on, but like if you go through this whole process, right? Because this is like, it’s a lot of work and it’s time and it’s money, um mm-hmm. , you build the funnel, you write the emails, you build the email list, you put together the webinar, you do the webinar, you have the live coaching, you have the follow ups, like you do all this stuff in your eyes, what do you see as a successful conversion percentage on of, of a funnel? Right? So let let, I mean mm-hmm. , let’s just say you start with a 10,000 person email list mm-hmm. and go, you know, if I have a 10,000 person email list, how does that whittle down to become how many customers? And like in your eyes where you go, gosh, this, this, you know, this would be awesome. This would be like pretty solid and then, you know, anything less would be like, yeah, it’s less, you know, it’s very much not what we would hope for. Um, yeah, like if, talk me through that.
LC (05:16):
Yeah. So I would say, and I’m not great at mental math, so you may have to help me here. Okay.
RV (05:21):
I can help you do,
LC (05:22):
I’ll do the percentages . Uh, but if you have like a 10,000 person email list and you send out, I’m doing this free master masterclass, it’s gonna be live, it’s your webinar, uh, and let’s say about of your 10,500 sign up for that webinar, you’re not gonna get a huge chunk of people. And then from that 500 about 70% would actually show up to the webinar. And that’s a really good show up rate. It may be more like 50%. Okay. And then from that, the people that stayed on and watched and are now in your s they would probably generate about 5% of sales would be good from that 500. But I would say, I would still say 5% of the 500, that’s what I would track as the math. However, you’re still gonna be emailing your list even if they didn’t show up. That’s where those fourth days are great. Where it’s saying, Hey, you missed it, here’s the replay. And they have a couple days to watch the replay. And even if they don’t ever watch, you’re still sending them through that sales cycle.
RV (06:40):
Yeah. So, so like 5% basically of, so we, we, we call that term funnel conversion percentage, which is the 500 mm-hmm. that opted in a good solid funnel would be like 5%. So 10% would be 50. So 25% would be 25 people. So if you had 500 people sign up for the webinar, a bunch wouldn’t show. You know, some, some would show, a bunch wouldn’t show, some would watch a replay, some wouldn’t. And then I always find it ironic cuz it’s like some of the people who actually buy didn’t do anything. They signed up for the first email. Oh yeah. Waited till the last minute, saw the bonuses and were like, yep, I’m in. And never like watched anything . Um
LC (07:21):
Yep. So we’re all natural born procrastinators, uhhuh, I mean, like you say, procrastinate on purpose. So that’s why that those last days, that’s why the, the timeline is the timeline cuz people are going to wait until that very last minute. And even then, and that’s what’s the hardest is co telling people do not stick to your word. Do not open that cart back up when you close the cart. Because I’ve done it myself where I’ve had FOMO on, on a course and I’m like, oh I know I saw the 27 email that I got from this and it was gonna end, but the next morning I was like, I’m ready to buy and it’s gone. You just, you have to stick to it because you’re gonna open it back up and, and that integrity you’re building with that person is going to convert them. Mm-hmm.
RV (08:08):
. But I think that again, just like it’s good to have you walk through that and I’m glad you said that cuz those, those numbers would match up, you know, I think reasonably with like what the mm-hmm. what we would hope for. I mean our, our best converting funnel that we have is a summit funnel and it’s me interviewing mm-hmm. a lot of our like pretty well known clients and we see about 8% of those people Yeah. Will request a call. So a conversion mm-hmm. for us is, that’s not even a credit card that’s like they request a call. Right. Um, and then mm-hmm. , most of our like, uh, outside of that we’ve got some evergreen webinar funnels that convert it like 5%, but most of them are closer to like two and a half to 4% mm-hmm. . And we’ve got some video funnels that convert at 1.3%. Um, so I think the, um, you know, but if you started with 10,000 people, you might go, oh man, I’m such a failure. I got 20 people to sign up. And it would be like, no, you’re, that’s like, that’s the, that’s how it works. . Yeah.
LC (09:10):
That’s how it works. And you’re doing good. And I mean, that’s a big part cuz it kinda like you said, you’re building a lead magna, you’re building pages, you’re putting people through a webinar, you’re doing, you’re doing so much and people burn out from it. And, and that’s be, you wanna maximize your work and not your effort. And so it’s like you, you have to create all these things, but once you’ve created it once, you can just recycle it. I mean, I can’t tell you with, there are certain funnels out there that they launched twice a year every single year. I’ve gotten the same exact emails in that sales sequence for three years in a row. Hmm. You know, and, and it took me two years before I ended up buying that program. And so it is that like you put in a lot of work and effort to build this funnel, but you can keep it on, tweak it as you go and, you know, everything should start with your program and what you provide, the value you provide and be extracted from that. So if you’ve got a coaching program, take one piece of the framework that you’ve already created and just tweak it a little bit here and there and turn that into your lead magnet. Yeah. Or turn that into your webinar script and then, you know, there’s just so much repurposing and reusing people start from scratch and you should never start from scratch.
RV (10:31):
Mm-hmm. , do you have any, um, tips for Evergreen or on-demand webinars,
LC (10:39):
Evergreen and on demand? I would keep the, I usually like to use those as like my mid ticket kind of funnel. Like if you’re gonna have, if you have multiple offers in your offer suite, I like to use those in my mid ticket price and low ticket. Um, evergreen is, I feel like it’s this unicorn people chase and they think that they’ll sustain an entire business on an evergreen model. Uh, but it, it, you, you need those launches infused there to get those like big pickups of revenue. Uh, and then forever Evergreen. I, we’ve, we’ve run them in the past where, uh, and we have one currently running where it’s to a book and then to a minicourse and to, you know, their entire offer sequence. And the, the secret to it is making sure you build and nurture sequences along the way. So when you do that, say you come off of a sale, you wanna make sure you have about four weeks of just value sequences and it’s not an email every day, but you’re, you’re providing value and then you’re leading into the next thing. And that’s how you can kind of turn that evergreen
RV (11:48):
Uhhuh . And you’re just saying basically like in a series of ascending offers from like mm-hmm. a book to a course to whatever, but you have, it’s like a bunch of mini funnels that you sort of string together with like a value funnel or a value chain in between there of just like, sort of cooling, cooling the jets for a minute and, and going back and adding value. Yes. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. That’s really, really interesting. Well, y’all, so if you’re interested in more of this from Lauren and, um, you want to find out more, we set up a little link. If you go to brand builders group.com/lauren, this is our affiliate link. Um, as I said, she’s someone that I have loved working with. I trust her. I, you know, I enjoyed getting to know her. Every time we talk and hang out, I pick up like some really good stuff. And this has been awesome, Lauren. Like, uh, I think even, even as someone who spent a lot of time studying funnels myself, like I always pick up l you know, new things and, and, and tidbits from this. So, um, you know, last thing I would just ask you is, is if someone is considering their very first funnel right now, like what would you say to them mm-hmm. if they’ve never done this before, but they’re kind of like thinking about it, what do you think they should know?
LC (13:05):
I think one of the most important things to know if you’re thinking about this and you don’t know where to start, is focus on providing as much value as possible in the front end. Do not be afraid to tell people what you do and lift the curtains and, and they wanna buy the how. So people will hold back on how much value they share, but they wanna buy, they wanna buy the how. So always provide that value and then knowing that your product is not your offer. So really focus on how are you helping someone apply and accelerate their results. And that’s gonna be your offer. Once you have a solid offer, then you’re ready to launch.
RV (13:53):
Mm-hmm. , I love that. I love that about helping them apply and accelerate their offer. Like, and that’s what it’s really about, right? We’re really trying to mm-hmm. , we’re not just trying to make money from a stranger and be like, ha, we won, we got you. We convinced you to give us your money. Like, we’re trying to deliver a result for people, um exactly. In their lives. And I think that’s exactly, that’s the, that’s the part that is the difference between slime and service. And that’s the part that I think people can vet out and they can sense like, you’re just trying to sell me something versus you actually care about helping me achieve this transformation. So thanks for that, Lauren. Um, we really appreciate it and we wish you all the best my friend.
LC (14:39):
Awesome. Thank you Rory.

Ep 381: My 3 Favorite Email Marketing Tips | Nathan Barry Episode Recap

RV (00:08):
Let’s talk about Email Strategy. You know, it’s funny, after all of These Years, email is still kind of the king when it comes to monetizing an audience. And, and I actually Just got off a call With our internal marketing team talking about the irony of how our email list we’re. This is very rare. I Think this is incredibly rare. Our email list
RV (00:33):
Is about twice the size of Our social media following, Like Most people, like almost all of our clients, it’s the Opposite. Where They’re social media following is like, you know, much larger, and then there’s some fraction of those people on their email list. Ours is the opposite. Our email list is, Is Like pretty massive, definitely massive compared to the Size of Our social media following. Most people
RV (00:57):
That have the size of our email list Are probably the people Who would have millions of social media followers. And so
RV (01:03):
Part of why that is, is it’s just where you place your focus, right? It’s like, what do you focus
RV (01:08):
On? And so I’m excited to share With you Three of my favorite email marketing strategies Of just Kind of like how we think about email in terms of the Way that we use it. And these are like my, my three favorite email marketing tips,
RV (01:26):
My three Favorite email marketing strategies. Of course,
RV (01:28):
This was inspired a little bit by my recent interview with Nathan Berry on our, on our recent podcast Episode. And So I just wanted to kind of share with you some of my philosophies and our Philosophies at, At brand Builders group About how we approach this
RV (01:41):
Subject and treats this subject Because frankly, like we do this pretty Good. I mean, I, I didn’t really, I don’t really Think of us necessarily of like, oh, we’ve got the World’s biggest email list, But it, it Did hit me and go,
RV (01:56):
Wow, That’s amazing. Like so many people are focused on growing their social media following and then trying to like convert that to a, to an email list Where The email list is really where the money is, right? Like the, the, that, that’s where The real long-term relationship happens. And that’s where a lot of the Trust takes place is, Is, you know, somebody’s email. So Let’s Dive into my three favorite email marketing strategies.
RV (02:21):
So the first strategy Is actually understanding something that we call the Four Types of email marketing. And this is actually something that we teach formally inside of one of our lessons inside of one of our courses.
RV (02:34):
So Our building your revenue engine course, Which is where we Teach our entire content marketing machine and how we convert it and nurture leads and automate trust.
RV (02:45):
There’s A section, a very specific section on email, and this is one of the things that we talk about. So this is a little bit of a, a preview for you if you Haven’t ever been through that. If you’re not one of our customers, and if you are one of our members, it’s A good refresh for you. So
RV (02:58):
Four types of email. The first type of email is the one that we all think of. These are broadcast emails, okay? So what is a broadcast email? It’s where you take your entire list or something that we would not recommend doing. We would never say, send it to your whole list. Take a segment of your list, you’ll have much more success with that. And you send everybody in that group the same message at the same moment. So whether somebody signed up for your email list today or 10 years ago, they’re all getting the same message at the same moment. And we used, we used broadcast messages to speak about things that are either timely or they’re big announcements. Those are like the two biggest reasons we use those. So timely, meaning it’s something happening in the news cycle, or it is something happening in the like like a holiday or something, right?
RV (03:53):
And we go, Hey, we wanna just like send out love about this, or it’s, it’s a big announcement. So, you know, we’ve done this recently a couple times in recent years where I can remember we’ve sent out big announcements when our clients have had huge wins, right? So we’ve had 13 clients that have hit the New York Times with a Wall Street Journal bestseller list. So whenever that happens, we’ve sent out some pretty big announcements. We’ve had now five clients go viral with TED Talks. I, we, we, we have another one that’s coming up the ranks that also could be taken off. And, you know, we, we celebrate client wins a lot of times and say, you know, cheer on everyone, Hey, check this out. So that’s broadcast email. It’s also used in launches would be another time that you would use that where you’re specifically saying, Hey, everyone show up for this free training or this, you know, webinar, or, Hey, we have a new whatever, a new podcaster, something like that.
RV (04:48):
So you’re, you’re launching something. So that’s broadcast email. The second type of email is something that people often think of, which I’m gonna call it long-term nurture, long-term nurture sequences. So this one is, you know, if you ever heard the term drip marketing or drip emails or funnels or automated emails, that’s kind of like this is going, you’re pre-scheduling out a series of emails where if you sign up today, you’re not gonna see the same, you’re not gonna get the same email today as someone who signed up 10 years ago, but you’re gonna get the same email that that person got on their first day, like hypothetically. So you’re the, and the, the number one way we use this is for long-term nurture, and specifically we use it for, we call it Evergreen magazine or easing, right? That’s kind of where that term easing originated from is to go, we’re gonna take your best of content of like what’s been on your blog post or what, what you’ve posted on your blog, and we’re gonna convert that.
RV (05:58):
We’re gonna turn that in to a greatest hits series. And so, the way this happens, right? If you think about a blog, every time you post something on a blog, whether it’s a podcast feed that you’re posting, like on brand builders group.com is where we post all our podcast episodes, but on rory vaden blog.com is where we post all of my blogs that I do every week. And so both of those, in both of those cases, they both get pushed down. And so some of the best content is from a long time ago, especially if you’re following one of our B B G mantras, one of our BBB G mantras is save the best for first, save the best for first. Always put out your next best piece of content as free content. Because what you, you don’t need to be worried about people consuming everything you have and then not buying from you.
RV (06:43):
You have to be worried about your content not being good enough that no one ever comes back, no one ever shows up again. So you’re always pushing yourself to get better and better and better and push your best stuff forward. So some of our best posts, a great example of this for me is you know I built my keynote speaking career on this story called Be the Buffalo, and it’s about buffalo’s versus cows. And you know, I, I published this intake the stairs in 2012. A lot of people use this, you know, use this. But I’m the original author of this story, and I was, I was telling this 10 years before it even showed up in my book, which was now 10 years ago. And that’s like a very popular story. People love it. And you know, it’s, it’s, it’s like one of my most highly trafficked pages.
RV (07:29):
Well, if you sign up for my email list today, you’re not gonna see that blog post, that blog post was five years ago. So it’s pushed way down. But I know that’s gonna be one of, that’s something that everybody loves. So I’m gonna take it and I’m gonna force it to you, and I’m gonna save the best for first. So just like we save the best for first with our kind of like blog strategy or podcast strategy going, what’s the next best thing I can put out fresh today? We’re also going to convert that into an a long-term nurture sequence of a greatest, basically, it’s your greatest hits. And we’re going, okay, I’m gonna take my my best blog post ever and I’m gonna make sure that everyone signs up, whether they sign up today or that was, you know, they sign up in six months, or they sign up in two years from now, they’re all gonna see this piece of content that I know everybody loves.
RV (08:14):
It performs really well. And I go, great. I wanna push my best stuff forward even to people who are showing up brand new. And so that’s how we use the, the long-term easing strategy. And so a lot of times, or not a lot of times, this is what we do, is we push our greatest hits into this email nurture sequence so that if you sign up for our list today, like you are gonna see all of our best stuff in addition to seeing some of our fresh stuff, which I’ll talk about in a second. Every month you’re gonna get one email, which is the greatest hits, and that’s the frequency that we do that is once a month. The other part that this does is this, make sure I’m talking to my entire email list at least once a month. So, and, and every time they get something from me, it’s, it’s not new content that I’m sort of like testing out and I’m hoping it works and that everybody likes it.
RV (09:04):
It’s like it’s proven, it’s time tested, we know. And so that’s automating trust, which is what we’re trying to do with our email list. We’re trying to automate trust. We’re trying to add so much value that people trust us and they go, you know what? These guys aren’t just trying to make money off me. These guys aren’t just trying to pitch me their next thing. Like, they actually give a crap about helping me succeed and they actually know what they’re talking about and they can help me. And so as I make money, I’m going to invest with them and, and hopefully they’re helping me make money, and then I’m investing, and then they make, help me make more money and then I invest more with them, right? Like, that’s the relationship we want to have with people, is we’re giving them free content to help them make money.
RV (09:42):
Hopefully they’ll make some money, they’ll invest it with us, then we’ll help ’em make more money, they’ll invest it more with us, right? And we’re trying to like, grow, grow with people. So anyways, that, that means that we have an email going out on autopilot so I can sleep at night just knowing my entire email list is gonna get one awesome email from me every month without adding any additional time to my calendar. Zero. So that’s the second type of email. The third type of email is one that you don’t hear very often and people don’t think about. And this kind of boggles my mind, and this is RSS email rss. What the heck does that stand for? RSS is a technical term, it stands for a real simple syndication. What it means in common sense language is every time I post a new article to my blog, automatically send an email to my list.
RV (10:33):
And this is amazing. First of all, it’s automating something for you. So you go, if you’re we have a whole nother process we teach called the content diamond, which you can go, you can go [email protected], I did a whole free training on this, on the content diamond. Well, if you’re doing the hard work of creating a content diamond every single week, then you want to tell people it’s out there. So we create this RSS so that automatically emails you. And, and by the way, if you can sign up for ours, right? If you go to, you can sign up for my [email protected], and we give you other, we give you a free training as an incentive for you to sign up for it. And then you get, you get free training every week, right? So we’re sending you this free video for me once a week, every single week.
RV (11:20):
And they’re like these little five or seven minute videos that I do and their articles, we convert ’em into articles. And so now that’s on autopilot. We also do [email protected] slash podcast because Brand Builders Group doesn’t have a blog, but it has our podcast. And so we post all of our podcasts there every week so people automatically can sign up to be alerted. And so RSS is this technical, you know, piece of code that you put on your website behind this form that people can say, Hey, I wanna automatically get notified every time you post something new and boom. And so this is cool because it’s automated, but unlike the long-term nurture, which is your old stuff of your greatest hits, it’s all your newest stuff, your freshest stuff, your like most hyper-relevant thing that you’re talking about today, and they’re automatically getting that.
RV (12:10):
So that’s also how we sort of balance the, like staying relevant and super current with our email list along with making sure they’re seeing our greatest hits of all time. That’s like the timeless, you know, principles and stuff like that. So that’s the third type of of email and it’s easy, I mean, easy to set up. So we do that, that’s standard protocol in both internally and also what we teach in building your revenue engine, which is where we teach all of this in social media and getting on podcasts and speaking engagements, et cetera. So, and then the fourth type of email, the fourth type of email is short term nurture sequences. This one actually is more commonly associated with the term funnel. So short-term nurture sequences mean that only a targeted set of your email list is going to get a series of pre-written emails that are hyper-relevant to a behavior they’re engaging in now.
RV (13:05):
So again, out of revenue engine one of the lessons we talk about is building funnels and, and how do we, we actually dissect and show people behind the scenes of our actual funnels that we use to run our entire business. And we talk about the different one. You know, we’ve done summit funnels and we’ve got video funnels, and we’ve got webinar funnels, and we’ve got, you know, just a pdf like download free, free download and free call funnels. We have all these different funnels that we use and we show behind the scenes of each one and how we, how we, how we build them, right? So, but if you, if you, let’s say you sign up for one of our webinar funnels what would happen is you sign up for a free training and then it’s going to say, Hey, thanks for signing up.
RV (13:48):
Here’s a link to the free training you requested. And then what it’s gonna do is we use marketing automation to that can tell us, did you ever actually click the link in that email and watch that free training? If you didn’t, it’s gonna automatically send you another email, like 24 hours saying, Hey, by the way, little reminder, thanks for signing up for our free training. Don’t want you to miss out, you know, here it is as promised, you know, when you have a minute, check it out. Boom, right? And then we’ll send a couple reminders to, to watch the free training. Now, as soon as you click that link and you watch the first couple minutes of the training, again, we’re using Mark marketing automation here, which is what we, we teach people do, and we also actually build templates to help you that we actually can do this for you, right?
RV (14:32):
So we’re building all these templates right now to actually do the programming and coding for you. So what would happen is it’s then gonna shut down that, that we call that the the training sequence, or sorry, we call it the the watch sequence, which is, you know, emails that are designed to get you to watch, watch the free training that you signed up for. So let’s say that you watch five minutes of it. Well, as soon as you watch five minutes of it, we’re using marking automation to shut off that sequence that’s reminding you to watch it. Cuz now we know you already started watching it, but then it starts a new sequence, which would be invisible to the untrained eye that says, let’s say you watch seven minutes, but then you abandon the video, it’s gonna start a new sequence called the finish sequence and it’s gonna say, Hey, we noticed you started watching the video, cuz we can tell, but don’t forget to finish because here’s some of the great things that come at the end.
RV (15:24):
And so then we’ll send ’em a few reminders to try to get them to finish watching. And then if they finish watching, but then they don’t like take the action, whatever the action is, we’ll say, Hey, you know, here’s a couple reminders of like whatever the action was that we’re trying to get them to take. And so you’re using these short term you’re using these short term sequences to move them along, and that’s the fourth type of email. So everybody is, everybody in that group is seeing the same emails similar, it’s like, it’s like kind of a, it’s kind of like a cross of all of these because it is a nurture sequence, but you only get put into that nurture sequence in a very specific moment in your journey where you have clicked on a video or requested a free call, or you’ve watched something or downloaded something very, very specific.
RV (16:14):
And so, you know, like one of them again if you go to, if you go to rory vain.com, there’s a free training section and there’s a, you can download our trends and personal branding national research study. So if you download that, that’s a lead magnet. It’s a free lead magnet. It’s incredible. It’s like this 60 page study, this of all this data that we paid tens of thousands of dollars to get, we give it away for free and then it, it starts a nurture sequence. Right? So everybody who, the only people who ever see that are the people who downloaded that specific thing. So it’s amazing. So anyways, those are the four types of email. I know that’s a lot, but, and that’s, that’s, you know, advanced, but that’s the kind of stuff we’re teaching and that’s like super, it’s advanced, but it’s simple, right?
RV (16:57):
But you go, you gotta build out all these different types. So it’s not just, you can’t just think of, oh, I send emails and that, or I send an email once a week. It’s all of these, it’s at least four major types of email that make up your overall email strategy. So you gotta like understand what’s the mix of these, and also the technology and also the timing of how they intersect, right? So that’s one of the templates that we provide to people is the actual marketing automation campaign that goes, Hey, make sure you’re not emailing people too much. And, you know, give them a chance to opt in and outta stuff and, and, you know, make sure they’re not getting, you know, a bunch of emails all at the same time. Which leads to number two, okay? So this is the number two thing that I wanted to talk to you about.
RV (17:40):
So my second favorite email strategy, which is really important is control the email opt-outs yourself, not the platform. So what do I mean by this? It means that every email marketing tool doesn’t matter which one you use, right? And, and we use all of ’em with clients and we like all of ’em, like we’re kind of like, you know, there’s certain ones we like more than others and whatever, but, but to us, the strategy is what matters more than the technology. The strategy matters more than the technology. And for example, all of the email marketing tools have an opt-out function. They have to, by law, this, this law is called gdpr, right? GDPR compliant. There’s, there’s all of this, this compliance now with how emails needs to be sent and permission-based marketing and all this sort of stuff. So they have to, when an email goes out, there has to be an option to unsubscribe.
RV (18:32):
Well, if you send an email to your list, let’s say you send a broadcast email, and let’s say you send it to 10,000 people on your list every time you send a broadcast email, by the way, people unsubscribe every single time. They always do. So don’t be offended or upset by that. And that’s not a bad thing, it’s not a bad thing when people unsubscribe, it’s a good thing. You only wanna be emailing people who wanna hear from you. But if people just hit that unsubscribe button, it starts to affect sort of like your ranking with the email service providers. And so what we like to do is, is we like to just, we give an opt-out function. But what the, the, the, the, we make a, we actually make a more noticeable link for people to opt out somewhere above the default one that is built in and tied into the tool where we say, if you don’t wanna hear from us anymore, click here.
RV (19:24):
But we also con control the languaging, which a lot of times you can’t with the default setting or not as much. And we’ll, so we’ll say something like this, if you say, Hey, if you want to hear from us less often or more often, click here to control your preferences or unsubscribe altogether, something like that. And then they click on it and then it takes them to a, a form where they can now manage. And we usually give them like four options in our standard suite it. And, and option number one says, you know, I’m a super fan, email me every time you have something new for me. And when they select that, it’s gonna apply all the appropriate, appropriate tags for them to get the broadcast emails, which we send once in a while, the evergreen monthly easing, which is on autopilot once a month, and the r s s feed.
RV (20:10):
So that means they’re gonna get at least one r s s feed every week and one email once a month. So that’s five. And then broadcast emails whenever we send them, which might be once every other month or something like that. So they could get maybe six emails in a month plus any other short-term nurture sequences that they are in. If they get into one of our, you know, free trainings or something like that, then the, the next button down would say something like this. They would say it would say something like I only wanna hear from you once a week. So we go, okay, no problem. We’re going to remove them out of our Evergreen magazine and we’re just gonna add them to the rss. So they’re just gonna get the most recent stuff once a week. And it’s like, download our most recent podcast, watch our most recent video or, or read our most recent blog posts, which are all kind of the same thing.
RV (20:58):
If you’re running the content diamond in and it’s just gonna push ’em to our blog feed and you go, great, once a week, the next person says, ah, I really only want to hear from you once a month. Okay? So that’s option number three, just once a month. So now they’re going to only get our oh, and by, and by the way, on that second one I wanna hear from you once a week we would say RSS plus broadcast, which we send once in a while. And if they say, oh, I really wanna hear from you once a month, we go, okay, great, once a month, let’s unsubscribe you from our RSS feed so you’re not hearing from us every week, that’s too much for you. And we go, but you do wanna hear from us? So we go, great, let’s, let’s put you on the evergreen nurture.
RV (21:33):
Now you’re hearing from us once a month but we are, we’re also gonna keep you on our broadcast e e email, not not, yeah. So our long-term nurture, which is our, our monthly easing and the broadcast e email, which sends, you know, sporadically once in a while. So those are the top three. And then the fourth one will say, ah, you know, it’ll say something like this I only wanna hear from you once in a while, you know, once in a great while or whenever you have something big to share. And so we go, great, unsubscribe ’em from rss, unsubscribe them from long-term nurture, easing, unsubscribe them from oh, but keep them subscribe to the broadcast tool, right? So we’ll keep them on the, the broadcast tag. And then the last one would say, I never wanna hear from you ever again.
RV (22:18):
Please stop emailing. So I guess there would be five options counting that, right? So boom, boom, boom, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So now what’s happening is, first of all, we’re controlling their preference because a lot of times people don’t wanna unsubscribe completely. It just might be like, they’re like, bro, you’re overwhelming me, ro like, it’d be like, Rory, I love you, but dude, I don’t wanna hear from you twice a week. Like, that’s too much Rory in my life, which I can, I can appreciate. Well, I’m not offended by that, right? Some people are like, gimme all the Rory, you can give me like I need, I need, I want motivation, I need inspiration as much as I can get it every day I am like, yeah, you know, great my people, but it’s whatever your threshold is, right? And you have some people like to hear from you for different things or it’s just, what do they have going on in their life?
RV (23:02):
What do they have capacity for? They re they might be in a season of like, man, I’m not trying to gum up my whole inbox. And you know, you just, a lot of it doesn’t have to do with you, it has to do with them. And they’re just going, I wanna be able to read what you send me and maybe I don’t have the time, or your topic isn’t so hyper relevant at this moment that I’m gonna make time to read everything you’re sending me and now you’re annoying me and so I’m just gonna unsubscribe, right? So you’re, you’re wanting to give them a chance to sort of choose their own adventure here. And that’s what we’re, and that’s what we’re doing. So control the opt outs yourself, l and and then the other thing is if they hit never talk to me ever again, we add an unsubscribed tag that anytime we send an email to, we filter against that tag.
RV (23:42):
So we literally opt them out and we will never, we will never send to them again. But it’s not hurting our rankings with our email service provider. And so that’s part of why we do that. And you know, anyways, so that’s that. And then the, my third favorite email tip is super short. It’s super clean, it’s simple, but if you’re not doing this, make sure you’re doing this every single time you send a broadcast email, which is send to the unopens, send to the un unopens. So what does that mean? Well, okay, we’re talking about broadcast email, remember, with four types of email broadcast, long-term nurture, RSS and short-term. So we’re talking about the first type here, which is broadcast email. By the way, I hope you’re not listening to this on two x speed, cuz if you are, this is going really, really fast, .
RV (24:25):
So anyways, when you send a broadcast email, which is to a wide swath of your list all at the same time, boom, everyone gets a launch email or a a, a timely email or something like that. One of the ways to like literally double your opens is you send it to all these people, however many it is, a whole bunch of the people aren’t gonna open like some, usually something like 80%. So if you send an email to 10,000 people, okay, typically like 20% are gonna open and 3% are gonna click through roughly, right? Something like that. So that means if I send it to 10,000 people, 8,000 of ’em aren’t even opening the email, right? So 20% are opening the email and then 17% are opening it, but not clicking Well for that 20%, you know, they saw your email. So we go, let’s not annoy them, right?
RV (25:19):
They, they, they already have it. We know they’ve seen it, but most of the good email service providers will tell you this, 80% or these 8,000 people never even opened your me email. So what does that mean? That means it’s like they never got the email, they never even saw it. So you’re not ano you’re not annoying anybody to send an email to people who never opened it the first time because for them it doesn’t e it’s, it’s not like, Hey, you’re bugging me, you keep sending me the same email. They’re going, no, they, they never saw it, right? Like, you sent the email, they never saw it, they never opened it, they don’t even know that you sent an email. So you send just to the unopened. So you would just send to that segmented list, you could send the exact same message. We, we do, we we literally go send, send a broadcast three days later, take everyone who has not opened the email and send it again.
RV (26:11):
Because if they haven’t opened it within the first three days, they probably not gonna open it, right? So we send it to 8,000 people, the exact same email, and guess what the number of opens in total, it’s gonna be like 20% of 8,000. And, and sometimes it’s higher, sometimes you get a higher percentage on, you often get a higher open rate percentage on a smaller list. That’s almost always true. So you might get another 2000 opens off of your send to 8,000. Well, the net effect there is instead of 2000 opens from your email of 10,000, you got those 2000 plus you got another 2000 from your email to 8,000. And you could actually keep doing this saying, okay, well now there’s, you know, roughly 6,000 people who didn’t open that email I could send to them. So you could keep doing it. We usually just do it twice.
RV (26:57):
Sometimes we’ll do it three times, but if they’ve never opened the email, they, they never saw it. Like, you’re not annoying anybody. So at least do it once. Always, always with broadcast emails and it’s so simple, right? Then these are things where you just go, man, of course like that makes so much sense, but you don’t know until you know, right? And you know, if you don’t have a strategist like us, you know, our team walking you through it, you just literally leaving money on the table, that one thing could literally double the income of your entire next launch or promotion or thing by such a simple tactic, right? Imagine adding up all of those tactics over and over and over again and y’all, this is, this is what we do. So at any point if you want to talk to our team, I would encourage you to do it like we have so much to share and teach you.
RV (27:46):
And so you just go to free brand call.com/podcast to request that call. If you’re not ready to do that yet, I would encourage you, as I said, go to brand builders group.com/podcast and subscribe there and or go to rory vaden blog.com and you could subscribe there and we’ll send you lots of free stuff so that you can be growing your business and building your income and, and increasing your mindset and your motivation and your productivity and all the things that we teach and talk about to help you make more impact in the world. And then hopefully you start making some money from that and you go, all right, I’m ready to level up. So when you’re ready to level up, request a free call free brand call.com/podcast. In the meantime, share this episode with someone who you think would l benefit from it and listening to it. And just thanks for being here, right? We’re, we’re, we’re trying to add more and more value to your life constantly, whether you’re paying us or you’re not, our whole goal is to just add value to everybody as much as we can. And the fact that you’re listening gives us the opportunity to do that. So we appreciate you being here. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.

Ep 380: Advanced Email Marketing Strategies with Nathan Barry

RV (00:02):
I have to say that one of the most powerful forces in the world, I think is marketing automation. And we hear about social media and we hear about podcasting and we hear about YouTube and all stuff. But man, the thing that has changed my life in terms of the digital landscape the most in the last 10 years is email marketing, marketing automation in general, and specifically email. And we’re gonna talk about that today with someone who is definitely an expert on the subject. We’re talking to Nathan Barry. He is actually the founder of Convert Kit, which is one of the largest and most well-known and respected tools among creators for email marketing. And so we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. Just so you know, he’s also an author himself and Convert Kit, you know, as an entrepreneur is a tremendously impressive success story.
RV (00:54):
So they’ve got over 25 million a year in annual recurring revenue, over 3 million in profits. They’ve got almost 60 team members. And they bootstrapped the company 100%. So this was not where you had millions of dollars of investor money, like from Silicon Valley flooding in. They built this for creators and Nathan was a successful blogger before and just kind of created this himself. So he’s also the dad of three boys, which I can appreciate. I’ve got two, so anyone who’s got more than me, I’m like, man, I don’t know how you do it. But brother, you’ve done a bunch of awesome stuff and thanks for making time for us.
NB (01:31):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show.
RV (01:33):
So I’d love to just hear the story of Convert Kit, like your personal journey. Cuz cuz you started as a blogger, right? And then all of a sudden you kind of were like, saw the need for this and then how, I mean, how to, how to go down.
NB (01:44):
Yeah, so my like traditional skillset is software design. I got started web design and then started building software for the web. And then when the iPad came out in 2010 I was working on a team that was trying to have an iPad app out the day the iPad was released, which was a fun challenge of like designing and trying to test an app, like all in the simulator. Like, you don’t act, the device doesn’t exist yet. And it was fun like going to the Apple store and like buying a dozen iPads, you know, like on launch day and testing our software and all of that. So that was a, a fun world. And I got pretty deep into, you know, iPhone and iPad app design. And then from there I had this idea that if I wrote a book about designing iOS apps, then people would wanna hire me to be the one to design their app.
NB (02:34):
And I, I thought I’ll make money from this book too. Like, this isn’t a charity, but the main thing that I want is design clients. Sure. Right? You wanna hire the guy who wrote the book, obviously. Of course. And so what I did, I built up a small pre-launch email list on MailChimp, got to 800 subscribers you know, teased that, wrote the book, self-published it. And my goal was to make $10,000 over the lifetime of sales for the book and see how many clients I could get. I ended up launching it and I made $12,000 on the first day and never took on another design client. Like, just like, nope, that world is, I’m not a freelancer anymore, I’m a content creator and this is what we’re doing going forward, . I love it. I love it. And really quick in the process, I had made my own iPhone app that was a app called Commit.
NB (03:25):
It’s not around anymore, but there’s other apps that do similar stuff. It was just for building a streak. And I had this streak of writing a thousand words a day. And so after I published the book, my app popped up and said, Hey, you’re gonna write a thousand words today. And I was like no, I’ve, I’ve published the book, but it was like I saw 80 days in a row and I didn’t wanna break the streak. So I was like, you know what, I’ll write a, a blog post about the book launch. So I did that, shared the numbers. And then the next day the app did what it did and popped up was like, are you gonna write a thousand words today? And I was like, no, I don’t have anything to write. And it was 81 days in a row I was thinking like, ah, you know what?
NB (04:03):
I’m gonna write another book. And so I wrote another book on designing web applications. So similar topic, different medium, and wrote like edited and published that in like just over 90 days. So it was self-published, also self-published as well. Okay. Made 26 grand in sales on the first day from that. And I was off to the races, but in that process I really got obsessed with email marketing and I was seeing that all of the sales were coming from the email list, you know, and that was where like giving away a sample chapter, getting people the email list and then dripping out emails and then them coming back and buying the book. All these things were working super well and it was driving more sales than like Twitter and Instagram and everything else combined. And I told this to a friend of mine who’d been in online marketing for long time, what year is this?
NB (04:53):
2013. Okay. Yeah. So talking to this friend who’s been in online marketing forever, I’m like, Hey, email is driving more sales than every other channel combined. And he just looks at me and is like, yeah man, we’ve all known that since 2005. Like, do you want a gold star? Like , you know, this is not a new thing. Great epiphany. I was gonna say 2013 is not that long ago. Yeah. And so but it was, it was brand new to me. And so really I became obsessed with email and email marketing, learning all the best practices. And then I just got really frustrated with MailChimp of trying to like implement these best practices in that tool. And looked at all the other tools. There were others that were like, had more automation were powerful, but super confusing. And I’m like, I’m a designer, I gotta use something that’s like elegant and beautiful. And so I decided to start my own. So it was January 1st, 2013 that I started to convert it. And yeah just over a decade later, it’s a giant company used by you know, most of the top graders, like James Clear, Tim Ferris, Ryan Holliday, Arnold Schwarzenegger has a convert kit newsletter that he sends out every week. And it’s super fun.
RV (06:04):
That’s really awesome, man. So congratulations. Like that’s no e that’s no easy feat. I mean to do, to do, you know, eight figures in 20 million plus in, in re recurring revenue is really, really powerful. So I wanna talk about email marketing strategies specifically. Especially, you know, in today’s era, email marketing has been out a long time. Yes. Email marketing automation has been out a long time. You have something that you talk about just sort of like a general strategy you were telling me about it fly, you call it flywheel for clients.
NB (06:44):
Flywheels.
RV (06:45):
Yeah. So I, I’d love to hear about this cuz cuz here’s, here’s one of the things that, you know, sort of like annoying and frustrating to me is even in just the world of email, one of the things that we teach our students is there’s, we think of emails like there’s, there’s four type four different types of emails. So there’s like, you send a broadcast email, everyone at the same time gets it. That’s what we think of. But then we have r s s emails, which are, every time a blog gets posted, that’s gonna automatically send an email. And then we have like these short-term nurture sequences where you’re someone’s in like an active selling situation and you’re like nurturing them to watch a video or, you know, buy something, there’s a closed card or something. And then you just have like your long-term automated nurture sequence. And suddenly what happens a lot is you end up going, you’re emailing people so much and, and you, you can even lose sight of track of like, oh my gosh, how are they, they’re in all these different sequences getting, so how do you kind of like pull all that together into a, like a, a more cohesive strategy?
NB (07:51):
Yeah. Well the first thing is that a lot of people end up in a position like I did where they realize how powerful email marketing is and then become obsessed and they go like way off the deep end and it’s so fun and it probably generates a lot of money for your, for your business. And then you get to that point where you’re like, oh, now all these cool automations that have set up are starting to step on each other. Like, it, it’s maybe the person that I hired on my team moved on and I now have a new person. And it’s way too hard for them to understand and like, it’s not documented well. And so I think keeping things relatively simple is a good way to go. Like one example that I really like is doing something called an Evergreen newsletter.
NB (08:34):
And this is where instead of sending, well let’s say half your content that you send out is really timely, you know, hey, I’m going on book tour podcast episode’s coming out. Or you wanna like respond and comment to recent news that just happened or, or ride some wave of some conversation in like mass media. Maybe we send that email as a broadcast every Tuesday. But then there’s also, like, you and I have been writing for a very long time. We’ve produced, you know, hundreds of thousands, you know, may maybe millions of words at this point of content. And like if someone signs up today and they’re getting, Hey, this is what I write every Tuesday, like, there’s this crazy back catalog that they’re never encountering. And so one thing that I like to do is set up an evergreen newsletter sequence, and I might send that out every Thursday.
NB (09:24):
And that is actually a sequence time to when you join and it’s like, Hey, here’s my best content over time. They don’t really know that one is the same email to everyone at the same time. And the other is like timed just to them. They’re just like, I don’t know, Nathan kept like, every Tuesday and Thursday he sends me great content. And so I could have an Evergreen newsletter sequence that’s 50 emails, a hundred, you know, 104 emails long, and I got two two years of content and that’s just working for me. And I go, oh, this is a great article that I’m really proud of. I’m gonna put that like in week five instead of week 100 where it would naturally sit. And so you end up making these systems that work for you. So that’s the first thing that I would do is really love it, really simplify that.
NB (10:10):
Another one, maybe if we talk about Flywheel for a second oh, when was this? Back in 2008, I got the opportunity to do like some public works projects in Lisutu, which is a little landlocked country inside of South Africa. And one of the things that we ended up doing was working on installing this well at an orphanage there. And so if you think about like, as a kid, I went camping and you know, there’d be like this hand pump to like pump the water at the campsite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that’s a, this like up and down motion and if you stop doing it, the water stops flowing immediately. And that’s the old, well at this orphanage had a pump like that and we actually replaced it with a flywheel, which was my first exposure to a flywheel. And so what that is, is this big metal wheel that sits on top of the well and it’s super heavy and it turns in place.
NB (11:05):
And like I remember when we got it all hooked up and we were like, okay, let’s get this going. And I tried to turn it and it was too heavy, I couldn’t turn it by myself. And so like another friend was on the other side and we’re pushing it as hard as we can and we got it turning and as it got momentum, it got, it turned easier and easier and faster and faster. And what it, it got to the point is that like my friend stopped helping and I could stand there and with like, you know, one finger keep this thing spinning and it’s just pumping out tons of water for this whole orphanage. And that’s the idea of a flywheel is having something that’s not a bunch of separate activities. Like it’s all the activities put together into one flow and like you get to continue that momentum and we can apply this concept to newsletters and to creators really well.
NB (11:50):
So there’s kind of three rules of a flywheel. Okay? The, the first one is that each, all these activities have to flow nicely one into the next. Okay? So if we apply that to marketing, you might think, okay, when I publish a an article, I’m like, okay, you know, how do I, we’re we’re, where am I gonna promote this new essay or, or this new article? And you might sporadically promote it a few places. But it’s really different if you say, okay, this is my playbook every time. This is what I do every time I publish an article and here’s maybe where I ask for ideas to give me concepts on what to write next. Right? It’s like, it’s a defined process that that happens smoothly. The second rule is that each rotation of the flywheel should be slightly easier than the previous one.
NB (12:42):
Okay? Right. So as you’re building that momentum, it gets easier. So here’s an example. Most people have an a newsletter where they’re sending out weekly content because what happens? You have to write that content. I know that’s not brutal, that’s not easy. And so a a little tweak is you go from the content that you’re writing, you know, your weekly newsletter like new subscribers are coming in and in that automated welcome sequence that you’re writing, let’s say email three, email four, you have a question, there’s a, Hey, what’s your let’s say we have a marketing, you know, we’re teaching people marketing. I ask, Hey, what’s your biggest frustration with marketing in your business right now? And by asking that question, everyone’s replying to you. Like, hit reply and let me know people are replying. We categorize those replies in a label in Gmail and now every Monday at 8:00 PM when I’m like, shoot, I don’t have a email ready to go for Tuesday yet, what am I gonna write about?
NB (13:37):
I go into that label in Gmail and I go, what are, what are people frustrated with? What are they not understanding? And I pick one out that seems interesting and I write a response to that and then I change it a little bit. So it’s for everyone. And then there we go. And so now in this flywheel, like I just made each rotation easier cuz now my new subscribers are feeding me content ideas. And that made that rotation easier. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, lemme stop there for a second. We can get into the third rule. Love, but love that. I’m curious if you see any of those things in your business or
RV (14:08):
Totally. Yeah, no, I, I love that. I mean, and the, the whole thing of like, you know, having to write a newsletter once a month or once a week, I mean it really, the, the problem is, it’s like inconsistency is the kiss of death and Right. The one thing marketing automation can do is like, solve that problem permanently. How, like, I want to hear number three, but I’m, I’m, I’m curious how many emails a week is too many? Like the, is like, you’re talking about kind of a cadence here, which is you’ve got your one long-term nurture going and then you have like one broadcast a week. Is that the actual cadence that you sort of follow as like two a week and, and you know, both what have you seen for yourself, but then also when you look at your, you know, your top clients, are they sending more frequently? Are they doing more broadcast? Are they doing more evergreen? Do you know, do they have multiple things happening? Like I’m just sort of curious like in the modern day, what’s the, what’s too much volume or what’s the right, what really what’s the right amount of volume?
NB (15:12):
Yeah, I think the right amount of volume first it comes down to expectations that you set with your audience. Uhhuh. So when, if you sign up for Seth Godin’s newsletter or I think it’s actually just a blog, I don’t know, that’s a newsletter, right? Just RSS to email. He, he posts every day always has, always will like clockwork. You know what, some, some of his posts are like four sentences long. Some of them, you know, might be a couple hundred words. They’re not super long, but you expect that every single day you’re gonna get a note from Seth and you knew that when signing up. And so he’s matching expectations. So is seven days a week or five days a week, whatever, he does too much. No. Cuz he set that expectation and it’s bite-sized enough that you can consume it. I think you need, when you think about cadence, you need to make sure you can maintain two bars. One, can you always match this ca cadence that you set? You’re like, Hey, a daily email, but I miss half of them because I’m busy. Or like, the kids got sick or whatever else. Like, no, don’t do that. So if you, if you hit a, a email once a week every single week like clockwork and you can get ahead, perfect, that’s a great cadence for you. And then the other thing is what cadence can you maintain quality?
RV (16:26):
Ah,
NB (16:26):
Like if you can’t write great content once a week, you know it’s a lot better than that is great content once a month, right? Pick a cadence that you can always hit and say, I will always be able to meet the expectations I set for my audience and I will always be able to put out content that I’m proud of. And some people do it every day. I personally like twice a week of the ev the balance of the Evergreen and the live, cuz I want both formats. And so I do an evergreen email on Fridays and a live email on Tuesdays and that I know I can hit and hit every single week and hit my bar for quality. Yeah. Some, sometimes it’s hard. We are like,
RV (17:08):
I love that I’ve, I mean I’ve heard, you know, I’ve heard the like consistency one, but that’s a really good about the quality metric and and that’s, I I’ve, it’s funny cuz I feel that way about books. It’s actually been several years now since I’ve had a book come out. I’ve written three, but it’s been, you know, we sold our co the last book I wrote was 2015. We sold our company in 2018. And so then it’s like, we basically been rebuilding for five years and you know, people are like, when are you gonna write a book? And I’ve always, you know, I’ve, I’ve had mentors tell me, you only need to write one book and you spend the rest of your career talking about it. And I, I really believe you can do that if you, if you do it right. I’ve had other people say, you need to write a book every two years, otherwise you’ll become irrelevant.
RV (17:50):
And I also can see the case for that. And so I think where I’ve landed is just, I’ll write a book when I have something significant to say. Yeah. And you know, to what you’re saying, it’s like, do the same thing with your email cuz I guess it’s, you know, I guess the big problem is going whether it’s once a week or once a month, the big issue is not that they’re not hearing from you frequently enough, the big issue is that they stop listening to you. Right. Because either the, the, the rhythm is inconsistent or the quality is, is inconsistent. That’s
NB (18:20):
Good. Yeah. They either forgot about you or they decided that you’re not worth listening to.
RV (18:24):
Yeah. I want to ask you about that too, in terms of how do you warm up a cold list? Because that’s a lot. Like, we have a lot of clients who will come to us and they’re like, eh, you know, I have an email list, but I haven’t sent anything to them in like a year. And especially, you know, a as, as a, you know, an email service provider. There’s a lot of rules there too, I think that you guys have to manage on a global level of her deliverability and all that. So like, but like what do you do? You go, these people opted in, like they wanted to hear from me, I was writing to them for a time, but like, I haven’t written to them in a minute. I mean, what would, what’s the, what’s, what’s the right way to to, you know, follow the rules and warm it up and like make use of it? Do you just scrap it and start over or like, what do you say?
NB (19:10):
Yeah, so what you do, one, don’t scrap the list and start over unless it’s been like a decade. It’s
RV (19:15):
Been a decade. We’re not gonna do that. Even if you tell us to anyways, we’re still we’re still uploading,
NB (19:20):
We’re gonna try to resurrect it somehow. Yeah. So the first thing is to, to try to look at what do you know about these people is there’s some cohort, let’s say we’ve got a list of 10,000 people, right? Is there some group that you think for one reason or another is more engaged than others, right? Maybe they bought a course from you, maybe something else. So if you email all 10,000 people at once, a bunch of people are gonna be like, make the news Nathan, I don’t remember him at all. Right? And they’re going to Marcus spam or whatever or not engaged. And the inbox providers, so like Gmail, Yahoo, et cetera, are gonna see that and be like, Ooh, this did not go well. And then my reputation, my domain reputation that I have is gonna go down, right? My Nathan barry.com domain will not be as respected by the inbox providers because of that and I’ll have a harder time reaching the inbox. So what we wanna do instead is warm this up. And so I’m gonna look and say, okay, instead of sending all 10,000 at once, I’m gonna start to build this reputation so that I’m not showing up, you know, with to, with 10,000 people at the party all at once. And the host is like, ah, I don’t want this. You know, so instead what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna say, okay, 500 of of these people bought a course from me.
RV (20:35):
Yeah. You know,
NB (20:36):
I’m gonna email them first and am I, am I right one, hey, I’m back email. Now you can expect a once a week or email from me. Here’s what’s going on, here’s what’s next. It might be the same email, but I’m gonna send it to only 500 people first and the the 500 that I think are the most engaged based on how that goes. Then I’m going to take a slightly less engaged group that I might sylvan, maybe they showed up to a meetup once. Like all of these things that I think there’s a bit more of a connection with. And I’m gonna gradually expand that circle and then people who don’t engage or I’m gonna say, say something in there and say like, Hey, if you don’t want to be on this list, like click here to unsubscribe and I’m gonna put that right at the top of the email.
NB (21:21):
I’m gonna make it really easy for someone to hit unsubscribe rather than spam. I do not want someone marking this is spam. That would be very bad. And so then really what we’re doing is watching that engagement. If people don’t engage, I’m gonna delete them off of the list cuz I want, I wanna take that 10,000 who may not have heard from me for a couple of years and I want to trim it down to whatever number of people that’s really engaged and wants to be there. Let’s say five to 7,000. And I’m gonna do it gradually and warm up that reputation. There’s other things that like get more advanced that our like deliverability team at convert it can help with, which is like making sure that your domain is authenticated correctly. And and we can put together a whole warmup plan or this, but that’s the basic concept is reach out to the most engaged people first and then gradually layer in people who are a little less known.
RV (22:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So you kind of just like start with the warm circle, work your way out mm-hmm. and then when you get to the, when you get to the remaining cold part of the list, just make something right at the headline to say unsubscribe so that they click that instead of spam and let let them, let them self eject and and not mess it up. I think that’s a good thing. I mean, I think there’s a mentality there for a lot of marketers that are like, well, I’d rather you know, send it to 10,000 people on the hope that someone might do it. And that’s the switch you gotta flip of. Like, no, what you really want is you really just want whoever’s really engaged, even if it’s 500 people, right? You really just want the one, you don’t want to, you don’t, it’s not a good strategy to email people who don’t want to hear from you.
RV (23:00):
Like it doesn’t actually work it and it has a lot of negative, negative impacts. This is kind of like what I hear you, what I hear you saying. So I have another question. I do want to, I want to hear number, I want to hear your number three of your flywheel or your three rules of the flywheel. But here’s another thing is when it comes to creating conversions, okay, so we’ve been, you’ve been talking like what’s your long-term nurture strategy, but let’s say you’re in a launch of some type, like a book launch or a course or a product or you know, or if you’re just making a fourth quarter push, we have a lot of professional service providers that work with us too. You know, they’re doctors and lawyers and chiropractors, whatever. And they’re just trying to drive leads into whatever their small business is.
RV (23:43):
So what about when you’re, when you’re trying to do like a quote unquote close cart situation? Yeah. Does, does, what do you know about effective email strategies there? Does the volume increase? Does it change? Like is there anything that you know about this? If you, if you’re trying to use email to actually sell, like not just build trust and add value, but like in the moments where you’re going, I need people to buy, like this is my moment where I pay my expenses for the year. How do we treat email differently in those seasons versus just the normal?
NB (24:22):
Yeah, you, you send more emails that, that’s the quick version of it. So let’s say we’re doing a a cart close right? Course launch any, any activity and we’re saying, Hey Friday at 10:00 PM like, that’s it, you can’t buy this anymore. A lot of people, you know, Friday at noon would send the last email, right? Or they’d be like, I don’t know, I told them on Wednesday it’s gonna close on Friday. So I probably like, they knew that, so I probably shouldn’t send another email like, no, no, you should definitely send an email. Probably the three things that I would do is I would send an email Friday morning saying today’s the last day and I might even kick in some bonus that I’m gonna give to everybody who bought. But I’m like, Hey, if you bought today, I’m a, maybe I wasn’t talking about it all the way along, but I’ll do this extra little thing to, to kick it over. And just make sure to give it to everyone else that way someone who’s like, Hey, I bought like day one. Yeah.
RV (25:17):
Early words got screwed.
NB (25:18):
Yeah, you don’t want that. Oh, another thing that helps in, in any kind of launch is being able to have multiple deadlines. So let’s say it’s a five day launch, I don’t know, opens on Monday, closes on Friday, you want something that goes away Monday end of the day, right? So that you can do a cart close on Monday, the, it’s still open, but like this extra bonus went away and then, so you’ll get this spike. Or maybe you do, actually I’d probably do that on Tuesday. Now I think about it because Monday gets you all this hype. Everyone who’s excited Tuesday you get this, Hey, this bonus is going away, so let’s let’s you email twice that day cuz you’re like, hey, the bonus goes away. And then that in the morning and then that evening you’re like, this is about to you know, you’re about to lose this back in sales.
NB (26:12):
Find some good educational re reasons to email on Wednesday and Thursday and then Friday morning as like, hey, we’re we’re closing tonight. Here’s some testimonials, here’s things that people have gotten. And then I, I would send an email like the last hour, you know, this is the, you have one hour left to buy it. And then the final thing, cuz you’ll see a bunch of sales happen then, especially from the people who are like, oh yeah, I’ve been watching this, but like every time I’ve gotten an email I’ve been doing something with the kids or you know, whatever Austin, you’re like, okay shoot, I actually have 52 minutes left to do this, you know, and throw a countdown timer in the email. That’s the feature that’s built in to convert it makes it really easy.
RV (26:52):
Well that’s really cool to not have, you don’t have to like put a little third party widget or something in there. You drop a native. That’s cool.
NB (26:58):
And then the last thing that I would do is on Saturday in our fictional example, I would do a down sell where I would say basically send the people who are interested in the launch but didn’t buy. So make that custom segment and then send them an email and like offer something different. Maybe it’s if you’ve had all of this stuff for one package in your, in your course, maybe you’ve trimmed it down to a lighter version and you’re selling that and say, Hey, if that wasn’t a good fit, maybe check out this other thing and it’s to a smaller group and you’ll drive another maybe 10% of sales off of that. You could also do an email and just say like, Hey I noticed you really engaged but you didn’t end up buying. Could you let me know what the reason was?
NB (27:47):
And a bunch of people will come back and be like, oh, it’s too expensive. I didn’t see the value. Like there’s some really good customer research that happens in there and, and you could even have like your assistant go through and be like, oh, well if it’s too expensive, here’s this option. Or if you didn’t see the value, here’s some of their case studies and you know, someone would be like, oh, well that’s, that’s sales, that’s not scalable. And it’s like, okay, but if I, if it takes me another five minutes to send a custom email to make a $300 sale, like yeah, that’s pretty scalable to have a team member be doing
RV (28:15):
That. Especially if you can copy and paste that email 25 times and like pick up, you know, pick up more sales. So, so basically in that, in that theoretical example, you have something you’ve probably been adding value the week before. Yep. And then when you
NB (28:30):
Actually, and you have to build up to the launch, like yeah, it’s so important.
RV (28:33):
Okay. And then when, when, when you open the cart, you have like one email on Monday.
NB (28:43):
I I would, I’m, a lot of people will send more emails. But yeah, I’m gonna end up sending eight emails in five days basically. It’s kind of the cadence.
RV (28:53):
Yeah. So you got basically one on Monday, you got two on Tuesday with like that Oh, the early, basically the early bird bonus. Yeah. And then one on Thursday, one on, or one on Wednesday, one on Thursday. So that’s five and then three on Friday. That’s like eight.
NB (29:07):
Yeah, two or three on Friday and then definitely one on Saturday. One on
RV (29:10):
Saturday. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I love that. And
NB (29:13):
You’ll get unsubscribes. Another quick little tip is this is another thing that converts good at is putting a little link in there and j just saying like, Hey, we’re gonna, we’re, we are talking about this product all week long. If you don’t want to hear about it, but you don’t want to unsubscribe, click this and won’t, I won’t send you another email this week and like next week we’re back to our regular scheduled programming and it’ll just pause that for them. Cuz someone will be be like, look man, I’m not gonna buy it, you know, for whatever reason, but I love your content every week and you just don’t want that person to get annoyed. And so right at the beginning and actually the week before, you could say, Hey, we’re we’re rolling into launch week for this. I remember talking all about it. If you don’t wanna hear about it, click this link and we’ll skip next week and or, you know, and I’ll see you later or I’ll see you soon and that’ll save a bunch of unsubscribes and let people kind of control their preferences.
RV (30:07):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I mean, it goes back again to just this idea of there’s this like weird thought that marketers have that somehow if they spam people enough that someone who is not interested will like accidentally decide one day to buy, become interested and become interested, keep them up the head with it more, and then they’ll get excited about it and it, and it’s like, it’s the opposite. It’s like if they don’t want to hear from you, let them not hear from you. Or if they don’t want to hear from you so frequently, let them slow down the cadence, you know, until they’re ready. That’s the whole point of email is you’re just nurturing them in an automated fashion and then you will catch ’em on the next launch or the launch after. But if you, if you annoy ’em, you’re gonna, you lose them here and then you taken money out of your future pockets. So I’m a I lo I love that. So I wanna go back to number three. You said the, there’s three things that great flywheel should have. And then I want to hear, I want to hear a couple specific, I have a couple specific questions for you about convert kits. So yeah, what’s the, what’s the third part about the flywheel?
NB (31:11):
Yeah, the third rule is that every rotation of the flywheel should produce more results than the previous rotation. Mm-Hmm. So going back to the rules, right? It needs to be in sequence, these can’t be scattered tasks. The second rule is each rotation needs to be easier than the previous one. And the third one is that it has to produce more results than the previous rotation. So if you think about that, like, wait, our rules are that rules two and three together is like, it has to get easier over time and it has to produce more simultaneously. Like that’s kind of a high bar to hit. But there’s a lot of creators that have done this. So let me give you an example. There’s a creator his name’s Sawhill Bloom and he writes a lot about habits and mental models and business and, and you know, all of these kind of things.
NB (31:55):
And he’s popular on Twitter. And so he’s built up a good size following on Twitter and he drives a lot of subscribers from his email or from Twitter to his email list and then from there into automations. And he’s got a few things going on here. He he does a referral program where he says, Hey, if you refer three friends to my newsletter, then you get this extra guide that I wrote for free. And so that means every subscriber that comes in, you know, maybe 10% of ’em refer friends. And so that turns into, you know, every one subscriber turns into 1.1 or 1.5 subscribers, and that goes from there. The next thing that happens is he’s got paid products that he is selling that’s pretty normal. So, so he is making money off of every subscriber from there on, from there he is in something called the Convert Kit Sponsor Network, and that’s where we sell advertising sponsorships for his newsletter on his behalf.
NB (32:50):
And so he is making a good amount of money from that, and he’s actually taking all of the money that he makes and pouring that back into advertising to grow his newsletter faster. And so what happens is, if we put some actual numbers to it at the beginning or like February, 2023, he had 200,000 subscribers on his list. And that’s growing at a pretty decent pace from, from social, but he was able to sell sponsorships and make tw about $25,000 a month off of selling sponsorships on his newsletter. He attends twice a week and he is taking all of that money and putting it into something called the partner network that a company called Spark Lu has. And that’s where you can sponsor other creators and like pay them $2 per subscriber that comes to you.
RV (33:42):
What’s it
NB (33:43):
Called? The company is spark Loop and we have a partnership with them. So you get it for free if you’re a converter customer. But it’s their partner network. And so basically you can say, Hey, I’ll pay $2 for every engaged subscriber that someone sends to me, and then creators can go browse it and say, oh, I like Nathan’s stuff. I’d happily get paid to send subscribers to him. So now instead of me going out and like paying Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram for more subscribers, like I’m paying another creator. And so Sahi is taking all the money he makes from sponsorships, spending it there, picking up another like 10 to 15,000 subscribers a month. And so now like he has this flywheel that keeps going around in circles, he’s taking his money, he’s reinvesting it, growing his list. But if you think about it, the more subscribers there are on his list, the more he’s able to charge brands for sponsors, which means the more money he makes, which means the more money he’s spending on advertising.
NB (34:43):
So his list grows faster. And so every rotation, this is actually getting easier and producing more results. So I think he started the year in January at about 150,000 subscribers and today what is it, April 20th or so he’s at 300,000 subscribers. So he is, he’s doubled the list in Q1 by like running the flywheel very aggressively. And he’s a great marketer, but that’s how you can kind of put these things in sequence and then make it so that the flywheel, you know, it’s like a snowball going downhill. It’s like picking up more snow as it goes. It gets bigger and bigger faster.
RV (35:16):
I love it. Yeah, that is really cool. How do you do the referral thing where you say, Hey, if you, if you refer three people to my newsletter, I’ll send you this bonus, which, I mean, does that basically mean you have to set up like an affiliate link for every single subscriber and somehow it has to track if, if if that subscriber sends it out and three people convert on that land? I mean that’s a, is that how that’s being done?
NB (35:42):
Yeah, so basically what it is in, in the same way that we’re all used to affiliate programs, you know, it’s similar this tool, spark Loop has that built in. And that’s something that people get for free with convert Kits Greater Pro Plan, and that’s where it’ll set up that system. And in the footer of your email it’ll say, Hey, here’s your link. You’ve referred two people. Like refer one more to unlock Nathan’s free guide to whatever. Right? Or it could be an email course, it could be maybe if someone’s like, Hey, if you refer 10 people, you know, I’ll send you this shirt. If, if you refer 20 people, I’ll give you this invite. Like you get to come and do this like one day workshop or you know, something else, right? You could, you can offer any kind of custom bonus. And it’s a really effective way of getting your best like your biggest fans to refer more, more people.
RV (36:36):
Interesting.
NB (36:37):
But it’s all, it’s all automated. You set it up once yeah.
RV (36:41):
And this is
NB (36:41):
Basically, I’m obsessed with flywheel and automation, so there’s no way
RV (36:43):
Is that like an HTML code you drop into the email and then it’s basically reading like how many people Yeah, exactly. Subscribe to and pulling that through. Wow, that’s interesting. That’s fascinating. Well, okay, so I don’t wanna let you go before we talk a little bit about, about Convert Kit. And, and I, I’ll tell you like I love all the marketing automation tools and I also struggle with all of them cuz there’s like certain things that they do and like you guys have some really, really awesome features. First of all, a lot of our clients use you and they say it’s very easy to use. It’s like, it’s not super comp, like it doesn’t feel overwhelming and complicated. And so a lot of clients really like that, especially if they don’t have like developers or a lot of team or like a lot of time for the tech stuff.
RV (37:27):
One of the features that y’all have that I don’t think I’ve never seen anybody else have, and I told you this before and I was like, it’s really an amazing feature, is to send emails based on zip code radius to say send an segment my list by people who are all within some radius range of the zip code, which is huge for anyone that does any type of events event marketing and for book book tours and stuff like that. Or even if you’re a speaker and you’re like, go, I want to have a meetup in all these different places. It, I mean, it’s a really, really cool thing. So anyways, w what would you say are like, let’s say, let’s just take three, so I’ve given one what would you say are like three of your favorite features about Convert Kit? Maybe they’re things that you, you guys either do that other people don’t do or you think you do better or it’s easier. But I would just love to hear like, what are your, your top three kind of like favorite features of On Convert Kit?
NB (38:29):
Yeah. First the location based one. I absolutely love, we have a bunch of clients that are musicians. Yeah. So like Tim McGraw and Land Bridges and Mandy Moore and a bunch of others. And their teams are doing that whole thing, you know, they’re like, oh, we’re playing this show, either a huge stadium show or something smaller and it’s like, look, you know, we want to email people within 200 miles of Dallas Fort Worth. Right? Super easy to do. Or another example is you get these customers who are selling like food products, right? Maybe you’re you know, you have like the recipe blog or there’s one that there’s a, a blog called Hey Grill Hay. She runs this fantastic barbecue blog and she’s just getting into selling her own like sauces and rubs that are getting carried in grocery stores.
NB (39:15):
Okay. And what she does I think is just brilliant is if she gets carried in a new grocery store, like they’ll just run this little test like, okay, we’ll see if people, like, if consumers want to buy your product, she’ll be like, cool, what what store did carry that in? And then she goes to her email list, you know, and says like, okay everybody within 50 miles of Denver where like this, you know, store is carrying our product, you know, she emails him and says like, go here and buy this. And then also tell ’em like, Hey, are you like, are you gonna carry this other ver you know, like you only have three other flavors. Where’s the fourth one? You know, whatever. And so these stores are just like, wow, your product was a huge hit, we should carry it. And more.
NB (39:56):
She’s like, yes, you should. I agree , and that’s the, the location-based play. But, but two other ones. One feature that Convert it has that I think no one else has. Well let’s set a scenario. We’re in our product launch and we’re like, Hey, the cart’s open, it’s live. Like go buy it. It’s that Monday morning email that we sent out and you hit send and you’re like, okay, here we go. You’re like refreshing for sales and instead of sales, you get an email back that says like, Hey man, your link’s broken. And you’re like, ugh. Like just this crushing feeling. You’re like, now do I send another email and all of that? No. In Convert It, you go in and you click edit on the link and you change it and you remove the like extra slash that you put in or however you type with the link, you fix it and hit save and all the links come through and, and click through automatically correctly. So it like, you
RV (40:47):
Can edit embedded links after you’ve sent them out.
NB (40:51):
Yeah, and I, as far as I know no other email tool will let you do that.
RV (40:56):
That’s cool. I don’t know of another tool that does that. I mean, that’s, that’s pretty awesome. I mean it was like one you hope you’d never have to use, but man, if you
NB (41:05):
Didn’t need use. But if you do it’ss there
RV (41:06):
For you, it’s pretty, it’s pretty clutch. Yep.
NB (41:08):
Like we’ve got your back. There’s a bunch of other fun things and like you know, like we’ll automatically check to see if any of your links are sending you a 4 0 4. We’ll check your subject. Like we’ll do a bunch of stuff like that for you automatically before you hit send. But probably the picking three, I love automations like as a feature and it, and pretty much every tool, email tool is gonna have automations. Things that I like about ours is you can click into an email sequence and see all the emails listed down the side so you can move between them really quickly. And so it’s easy to see like, oh, what did I send them last week? Or what was yesterday? And you’re not like backing out and going back in or opening a ton of tabs, you’re just like clicking between them. It’s really fast. I’m
RV (41:56):
Not gonna, that’s handy cuz a lot of the time you lose is just in the extra clicks when you’re building these things is like, click in here and then click in here and then click in here to edit it and then click back out. Click back out. Yeah.
NB (42:07):
Yeah, so making things load really quick. And then really like these advanced things that you’d have to be normally be like a marketing automation expert to implement. We’ve got all these recipes like shared automations inside of Convert It. And so you can go through and be like, okay like gimme the book launch template and let me load that in and then just edit it from me. So it’s really like, how do we take something that before only the experts could do and make it so it’s approachable for
RV (42:36):
Yeah. You mentioned that like the, you you mentioned that like deadline sequence, sort of countdown timer inside of an email. That’s a cool thing cuz normally you’d have to use like a third party plugin or like
NB (42:45):
Yeah. How do you install it? Like, paste in this html nobody knows how to do it, no one wants to, so it’s like click little plus icon, select countdown timer, set the date you want it to countdown to hit send on the email.
RV (42:56):
Yeah. That’s really cool. That’s awesome, man. Well just so everybody knows, like if you go to brand builders group.com/convert, that is our affiliate link for Convert Kits. So we are, you know, been fans of Nathan. A lot of our clients use Convert Kit. I wanted to have ’em on the show so you could like, hear, you know, his story and what they’re about. We’ve heard great feedback on it. Some of these, some of these features are really, really hard to find. So Nathan, this has been awesome. Like what’s, what’s the vision for Convert Kit from here? Like where do you, where do you, where do you think you guys are going? Like are there any big things ahead in terms of like what you’re working on or, you know, what’s, what’s that? What’s in the future?
NB (43:42):
Yeah, so our company mission is that we exist to help creators earn a living. It’s deeply personal to me. I grew up in a family where money was really scarce and when I learned about making money on the internet, I was like, does everyone know this? Like, like, I wanna make this accessible to as many people as possible. And so everything that we’re coming out with whether it’s our sponsorship network that we’re building and still in the early days or work at Commerce where you can sell digital products or even this new partner network that we’re working on with Spark Loop, those are all about like, Hey, how can we make it easier? Like, how can we get creators paid? And so that’s really what we’re building is like turning all of this into a flywheel that someone can sign up and say, Hey, whether you have like 500 subscribers or 50,000 subscribers, there’s a lot of great ways to make money. And so that’s kind of, kind of next, that’s the North Star. How much money can I pay to creators every single month? And then whatever crazy ideas I can dream up that makes that easier.
RV (44:44):
I love it. Well, thanks for what you’re doing, man. Thank you for supporting creators. We’ve got a, we have a sh a shared united passion for, we call ’em mission-driven messengers, but like we you know, and the tools, the tools matter a bunch and, and they’re making a big difference, man. So we wish you all the best. We’ll stay connected again, go to brand builders group.com/convert if you wanna learn more specifically about Convert Kit and you know, Nathan, I’m sure I’ll talk to you again soon.
NB (45:11):
Sounds good. Thanks for having me.

Ep 376: How to Build A Credible Personal Brand with Dr. Mariel Buqué

RV (00:02):
I am delighted that you get to meet a newer friend of mine, but someone who I absolutely adore and I feel is really, really a special soul. And this woman is a true expert and a total class act, and you probably have already seen her on social, but I predict that she’s, she’s gonna be one of the most influential personal brands in the mental health space in our era. So her name is Dr. Mariel Buque, and she is a Columbia University trained psychologist. Okay. So she’s an actual psychologist, a trauma expert. She’s the author of a book coming out called Break the Cycle which is from Penguin which is my publisher, Woohoo. Go Penguin. And she’s been featured on CNN and the Today Show b ABC News, and she does corporate wellness workshops to companies like Google and Twitter and Capital One and Facebook.
RV (00:57):
Her and I shared the stage together at Louis How Summit of Greatness. So she was one of the other speakers, and that was how I met her. And I immediately was like, Aw, I just love this woman. She’s awesome. And so we got to connect a little bit and I want you to hear her story because, you know, she, she was a psychologist and she had a practice, which we’re gonna talk about, and she’s gone from that to over 700,000 followers online. Huge following on both, both Instagram and TikTok. And so I want to hear about some of what her strategy’s been with social media, how she kind of went from, you know private practice to personal brand and just kind of hear that journey. And then also, you know, maybe, maybe we’ll get some free trauma counseling out of it along the way. So Dr. Mariel Buque, welcome to the show.
MB (01:49):
Thank you so much. Rory I’m such a fan of yours just from a professional standpoint, but also you’re just such a wonderful person and so I’m, I’m delighted to be with you here today.
RV (02:00):
Well, thanks buddy. I, so, so tell us your story. So you go to Columbia, you become, you, you’re a classically trained psychologist, and then did you immediately, like, start a, a private practice?
MB (02:13):
No, actually I started a private practice in the pandemic, but even prior to, I was already offering some education online as a student. So part of the reason why I decided to start offering information was because I was seeing so much of this information floating through these ivory towers, right? We have like these peer review journals and all these places where we place information that’s really important for the public to know, but it wasn’t really out there. And so I was like, okay, social media is a public space that can be a space where people can gather some of this mental health information. So it kind of all started even before I graduated, about a year or two before that. And then I transitioned into being a psychologist at Columbia University Medical Center. So I was a staff psychologist there in addition to also holding some courses. I was a professor in the medical center and in the main campus. And then within a year’s time, that’s when I developed my private practice. So I was very busy.
RV (03:17):
Wow. Okay. All, so you actually started while you were still in school, so you were still, you were a grad student mm-hmm. . And and then, and then you were, you said you were a counselor at Columbia University Medical and also a professor.
MB (03:31):
That’s
RV (03:31):
Right, yeah. And then went into private practice. So, so talk to me a little bit about social media, like the journey on social media, because I think there’s a lot of, a lot of people say, well, I’m not an online influencer, and I don’t know if social media applies to me because I don’t wanna do dances on TikTok, or, you know, I don’t really want to do hashtags. And our audience, you know, we describe as mission driven messengers mm-hmm. , and if I had to sum it up in one word, I would call ’em experts. I would say that they’re experts and, and you know, I just have this deep-rooted belief that you, you know, there’s nothing wrong with all of these things. You know, different transitions and reels and like, you know, learning all the skills, the hashtags and the angles and the, you know, the dancing and the music and whatever.
RV (04:17):
But I’m a, I’m a really firm believer that if you just share your expertise, there’s gotta be a way to make this all work. And when I look at, when I follow you and I go, oh my gosh, you have blown up so massively. So can you just like, tell us how did you get started on social media? What are some of your philosophies there? And, and also like, yeah, just like your mindset of going, you know, you’re a Columbia trained psychologist, but yet you’re on social media and, and, and going, there’s a little bit of a dichotomy there of like credibility mm-hmm. things, but clearly you’ve, you’ve made it work for you in a really big way.
MB (04:55):
Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting that you say the, that there’s that dichotomy because when I first started off, I actually, I was really hopeful that none of my professors would find me on social media, , .
MB (05:11):
Cause I thought, you know, this perhaps doesn’t present as professional. They might have some sort of view on what, how I’m presenting the information to make it more accessible to the general public and not feel like this, like very dense clinical information. And so there were so many things that I had to think about in, in reference to how to make the information feel like it was reaching the places that I wanted it to reach. And interestingly enough, I’m actually going to speak at Columbia this week. So it’s, it’s very, very interesting how that, the reason why I’m going to go speak at Columbia is because of the visibility that I’ve been able to amass based on social media. So it, it’s just coming back so full circle where, where,
RV (05:57):
I just think it’s funny cuz it’s like, normally, you know, people post stuff online and they’re like, I hope my parents don’t find out, or I hope like, you know, my, my boyfriend and my girlfriend doesn’t see. And you’re like, yeah, I hope my professors don’t see, I think . That’s, that’s so funny. Yeah.
MB (06:12):
You know, it was in part because it was so new, like, I was one of the, the first therapists and therapists in training that were coming into the social media space. So we didn’t have a blueprint for how we were supposed to be showing up into these spaces. We were just doing it based on our own personal style. And this is one thing that I, you know, I’ve, I’ve learned even through looking at your work, shout out to Lewis House also, like looking at how Louis shows up to the work itself as well. And I, because I show up from a place of wanting to serve in addition to wanting to be very authentic in my delivery, I think that’s worked out really well for me. And it’s something that people have gravitated to because they appreciate the authentic expression of the things that I say.
MB (07:01):
Right? And like being able to connect with the real human, but then also because I show up from a place of wanting to serve every day, I present information that is driven towards like, helping the public to better feel, better educated, and feel healed. And so that allows me to step into these spaces without having to overthink how it is reflected upon me. So I think that that’s been really helpful and being able to see the folks that I’ve been able to connect with, like you and Lewis and others, and also just bring in my own element of authenticity into this work. And I think that that has contributed to the, the amalgamation of like, you know followers across all these social media spaces.
RV (07:46):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, I mean, I, I think that’s really powerful because you go, Hey, on the one hand, I don’t wanna risk like my professional credibility with my peers and my colleagues. On the other hand, you’re, you’re going, I’m using social media as an outlet to serve people so that I’m, I’m deliberately trying to make this information more accessible, as you say, which I think is a, is a great word, word for it. So how would you describe your social media strategy? Like, when you just think about it and you go, in my mind, here’s what I think about in terms of the type of content I’m gonna present, the way I’m gonna present it, the frequency at which I’m gonna present it. Can you just like, talk to us briefly about about that? Like just what, what are some of, what’s your mindset as a, as how you approach content creation for social?
MB (08:42):
Mm. Ooh, I love this question. Content creation has been a combination of a few things. The first of which is a unique approach that has been very, very much a part of what has driven like my mission to show up in these spaces. And what I mean by that is, I have this way that I present information with something that I do every single day, which is drink tea. And so I present the information like I’m having tea with someone and I’m breaking the fourth wall and I’m engaging the person. And when I started doing that, I started getting the feedback that people were actually feeling like they were landing in a gentle place where they can actually like listen to a tip that felt doable, accessible. And so when I started hearing from my community that that was the case, I started doing more of those very unique types of videos. In addition to that, in terms of the cadence, I believe that right now algorithms are a little bit influx, but what matters is that people notice your presence. So I have had a steady flow of information for now almost seven years.
RV (09:56):
Wow.
MB (09:57):
Yeah. It’s been a while. . So the information has looked very different because I started off just as many of us did with very dry mental health information. Like, this is depression, this is anxiety, these are the symptoms. And we were just educating the public and bringing that information out. Whereas now there’s a lot more that people are talking about, what is codependency? What’s trauma, you know? So there are a lot more nuances that people are willing to engage in, in terms of the work. And so there’s more that we can do in terms of how we can deliver it. And there’s so much more content that we can actually use because people are having, you know, these kinds of words in their vocabulary and they’re, they’re understanding what we’re saying outside of the therapy room. So the cadence is daily. And what I aim to do is to provide information that hopefully people feel is new in some way.
MB (10:52):
Like, I presented information about grief the other day and how grief is connected to healing. That’s something that a lot of people, my followers were like, wow, I never thought of it that way. This is something that I’d like to sit with. Right? And so the fact that it’s new information, or at least my, my interpretation of how healing can look is allowing someone to take a step back into their life and really think about their healing work in a different way. So I try to add that element in there too, in addition to the other pieces. But I have realized that when you show up with consistency, people that digest your information are really grateful for the fact that you’re willing to do that.
RV (11:38):
When you say daily, break that down for me, like mm-hmm. , does that, does that mean every single day? Saturday and Sunday? Does that mean multiple times a day? Does that mean you’re like going, you have a YouTube video every day and a bunch of, you know, Instagram posts? Like, like talk to me about that. The, what, when you say showing up daily, cuz that’s, that’s an, that’s an insight in and of itself to just go like, Hey, you’ve been doing this for seven years. It’s, it’s not an overnight success story. Mm-Hmm. . And it’s like consistency always wins. I mean, if you post great content for seven years, how could you lose? Like, but, but break it down. Tell me the seven, well, tell me what you’re doing every day. Like what’s your daily rhythm?
MB (12:21):
Yeah. So I must say there is one day where I’m no longer posting, and that’s because I’ve looked into my insights and that day isn’t a very highly engaging day, which is Friday. And so every platform’s different, every account is different. So I would urge anyone that is like hoping to understand how their users are digesting their content to look into their insights. So Fridays is the day off, basically, but on my bigger platforms on Instagram and TikTok, there is a, an almost daily presentation of information in some way or another. There’s a carousel post, there’s a video, there’s some sort of a repost of somewhere where I’ve been. And I have also restructured, especially my Instagram into being break the cycle of trauma, that being one account, which is primarily the information that you’ll find in my upcoming book, and like information that can be digestible around trauma.
MB (13:23):
And then there’s my main account, Dr. Dot Mario Bouquet, which is where I present some information about what I have going on in addition to some mental health tips. So there, I, I’ve actually just recently broken them out instead of having everything live in one space. And the reason being is because I wanted there to be a space where people can go to and then just digest the information and a space where pe where that would be more branded in, in reference to my own personal brand. Now typically what the posts look like are carousel posts or reels, given that they’re so popular now with a boom of TikTok. And whenever I’m doing a tee time video presenting information in that way, that’s typically presented like on a weekly, now two times a month basis. And I, I find that presenting the information in that way gives people an, an opportunity to look forward to the information and to really digest it even more. Versus when I was posting a video on tee time and trauma every single day, I felt like I was oversaturating my audience and it wasn’t being received in the same way. So I did do a little bit of internal studying of what has worked, what the feedback I’ve received in the comments section, dms, I get emails every day. So all of this, I’ve kind of created my own self case study, if you may, and it has led me to figure out what the right cadence is for me on each of these platforms.
RV (15:01):
Mm-Hmm. and, and so, so is tee time a longer format post?
MB (15:07):
It is, it’s an approximate minute of me inviting someone to tea, offering up a, a bit of information about mental health, providing a mental health tip that they can try for the week, and then closing out the segment within a minute’s time. I don’t know how I do it, but it, it gets done.
RV (15:25):
Okay. And so you do that, you do that only once a week?
MB (15:28):
Once a week, sometimes twice a month, just depending on whether or not I can actually provide my team with the video that they need to chop up and make into a tee time. But yes, once a week.
RV (15:42):
Okay. But it’s, it’s only a 62nd video.
MB (15:45):
Yeah, it is. Yeah. But it, it’s, it’s about seven minutes before it’s chopped up.
RV (15:50):
Oh, it’s a seven. So it’s a seven minute video mm-hmm. that you record that then gets chopped up and they take like one, the, like, the top 60 seconds of it and that’s what they turn into a post for you? Yeah,
MB (16:02):
Yeah, because it’s a, it has a certain style, so it’s chopped up in a certain way where it’s inviting, it’s a little bit on the therapy humor and but it brings us back into something that’s a little more serious, so it has a flow to it and the editing behind it you know, requires for me to have a little bit more B-roll.
RV (16:21):
Got it. And then the rest of that, like every day you’re doing just a carousel post with more of like just text copy and tips that way and, and then other personal stuff or re-sharing things that you’ve been up to. Mm-Hmm.
MB (16:36):
. That’s right. Yeah.
RV (16:38):
Mm-Hmm. . How, and so tell me about your team. So you bring up a good, a good point, right? I think this is something that people struggle with as they’re like, okay, well, you know, I, I have some of this, I have some expertise, right? Like, I’m a lawyer, or I’m a, you know, I’m a C P A or whatever. I’m a financial advisor. Like I’ve got this, this professional, you know, expertise, but I don’t have the time to do this and I don’t, maybe I don’t love social media or don’t even feel comfortable, like, or maybe I don’t even get on the apps that much and like, push the buttons and like, know what to do to whatever, edit the, edit the reels and, and, and all of that. How do you get around that and how big is your team? And, and, and talk me through like the evolution of your team. So when you first started, I’m guessing you maybe did, were doing it yourself. And then how has that evolved where you’re at now?
MB (17:28):
Yeah. So I absolutely first started with doing it every, doing everything myself. And interestingly enough, when I was doing interviews for publishers, like shopping around publishers to determine who I was gonna go with for my book in every single meeting, and I have 15 of these me meetings Wow. Within a two day span. And in all of those meetings, everyone asked you do all that yourself. And I said, yes, I do. And so they actually couldn’t believe it, but I realized in that moment, I need to outsource. I’m clearly doing much more than what I need to be doing. And what I learned in that journey is that people have an area of expertise in their respective area that can help burgeon your platform that you may not have. And outsourcing is actually one of the wisest things that you can do in order to really build a platform beyond, you know, where you are.
MB (18:22):
So right now, my team is still relatively small, but it’s a very mighty team. And so I have a brand manager someone who is a, a content creator and facilitates a lot of the brand elements of what is forward facing to my followers. I have someone who manages more of the financial side of things and helps me in orienting me around those moving pieces. Someone who in essence oversees everyone else who is more of a business manager and oversees also all of the moving pieces of the business, including speaking, although I am transitioning into speaking via a speaker’s bureau and which is it, it’s still tentative who I’m gonna go with. But I have been managing all of that on my own, on the backend with my team. And so there is a person that helps me to make sure that everything is like running smoothly.
MB (19:28):
So it’s been, in essence, more of a, with myself included four person team, which I think given how much I have on my plate is most of what I can manage. But I do believe that having someone that oversees everything has freed up a lot of my own space to be able to be creative, know what kind of content I wanna put out, because I still very much am tied to that part of the work. And the reason being is because it’s such sensitive material that I have to be closely connected to it, whatever goes out into the public. And so it, it gives me an opportunity to do that, to write and to think about, you know, the evolution of what will be out there in the future for, for all of us, for my business.
RV (20:12):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. So, and, and business model wise. So you finished school mm-hmm.
MB (20:20):

RV (20:21):
When, when you first started, you, you, you were a counselor, right? So you, you, you, you were taking on clients and that was how you were bringing in most of your money mm-hmm. and then how, how has your bus, how has the business model evolved? Like, how have the revenue streams kind of come and gone and changed over the, over the time span of, of making this like your official full-time gig? Mm-Hmm.
MB (20:45):
. So it has had an evolution that has geared in the direction of consulting, writing, and speaking. So those are my main areas. Now. I do a lot of corporate wellness consulting. And then as you mentioned, you know, kind of through some of my bio stuff, and then also with the authorship journey, it’s my very first book, right? So I did give myself an opportunity to, to streamline everything else so that I can then focus on the writing piece. The evolution of that was primarily me trying to set up the business financially. So before I, I used to take on a lot of brand partnerships with some of the health organizations that are out there, Ali Wellness, c v s even some organizations that had a health element or an element around self care, like anthropology for example, or Dove who weren’t necessarily like health organizations, but were connected to a mission to serve in, in the area of mental health.
MB (21:48):
And so all of that actually helped me with the financial setup to be able to then create a team and have an actual funnel of income to individuals that can help me to build what, what I really desired, which was an evolution of my expertise in the authorship and speaker arena, right? And so now that’s where I am now. I’m, I’ve been able to build that out. I have a really solid book deal. You know, I have a strategy for how to move forward. And so all of that is now in place because I first started off with doing all those other things, right? Like all the things that are in your traditional kind of psychology trajectory, being a clinician, being a professor, and consulting here and there, but not as much as I’m doing now.
RV (22:39):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I, one of the things that I love about the way that you’ve done what you have done is you know, like a lot of times, you know, lots of people wanna write a book, and, and one of the, one of the big things that we’re always telling people is we’re saying, Hey, build the audience before you build the book. Because you gotta have, you gotta have people who, who want to buy the book really like because you know, we all think, oh, I’ll just write a book and then all of a sudden, you know, everybody will run out and buy it. But it’s like, you really need that kind of core fan base. Mm-Hmm. . So how do you nurture that fan base? Like in addition to posting, how do you handle are like, are you doing comments and dms all day long? Like, are, how much time do you spend on that actual you know, interaction piece?
MB (23:36):
I go in at least once a day to make sure that I’m connected in some way to community and see it, especially if there are any comments that I feel, feel like might need special attention, however, and, and also with people that DM me that wanna build with me in some way. There’s a lot of people like that, and I, I don’t wanna miss those messages, but for the most part, the, the, my team member who is managing a lot of the content side does have a good way of being able to connect with people in a way that is my voice in many ways. A lot of us are doing now. Because sometimes these platforms just get way too big and it can be a bit overwhelming to manage it as one person. So I try to stay connected to the community. And even through my newsletter, like in my newsletters, people email me still via the newsletter when they receive it, and they’ll tell me it’s a newsletter that helps people with coping skills.
MB (24:34):
And people always tell me like, this one really helped me. I’m gonna use this one this week. And so I try to be responsive there as well. However, because of the enormity of these platforms, now I, I can’t respond to everyone. And before, when I first started off that first and second year, every comment was attended to every last one, even when I was at, you know, 10, 20, 30,000. But now it, it’s almost impossible to do. But I do try and make sure that if there’s ever any sensitive material or if there’s anybody who feels a little bit more tender and sensitive or like they really want to connect that they’re being attended to, because one of the things that is really important for me is for a person to feel like when they come to any of my platforms, they feel a sense of security, safety and like they’ve landed in a soft place. And if I can make that even, even though I can’t please everyone, if I can make that a core part of my mission, then I’ve been able to really fulfill a lot of what I’m, I feel like is a part of the work that I’m here to, to do. So the, the comment section is an important part of my work, but you know, the more that we grow the, the harder it gets to mm-hmm. manage
RV (25:58):
. Yeah. Yeah. Those are good. I mean, that’s true about everything. I mean, the, the more the business grows, it’s like it’s harder to keep up within, that’s how you end up creating jobs for people and, and doing that. So well, Dr. Marielle, this is, this has been so good. Like, it’s so cool to to hear this. I got one other question for you, but before we do that, where do you want people to go if they want to connect up to you and like, follow your journey? And, and obviously we didn’t talk much about what your actual expertise is, like intergenerational trauma and like, you know, like you said, the dealing with having coping skills and things for, for dealing with, with trauma and mental health. But where should people go if they wanna, if they wanna follow you?
MB (26:41):
They can go to dr marielle bouquet.com, which is my website. And there, there’s just about everything that I’m up to, but I’m Dr. Dot Marielle bouquet on all socials, and so they can find me in that way as well.
RV (26:55):
Uh huh . So, and it’s, and her name is m a r i e L, and then Bouquet is spelled B U Q U E, just so you all know. So head over and at least leave her a comment or a shout out on TikTok or Instagram and follow her and, and just let her know that you heard her here on influential personal Brand podcast, Dr. Mariel is, if, if there’s somebody out there who is professional services person who’s like, has a really deep expertise, who really cares a lot about quality and credibility, and you know, has a true desire to maintain professionalism within their craft mm-hmm. but they’ve been sort of slow to adapt to social media or to adopt social media, or you just haven’t made it a priority, what advice or encouragement would you give, you know, would you give to that person?
MB (27:49):
I would say bring your authenticity and your voice. So find whatever it is that it is your voice within this space, within your own respective health space, and bring that in. Like, there are people waiting to hear from you. And I think we oftentimes, we’re, we’re so caught up in our own process of how to make it happen, that we forget that there’s an audience that’s there that’s waiting for our voice. And in addition to that, I know you mentioned TikTok videos and dancing. I just wanna say I don’t dance and I don’t dance on these videos, , and I’ve still been able to to amass a healthy audience. So there is a way that we can, as health professionals, really get the message out there. Just find your own flow, your own way, whatever authentic message it is that you wanna relay and your own clinical voice. And I think that there’s so much power in that and you can bring to these platforms.
RV (28:42):
I love it. Well, we will link up to dr mariel Buque.com [email protected] slash podcast in the show notes. So you, that’s an easy way to find her if you, if you don’t find her on your own. And Dr. Mariel, this is so wonderful. I, I love connecting with you. I’m excited to follow your journey. I’m absolutely confident that you’re just going to go so far and, and continue to impact millions and millions of people. So thanks for making time for us friend, and we wish you the best of luck.
MB (29:10):
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Ep 369: How to Build Recurring Revenue | John Meese Episode Recap

RV (00:02):
How do you build massive recurring revenue? That is the theme of today’s show. And recap, this is sort of based off the interview that I did with John Meese talking about how to build massive membership sites, and we’re gonna talk about some of those highlights. But really, I wanna zero in on some of what our, what we believe our keys are to building massive recurring revenue and, and even just understanding what recurring revenue is and why does, why does recurring revenue even matter? And I wanna just kind of start with a little bit of a track record here. So you know, this is something that we know something about. Brand Builders is a recurring revenue model. I mean, our core business is a one-on-one coaching or, and training product that people pay a subscription for. And that’s our, our flagship program includes you know, coming to two days of training every month, and also one-on-one coaching every single month as well.
RV (01:04):
And then there’s a, there’s a, a, a, a do it yourself, like a self-study version of it, which is you get access to all the online training, and that’s a lower, a lower version. But we are a membership site, or not a membership site. We’re a recurring revenue business. And the business that we sold in 2018, a huge component of that business was also recurring revenue. So this is something we know a lot about and have a lot of experience in. And I first wanna talk to you about why would you even consider recurring revenue and, and, and, and what are some of the, some of the strengths and some of the reasons to have recurring revenue. One of the great things about recurring revenue, so this is some of the, you know, selling subscriptions, is because every month you don’t start on zero, right?
RV (01:48):
Like every month you’re not automatically on zero every month, you automatically come into the month with revenue contracted. Now, not always does a hundred percent of that come in, but you always have a, a, a, a large number, a large proportion of revenue contracted. And so that’s really, really valuable. And y you know, just in terms of taking the pressure off, because what recurring revenue does is it allows you to kind of predict for the future. It’s, it’s, it’s more predictable. And so because it’s more predictable, we can say, okay, well if, if we can grow our revenues, you know, we’re always factoring for churn. So some percentage of people are gonna leave, and hopefully we’re gonna seal that back door with retention, which we’ll talk about. But the the other thing that we will we’ll try to do is we’re always bringing people in the front door and, and then the snowball is growing.
RV (02:44):
And so it’s a snowball that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So the revenue is steady, it’s consistent, and then you can plan for growth. You can say, gosh, you know, hiring this person would be a little scary right now, I don’t know that we could afford them, but assuming some basic metrics. And, you know, if we can look back and say, Hey, statistically our, our revenues grow at this rate, we can sort of forecast more predictably and more comfortably in the future to say, yeah, there’s probably some investments we could make, whether it’s technology or personnel or you know, equipment or whatever you know, software tools you need or services you need done to go, I think we, we can, we can swing it based on, you know, our growth trajectory. The other reason why recurring revenue is so valuable is it’s, it’s literally more valued in terms of business valuation.
RV (03:35):
So when you look at the financial valuations of a business, this is a super deep dive by the way that in our, one of our phase four courses is called eight Figure Entrepreneur. And we really teach the real mechanics of, of, you know, the, just the, the basic foundations of finance and acumen, cash flow and things like that that most entrepreneurs don’t get, not even in business school. You know, I have an M B A and I would say I, there was so much practical information I I never got. But when you look at how businesses are valued, businesses are valued based on an estimated stream of future cash flows. So in other words, they’re saying, what’s the likelihood, the way I describe it is pretend that you, here’s how you, here’s how you value a business. Think of it as a money machine.
RV (04:22):
And if, if I had a money machine that printed dollar bills and I said, Hey, I have a machine here that prints a $1 bill every year. How much is, how much would, would I sell this machine to you? And what would you be willing to buy this machine? And we go, well, we know it’s, it’s probably worth at least a dollar cuz it prints a dollar every year. And you know, if you don’t do anything to improve the machine, if it’s a reliable machine, there’s probably gonna be a dollar next year. So that would be $2, you know, in, in three years from now, it’s gonna be at least $3. Now the machine could break down. So that’s part of what as the buyer is assessing as what’s the likelihood that machine’s gonna break down or the strategic, A strategic buyer is somebody who says, Hmm, I know how to take $1 machines and I can turn them into machines that print a dollar every month.
RV (05:09):
I have some expertise or some skill or some people on my team who can take that machine and make it per print more, either $1 bills faster or can print dollar bills that are not a dollar, but $5 or $10 or $50. And so that’s what, how businesses are valued. It’s like, what’s the, what’s the reliability of the revenue coming in the future and saying, I’m willing to, when someone values a business and buys a business, they’re saying, I’m gonna, I’m gonna basically buy three years of your future cash flow now and assuming going, I’m gonna take the risk of going this machine. I’m buying from you. I’m going to, it’s gonna take me three years to earn my money back, but then after that, I’ll make more money. Or because I believe that I can pay, pay you three years worth of earnings for your machine now.
RV (05:59):
And I think I can, I can increase the productivity of that machine. And that’s effectively right there is how businesses are valued, which they really overcomplicate in a lot of, you know, academic institutions and schools and just people don’t understand it in general. Well, so then why is recurring revenue valuable? Because recurring revenue is predictable, and as predictability goes up, the valuation of the business goes up because the likelihood of those cash flows being there, every single month goes up when it’s already contracted versus when I have to go out and sell a whole new bunch of customers. So recurring revenue companies have higher values, they’re literally worth more because they’re more consistent and more the revenue’s more consistent and more predictable. You know, and if you look at SaaS companies, software companies, a lot of times those companies are valued based on a multiple of their revenue.
RV (06:51):
Whereas most companies are valued on a multiple of their profits. And so it becomes highly valuable when you have recurring revenue because it, it’s enticing to a potential buyer. So the demand for that money machine i e a business is, is higher. So those are some of the reasons to do recurring revenue. The, one of the other reasons why we love recurring revenue, and, and here’s a good way so in our, our phase one course one which is called finding your brand, d n a, one of the things we help people do is, is figure out what their primary business model should be. Your primary business model. Is that the revenue stream to which all others are subservient to that one. And we talk about when you should choose a course versus when you should choose a membership site. And there’s all these factors.
RV (07:39):
Well, one of the factors is to say, if you are good at constantly finding new customers and you’re good at it and you, you, your talents lend themselves to it and you want to do it, you go, a course is a really good option because once the course is built, you don’t have to change much. You can focus your time on just finding new people to buy the existing thing. But if you struggle with marketing and sales and you go, man, I struggle to find new customers, I’m not as, as talented at as that, then we go, well, sometimes membership sites are better because what you can do is you can spend less time acquiring new customers and spend more time creating content to service your existing customers. And so that’s kind of what we do. I mean, we like to think we’re good at both marketing and sales especially is like kind of our expertise.
RV (08:30):
And, but, but we don’t love having to sell every single month just to like hit the budget, right? So we love having the recurring revenue and going, you know, at least for me, I think one of my superpowers is creating content. So it’s easier for me, even though I love marketing and sales, and we’re good at marketing and sales, and that’s what we teach people how to do. I, I, my superpower I think is even more so in creating content. So it’s easier for me to go, yeah, let me, let me find a few customers who will be in a continuity with us and let’s serve them in a deeper way. Now, at Brand Builders Group, we currently have over 600 active clients that are in our, our our monthly training, you know, and coaching program which are our flagship programs. And there’s like a self, you know, there’s a do-it-yourself version, and then there’s a one-on-one version, which also includes our live training events.
RV (09:25):
And then we have, we have like 300 private clients on top of that who just hire us for private projects and private, you know topics at at at less consistent. Those are more like, those are more like sales. They’re not recurring revenue, they’re bigger hits of revenue. When someone just says, ah, I really wanna like, focus on my podcast, just hire us to help you with that. Or writing their book or launching their book or their keynote or building out their funnels or, and it’s more of just they’re hiring us for, in a more expedient way to focus on a burst. But those are ones like, you have to be selling new ones every month versus the recurring revenues going, Hey, when you’re on a recurring membership, we give you all of those things, we give you access to all of ’em, and we’ll step you through ’em as you need to.
RV (10:06):
So that’s a little bit about why recurring revenue matters and understanding how it affects business valuation. Again, if, if you look at the difference between a company valued on revenue versus a company valued on profit most companies are valued on, on, on profit or ebitda earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, which basically just means profit, which is, you know, to use my money machine analogy which by the way is an analogy I came up with of, of just thinking about a business just as a simple m money printing machine to go, okay, a dollar, if my money, my money machine prints a dollar every year, that’s the profit of, that’s the final output. But and most companies, you know, depending on a whole number of factors, but let’s say you were getting a just a five multiple meanings, if someone were to pay you a five multiple, that means a buyer’s gonna basically come in and say, I’m gonna pay you five years worth of profits, five years worth of future profits today to buy your money machine.
RV (11:08):
So I’m gonna, if, if you have a dollar in profit, I’m gonna pay you $5. I’m a multiple of five, I’m gonna give you $5 today knowing or feeling confidently, like I will at least get my $5 back over the next five years and hopefully faster if I can do some things to improve the efficiency of the operation or if I have other strategic reasons to make that acquisition. That’s how most business deals are done. It’s a multiple of profits or multiple of ebitda, but recurring revenue, like SaaS companies often are valued on revenue. So if, if you get a, a value of let’s say you get a, a multiple of five, but instead of on your profits, it’s a, it is on your revenue. So, for example, to use this same example, a company that produces a dollar in profit every year, let’s say their revenue is $10, so that would be a company operating at a 10% profit margin.
RV (12:03):
So they generate $10 in revenue, they gotta pay all their expenses, their salespeople, their marketing, their overhead, you know, the product acquisition, their taxes, their insurance, their, you know, everything. And then at the end of the day, maybe they have a 10% profit. Like, and you go, okay, I generated $10 in revenue, a dollar in profit. Normally it’s a a five multiple would say, oh I’m getting, I’m gonna get $5 for that business, five times, $1. But when you’re valued on revenue, it’s a game changer to go, I’m, if I got a, if I got a a, a multiple of five on revenue, it’s not five times $1, it’s five times $10. So that company is to buy that company is not $5, but $50, five times 10, the multiple of five times the revenue of $10. So that’s five years worth of revenues.
RV (12:55):
I’m valuing, valuing that company based on revenues that that company is worth $50 instead of $5 because it’s five years of future revenues versus five years of future profits, right? One of the dynamics that makes companies more have a higher enterprise value is, oh, and be more likely to be valued on revenue, is the consistency of the revenue, which is, you know, happens with recurring revenue. So that’s probably more than most of you wanted to know, but I, I mean, I literally went through MBA school and never understood that basic core concept. It wasn’t until years later as an entrepreneur that I, I, I had a mentor finally explained it to me, sort of in, in simpler English. And it’s important to understand that. And, and that is, even if you plan on never selling your business, I mean, this is again, another principle.
RV (13:45):
We teach an eight figure entrepreneur, is that a business worth selling? Looks a whole lot like a business worth keeping. You know, a business worth selling is a business that operates without you with consistency and produces loss of cash flow inevitably into the future. Well, a business that does that looks a lot like a business worth keeping. I mean, if you have a money machine that prints money every year and it doesn’t require a lot of your time, and there’s not a lot of risk in, in those, that money machine breaking down, you go, why didn’t I just keep it? So the money machine’s just printing money and I’m just keeping the money every year. That’s the way to think about it. Recurring revenue increases consistency, thereby reduces volatility or reduces risk, thereby increasing the valuation of that business, whether you sell it or you keep it.
RV (14:25):
So high level, that’s why recurring revenue is such a good idea. Now, how do you create great recurring revenue? Couple of the key things, if you’re wanting to create recurring revenue of your business, and John talked about this a little bit in the, in the interview, but if you really wanna create a quality recurring revenue product, the question that I would pose for you to answer is this, what is the problem that I can solve that never goes away? What is a problem that I can solve that never goes away? In other words, the need for it continues on month after month after month, which causes people to want to continue paying for us. Accountability is one of the, one of the core problems that we solve. Now, technically the problem we solve is obscurity. We help people who are struggling to be more well known to, to do that.
RV (15:24):
And we teach them a set of information and strategies for how to do that. And all the tactics that we have now used to launch, you know, we’ve had 12 clients that have become New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestsellers. We’ve had four clients create TED Talks that have gone viral with over a million views. We’ve had over we, we just had our, our fifth client generate more than seven figures growth in their annual revenue. So they’ve grown their revenue more than a million dollars a year since being a client of ours. So we have a set of knowledge that we teach people to do that. But what the need, the, the, the problems that never go away are accountability, community and access to great vendors and as well as inspiration, right? You, the inspiration is like never, it’s a, it’s something that never disappears.
RV (16:13):
So those are the, some of the problems we’re solving. So you gotta sort of think about it if you’re gonna create a membership site or if you have one and you’re going, how do I, how do I get the snowball rolling faster? Be thinking about what are the problems that my clients have that never go away? And how can I serve those needs better? All right? So that’s my first key for how to grow your recurring revenue. The second, the second key, and this one is directly from the, from the the mind of AJ Vaden. So AJ talks about this all the time with our team internally, is when you’re growing recurring revenue, it’s sort of a two-part game. You need new people coming in the front door. But the big thing that everybody misses, which is really the, like, the more critical one I think is you have to seal the back door.
RV (17:05):
You have to like, you have to be so sticky that people aren’t leaving. Otherwise, you literally have a treadmill or this revolving door where you got people coming in as fast as they’re going out, or if they’re leaving faster, then you’re bringing ’em in, then you’re going backwards, right? And that’s negative churn. So y you, the, the, the first real job is to go, man, even before we perfect bringing in new customers, it’s going, how do we close that back door? In other words, how do we keep people from canceling? And when I say key people from canceling, I don’t mean like locking them in to, to, to, to being forced to stay to something that they hate. It’s not like going, Hey, you gotta have, you know, these contract terms that are just relentless. And it’s not that, here’s the key, the key is retention or, or excuse me, here’s the, here is the key to growing your membership site.
RV (18:00):
Utilization equals retention. Utilization equals retention. This is what AJ is saying all the time. Utilization equals retention. Meaning the way to serve your current customers is you have to make sure they’re using whatever the thing is that you’ve given them. And this is a distinct mindset shift. A lot of people think that sales is done once the sale is made. And when you have that mindset of like, oh, I closed the sale, I’m onto the next, I’m onto the next, that doesn’t work. We don’t think that works, period. You know, in one of our phase three courses, it’s called pressure-free persuasion. We, we talk about how the sale is not done when the sale is made. The sale is finished. When the client experiences the result that you promised the sale isn’t made, or the sale, the sale isn’t finished. When the sale is made, the sale is finished.
RV (18:55):
When the client experiences the result that you know, you promised or that you were both working towards you probably didn’t promise it. I would recommend you don’t promise results. Just like you can’t, we cannot guarantee results even though we’ve had amazing results. And that’s why our client list continues to be amazing, right? I mean, we’re working with Ed Millet and Louis Howes and Amy Porterfield and, and you know, Eric Thomas et the hip hop preacher and Peter Diamandis and all these amazing people that are, are now clients of ours, cuz we are really getting amazing results. But utilization equals retention. So the sale that you have to make every month is not so much to a new customer like you might with more of a commoditized model, like a course offering, let’s say the sale you gotta make is to your current customers to use the thing they have.
RV (19:45):
So you always have to be selling, right? You still have to be selling, you gotta be selling them on making sure they’re using what you’ve given them. Utilization equals retention. If your people are using your program, if they’re using your service, if they’re using, if they’re accessing your portal, if they’re utilizing your tools, they’re gonna stay. If they’re not using your tools, they gonna leave, right? They’re not going to pay for something they’re not using. Even if what you’re providing is amazing world class best in class, even if your solution is the best there is, if your clients aren’t using it, they are bowing out, they’re gonna be leaving, right? So I’m not so focused, like if I were gonna buy a recurring, if as a, as a, as a business acquirer, if I were gonna go buy a company who had recurring revenue, I would be looking at their u the utilization.
RV (20:40):
Are people using the thing they’re paying for? If they’re using it, even if the product is crappy, I go, it’s, that’s great. I can make the product better. That’s not that hard. But if people aren’t using it, then I go, you just got a bunch of people paying for something here that are, you know, it’s a parking lot that no one is using and going, that’s not gonna long term, that’s not gonna work. We gotta get people using the thing. So utilization equals retention. And there’s a couple key things here for how to increase your utilization. So first of all, you gotta have a journey. You need to have a map, you need to have a visual that outlines what the process looks like. For those of you that are listening that are members in captivating content, which is our phase one course two program, that’s what we help you do.
RV (21:26):
We help you extrapolate your unique expertise and experience into a proprietary methodology, a body of work, a visual journey of, of illustrations and frameworks and flow charts and, and, and chart and tables that that show. This is the process. If you’re a member of ours, you know, we have the brand builder journey. It’s our four phase process that we walk you through from going you’re completely obs obscure and unknown to world famous and world recognized eight figure entrepreneur, best-selling author, hall of fame speaker you know, all the things that we have done and helped people do. We’ve got a four phase, a simple four-phase process that we push people through. And it works. Part of the reason why people stay is cuz they can see the whole journey. You gotta show them this, it’s this step and this step and this step. Don’t just assume that they’re gonna hang around blindly not knowing what, what it takes to actually get to where they’re trying to go.
RV (22:23):
So you wanna show that, talk about it, keep that in front of them so that they’re seeing like, oh, okay, you know, yes, it’s hard right now, but this is just a step and I’m gonna go to the next step and the next step and the next step, and that’s how I’m gonna ultimately get to where I want to go. So you gotta have a journey. The other thing is you gotta have data. You gotta have red flags going on, firing off in, in your, in your business. Meaning if somebody’s not using your stuff, you need to have dashboards and tools or reports or people who are monitoring that, who send up an alert to say, Hey, this is, and at, at at Brand Builders Group, I’ll just tell you transparently, we have something called an at-risk report where we’re looking at all of the people who haven’t been doing a certain number of activities.
RV (23:11):
So in our case, they haven’t logged into a portal in a certain number of days. They haven’t been to a course been to one of our live events in a certain number of days. They haven’t showed up for one on their one-on-one calls in a certain number of days. They haven’t, you know, been inside of our, our Facebook community, our private Facebook community in a certain number of days. And so we’re, because part of what we’re providing, part of what they’re paying for is frankly is accountability and inspiration. And this is how we track that, is go like, Hey, you’re not showing up, like you’re not doing the work. Like if you’re not coming, you’re not doing the work, which means you’re not getting the results, which means even though it’s not our fault that you’re not getting the result, the fact of the matter is you’re not getting the result, which means, means you’re not gonna keep paying.
RV (23:46):
So even if everything we do is perfect, if they’re not using it, it doesn’t matter, they’re gonna cancel. So we have to set up triggers and, you know, red flags and this at-risk report of all of these things. And we’re using automation tools to do this. And we’re using some of its manual reporting, some of it is customer surveys, some of it is manual outreach and check-ins, like to constantly go make sure people are using this. And, and here’s here’s another question that I would encourage you, you know, to, to ponder as it relate as it relates to this. Ask yourself this question, how can I serve my current audience in a deeper way? How can I serve my current audience in a deeper way? Because utilization equals retention. And if I’m serving them in a deeper way, then I’m, I’m speaking more powerfully to their immediate needs.
RV (24:40):
I’m providing the tools, the templates, the checklist for them to do it. Here’s a recent example for us. A lot of speakers struggle with how much should I charge? This has been, you know, gone on for decades, like what’s the right price to charge? And people throw out all these weird numbers. We created this, this speaker fee calculator. It’s, and it’s a simple set of questions you answer and it spits out not only what your speaking fee should be, but what your virtual fee should be and your half day fee and your two day fee and your international fee and your interview fee and all of it, it all spits out and it takes you like two and a half minutes to fill in this, this thing that is now a tool that solves a problem. We then also have a, a a a toolkit that is our speaker press kit and we go, you know, your speaker press Prescott needs to have a fee schedule.
RV (25:28):
Well, we just solved that problem, but then what about the rest of your speaker Prescott? What are all the things that need to be in there and how should it be structured and how should it be laid out? And we go, great. One of our incentives for people when they sign up I I think it’s, if I think if they sign up and pay for a year in advance, is we give them the template that we actually use for our own speaker press kits. And then you can like, model off of it and you can just build it, boom, up and running. So everything that we’ve been doing at Brand Builders Group for the last few years has been basically creating the education and all the educational resources. Now we’re moving much more aggressively and a assertively into how do we give people tools and templates and checklists to help them execute and implement what they’re learning faster.
RV (26:10):
And internally, our team is going, how are we monitoring utilization? Because utilization equals retention. Utilization equals retention. So that’s the second thing you really gotta do. Now the third thing is you gotta keep people coming in the front door. You gotta keep people always coming in the front door. And it’s just, you know, sales, sales solves all problems, right? Like if, if we, if we can figure out how to constantly generate new sales, then we’re gonna always have cash flow coming in that we can use to solve other problems or to hire people who can solve problems. The question is, do you have a consistent engine for driving new leads and new customers into your business?
RV (27:00):
Think about that. Just just think about that question to yourself for a second. Are you confident that you have an engine that consistently produces new leads and new customers for your business every month, every week, every day? Do you know exactly this is, this is how my machine works, we do this and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens and that brings somebody who finds us here and then they do this, and then they do this, and then they become a customer and then they stay because they’re utilizing the program. And you, if you aren’t confident on that, like if you aren’t crystal clear on what is your process, what is your system, what is your method for perpetually continually, constantly never ending, always driving new leads and new customers into your business? If you’re not clear on that, go to free brand call.com slash podcast right now, free brand call.com/podcast because you need to talk to our team because this is one of the things that we specialize the most in, is helping you create a, a set of mechanisms and systems and processes in your business to keep people coming in the front door.
RV (28:13):
They’ve gotta be coming in the front door because they’re always gonna leave out the back no matter how good your program is. And no matter how much you focus on retention, which, you know, as I just said, utilization equals retention. So we wanna close that back door, but even if your program is the best in the world, people are always going to leave. So you just gotta make sure you’re bringing in new customers faster than the older one, than the old ones are leaving by. And so you’re adding value to them and you’re also constantly refining and perfecting your new customer acquisition strategy. If you don’t feel confident or you’re not clear on how you get new customers and new leads on a regular consistent basis, you need to talk to us. I mean, I’m, I’m serious. Just go to free ran call.com/podcast, fill out the form and talk, talk to someone on our team because this is what we specialize in and this is why we’re doing it, right?
RV (29:07):
And I, you know, i i I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a total jerk, but like we, we just launched another seven figure business inside a brand builders group in like the last year. So we, we now have five different seven figure, multi seven figures businesses that we’ve built and two eight figure businesses. And it’s by following the same principles. All of these principles are are very straightforward, they’re not easy, but they are simple and they do work if you follow the system. So that’s why we’re here. We’d love to talk to you. If you’re not ready for that, hey, share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it. Obviously anything you can do to, to leave reviews helps us tremendously, but also helps new listeners so you know, rate and review and help us that way. And no matter what, keep coming back every week so that we can be keep pouring into you and giving you as much as we can Right here for free on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. That’s all we got today for how to build massive recurring revenue. We’ll catch you next time. We love ya. Bye-Bye.

Ep 368: How to Build Massive Membership Sites with John Meese

RV (00:02):
Well, today we’re gonna talk about a really important topic, membership sites, and a favorite topic of mine. And you’re gonna get to hear from one of my favorite people in the world on that topic, John Meese. So I’ve known John kind of loosely for years because he’s, he’s helped multiple people build membership sites. These, you know, six figure seven figure membership sites, specifically Platform University, which used to be owned by Michael Hyatt, who of course is good friend of ours, of mine, and AJ’s, Michael and Gail. And we’ve known Michael for years and he’d been a mentor and a friend. And so that’s how I met John. And Michael sold Platform University a few years ago. And I think around that time is when John started taking his expertise out and helping coaches and, and trainers and consultants and just anybody who’s out there to build wealth by starting an online business. And specifically, I think, you know membership sites. So he’s also the author of a bestselling book called Survive and Thrive, how to Build a Profitable Business in Any Economy, including this one. He’s bilingual in Espanol, and he just moved to Puerto Rico where he’s saving money on taxes, although that’s not why he’s went there primarily. But anyways, buddy, it’s good to have you here.
JM (01:23):
Thank you, Rory. It’s good to be here. It’s good to be here. Is the interview today gonna be bilingual or are we stick in English?
RV (01:28):
Yeah, no, I, yeah, we’re gonna do it in Spanish, man. Yes, you and me. It’s gonna be a back very, very short interview. . . It’s gonna be about 30 seconds, but so in all seriousness membership sites, why, let’s start with why membership sites? Sure. Why should, why should people be thinking about membership sites as a business model? And maybe even just kind of clarify what, what you classify, like what counts as a membership site and exactly what it means.
JM (02:02):
Yeah, so there are a lot of subscription type businesses, so I think it’s probably helpful to start by saying that my focus is generally helping people turn wisdom into wealth by building a thriving online education business. And so that’s a lot of the same work you do Rory, with Brand Builders Group of helping people build personal brands where there’s an educational component sometimes that looks like a course or coaching program or a life event or books. But memberships are the subscription version of that. And so some of my favorite membership sites that I’ve been a part of myself you know, you’re typically paying a monthly or annual fee to be part of a community where you get access to a combination of training, support, community. It’s more, there’s definitely more of a peer element than if you were maybe in like just watching a course.
JM (02:48):
Cuz often courses online courses are typically very kind of, you’re consuming it. And then that’s kind of it, like, there’s not usually a lot of community interaction, but community is a key part of membership sites. So there’s really two primary reasons to want a membership site in your business. One of them is kind of the obvious one, which is that when you build recurring revenue, now all of a sudden, every month you get to start knowing that you have a reliable recurring revenue coming in from customers who’ve subscribed to pay you automatically. I, like John Orlow calls this the the automatic customer, and I like that idea. I was just saying like, that’s a great book, you make the sale once. Yeah, it’s a great book. And, and it’s a great concept too, of just the idea that each month you’re like, well, I automatically have customers, I don’t have to start with zero.
JM (03:31):
So that’s huge. And recurring revenue can really grow over time to become an incredible source of generating wealth. But the flip side of that is also, it’s a phenomenal way to serve to serve your clients, to serve your customers and your audience. Because the reality is what, I mean, the academic churn is typically MOOCs or massive open online courses for like, what we know is like an online course where you buy it, it sits on the digital shelf somewhere, maybe you watch it. And historically, the, I mean just kind of industry-wide, the completion rates on online courses are very low. And the success rate of someone taking an online course and actually going to do it, actually do the work and succeed, which of course is what you want, not just their money. That’s also very low. Membership sides allow you to take the same kind of educational content and scalable educational content you might put in a course, but add ongoing community and support that allows people to stay connected to ongoing transformation. How
RV (04:26):
Do you do the community part of it? Like Yeah. Is is it, is it mostly a Facebook group? Like is it I mean, do you, do you, do you see that most people are using a Facebook group as their mechanism for hosting community? Or is there some other way that they’re achieving that? The objective of getting the members? Cuz that is a huge part of it is yeah, who do you meet and supporting people and meeting other, like referral relationships, et cetera, et cetera. How do, how do you facilitate that?
JM (04:58):
You know, Facebook groups at one point in time were kind of just the standard for membership sites because it’s kind of where everybody is or was. But I would say these days it’s still an option, really. The, the software you’re using or the platform you’re using is really secondary to the strategy for how you’re interacting with people. That said, I don’t really know, I can maybe think of one or two people I know with successful membership sites that are still on Facebook groups. Most people have used an independent platform that where you have a lot more control. There’s a lot of popular ones, but honestly I think the best one by far is circle. And so that was created by some of the early people at Teachable, which, you know, is like the biggest course platform in the world. And some of them spun off and created Circle, which is you know, essentially it’s your ability to create a private group. They even added courses within that now. So you can have courses community, you can, well, as much as I love Zoom, which you and I are talking in right now, you can actually replace Zoom by doing live streams or, or meetings through Circle as well. And they have a mobile app. And so there’s really the software secondary to the strategy strategy, but I would say Circle is like an all in one for having a great membership site.
RV (06:01):
Okay. That’s interesting. So kind of in the vein of, of retention or, or yeah, like of community is, there’s a retention, right? So the, the, to me, when it, when somebody starts a membership site, they go, oh man, recurring revenue. Like, yeah, you know, why, why, why sell a course for $500 when I can get people to pay me a hundred dollars a month and then they’ll stay forever. But I feel like the thing that we see pretty consistently is that people are gonna drop off around month three or four. So what do you think are some of the keys to retention? Because if that happens, if you were gonna sell a $500 course and now you’re just doing a hundred dollars a month membership Yeah. And now they’re only staying three or four, you actually have, you’ve gone the wrong direction, right? You’re losing money by converting it. Now there’s some other benefits of, of it, but I, I mean, what are some of the things that you see that help the retention component of this? Because to me, that’s really where the magic is, right?
JM (07:05):
Yeah. Well, it’s worth talking about your question’s. Great, Victoria, because it, it kind of illuminates sort of the ugly truth about membership sites. Cause we started with sort of the beauty of membership sites, right? It’s just recurring revenue. Your customers are getting transformation all the time. You’re getting recurring revenue all the time. That’s like the nice side. But the between the membership sites is that the minute you start a membership site, it’s upside down. And by that I mean the same way that you can be upside down at a house where you owe more than it’s worth. The minute you start a membership site, you have members who are paying, you have some members coming to pay, but for you to deliver a high value membership site, you have to give ongoing value. It has to be re not just, it’s not just kind of an on-demand library.
JM (07:43):
There has to be some sort of value giving on a regular basis to get people to stay. Because really the measure of success, the membership site is not that somebody joins, it’s that it’s retention, as you said Rory, it’s that they stay for a long period of time. Right? So I guess the first thing I would say is that if you’re looking at different products and considering a membership site, I actually don’t recommend you start with a membership site until you’ve already built a successful flagship program. Like a coaching service or a group coaching program or mastermind and a gateway product, like a low price course or a book or some, or a workshop or some other, you know, those really, those two anchors of the flagship product and the gateway product, they allow you to both bring in new customers on a regular basis, but also be able to create massive transformation in the flagship program at a, at a premium price. What those two things do is not just the revenue piece and the audience growth piece, which they do that, but they also help you refine your understanding of your target customer, their problems, their needs. And the way you sell a membership site versus the way you sell any other product that has a one-time purchase is completely different. Mm. And so it’s, it’s because are are you familiar with the concept of the the Infinite game by any chance? Rory?
RV (08:57):
I mean, you mean Simon Sinek’s book?
JM (09:00):
So Simon Sinek has a book on this, but the concept is not unique to him. But yes, his book
RV (09:04):
Is a great, no, I don’t even know what that, I don’t even know what that book’s about. I, I have read his others, but I’ve not read that book.
JM (09:09):
It’s a phenomenal book. And there are other great resources on this subject, but that’s usually the book I recommend is The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. But the point of this concept is that essentially that there are finite games. Like for example, what’s your favorite sport, Laurie?
RV (09:24):
The spot here. Oh, we’ll, we’ll go, we’ll go, we’ll go with, we’ll go with soccer. I’m Nashville Soccer Club season two. There we go. So now I’m, now I’m soccer man.
JM (09:32):
There you go. All right. So soccer or football as we call it in Puerto Rico, but that’s a whole other thing. soccer itself is a very, is a finite game. There’s a clear point where the game starts, the game ends in between, the ball kicks around a bit. Some people score points, some don’t. There’s a, but that’s not, there’s ar that’s not arbitrary, right? There’s a clear way where you know how points are scored and there’s a clear point where the game ends, it’s finite, the game ends, and you have a winner and a loser.
RV (10:01):
Yep.
JM (10:02):
Most things in life are not finite games. Most things in life that matter are infinite games. Like how do you win at marriage or raising kids or building wealth or growing a business. There’s definitely milestones along the way where you’ve achieved success, but there’s not really a finish line unless you create one arbitrarily that says you’re done. You can’t just say, all right, honey, that was our, that was our winning date night, actually. We’re done, now we’ve won the game. I’m just gonna kind of coast through the rest of this marriage. Like that does not work. I’ve been very for about a decade and I’ve already learned that lesson. So the point of this, the reason why I bring this up is kind of bring this back into products, is that when you sell like a course or a book or even a group coaching program, typically what you’re selling is a finite promise by this thing.
JM (10:50):
You will get this result, right? Like if you join my seven figure school accelerator, my flagship program, the promise is that I’m gonna help you build a personalized playbook to build a seven your seventh Figure school, which is an online education business that generates a million dollars a year from three core products. But I’m also gonna help you scale a flag share product to six figures. That’s a finite promise, right? And then when you sell a book or a course, if the course is how to get a thousand email subscribers, for example, that’s a finite promise. The only way to sell a membership site effectively and grow retention over time is actually to sell an infinite promise. Because baked into it is this idea that it’s ongoing. If I sell you a membership site, it’s like, Hey, just pay $10 a month to join my program and I’m gonna help you lose 20 pounds Immediately your brain kind of got off go, like, gets us like kind of like full break, full stop, and you’re like, wait, what? Lose 20 pounds, then I’ll just cancel the membership. Like why would I e even before you body, you’re already talking yourself out of staying as a member. Mm-Hmm.
RV (11:50):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (11:51):
Interesting. But if instead, and instead I approach that same exact membership and I say it’s $10 a month and as part of this, you’re gonna get access to all of my, all of my training and support to help you to help you build and live like a fit, a fit body and a fit life. Or I like the phrase to transform your I’m, I’m expecting my fourth son in April, so I’m definitely have a dad bought, but I wanna transform my dad bought to a father figure. Like I’ve heard that phrase a couple of times and that stuck with me. Mm-Hmm. Right? That’s, but that’s like, that’s an ongoing thing. That’s an infinite game. And so a key is you have to make an infinite promise. And so that’s, that’s really the first key to retention is really just upfront. You have to be clear on what transformation are you promising.
RV (12:31):
Yeah. I mean that’s in, that’s interesting thought. You know, cuz we’ve like of course our, our core business as you would say is a membership model. I guess we’re really a coaching company, so peop like we, we do coaching and training, but people pay a recurring fee. We don’t charge like an upfront fee. And like, you know, I’ve wrestled with, gosh, it’s so much easier to sell like a course where you go sign up for this, you’re going, we’re gonna teach you this, it’s gonna give you this result and boom is done. Whereas like, you know, we’re selling building an influential personal brand and like that never ends. It gets bigger and bigger, but the game. But sometimes I’ve wondered, should we be selling more terminal points or, you know, checkpoints along the way cuz like, you know, we’ve had 11 clients that have become New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestsellers. We’ve had four clients have Ted talks that have gone viral. We’ve had, we’ve had four clients who have, you know, grown multi seven figures, the, those kinds of things. Where it’s like, so it’s, it’s a fascinating to think about. You’re saying that it’s actually a good thing to align a membership site with more of an infinite promise, something that there’s no finish line.
JM (13:42):
I am, but I’m, but I also want to wanna say that from my experience, it is more difficult to sell some an infinite promise. And you’re probably have seen this with a coaching program like you just said. Like, yeah. And it’d be convenient if we could do, you know, a finite promise. I will say this is not on the membership side necessarily, but in my accelerator program, what I do is I really focus on selling the finite promise of my 90 day program. And then on the back end, it’s like as soon as you achieve those results, it’s like, okay, great, let’s keep working together in a mask line group. And that has an infinite promise attached to it. And so I would, I think there is a way probably to do some sort of hybrid of like taking your coaching services and figure out, okay, is there maybe a 90 day promise or a 30 day promise we could make? And you can see how that affects your conversions. Cuz my hunch is it’ll actually be a lot easier to sell. Cause that’s the thing you can go back and justify to your your bank or your spouse or, or your business partner, whatever, to say like, I’m gonna invest this money and I’m gonna get this result. That’s a finite equation. You can’t really run that math on a program that never ends. And so I Yeah,
RV (14:41):
Yeah, no, I follow, I follow you there. So let’s on the, on the topic of selling membership sites. Yeah. Another thing I want to ask you about is, is about urgency, right? So the, the the the, you know, if you think of like, so many launch models are based on this closed cart idea that’s like, yeah, you, you gotta buy it between this window or else whatever, you lose bonuses or the price goes up or, or, or whatever. When you have a membership, I mean some people keep like our membership is open year round, right? So people can come in anytime, some people only open it for certain windows. Have you seen any like best practices around how to create urgency if you leave it open year round? Do you, do you recommend one way or the other? Like how have you navigated that with mem different types of membership sites?
JM (15:31):
Yeah, it’s totally, I’ve seen done both ways and it’s totally either one’s totally legitimate. I do have my preference in what I do as well as what I’ve, I’ve done that’s done well. And it’s sort of essentially to leverage the urgency factor, especially when you launch the membership site to get your core membership base. Cuz remember, because your membership site does start upside down, you wanna get as quickly as possible to the point where you have enough recurring revenue coming in to offset all the overhead that it takes to run a really good membership site. And I don’t just mean expenses, there’s not a ton of expenses attached to running a membership site. The biggest expense is gonna be your time or your team’s time, depending upon how you’re doing that.
RV (16:09):
Cuz in terms of finite and infinite, that’s the other problem here is when you create a course, you have a finite expense, you create the course and you’re done. When you create a membership site, you have the infinite, the infinite expense
JM (16:22):
, the infinite hamster wheel is the term that I hear them most actually about the content strategy. And, and I’ve worked with clients who didn’t come outta the gate with a huge bang, and so now all of a sudden they’re on year two of their membership site and now they’ve got, you know, less than a hundred members paying them $15 a month for their membership site. And they’re, you know, they’re, they’ve got on the hamster wheel of masterclass and live q and a and customer support and, you know, guides. And it’s just, it’s this maddening amount of work for really a meager recurring revenue. And so I do think you have to come outta the gate really strong. And so I do recommend having a founding membership launch. And that could be you know, they could be short, it could be like, you know, 10 days a week or like a normal launch.
JM (17:01):
But my founding membership launch for my membership site, I did the full month of September. And so I, when this is recently, you know, I recently launched my own membership site after doing this for other people enough times that I wanted one my own. But I did that for the full month of September. And so I, throughout that month, I could just emphasize that, hey, this is a founding membership opportunity. A some people are just attracted to the idea of being an early adopter because they know they get to help shape a product. There are plenty of people who are not right. There are plenty of people who say, Nope, I’m not an early adopter, I’m gonna come back when it’s done. But I typically like to reward the early adopters as well by offering a founding membership price. Now with the membership site, I do think you have to be really careful about discounts.
JM (17:39):
They can get really complicated with the exception of when you launch it, when you launch it, you sort of have this one time opportunity to say like, Hey, here’s the normal price of membership and here’s the founding membership price. And my, what I would do here then is actually only offer the founding membership discount on annual membership. And so, for example, thrive School Pro, my membership is a hundred dollars a month or a thousand a year, but during my founding membership launch, it was $500 for the year for founding membership. And so that got a lot of these like highly invested members to join, establish the core foundation of the, of the membership of the group. And so that’s one of the things I would recommend. In terms of urgency beyond that, I do think you need to look at how a membership site fits into your full product strategy.
JM (18:24):
And so yes, urgency self for sure, but a membership site is not about converting someone from being on the fence or not knowing who you are to being, you know, all in a membership is really about nurturing your raving fans, your super fans. And so the gateway product or multiple gateway products, I do think that is a great way to really lean on urgency of having a course or a book or a workshop that’s only available for a short period of time, leaning into that, getting people into that experience. But then it’s much easier, again, for people to buy a product with a finite promise and then be able to like get that experience and choose from then if they want to go further into your membership site. So I, I’m a fan of what you’re doing, Laurie, which is keep your membership open all the time. With the exception of having a founding membership launch I can share a real life example with some numbers. Would that be helpful in terms of like Sure. How these products kinda fit into each other?
RV (19:16):
Yeah,
JM (19:16):
So in September when I knew that I was launching my membership site, at this point, I’d already scaled my flagship product so that it was doing very well. I was funding my lifestyle and I had, you know, I had a bestselling book and another gateway products in the pipeline. Then at this point I did a couple you partner workshops. So I wrote it to my own audience, but I also convert Kit asked me to come teach a workshop to their audience about my seven figure school strategy. So they’re like kind of pro, I had to put a big pause here. They’re proc creators, , they’re professional creators. So I’ve, I’ve run into that issue before mm-hmm. but converts professional creators. They asked me to teach a workshop for them, so I did. And then, well,
RV (19:55):
You do have four kids, so you’re a procreator also.
JM (19:57):
I’m a procreator, I’m a procre and I’m a professional.
RV (19:59):
Yeah, you’re you’re a double a double procreator.
JM (20:02):
I’m a double dipper. Yeah, for sure. But convert side, so I taught this free workshop and then in the workshop I met, I kind of explained this concept of having these three core products, gateway membership with flagship. And then I said, Hey, let me create a gateway product for you live as a demo just to show you how easy this is. So I, of course, I planned this, right? So I created, I opened convert IT commerce, and I created a little order form and I said, okay, here’s the product. It’s called five Figure Flagship Earn $10,000 in the next 30 days from your existing expertise by creating and selling a flagship product. It’s a hundred dollars. And then I put a little image on it, just a slide, and then I dropped a link in that chat and I said, this is for real and it’s for sale and it’s, I’m teaching it live next week.
JM (20:45):
And out of that workshop, there were a little, a little over 300 people there, 35 bought the workshop right then. And so I had made over $3,000 live from that workshop. Who bought that course of the 35 who bought that course? Nine of them in my follow up with them upgraded from $400 to my, my founding membership offer for my membership site. So remember it was, it was $500 a year, but I said, Hey, you already paid a hundred for this course. I’m gonna credit that towards this. This is a campaign just for those people. So nine of them upgraded to my membership site, one of them upgraded to my accelerator program for $10,000. So that one workshop that I taught, that audience of 300 people made me over $20,000 very quickly in terms of when you start looking at recurring revenue and the fact that many of those customers are still in my pipeline. Another one I just noticed just on my membership last week, even though that workshop was several months ago. So this is kind of, that’s just one example, but I think you can see now how the products, the products, the urgency really play into each other. It’s not just the membership site. There really has to be ecosystem.
RV (21:47):
Yeah. So let’s talk about that for a second. Yeah, that, what you’re describing there is like a concept lifetime value, right? Customer lifetime value, L t v, which is what Yeah. You know, very sophisticated digital marketers and people understand that. It’s like, okay, the, the, the whatever, the 35 people that bought you a hundred dollars, but then nine of ’em upgraded from there and then one of ’em upgraded to to $10,000. How do you calculate lifetime value and and how do you utilize that when you’re managing a membership site?
JM (22:27):
Yeah, so I mean, the civil way of calculating left hand value is, it’s easier said than done. You know, first of all, it’s just saying like, how much has someone paid you over time and adding it up. You know, I some of this Stripe, like if you’re using Azure Hanger Pro, they includes some of this data in there. I actually have a custom, you know, I call it a people profits pipeline, essentially a custom CRM or custom way to track my customers. That’s, I built a notion and that tool, basically, I have a, this is a little nerdy, but I have a Zap set up with Zapier that says whenever someone buys something, it automatically updates their lifetime value there. Now, I’ve seen some people do this really well and convert Kit and other email service providers and just having all your data there.
JM (23:09):
But lifetime value is one of the ones that I wanted to pull out, especially because I do have an actual direct outreach sales strategy to sell into my accelerator program. And so it’s not just email marketing funnels, there’s this other piece. But then the other way, the other way to look at it then, of course is to say, okay, but then what’s the average value of a subscriber? Cause if you can look at a campaign like what I just described, and if you can do the math on how many subscribers and what’s the total value, and if you can come up with a dollar value per, like your average quality email subscriber, what they’re worth to you in your business, well then all of it makes it lot easier to decide where to invest deal marketing money. I will say all of that is true, everything I just said, and even though I know how to do all that stuff, I really try not to get distracted by most of that.
JM (23:55):
And I try to keep it super simple for my clients and myself, which is that of those three core products, my gateway product, every dollar that I generate from my gateway product is my sales and marketing budget. And so my goal is not actually to make money from my gateway product, it’s basically to say whether it’s a book or a course or a workshop, when the goal of that gateway product is to create customers not cash. And so when that money comes in, great, that’s what I can use now to either partner with other affiliates and pay commission or to sponsor a newsletter to get featured. I don’t do a lot of paper click ads, but that’s something else you could do with that strategy. And then my, my flagship program is primarily how I fund my lifestyle. And the goal of the membership then is that funds sort of the core infrastructure of your business, your ability to hire, to scale things like that. And so that’s like super simple and any accountants or bookkeepers listen this are, are just like, oh my gosh, how do you put that on a p and l? That’s way too simple and Yep. Skipping all the complicated stuff. Yeah. But I, it really helps. I find when you’re selling these products to think about, especially when you’re starting from scratch, to think about how
RV (24:55):
Do you calculate the value of the email subscriber?
JM (24:59):
Well, I mean, candidly, I don’t, I don’t do that a lot. I mean, technically, yeah, I’ve done this for clients, I’ve done this in the past when I was a, like a full-time fractional chief marketing officer. And so the way you would calculate that essentially is, is look at, look at a period of time. I mean, typically it’s a long period of time. Look at your total revenue and divided by number of subscribers. And you know that the reality is that 80 to 90% of your email subscribers, they never bought anything from you. So they’re obviously gonna throw that math off. But even if you say, okay, wait a minute, a subscriber, a quality target subscriber to me is worth two or $3 when all of a sudden, or maybe $5, now all of a sudden it’s easier to make decisions about how you’re gonna get your leads.
RV (25:39):
Mm-Hmm. Interesting.
JM (25:41):
But I don’t wanna mislead you. I don’t, I don’t do that, all that tracking myself in my business.
RV (25:44):
Yeah, no. Well the, they and I know you’re kind of just in terms of running your own membership site, you’re newer to, newer to that, newer to that party. But it’s really interesting to see you doing that and to hear some of the data of how you’re kind of getting this up and running, which is cool. And so the, talk to me about free trials. So this is another real common thing that I think you, you see, right? Is either a free trial or try it for a dollar for 30 days or seven days. Have you seen those strategies work? Do they work well? Do they work not so well? Do they work only if you do it in a certain way? Like yeah. Tell me about the trial trial period.
JM (26:31):
Well, the reality is, is we’re talking about this right now. Subscription products have been on for a long time. And so the average modern consumer has subscription fatigue. You know, you’ve got Subscri, you’re subscribed to like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and I mean, you know, your utility company, of course that one’s been around for a long time, but you’ve got all these different things that you’re paying for on a regular basis that are the mean that once upon a time you could sell very differently. In the early days of membership sites, there was a lot of like leading with a 30 day trial, getting people in there, they forget about it, now they’re a customer. Well, if the goal of your membership website is to create raving super fans, your goal is not to get people to become a customer by accident, right?
JM (27:14):
So there is a way to use free trials, but I just wanna put that disclaimer in there, that sort of, the way that a lot of people used to do it doesn’t really work anymore, nor do I recommend it. But there’s a, one of my favorite newsletters, I can’t even pronounce it, I think it’s called ari, but it’s academic, it’s an acronym for academic research in your hands, A R I Y H. But he dove into like the, there’s actual studies on pre-trial link. And what they found was that the order trials actually had a higher a higher effect on sales and retention, specifically seven day trials. What they found was if it’s a longer trial, people are nervous that they’re gonna forget it. And so it actually hurts your sales. But also then even if they do forget it, and then it automatically when used, they’re more likely to either cancel asper refund, but a shooter trial gives someone to say, yeah, I’ll try this this week.
JM (28:04):
And so it is a great way to get customers. I what I do is typically I use, I use free trials as an opportunity to introduce urgency to get people from a gateway product to a membership product. So like for example, I don’t do any public free trials, but what I’ll do is say like, Hey, when once you buy a gateway product, like a course, then included in that is a complimentary 30 day membership in Thrive School Pro. And that is essentially a free trial. That’s one way to do it. One of the most profitable ways we grew PLA University was we did have paid ads going to a funnel for a $1 10 day trial. Now, there’s two reasons I love this. One is it’s a short trial, and so people know going into it like, yeah, that’s, that’s realistic. Like, I’m not gonna forget, forget about it. I’m gonna actually give this thing a shot, see if I like it, stick around
RV (28:50):
Or 10 days the second one, 10 day trial.
JM (28:52):
10, yeah, yeah, we did a 10 day. The second thing I like about that is that it’s a dollar. It’s not free. That means there’s actually some money changing hands, but it’s not much. But it also means we’re actually getting real life payment information cuz we’re free trials. People will often put in fake credit, like fake payment information, but the $1 trial, it’s like we actually charge ’em, they have 10 days and then it turns into a regular membership. And that was very effective.
RV (29:17):
Yep. Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. So I got one other question for you. I knew our time was gonna sort of fly by be before I do that you know, you’ve talked about some of the things, some of the things that you do and teach people in terms of membership site, like specific where should people, where should we send people and connect them if they wanna learn more about what you’re up to? John,
JM (29:40):
Thank you so much for asking Roy. I’m honored to be here and I wanted to share some of this. So I set up a special website just for you, Rory. Nice. It’s Rory loves memberships.com. Rory loves memberships.com. You do love memberships, right?
RV (29:53):
Rory? I do love, I do love memberships. We are okay. We’re, I mean, I think of us as our real, I would say our real expertise is like coaching. That was, you know, we have built an eight figure company before Phoebe Brand Builders group will be our second. But coaching and membership have a lot of similarities. Coaching is less scalable digitally you know, it’s, it’s much more people intensive, but Yes. Yeah, but
JM (30:17):
You’re still a subscription based coaching, which is very similar.
RV (30:20):
We are, yeah. A lot of the, a lot of the mechanics are very much the same. Yep.
JM (30:24):
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So if you go to rory loves membership.com, you can download a free copy of a book I wrote could always be teaching that goes into this in more detail. But I’m also teaching at works, a live workshop there on turning your wisdom into wealth on how these different products play into each other that we talked about today. How does the Flasher product play to the gateway product play in the membership? Which do you do first? How do you scale them? And so that’s totally free Rory for anybody listening to this. So Rory loves memberships.com.
RV (30:53):
Cool. So we’ll link, we’ll link that up in the show notes and over on our website and everything. So one last question for you, John. One of the things that you guys did at Platform University, which is very, very rare is you sold or in this case Michael sold the membership site. That’s unusual. It’s unusual to see like, you know, people don’t often buy someone other creator’s video course because it’s very much connected to that person. So you guys were able to create an asset that was a brand that was sort of beyond just, just Michael. Obviously Michael was a big part of that, but you know, do you have any keys around scaling a membership beyond just like the original founder or the original brand? And like how do you go about, how do you go about doing that and setting that up? Because when you do that, it actually creates an asset that would be sellable so that, that has enterprise value, which is one of the big potential payoffs compared to Yeah. You know, a course that’s just tied directly to a course creator. How’d you do that?
JM (32:03):
Well, so now you’re tapping into my secret mission because when I was hired by Michael Hya Clocking University, I had a public mission, which is hello meet John Mes. He’s the brand director and dean of PLO University, and he now runs this thing and serves up our students whole time. I actually was a student originally, so it was a cool story of sort of like from Success student to the dean. That was my public title. My secret mission was I was hired to help separate platform university from being attached to Michael Hyatt’s brand to sell. That was explicit from the beginning. And so that was a huge part of, of my job behind the scenes for a long period of time. At this point, we’re talking about a multimillion dollar membership site with its own massive audience separate from Michael Hyatt’s audience. And so because of that, that means like we’re, this was, this was a slow process but it meant looking at the content strategy and finding out, okay, how much of this content is dependent on Michael itself and minimizing that as much as possible.
JM (33:01):
So we switched from having a hamster wheel of live content to creating a core curriculum and then recording all of that in a two day video shoot with guests that we flew in from all over to interview. And then Michael interviewed the guests for those interviews. And actually the, there was 13 interviews and the first and the 13th was actually me. It was sort of like we, Michael and I were in the book ends of like interviewing each other sort of Mm, which helped set me up in that role. But also every single one of those masterclass videos, we then created screening videos. They’d that when in detail on that subject that were, that Michael was never part of. And so we either had other people fly in, sometimes we had members of our team teach them. Sometimes I taught it, but we really just diversified the, the talent pool of who was teaching the content.
JM (33:45):
And then we took off the hamster wheel. Now all of a sudden it was all of our job to run the membership site was, was get new members in, serve the current members direct into the core curriculum and do regular weekly group live q and a coaching calls. And that was really a huge part of the process so that by the time we hired a broker and we were negotiating with different people to who were interested in buying the business, we’d already answered a lot of the questions that people were gonna ask about. Like, but what about Michael? And Michael was like, Michael could honestly say, he was like, I literally haven’t touched Pop University in more than two years and it’s still made over a million a year in revenue. Like that was, he was at that point where I was running the whole thing and he could, I mean, he knew of a financial and all that kinda stuff, but he was not involved in the day to day of that, which is really what convinced ultimately to have multiple people at the table who wanted to buy it. And then Pete Vargas was the one who ultimately struck a deal, bought Platform University and it became his
RV (34:38):
Yeah, wild. What an interesting what a really cool, really, really cool case study. And you know, that’s a, that’s a very unique potential feature of building membership sites. And just, and then giving life to people’s personal brands. Right now, here you are on your own teaching people how to do this, and that’s inside a brand builder’s group. We’ve, we’re, we’re raising up all many personalities. I mean, you were the primary one at Platform University, but like all of our strategists, you know, we’re constantly pushing forward and they genuinely get to know the content better than me because they spend more time in a more specific area and, and they just do it over and over, you know, like a specific area with clients and they, they actually really, really develop. It’s a really, really cool thing and gives life to other people. So I love that. Well, thank you for this, John. Thanks for sharing this, this. Oh,
JM (35:32):
It’s my
RV (35:32):
Pleasure. Really cool stuff, man. Congratulations on starting your Journey, your own membership site. So that’s, that’s fun. We’ll be, we’ll be cheering you on and watching you and wishing for the best my friend. So take care and, and keep going.
JM (35:47):
Thank you, Roy. Please keep up the good work.

Ep 365: How An App Helps You Build Community | Amanda Moriuchi Episode Recap

AJV (00:03):
So I’ve got a question for you. How good are you at building and nurturing your own community? And I think that’s a really relevant question to at least me. As you know, I sit as c e o, which is, you know, more like I just do all the things. Other people don’t have time for more than anything fancy. But as I sit as the c e o of Brand Builders Group this is just a question I ask myself all the time. It’s like our number one priority is to build and nurture deep, meaningful relationships with our community. And our team is always asking, how do we do that? And then how do we do it better? How do we do it more efficiently? How do we build community and nurture them faster in the way that they want? And that led to a, a conversation with a friend of mine, Amanda Moriuchi, who also happens to be a client at Brand Builders Group, which was even more helpful and insightful.
AJV (01:01):
And she happens to be the owner of this really cool custom app company. They build apps called app. And it led to this often conversation around how we use technology to deepen relationships and nurture relationships. And let me say, without going any further, I believe deeply in the importance of one-on-one human interaction on a phone call or in person over coffee. And I also know that there’s just so many minutes in the day. And so to be able to supplement some of that nurturing and some of that community building with technology is just, it’s where we are and there’s components that are really good and healthy and some that are kind of exhausting and overwhelming. So I’m gonna focus on the good and healthy ones. So I thought this was a really great question to go and how do we use technology to increase our relationships with our community as a company?
AJV (02:00):
And so there’s a couple of things I thought were just really noteworthy in this conversation that I would share in this little video with you. So number one is having an app is really what this conversation is about. It’s taking your relationship building off of social media and putting it into a platform that is yours. And in this particular conversation, we’re talking about an app that could also be in an email list. But I think the interactive nature of all the things that are happening in app make it really diverse and unique. Whereas an email list is, that’s an email list. But not to negate that, but this is specifically about how do we use apps to deepen relationships and sit, here’s some of the benefits that came out of this conversation of having an app. One is you own your audience, and that was, that is a number one priority for asset Brand Builders group is we can’t expect that the algorithm is always going to be on our, in our favor on other people’s
AJV (02:58):
Platforms. So, you know, regardless if it’s YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, it, it doesn’t matter. It’s, we don’t own those audiences. We don’t own that platform. We don’t own that content, even though it’s our content, it’s on their platform. And so to be at the mercy of that is a little debating when you hear about a lot of the, a lot of these stories that are happening right now, you get locked out of your own account and it’s gone. And so it’s the importance of owning your audience. And again, this is on an app, if you can do that too with, you know, your email list with a, a blog RSS feed or your podcast, right? But it’s owning it so that you have more control over how you engage and interact and who actually sees it. So that’s step one.
AJV (03:43):
Two is technology is really leveling the playing field. And right now it’s, if I have a small audience with not tons of engagement, I’m not favored on social media, but in my own community where it, although I may have fewer followers, they’re deeper loyal followers, I have more opportunity to even go deeper and broaden those relationships when it’s in my control. So there’s a lot of benefit of having all of your audience or ha giving them the opportunity to have more of you, and thus you get more of them in this technology, you know, component that we’re talking about with an app, right? So it, it levels the playing field and let the small guys, the small gals have more opportunity to have deeper engagement and more access to our community and vice versa. So I think that’s really important.
AJV (04:32):
It’s the difference. The next thing is the difference between community and connection on social media. And I’m not slamming our dog and social media right now. It seems like a, a comparison and a little, a little comparison, but I’m not dogging. I think social media is really important, don’t get me wrong here, but there’s a lot of connection on social media, but not a lot of deep community is being built on social media. And so again, whether it’s your email list, podcast, whatever, but for me, it’s this idea of an app that allows you to create real community where there’s back and forth chats and there’s notifications and there’s internal challenges that you’re not paying for. It’s like you’re getting unique content just for you. You’re getting correspondence. You’re, you’re getting videos, you’re getting all this different stuff all in one platform that is actually you’re subscribing to, you’re saying, give this to me.
AJV (05:23):
I want this. And it allows the person who is managing the community to tailor and augment and make it better for the people who are saying, I want more of this, and just creates more community. It creates a like-minded group of people who are going, this is what I want, more of this, less of this. And they’re asking for it, which is hence why they’re on the app, right? So there’s just a lot of opportunity to build more community versus connection which happens on social media. The next is talking about a, a simple way of taking all of your content as a content creator and having it on one place. So with an app, it’s like, I can have my podcast there, I can have virtual trainings there. I can have live events there. I can have community correspondence and interactions video engagement, eBooks, challenges, the list goes on and on and on.
AJV (06:16):
And I’m not having to send some people to this funnel, some people to my website, some over here to iTunes. It’s like, no, no, no, I’m gonna take everything that I’m doing and I’m gonna consolidate it, condense it into one awesome platform that allows you to have everything you want in one place at your fingertips that has just been a game changer of a conversation of how do we do all these things and do it effectively while also keeping in place the integrity of the relationship with the individual. And so as you’re kind of thinking through your strategies for the year and in the years to come, I would just encourage you to think about three things as you listen to this rant on the importance of building community, not just on social media would be one what are you doing to own your audience?
AJV (07:08):
What are you doing to take back control of the engagement, interaction and correspondence that you have with people who subscribe to you, right? In other words, they follow you, like you engage with you. That’s number one. What are you doing to own it? Versus having everything that you’ve built on somebody else’s platform, which is rented real estate. So how can you own those, that audience engagement? Second thing is, how can you consolidate? How can you put everything that you’re doing online and put it into a centralized place where people have a go-to place to get all the things right? Workbooks, downloads, video, content, engagements events, whatever it is you’re doing, webinars. But how can they just get everything into one place to create a better member community experience? So that’d be the second. First one is how do you own your engagement?
AJV (07:59):
Number two is how do you consolidate your engagement? And then the third one is, how do you actually create better deeper community, right? And that just means you’ve got more time with people a huge part of community and relationships. It just takes time. So how are you doing that? How are you creating, you know, better and deeper relationships within the community? And that doesn’t mean just you and one-on-one to your community, but creating them amongst your community and how are you gonna do that? And so the app is not the answer for everyone. The app is the obvious answer for us at Brain Builders Group and what we’re moving ahead with. But I would just pose those questions for you to go back and sit with and think about of how can I do more of this? How can I own it, consolidate it, and make it better and deeper for the people that subscribe to what I have to say and what I have to share. So with that, you have your homework assignments speed . Hope this helps, and I’ll see you next time.

Ep 364: How To Know When You Are Ready For An App with Amanda Moriuchi

AJV (00:02):
Hi everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand podcast AJ Vaden here, and I am with a very good friend of mine, Amanda Moriuchi. And today is always exciting to me whenever I get to do podcast interviews, but then when you get to do them with people that you actually really know personally and you get to share their business and their expertise and their brilliance just makes it extra fun. And so before I formally introduce Amanda, I want to tell you why you need to stick around for this episode. So here’s why you wanna listen to this episode. One, the main reason I have invited Amanda on to our podcast is because of the growing number of questions that our community and our listeners like you ask us all the time around, do I need an app? And if I do, how do I know when I am ready to get an app?
AJV (00:59):
And Amanda is going to answer those two question questions very specifically with real tangible data around why you should or why you shouldn’t, when you should, and what that process looks like. So that’s the first reason. The second reason is that there is this growing trend in the world called mobile apps, right? And there is a lot of things behind the scenes that most of us don’t realize when it comes to building, launching, growing, or even potentially monetizing an app. And so we’re gonna talk about some of that behind the scenes work and really what that means for the everyday entrepreneur, small business owner, coach, consultant, speaker, and what that world is gonna look like in the next five 10, so forth years. And then the third thing that you’re gonna learn, and this is also selfishly, is if you are ready for an app, what does that process look like?
AJV (01:55):
Like, does it really have to cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and does it have to take years? And we’re gonna find the answers to that too. So how further ado, let’s get right into it. So I’m gonna give you a little formal bio on Amanda, and then we’ll then we’ll jump in. And the rest of this will be super casual, but Amanda is the CEO of App Ventures, which is an award win, the inter international custom tech company. They have won lots of awards. And I actually had one, one of Amanda’s clients on our podcast just a little while ago called, the company is called Keep With. And Amanda’s team is the one who actually developed and brought that idea to life and app form. So it’s so cool to not only get to know you, but to see your business actually bring things to fruition and products and services that I actually really love and enjoy.
AJV (02:49):
But I will say, I will tell you also, she has developed and led hundreds of top tier software experts to launch over 1000 apps, which is amazing. These apps are averaging a three times return on investment she has or not to divulge your many years of experience, but more than 20 years of experience working with startups, fortune 500 government and non-profits. But I tell you, if you’re not watching this, Amanda does not look like she has been in business for more than 20 years. So, , with all that said, Amanda, welcome to the show.
AM (03:25):
Thank you so much. It’s good to see you, aj.
AJV (03:27):
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited about this. And before we get into the nitty gritty details of building an app and what that process takes, I want people to get to know you a little bit and how you got into this business. But right before we do that, to kind of give people a preview of what to expect for the rest of this interview, can you just give us some very quick highlighted data, trends, insights around what this growing world of apps looks like and where you see it heading?
AM (04:00):
Ugh, I love this question. Yeah, so the biggest trend that I’m watching right now that really I think a lot of your clients and listeners are gonna care about is the shifts that kind of the larger social media companies are taking where they’re starting to lock down some of the most valuable elements of their platform. So for example, the most simple example I can share is you can no longer embed a private Facebook group into your app. And really Facebook knows that they know that people really are starting to build their own private communities mm-hmm. , and that’s where the value is. And they’re gonna wanna hang onto that. And so as I’ve been working with our clients, I want, I want them to look ahead just a few years down the line and consider how are you going to engage your audience or serve your customers if a platforms like Facebook or Twitter or, I mean, Twitter’s a big one, obviously it’s been in the news for a lot of reasons recently and Instagram, what if they start changing their algorithms, changing their rules starting to lock down their access? How are you as a thought leader, as a community leader, as somebody who’s serving your clients? How are you gonna protect your customer experience? And I’m starting to see some of these changes accelerate, and it’s on the one hand exciting, but on the other hand, something that’s giving a lot of our clients some urgency to really plan ahead.
AJV (05:39):
Yeah, so that’s a really good point because we have a private Facebook group at Brain Builders Group, but we have been urgently trying to figure out what is our long term? And for us, long term is like the next, in the next 12 to 24 months, what does that look like? Because not only do we know that that’s not a long term strategy to build our community on somebody else’s platform and that should be no one’s strategy to be honest. But one of the things that we are also seeing is we’re we’re experiencing a growing number of people who don’t wanna be a part of certain platforms.
AM (06:12):
And I’m that right. I’ve, I love you guys. I’ve been working with you guys for a couple of years now, and I’ve never been a part of Facebook as at like, when I’ve been with Brand Builders Group. I was a part of Facebook when I was a college kid when it first started forever . But you know, I think another that ties into the second big trend is really being mindful of how you’re using your customer data, right? Mm-Hmm. . So a lot of the larger platforms, how they make money is by mining data from the users. And that doesn’t serve your customers at the end of the day. In fact, it kind of puts them at risk. And so we’ve been working with our clients on thoughtful ways to gather data in a way that serves your customers instead of just taking, taking, taking, right?
AM (07:06):
That’s, and you also really need to keep an eye on some of the legal changes and regulation changes that are headed our way. I, I know everyone knows about GDPR in Europe similar laws have already passed in California, and you’re gonna start seeing those laws slowly spread across the country. And you have to be very careful as you’re planning ahead for some of that kind of stuff too. So really, I think end users are demanding more demanding more from the apps that they work with demanding more privacy, demanding more intimacy, demanding more connection, and it’s a really exciting time to be developing tech for good that really is in service to end users rather than just taking,
AJV (07:56):
I love that It’s building technology for good. Yeah, I love that. It’s like with any tool, it can be used for good or for harm. And it’s like, how do we just do it that’s got this mutual benefit for the end user. So good. Y’all, this is why you need to stick around. We’re gonna get into the nitty grits of this, but I, I am super curious, like, how did you get into this world, this business? Like, give us just a little bit of background of why apps we could have done so many different things in technology. I know you’re wicked smart, but why this
AM (08:32):
Totally on accident, to be honest with you, I, I fell into technology at an early part of my career and I think truthfully, that’s what made me successful, right? So I think a lot of times where people get frustrated with technology is you have a business person speaking to a technology engineer and they just speak past each other, right? And when I first joined the industry, I didn’t know anything about technology that wasn’t my, that wasn’t my expertise. And so I found the smartest people in my organization and I made them sit down with me and explain everything. And so I think with that, that gave me the ability to blend business and technology and make sense out of something that is really can be overwhelming if you don’t understand the nuance. And so I think I built my career on being that bridge between what a business leader wants as an outcome and what is possible from a development perspective.
AM (09:38):
And I’ve come to realize that’s kind of a rare trait to almost act as a translator between the two ends of the business. And it’s been incredibly rewarding. So the reason why I stayed was because I believe in my core that technology has the ability to level the playing field. It grants access to vulnerable populations, to affluent populations, and everything in between. It really breaks down the barriers between location, right? So, I mean, I have to say a j I found you guys through technology. Mm-Hmm. . I mean, Lori was giving a presentation a few years ago at a conference that was on the East coast that I attended from Denver. And you know, I think that’s been the, the thing that’s kept me so passionately involved in the industry is just that magic of technology to bring together ideas and to make something that wasn’t possible yesterday, possible today. And especially now more than ever connecting communities of people that are bound by a single passion or a single interest and just infusing some positivity into the industry. And it’s been so rewarding.
AJV (11:00):
You know, it’s so interesting that you say this. I’ve I actually made a post about this book that I’m reading called Find Your People by Jenny Allen. And I love Jenny Allen and I love this book specifically cuz it talks about how we’re in unprecedented times in America at least of a lack of community. And what an interesting thing with more technology availability and more interfaces and more this, that as a country we’re at an all time high of people who suffer from depression, anxiety addiction, and most of that stemming from an internal feeling of loneliness. And this entire book talks about loneliness is the real epidemic that we’re experiencing here in America. And then all these other things are the byproduct. And so I love what you say cuz it’s like, again, it’s like using technology for good and you know, we are most interested in our technology for communal purposes.
AJV (12:03):
It’s how do we stay in touch with people? How do we connect, how do we stay present and available when we are hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles apart? And I really do at some point during this interview wanna talk about the power of using apps specifically for community because as we are experiencing on the social media realms of today, and as we will continue you cannot build your audience on a borrowed platform. And that is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. That’s what they all are. And so if you don’t have a plan of building an audience that you own then at, at some point you’re at the mercy of big tech companies and big investments, bankers deciding how you’re gonna engage with the people that you have built a following with. And so I love what you’re saying about just doing it for the purpose of community and doing it for good.
AJV (12:55):
Cuz I think that’s a really critical part of where business is heading and people are building these communities that are the source of major business and revenue. Back to this like, you know, customer loyalty is like people stay with people more than they stay with companies. So how do we do more of that? So, okay, so getting into this app conversation, which I love and I’m fascinated by because I feel like I get, I feel like going into the app store is like me going into like TJ Max, oh my gosh, I’m so overwhelmed. I go walk in and I’m like, there’s like too much here. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know which one. It’s like, I’m like doing it by customer ratings and it’s like, it’s so overwhelming to me. It’s like, I won’t even consider an app until like five or six people have said, you have to have this. And there’s just like, it’s so overwhelming and there’s so many of them. And so there’s my question with them being so many, how do you create something that actually does anything for good? And I guess my real, my real first question is, do you need an app?
AM (14:04):
Yes and no , so lemme say this, I couple of things on the loneliness as an epidemic. My, my belief on that is that we were sold a a bill of goods, right? Like we were said, we were sold. Facebook is a place for community, right? It’s not, it’s the town square, right? So any, any introvert would tell you, and I I’m a closet introvert, any introvert would tell you you don’t go to the Town Square or an example would be like a large concert hall to be filled up and to form an intimate connection. That’s not where you go. Like you can go meet people in the town square, you can go meet people in the concert hall, but you build connection outside of that. And, and I think we really need to be clear on what do you mean by community? Do you mean town square or do you mean intimate connection?
AM (15:06):
And somehow those two buckets have gotten muddled, right? And I think, I think that’s a crusade that I’m up against right now is like, great build your town square, right? Or build your audience in your town square, but you bring them into your community and you protect them. And that’s when you’d want an app, right? So we say, look, work with brand builders group, build your following, build your audience. And once you reach a certain kind of magic number in terms of like a certain number of engaged followers, you need to bring them to a place where they’re sheltered within your community. And then they start to form intimate bonds. And that’s the magic of an app, right? So let’s go back to the TJ Max example. I get also super overwhelmed by TJ Max because like the racks are just overwhelming. I can’t even remember that You have to like, like comb through all of the different types of brands and sizes and product types and all of that.
AM (16:17):
If you could imagine going into TJ Max and knowing, okay, it’s, it’s a Thanksgiving, right? It’s, I call it the high holiday time, right? It’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, like the best time of year to decorate, right? And so in that time of year, if I go into TJ Max, and I know I’m looking for a particular brand of a decor item. Ray Dunn is really well known in TJ Max, right? I don’t have to spend as much time as much of my attention, as much of my focus combing through all these different products if I know a very particular brand that I’m going for. Another example would be like in clothing and Under Armor, I know that I’m looking for that brand so I can go to that rack and more quickly sift through the noise, so to speak, and find the product that I’m looking for.
AM (17:11):
And that’s applying that analogy to technology, right? So one of my biggest gripes is if I’m looking for a particular type of content, not, not that different than shopping for a particular product. Let’s say I need some business inspiration, right? I’ve hit a plateau in my role. I’m tired, I’m burned out, I wanna go find some inspiration. The first thing I do is I go to Instagram and I look at all the people that I’m following and let’s pretend AJ posts something really inspiring that I haven’t seen before. And I’m like, who is this AJ Vaden? And then I start getting to know you, right? Testing you out a little bit. And then I’m like, I love what she has to say. What else does she have? And then I come upon a post where you’re like, Hey, I’ve just launched an app. All of my thoughts, my podcast, my books, any products that I’m selling, the community that I’ve built, it’s all here in this place.
AM (18:17):
Essentially come to my digital store. So we find that customers that rely on simply people finding you through the app store, they don’t succeed. Yeah. Because the app store is not going to elevate your app. The app store, I’ll, I’ll save a lot of my commentary on the challenges of posting something in an app store. That’s not the way to market your app. The way to market your app is by building an audience first. Having that foundation first and then having a plan to convert them to app users, right? You build your audience first and then you protect your community. But you can’t, you can’t protect a community that you don’t have, right? Yeah.
AJV (19:02):
So it’s such a good reminder to anyone who’s listening. Cause I think we all get tempted of what’s the newest, bright and shiny thing? What is everyone else doing? And it, it’s a really core part of mine. And my husband Rory’s philosophies and a part of Brain Builders group, it’s like there is a time and a place for all the things. And, and, and this example, an app is no different than a business model, right? It’s like you gotta have people to buy your products and services if you’re ever gonna make any money, right? And so there are two things that you said I think are really interesting and really important. And you said there’s this magic number, right? Like if you have this many followers and so care to give us any ranges of like what that ma magic number might be be Yeah.
AM (19:47):
Yeah. So our most successful clients come to us with an engaged audience of 10, at least 10,000 followers, right? And that can be across channels, right? Because you could, you can have 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. You can have 10,000 followers on Instagram. They can be divided amongst those right? Now, here’s why. So there are basically three main revenue streams in an app. The first one is pretty simple, paid subscriptions, right? And the second is advertising where essentially you can set up advertising space within your app and you can work on on a content mediation platform. They’ll fill in that ad space for you. And then the third would be like sponsors or strategic partners or people that want to have their logo in front of your community. Those are your three podcasts. Yeah.
AJV (20:43):
Podcast, okay.
AM (20:44):
Exactly. Exactly. And so let’s do some rough math here. If you can convert half of your 10,000 audience members to paid subscribers, and let’s just say you’re charging $20 a month for access to your app, and that would be content. The content that you’re producing, that would be the community that you’ve built around your content. I I describe that as like a digital country club. So this is an exclusive group of people that are building relationships around your core truth, right? So or as brand builders talks about your through line, right? And these are engaged people that are helping you along your path and building community, again, around your core truth. And then you might be selling some products, right? So my most successful clients host their podcast on the app. They will put digital versions of their book on the app. If they’re selling any physical products, you can sell a physical book if you want. You can sell shirts or mugs or whatever it is that you’re selling to further your brand. And let’s say that you have 5,000 users charging $20 a month low cost for high, high value, when you launch on launch day, you’re making a hundred thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Mm-Hmm. , I mean that’s, that’s game changing for a lot of these thought leaders that I see in the market. And yeah,
AJV (22:18):
So this, so you said something really quickly cuz I’m curious how many people, and this could be just like a wildly guesstimated number here, but how many people do you think are charging for their ad versus just getting it for free?
AM (22:33):
So,
AJV (22:34):
Or should there be some versions?
AM (22:36):
It’s, it, you could do, you could do a freemium version where you’re exposed to ads now. Okay, so let’s talk about ad revenue because a lot of people kind of have the misconception that ad revenue is based simply on number of downloads and that’s not the case. So you need to have a number of active users. I guess that’s where a number of downloads make sense. But if some, somebody downloads your app and never opens it, you’re not making money off of that user, right? So it needs to be somebody that’s in your app and stays within your app for a longer period of time. And so that’s why you need a little bit more. So you need to convert about 80% of your engaged audience to deliver revenue substantial enough revenue on the freemium side, although I spend most of my time convincing my customers to have a paid application. And the reason why is one of my sales managers way long time ago said, Amanda, people value what they pay for mm-hmm
AJV (23:42):
.
AM (23:43):
And so I would say this back to our most successful apps. They come down to, there are two paths, but the the biggest one that we’re kind of talking about right now is you form a core truth. What are you here for? What breaks your heart? As brand builders taught me, what are you here to solve? That’s your core truth. You build content around your core truth and then you build a community that’s engaged around that content. That’s incredible. Regular high value content and connections that you’re providing your users. And I would say any country club charges for admission, any movie theater charges for admission, the people that you want in your digital community must be paying because they value what they pay for. And that’s what I’ve seen with our most successful clients in this type of a scenario where you have your core truth, your content, and your community.
AJV (24:45):
Okay, so I have like 14 questions right now, . So, cause I think this is really fascinating specifically for our audience who is wildly full of speakers, authors, coaches, trainers, consultants experts, right? So it’s like you could be a more a mortgage lending expert or a physician either way. It’s like, but they are, they’re very convicted in building an audience and, and doing something good with that audience. And so just think this is a really fascinating concept. So this whole idea of having an app for your community, which I personally love, and it’s something. So I think it’s just something that’s really important as we proceed into the future with the uncertainty of the platforms and the constantly changing algorithm and new rules and laws and regulations and the fact that most of your audience already isn’t seeing your content. So just a little bit about how do you build something that you actually get to influence and you actually do get to build connection with. And so going, going down that rabbit hole, here are some of the questions I have. So I think I hear you saying a paid app is kind of the way to go. And I think that’s really wise and I actually really appreciate that. And I I’m asking myself, is there a price point that you see for a paid app for somebody who is building their audience and building a community with an app that is an appropriate price point? Any ranges? Like what’s too much little,
AM (26:14):
No. So I would say this, it, you’re, this is not a cop out. I, I apologize. It depends, right? So looking at like category types, so like fitness for example, most of the fitness apps that we’re seeing out on the marketplace are charging anywhere between 20 to $40 a month, right? But hear me out on this on the fitness side, like you’re, you’re basically getting a digital personal trainer for $40 a month and tell me where you can go in any gym across the country and get that kind of dedicated high level personalized attention. You, you can’t, right? So I think that’s kind of the, the value there. Now let’s, let’s apply, let’s say like brand builders group and what you and Rory have to share, right? You guys are high level business strategists. You guys are coaches, you guys come in and you work directly with an entrepreneur to help them build up your business.
AM (27:20):
Okay? Where else are you gonna find that in the marketplace? Person to person? And if you’re, if you’re able, I would say charge 50 to $75 a month because you’re getting people that are engaged and really wanna, wanna level up their business. And that’s just for the app aj. That’s not for like access to events, that’s not access to products, that’s not access to one-on-one coaching, right? All it is is an entrance fee into the sanctuary that you’re building for your community, right? And so I would say most of our clients start out charging $20 a month just because it’s an even easy number for people to absorb. You’re not gonna get pushback. And then a lot of our clients will engage in ab testing on pricing when we work with our clients, we’ll kind of do a competitive review of what’s in the marketplace and what you can charge. The problem is, a lot of our clients right now that are thought leaders in this space that are kind of building what we are calling like the digital country clubs, they’re at the forefront. And so when you’re at the forefront, you have to guess and when you’re guessing, you have to compare, okay, how much am I charging versus the value I’m providing? And if that gap is big enough, you’ll start seeing volume that comes in much more quickly than, than if you’re kind of just throwing something at the wall and seeing what sticks.
AJV (28:49):
I love that. So, and, and I agree, I do think there is so much value in having gated content and building this gated community. And so that leads me to my next question. And you know, both, for me and everyone listening, I figured if I have these questions, so do you remember listening? So then it’s what content do you save just for your app versus what content do you continue to put out there on the different platforms in order to attract people into the app? And so have you seen any successful ratios of what type of content should be gated that people are paying for? And then you mentioned some people even put their podcast on there. So are they no longer on iTunes and Spotify? And are they only in the app? And how does that really work? So
AM (29:41):
Yeah, great question. So let, let’s talk about the podcast piece first. So I would say if you have a podcast, still put it out on iTunes, still put it out on Spotify because what you’re doing is you’re fishing, right? Like you’re putting lines in the water to attract more people from the town square into your protected community, right? That’s the purpose of having an Instagram feed, of having a podcast, of having a blog, having an email newsletter, all of these things, the purpose of those activities or putting lines in the water into the town square fishing for people to join your protected community. So a lot of times my frustration is I actually follow a, a bvg client on Apple Podcasts and I get super frustrated because Apple is now changing how they set up their podcasts without your per or oversight. They’ll put advertisements into your podcast. Yeah. And you’ll start seeing that with podcasts and iBooks even. They’re inserting ads. And so you’re starting to see the evolution of Apple from a product company to a media company, right?
AJV (30:58):
I have noticed that too. And many people who we know who have very, very, very big podcasts they are quickly going, what? Like, exactly. You can’t have ads on my show without even asking me. But yet they can,
AM (31:15):
They can because it’s rented space, right? So I would say in the podcast example, you put the, that podcast out on iTunes, Spotify, whatever for Phish purposes, you bring that also into your app as, and you can put it in front of the paywall or behind the paywall. That that’s, that’s kind of your prerogative. But what the thing is is now I know if I wanna hear from aj, I’m gonna go to AJ’s app mm-hmm. because I’m an engaged user, right? And so it’s kind of like you’re fishing by putting your podcast out on iTunes, and then maybe what you’re doing by putting your podcast in front of the paywall with some ads so you can still make advertiser revenue that advertisers you pick not that someone else has picked for you. You can put the podcast with ads in front of the paywall to reel in your customer and qualify them to make sure they’re worthy to be a part of your protected community. And the minute they start paying for the app, then they have the podcast behind the paywall without ads, right? So the idea is leveraging your content to validate the fit for the person to be in your community and the community is where the real value is. Okay. Does that make sense?
AJV (32:40):
Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think, again, back to the quickly changing landscape that we’re all living in, where now Apple is deciding, well, we’re gonna decide what ads we put on your podcasts and even YouTube. It’s like, I could put an ad on your podcast today to advertise my podcast if I wanted to, right? And I think there’s just a lot of that of going, man, it’s like I’m trying to create an experience for my audience and Exactly. Advertisers and big media companies are kind of getting in the way of that. So then, so then the question is about how much content do you reserve for the app versus what you’re just putting out there on social media?
AM (33:21):
Yep. So the biggest way I encourage our clients to delineate is the content you put out on social media or in front of the paywall. Those should be an invitation, right? So it’s free because it’s an invitation. The content that goes behind the paywall is the instruction on execution, right? So the invitation might be a sample, might be the first bite or two, but then the real getting down to the nuts and bolts of executing to solve the problem that you’re working against that sits behind the paywall. And so what happens is, if you have a, and actually the beautiful thing is you don’t really need to have a ton of content that you’re consistently refreshing that’s behind the paywall. Because what happens is people will go through that content that’s behind the paywall and through that build connections with the community that have already been around and been doing the execution.
AM (34:25):
And so people will come for the content and stay for the community, right? So what it does is it takes a little bit of weight off of the content creators. The hardest stuff is teaching on execution, right? That takes a lot of thought planning production time, production cost what you can do, once you’ve established that behind the paywall, then it alleviates the pressure. So you can focus more on generating the fresh content that is acting as the invitation, right? Almost like the advertisements to the town square. And the reason why you need to have fresh content constantly is because you as content creators are consistently diluted mm-hmm. on the town square, right? And so you have to keep up with that pace to continue to invite people in and bring people in. That’s, that’s marketing. Whereas the stuff behind the paywall is building and keeping your engaged community.
AJV (35:27):
So then this leads me to my next question cause I agree with all of that. Which is what’s the likelihood of, I don’t know, know even like, even in the app store? So I don’t know if this is true, but I was told this here recently and it stuck with me that Apple takes about 30% of revenue for every app sold. That’s about right.
AM (35:51):
, they, well, okay, so up to a million they’ll take 10%. So nice, generous bit there over 10, over a million in revenue, they take 30%. But something important to think about here is they take 30% of digital content. So if you’re selling coaching separately, that’s not digital content and therefore not subject to the 30% commission. If you’re selling physical products, you’re not, you’re not subject to that 30%. So app it, what we’ll do is we’ll work with our customers and get creative with ways to protect your revenue and shield some of that from the Apple tax. So we
AJV (36:36):
Call it, okay, the Apple tax, that’s good, but it’s like, basically if you’re under a million in annual revenue, they’re taking 10% of gross revenue. So just build that into the budget. And so I guess my question is, which I did not realize that, so I think that was really important and I came up in a conversation here lately and then my, so my question is like, what, what is the likelihood that Apple, just like all of these other platforms, as Apple is changing this with the podcast, start doing this own thing in the app store where they’re going, well now I’m gonna decide how things are done, because it too is a little bit of rented real estate in terms of, you know, the marketplace, the grocery store of sorts, so
AM (37:15):
Exactly costs
AJV (37:16):
Around that.
AM (37:16):
Yeah, so we we’re watching a lot of what’s happening with Apple and Google, especially as it relates to the app marketplaces. I, I don’t see Apple increasing commission, nor do I see them trying to make any large changes or dominate app owners or developers for a couple of reasons. First of all, they got in deep trouble with the government on how they were managing a lot of these commissions and what they were doing. And we saw Apple make a pretty abrupt change in their policies from there. The other thing is for as challenging as Apple can be, they really do love their developer community. And you have to remember, they are motivated to keep developers coming back and app owners coming back because that’s a big part of their revenue. And so this is why you’ll see like app, it was a lot, or Apple was a lot of their major updates.
AM (38:20):
They’re slowing down the impact that it has to developers because they wanna keep their developers happy. They have to, it’s a big part of their business. The one risk I would say is it’s really important for app owners to be aware of Apple’s guidelines because they do change. So one example, I’m sure any user who has an app remembers when you’d have to go through an app update and you’d have to click Ask App not to track that was a guideline change from Apple that every app owner was required to add that button back to the user. And really that’s in response to user demand on privacy and shifting laws. So building an app is no different than owning a storefront, right? Laws change, customer preferences change taxes change, revenues change. And I think that’s all the more reason to want to have your own app to give you the control to pivot in a way that works best for you.
AJV (39:22):
That’s good. All right. Well I have, we just have like five more minutes and I’ve got like two questions here I think that are really important. So this whole kind of concept, or you’ve got 10,000 plus, you know, online followers and that’s growing, then this is kind of like, okay, now let’s talk about like, should you have one maybe. So, and then give us just some high level behind the scenes, what’s that process look like? How much does it cost emotionally prepare everyone listening of real numbers, real timelines? What does it look like to have an app?
AM (39:53):
Oh my gosh, this is the hardest part of the process. Shopping for an app makes TJ Max look like a day at this spa. It’s so I, you know, I actually really empathize and I have a high level of respect for all of our clients because building custom software is not an easy thing to find the right person. It’s, it’s really hard actually. And the reason why is because you have developers from all over the world, right? And they have different salary needs. So a developer in Pakistan is going to charge a much different hourly rate than a developer in the Bay Area in California, even if they have the same level of experience and expertise. And so I think that element and also the creative element. So how an engineer would approach a, an app idea or a technical problem, it’s up to whatever’s in the mind of the engineer.
AM (40:53):
And so one engineer may think that a particular app would take 10,000 hours to build, whereas another developer would think it’s only 2000 hours. And so I think it’s those elements of very wildly varying rates and wildly varying ideas on how to tackle a problem. And that’s where, for a single project you could get a quote from anywhere from $10,000 to as high as a million. And in fact, APPT did recently we did a competitive study a a local against our local competitors and nationwide. And it blew me away. We had detailed features like, this is what we want. And we were getting quote ranges that same whip from $10,000 to a million dollars and app it. We tend to kind of come in like mid-level because we’re a hybrid. So it’s, it’s crazy. It’s really hard. And so, oh gosh, I could spend, you
AJV (42:00):
Make a decision based on, I mean, cuz I imagine most people make a decision based on, well, if I got 10,000, a million, 10,000 sounds a lot better. So, but then it’s like, what at what cost are you paying that, you know, fee? So it was like, how do you even make a decision in those types of environments? Yeah.
AM (42:19):
So I, you know what aj I might have to give you a blog on how to vet vendors. Like we had a list of questions that you should ask every single vendor to make sure that they’re a fit for your project because price is a, like, it’s, it varies so wildly that it’s not, it can’t be a deciding factor, right? Because even if you go purely offshore with a very low cost developer, so that $10,000 example, what you’re missing is cultural context. Mm-Hmm. , right? So you have to respect that offshore development or developers, they build community so much differently than we do in the us And that’s not a good or a bad thing. It just is what it is. Yeah. Right? And if you are looking to build community, you need to work with somebody that understands how you’ve built your community and how you want it to be built.
AM (43:17):
And that in and of itself, I mean, I would say about 40% of our business comes from entrepreneurs who tried to take the cheap route and have ended up spending what they would’ve spent anyways. They would’ve saved the money had they just gone with a reputable shop in the first place. So I would say this, check the reviews a really, really good place to go is Clutch. It’s a, it’s a third party website. They ranker technical service providers like app and you can start to see the rankings If you want somebody local, you can see who’s the best in your local area. But honestly I think it comes down to relationship. Like you have to work with somebody that you know and you trust or that somebody that you know, has worked with and trusted and has done a good job for them.
AJV (44:12):
Yeah, I think there’s three things that kind of to like, to wrap up our conversation cause I could ask another 36 question if we had the time. But but to everyone listening, Amanda and her team at Abbot have put together something really cool for all of our listeners. And if you’re wondering, am I ready for an app they actually have put together a cool quiz that you can take that will tell you are you ready for an app? And so if you go to app ventures.com/b bg app quiz, we will also put that in the show notes. But it’s app a p ventures.com/bbg app quiz. You can go and take this quiz to determine if you’re ready for an app. And if you are, then to kinda recap what Amanda said is that then go to Clutch, which is a great place to review different vendors.
AJV (45:11):
App is reviewed on there to do a comparative analysis of, you know, try to compare apples to apples here. Doesn’t really help if you’re comparing apples and bananas. But let’s look at apples to apples. And then if you’ll send me the blog link of great questions to add or to ask, we’ll add that to the show notes so that everyone listening, you’ve got three amazing resources to leave this interview with. Go take this quiz. Then you can go to clutch start vetting vendors, and then we’ll include this blog link where you can go and say, these are the best questions that I can ask to figure out who’s the best person to proceed down this path. But I think generally speaking, we’re all headed towards this privately owned community realm at some point. And at some point just means when you are ready, when it makes sense for you without comparing yourself to anyone else’s out there, it’s not doing it for the sake of doing it, it’s doing it for the sake of this is what my com, my community and my business requires of me at this time. Now last but not least, if people wanna connect with you personally, Amanda, where should they go?
AM (46:19):
You know, if you anybody has any questions like, Hey, I can you review this bid? Am I crazy or can you help me build out a feature summary? Have them email me, just [email protected]. This is my passion to help people start off on their right foot with technology. So email me, I will answer any question you have or you can find me on LinkedIn. Amanda, more uchi and let’s keep in touch and I’m here to help. I’m here to answer any questions, mostly because I want good tech built for good people. And it should be, it should be way easier than it is. But it’s a challenge. So,
AJV (47:05):
Well that’s outrageously generous. So Race for Impact a lot. Thank you so much, so helpful, so insightful so many just good tips, good data points, so many good things to consider. And I know that this app conversation is just like scratching like the top of, you know, the beginning of the surface of the, the iceberg. I know this is a deep dark tunnel we could spend a lot of time in, but I think it’s a worthy conversation. So appreciative of you for coming on and for everyone listening, we will catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. We’ll see you later.

Ep 361: Sales Enablement for Beginners | Ben Rigsby Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
So I was recently having this super insightful conversation with a friend of mine talking about sales enablement. Now I’ve been in sales for a really long time. In fact, at my core, more than any other title, professional title that I hold the one that I really hold the most and the one that I love the most is salesperson. Like. So like, I love sales, I’m into sales. I started in sales. I’m still in sales today, to be honest. But this term sales enablement was like, what is that like, fancy term? And it was so interesting to talk about the, you know, I guess today old school sales process that we’re used to in the offline world, right? So it’s, you know, anything from, you know, the introduction to the questioning and overcoming objections, which apparently people don’t use objections anymore.
AJV (00:58):
Now they’re called reservations and I’m not really a PC person. So a lot of these, I’m like, okay, let’s just call it what it is, right? But objections, reservations, whatever you wanna call it, closing. Apparently people don’t use the term closing anymore. But we’re asking for the business, right? And then we’re asking for referrals. We’ve got the presentation with all these things, but that’s in an offline world. But an online world, this term sales enablement is like a really important term. As we drift further and further into this world and we’re finding our clients somehow in a digital space, right? Even if we meet them offline and you know, the real world, at some point they’re looking at your website, they’re looking at your content, they’re checking you out on social media, they’re going through your LinkedIn profile, and there is this online component that that is an ever present and probably ever-growing.
AJV (01:51):
Part of how we attract, nurture leads into clients, right? And then clients into forever clients is the plan. So I was having this conversation with my friend Ben and I thought there were some really cool takeaways that I would put in a little video and share them with you. So here’s a couple of my takeaways from my conversation with Ben. Number one is that lead captures surprise, surprise are the number one best option for growing your email list. People are no longer interested in just subscribing to something where they might in hopes get good information one day. So the idea of, Hey, you just give me your email, I’ll add you to my list, I’ll add you to my easing. Like, that’s not a thing if you weren’t aware, right? And you actually do wanna collect emails, . So I think this is like the more important conversation. Cause I have this conversation with clients in our Brain builders group community all the time about all their focus, all their efforts are going into social media, right? Social media content, social media engagements pretty pictures. And those, I’m not saying those are bad,
AJV (02:58):
I’m just saying at the end of the day, you don’t want people to just follow you on social media. You want to turn those followers on social media into emails that live on your email list that you can actually build real relationships with through your own natural correspondence. Rather through a blog or a podcast or an easing, whatever it is you have them subscribe to. You need possessions of those emails. Cuz if you just have followers on social media, you are, it’s rented real estate, right? Those are not your followers, those are Instagram’s followers. Those are TikTok followers. Those are not yours. So we’ve gotta get ’em off of social and into your email list. And so the best way to do that is to offer a lead capture where it’s enticing enough, it’s valuable enough where you’re going. Yeah, I’m gonna give you my private information, my email address in exchange for whatever promise you hold into this.
AJV (03:59):
Something. It could be a webinar, it could be a P D F, it could be a research study. That’s what we do. It could be some sort of, you know, free call. It could be a variety of things, could be an ebook, the list. We could go on and on and on here. Private interviews. I, I’ll stop with ideas, but what do you have to give someone an exchange for them giving you their email address that is a lead capture that would live on your website. That is something you can promote on social media that can live on, you know, the right hand side of your blog. That can live in a lot of different places. You could advertise that on a podcast. It can live in a lot of different places, but it’s, someone’s going to go to somewhere, click something, give your email address and then you have to be able to deliver them information.
AJV (04:47):
Now in an offline world if you’re going, wow, that sounds like a lot, that, that sounds like a lot of technology cuz it is. In an offline world, let’s just say that you are a speaker or you do presentations. One of the easiest things you can do to have a lead capture is to just say, Hey, if you liked my presentation today and you would like a copy of my slides, bring me your business card and I will email you the slides. Guess what? That too is a form of a lead capture. So let’s change the way we think about it. Yes, it can be through funnels and online correspondence and webinars and all those things. Yes, it can, right? But it can also be really simple in an offline setting to still nurture the sales enablement process where you’re getting leads that you can then, you know, turn into fans and customers for a lifetime. So there’s lots of different ways of doing, but if you’re low tech, which is totally fine, just think about what can I give people just in exchange for their business card. People do have those
AJV (05:57):
Mostly today. And if not, just say hey, and if you, and if people don’t have their business cards, you could again, I’m trying to keep it low tech for the non-techies. Just go, Hey, I have a signup sheet in the back of the room. Just give me your name and your email and I will email you X, y, and Z. So it can be simple, it does not have to be high tech if you are not there yet. There are many ways to do this, but then you still have to have them stored somewhere. And yes, you could just put ’em in your outlook contacts if you want, right? You could just add ’em to your LinkedIn profile if you want. Now there are more advanced ways to do that, but there’s some low tech ways. The most important thing is how are you capturing contact information so that you can stay in touch with people in an online world in the sales enablement process.
AJV (06:44):
So that was the first thing, right? I think that’s really important cuz we talk a lot about it in the online world with e-books and webinars. But I wanted to say there was a way to do it in the offline world too. From stage at a Chamber of commerce meeting and a keynote with thousands of people. You don’t have to go high tech, you can just say, bring me your business card or sign up in the back of the room. Give me your name and email. I will send you this. The most important thing is the this, whatever that is, needs to be something of high value, right? So what information do you have that people want? And that is your need capture in exchange for an email address high level. Okay, we can move on now, , right? This next thing I, I shared or he shared, that sounds so good.
AJV (07:26):
And I actually wrote down this quote and I thought this was so good. And he said, the more that you ask someone else to do, the less likely they are to become a customer of yours, ma. So good. Such a good reminder. I’m gonna say it again. The more you ask someone else to do, the less likely they are to become a customer of yours. So good. So think about it. If you are techy and you have all of the, you know, backend automation set up, think about the things that you’re asking people for. Are you making them answer 5, 10, 15 questions in order to get to the next step? Because again, the more you ask someone to do, the less likely they are to become a customer, right? We know that in terms of the sales enablement process and lead captures online we’re going first name and email.
AJV (08:20):
That’s as much as we’re gonna ask from you. I know plenty of people who don’t even worry about the first name. Just give me your email because the least amount of information is going to get the highest conversion. Now, there is a pro to doing that for lead following, right? So, so for emails, but there’s another process that you really wanna consider if you’re actually having people request a call. Because if you’re going, Hey, just give me an email and I’ll, you can request a free call or you’re getting something free, then you really do wanna have a whole nother conversation with, Hey, you’re not asking for emails. This is no longer a lead capture. What you’re doing now is you have an application and that is a qualifying list. So in the offline world, how I would sit down and go, you know, you know, tell me what you’re looking for.
AJV (09:05):
What are you currently using? What do you like about that? Is there anything you would change about that? Who’s involved in these decisions? That’s an offline application, right? That’s an offline qualifying set of questions. Online. You have applications, which could be called intake surveys, they could be called assessments, you can call ’em whatever you want their applications. And that’s going, Hey, what’s your industry? What’s your title? What was your revenue last year? You know, who are you currently using? What are your goals in the next six months? All of those things, those are qualifying questions, right? This is a sales high level capital word here, sales enablement process. So let’s don’t be confused with what we’re doing in order to actually have someone on the phone to convert them to be a raving fan and customer. So there are marketing, which is you’re just trying to get emails, which is the least amount of information as possible, is gonna give you the highest conversion that’s on the marketing front.
AJV (10:06):
Then you’ve gotta think about sales. And for that, you don’t wanna be getting on the phone with people who aren’t truly good prospects for your service. And I didn’t say good prospects now or later. Just good prospects. You should. And we’ll have plenty of calls with people who aren’t a fit right now. That doesn’t mean they won’t be a fit in the future, just like offline sales, right? That is the whole process of sales nurturing. It happens offline and online. So we just wanna make sure we have qualifying questions that go, you’re a good fit for what I do and we’re a good fit for what you’re looking for. Let’s talk. Right? So that’s an application completely different than, Hey, give me the least amount of information as possible, which is going to result in the highest conversion, which is first name or email, or just email.
AJV (10:53):
So again, you just kind of have to know what you’re looking for. We even say we have some funnels where we split test of going, Hey, how, how are we doing with just first name and email? And then we go first name, last name, email. And sometimes we even go first name, last name, email, phone number, because if we don’t have a phone number, there’s just so much we can do with email clutter. So there’s all different types of ways of going about it. But in general, one, you’re trying to grow your email list. The other, you’re trying to get qualified emails for marketing and then you’re doing qualified leads for sales. Think about those in three very different categories, right? . So we’re trying to get, just grow the email list. Then we’re trying to grow qualified leads for the email list and then qualified leads for a sales conversation.
AJV (11:41):
Three different things with three different sets of information, sales enablement. Okay, moving along here, . Couple of other just quick things I just thought was really important for me. These were just great reminders and I loved when my friend said, he said marketing and sales are a true marriage. They’re a marriage and marketing’s job is to serve up qualified leads to your sales team. And I just know so often, so many companies and corporations, smaller, large, they think about here’s our marketing department and here’s our sales team. And they don’t really have a lot of collaboration. They don’t have a lot of interaction. They don’t have a lot of, you know, back and forth and feedback sharing. But this is a marriage. So like imagine like husband, a wife marketing, sales, they have to work together, they have to communicate, they have to collaborate, they have to work together.
AJV (12:42):
Marketing’s job is to serve up qualified leads for the sales team. So the sales team can have good conversations and find the right fit for the right person and convert them into being hopefully again, a lifelong customer, a raving fan. And that’s a really important job. So if we’re not getting great qualified, you know, leads from the marketing department, sales doesn’t do their job very well. And if sales has been converting, then we gotta look at like where are the leads coming from? Is it a sales problem as a marketing function? They go together, they’re not separate. And marketing and sales are a union. This is a marriage because the whole point of marketing is to provide good qualified leads to help the sales team and sales team job is to do an amazing job and deliver a great service so that the customer goes, yes, that is what I wanna do.
AJV (13:39):
I do wanna buy your services and your products. Here’s my money. Right? So those two things have to work together. So just ask yourself, how often do my sales marketing team talk, collaborate, communicate, brainstorm, and give feedback all? How often are they sta sharing? How often are we doing this together? Because it’s gotta be all the time, right? Just a great reminder. And then one last thing here is that communication. I love this. I thought this was so good cuz we’re all about lifetime value at Brand Builders Group. We’re constantly just looking at how do we create products and services where our customers want to be a part of this for a lifetime, right? It’s not about like, how do we hold you to your contract? It’s not about that, although, right? Those are things a part of business, but it’s like, well, how do we create a program? How do we create a membership, a service where you go, I want to be a part of this, right? That’s lifetime value. That’s how we interpret that, right? It’s a life of the time of a customer who’s with you. And the number one thing that improves lifetime value is communication with your customers. So couple of quick things here. Just really
AJV (14:50):
Quick tips. It’s like during your customer onboarding, just make sure you’re asking what’s their communication preference? Like, what do they actually prefer, right? Do they prefer phone calls, texts, emails, like what’s best for them? And just simply asking that question allows you to cater the communication experience so they actually receive your communication, right? If somebody is not checking emails ever, or you’re just getting spammed, there is no communication even though you’re making a attempts. Same thing. It’s like if you’re blowing someone up in text and they’re like, oh my gosh, just stop. I only use this for personal and they just opt out, right? Or maybe somebody just actually wants to talk to be like, Hey man, I just, I’d love to hear from someone every so often. These are the things that will just make our communication efforts more streamlined, more targeted, thus more successful. And the number one thing to improve lifetime value is communication. Good, healthy communication. So simple tip, during onboarding, ask them what is their number one preference of how they want to receive communication from your company, right? So simple things, important things, they will make a difference. They’re gonna make a difference for you. Hope you enjoy this.