Most podcasters wait years for anyone to find their show in search. Caitlin Durning built Meraki Media Management after growing a nonprofit Instagram account to 500,000 followers in under 30 days, and she has spent five years hosting The End in Mind without missing a single Wednesday release.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Caitlin Durning reveals the four word title change that pushed her show into the top 3 percent on Listen Notes, the free value strategy that turns volunteer talks into consulting contracts, and the way sponsored guest episodes can support a show without turning it into an infomercial.

Want new listeners to actually find your show? Start by adding your niche keywords after your show name and repeating them in each episode description. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building shows that grow through search and relationships.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:Podcasting Secrets:
Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Caitlin Durning: Website: https://www.merakimediamanagement.com/
Podcast: https://www.merakimediamanagement.com/the-end-in-mind-podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caitlin-cynthia-durning-903530131/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@meraki_media_management
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meraki_media_management/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-end-in-mind-personal-development-for-entrepreneurs/id1550833764
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/37TQoqTfeNCx4R3k3ZoDqYEndFragment

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Most podcasters guard their downloads and forget to guard the thing that actually holds their business together. Beverly Cornell learned that lesson the hard way. She built a podcast back in 2007 that passed a million downloads and became required listening for Michigan State economics students, then lost the whole thing, files and domain, when a relationship ended and an ex kept the assets.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Beverly reveals why she now owns her files, accounts, and domain start to finish, how she turns the people she wants as clients into guests so a large share of her business runs through the show, why she treats each interview like a discovery call, and how she brands the whole guest journey down to the calendar link.

Want a show that builds authority and brings the right clients to you? Own your assets first, then make your guest list your growth engine. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators who turn shows into real businesses.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Beverly Cornell: Website: https://wickedlybranded.com/
Podcast: https://wickedlybranded.com/marketing-podcast/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverlycornell
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMael_qxs7iHCypVhVh_kMA
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedlybranded/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wickedly-branded-marketing-magic-the-messy-middle/id1729820075
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6w30Bg2kXmtnhxuLVLjLXB

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Most podcasters treat YouTube as a US-only platform. Ben Olmos built DissedMedia from scratch on a fully bootstrapped budget, growing 800 to 1,000 new YouTube subscribers per video spending just $20 per post, by targeting English speakers across the globe.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Ben reveals how to grow your YouTube subscriber count using global paid promotion for under $20 a video, how the PERMA framework from positive psychology gives podcasters a practical structure for content that sustains both the creator and the audience, and why finding your podcasting tribe is what gets you through hard seasons when motivation disappears.

Want a low-budget YouTube growth strategy that actually works? Start by targeting English speakers globally and making sure your content is properly tagged for discovery. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building shows that last.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Ben Olmos: Website: https://www.benolmos.com
DissedMedia: https://www.dissedmedia.com
Daily Pitch: https://www.dailypitch.news
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDailyPitchNews
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benolmos/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dissedmedia-a-startup-story/id1687025948EndFragment

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Most small business owners do not fail because the idea was wrong. They fail because the math never worked. Monica Allen co-founded Zeus's Closet, an Atlanta-based branded apparel and embroidery business she has run for more than two decades, and launched the Become Your Own Boss podcast after watching the same pricing conversation play out at her front counter more times than she can count.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Monica reveals why pricing without counting every cost is one of the fastest ways a business runs out of money in the first five years, how her podcast accidentally built a coaching business she never planned for, and why owning your podcast feed and email list protects you in ways social media never will.

If you are a small business owner or podcaster building something that lasts, this episode is for you. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets with Nathan Gwilliam for weekly conversations with creators building shows that grow and monetize.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Monica Allen: Website: https://www.monicaallen.com/
Podcast: https://www.monicaallen.com/podcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becomeyourownbosspodcast/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monica-massey-allen-8a3b6612/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/become-your-own-boss-tips-for-starting-and-growing/id1509600261
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GEYCe9XuZ5OynbnjdOX0d
Zeus's Closet: https://zeussescloset.com/

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Most podcasters send a cold email and wait. Trish Manzo picks up a physical phone. She launched the Ride to Independence podcast about a year ago and grew it to roughly 45,000 YouTube subscribers by publishing three themed episodes a week and booking the guests she wants with old fashioned cold calls. Before podcasting she built a children's music program that served more than 450 families and ran it for 18 years before selling it.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Trish Manzo reveals why cold calling converts where email and LinkedIn quietly stall and why she books guests on the first call, how giving each topic its own day of the week trains listeners to come back, why she is building the audience first and letting monetization wait, and how a surprise press junket had her interviewing seven actors back to back in four hours.

Want to grow faster without a bigger budget? Pick up the phone, book the guest you actually want, and give your listeners more than one reason a week to come back. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building audiences that compound.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Trish Manzo: Show Website: https://www.ridetoindependence.com
Business Website: https://zoomconcierge.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trish-manzo-072368156/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ridetoindependencepodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ridetoindependence/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ride-to-independence-business-growth-with-current/id1811379306
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4xu9i1S6wLUVAsLTBKUaOa

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Most podcasters chase downloads, sponsors, and ad revenue. Patrick Lonergan built something different. He is a tax strategist whose clients save an average of $280,000 a year, and his podcast is how they find him. The strange part is that the show has not earned a dollar directly. For two to three years he talked himself out of starting it. Now he turns away 29 of every 30 guest requests.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Patrick reveals the filter behind a show that gets to say no, why hosting your own mic beats cold pitching to get booked on other shows, and how a recorded conversation turns an ideal prospect into a pre-sold client. He also breaks down the episode buffer that keeps busy seasons from breaking the rhythm, the year-long commitment that separates the people who grow from the people who quit, and the "don't be beige" positioning that earns loyal listeners.

If you want a podcast that brings in clients instead of just downloads, this conversation gives you the playbook.

Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets with Nathan Gwilliam for weekly conversations with creators building shows that grow and monetize.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Patrick Lonergan: Podcast: https://vitalstrategies.com/
Tax Consulting: https://vitalwealth.com/
Free Tax Resources: https://vitalstrategies.com/tax
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricklonergan/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VitalStrategies
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vital.strategies
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vital-wealth-strategies/id1716929954
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1T5vJ5MlAg9yNXXOf7ppws

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Most podcasters chase guests, downloads, and sponsors. Mitchell Beinhaker built the opposite. He started The Accidental Entrepreneur for 75 dollars after seeing a Pat Flynn video, and 400 episodes later the show runs as a content engine for his New York and New Jersey law practice. Guests pitch to get on, booking agencies reach out, and new business arrives through referral instead of cold outreach.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Mitch reveals the 100 episode milestone that changed how the industry treated him, the micro influencer outreach move that brought him his first real following, and the simple editing template and email system that let a busy attorney publish for seven years without burning out.

Want a podcast that markets your business while you stay focused on your real work? Treat the show as a content engine, publish with a system, and let trust bring the right people to you. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators building shows that grow their business.

Follow, Like & Subscribe

Podcasting Secrets:
Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj
Nathan Gwilliam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/
Mitchell Beinhaker:
Website: https://beinhakerlaw.com/
Personal site: https://mitchbeinhaker.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beinhakerlaw/

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Most podcasters assume they need paid ads to grow. Jaryd Krause proves the opposite. After he got banned from Facebook ads and watched a business that ran on up to $20,000 a month in ad spend fall apart, he rebuilt his business on a podcast with zero ad spend, and the clients started coming to him.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Jaryd Krause, founder of Buying Online Businesses and host of the Buying Online Businesses Podcast, shares how he advises on acquisitions up to $20 million while working five to ten hour weeks from Bali. Jaryd breaks down the content garden approach that attracts buyers instead of chasing them, the ad funnel that turns one short clip into an email list, why he rejects about 99% of guest pitches and hunts the guests he wants instead, and the simple naming move that makes a show sellable later.

He also explains why he does not lean on sales calls anymore, how banking episodes ahead buys real freedom, and why building your show for others beats building it for the money.

If this episode helps you rethink how a podcast can grow a business, subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies on growth, monetization, and building a show that works while you live your life.

Follow, Like & Subscribe

Nathan Gwilliam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Jaryd Krause:
Website: https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarydkrause
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3g6G2USlnq7EgnUsajTBw
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buyingonlinebusinesses/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/buying-online-businesses-podcast/id1455428116
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/54NJNFU0VjO35y4heFBWmx

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Most podcasters measure success by one number, downloads, and quit when that number stays small. Matt Haycox keeps a different scoreboard. The investor and host of No Bollocks with Matt Haycox went bankrupt at 28, rebuilt after losing it all, and has now recorded around 700 episodes over seven years. His take is simple. A podcast can pay off even if nobody listens.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Matt explains why 300 loyal listeners in the right niche can outearn 300,000 random ones, how the niche trap buries most business shows before episode 20, and how to use the show to open doors with guests who would rarely take your call. He breaks down booking ideal clients as guests, pushing through your rough early episodes, and why dropping the fake highlight reel builds the kind of trust that turns a small audience into real revenue.

Want a podcast that builds authority and brings in business, not just downloads? Focus on the right niche, the right relationships, and consistency you can sustain. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators who are growing and monetizing shows that last.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Matt Haycox:

Website: https://matt-haycox.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthaycox/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MattHaycox
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thematthaycox
No Bollocks Podcast (Apple): https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/no-bollocks-with-matt-haycox/id1663860906
No Bollocks Podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/3UVPhB8D2igVlqyWWWZCvO

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Most podcasters spend years chasing ad deals that never come. Tim Topham took a different path. As the founder and director of TopMusic Co and host of The TopCast, Tim built 470 episodes of a niche podcast for music teachers without ever running a single ad. Instead, every episode fed a paid membership community that replaced his full-time teaching salary, funds a full team, and has run for 10 years straight.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Tim reveals why the podcast should never be the business, how he beta-launched his membership while still teaching full-time, why consistency over years compounds in ways most early podcasters never stay long enough to see, and the screen-recording system that helped him hand off production tasks and protect his time.

If your show is not generating the income you hoped for, this episode reframes the problem. The show is the funnel. Build the right product behind it. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building shows that actually pay.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Tim Topham:
Website: https://topmusic.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timtopham/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/topmusicco
Apple (TopCast): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-topcast-the-official-music-teachers-podcast/id972978614
Spotify (TopCast): https://open.spotify.com/show/7pEIphmLpaQS1E4lFbxd3R

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Most podcasters think they quit because they lose motivation. The real reason is more physical than they'd expect. Michal McCracken is a transformational coach and host of the Space and Grace Podcast who helps entrepreneurs build abundant businesses without burning out, by working with the nervous system rather than against it. She built and sold a thriving pet care business, made great money, had amazing staff, and still found herself sitting in her car one morning convinced she was having a heart attack.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Michal reveals why your body treats the publish button like a survival threat, how the three nervous system states (ventral vagal, sympathetic, and dorsal vagal) show up as procrastination, distraction, and pod fade, and how to negotiate with yourself to keep publishing without white-knuckling through the resistance.

Your body isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. The question is whether you know how to work with it. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building shows that last.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Michal McCracken: Website: https://www.spaceandgrace.me/resources
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michal-mccracken/
Podcast (Apple): https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/space-and-grace-podcast-abundant-business-without-burnout/id1776927699
Podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/7Lz9vFTiRaWzwPuDloUZEg

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Most podcasters obsess over downloads while missing the bigger opportunity sitting across the mic. Athin Cassiotis built The Business Growth Show to 290 episodes in five and a half years without missing a single week, then turned guest introductions into a multi-million-dollar partnership he never pitched. A high school dropout from Adelaide once told by his own teacher he would never succeed, Athin has gone on to coach 1,000-plus entrepreneurs across 30-plus industries in 10-plus countries.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Athin shares why your guest list outranks your listener count, how he landed Jay Abraham, the world's highest-paid marketer, on his show for free when others pay $5,000 just for a meeting, the buffer system that keeps a weekly show running for years, the calendar booking workflow that turns hours of prep into minutes, and how to land headline-name guests by working up through their network of instructors and assistants. He also breaks down the reciprocity move that turns guests into distribution partners and the AI workflow that lets one episode fuel weeks of social content. Catch The Business Growth Show on Apple and Spotify.

Want to stop chasing downloads and start building real partnerships through your podcast? Treat each guest like a partner, not just a content piece. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly conversations with creators turning podcast guests into long-term business growth.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Athin Cassiotis:

Website: https://athincassiotis.com/
The Business Growth Show on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-business-growth-show-with-athin-cassiotis/id1519360640
The Business Growth Show on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ObQdySPoVkYFteIMvh0Tr
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/athincassiotis/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/athincassiotis/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/athincassiotis/
X: https://x.com/athincassiotisEndFragment

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Most podcasters chase ad revenue and downloads. Jack Hoss went the other way. Over 9 years and 800+ episodes of RealDealChat, Jack has never sold a single ad. The show itself became the engine of his entire real estate business, giving him 45-minute conversations with elite operators who normally charge tens of thousands of dollars for a weekend. He calls a podcast the modern-day version of writing a book, and the network it built for him shaped the deals that came after.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Jack reveals the AI prompt strategy that pushes his YouTube SEO score past 100, the Bing business profile sync that AI engines now reward, the Chamber of Commerce backlink trick that compounds authority for any podcaster, and the vibe coding workflow that let him ship a working Minimum Viable Product in 3 days for $150 instead of paying a developer a year of salary. Jack also shares the simplest review-growth tactic most hosts miss and his 75/25 rule for using ChatGPT to sharpen business focus.

Want a podcast that creates real authority and real deal flow without ad sales?Treat each interview as a free seat next to a top operator, build distribution into the workflow, and let AI handle the SEO grind. Share this episode with anyone still chasing downloads instead of relationships. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly tactics from creators turning their shows into sustainable businesses.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Jack Hoss:

Website:https://www.realdealcrew.com/
Podcast:https://realdealchat.com/
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackhoss/
Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-estate-investing-with-realdealchat/id1227366661
Spotify Podcast:https://open.spotify.com/show/4P66jm0Q4PMl7OoZzHMUUZ

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Most podcasters spread themselves too thin and wonder why nothing compounds. Ross Stockdale spent six years building 30,000 downloads across three different shows. Then he made one decision, went all in on The Thunder Stock Show, and hit nearly 400,000 downloads in nine months. A former MMA cage fighter turned fractional CMO, Ross treats podcasting the way he trained for fights: every rep builds on the last one.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Ross shares Russell Brunson's advice to ignore analytics for the first 100 episodes, why he monetizes through guest referrals instead of sponsors, the three-stage growth framework that removed his mental fatigue, and the personal loss that taught him when to cancel a recording instead of forcing it. He also explains how podcasting can 40x a business's online presence without expensive production, and why pattern recognition matters more than natural talent for long-term growth.

Want to stop spreading thin and start compounding your podcast growth? Pick one show, commit fully, and build the systems that make consistency sustainable. Share this episode with a podcaster who is running three projects and growing none of them. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies on growth, monetization, and building a podcast that actually moves your business.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

StartFragmentPodcasting Secrets: Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Ross Stockdale:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrossstockdale/Website: https://thunderstockmarketing.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThunderStockMarketingApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thunder-stock-show/id1656717958Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6bJd7N1FDPnUC30CcPZ6DYEndFragment

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Most podcasters start a show and then wonder how to turn it into revenue. Philip Jayhawk Chan did the opposite. He looked at every marketing channel available to grow his investment firm, Lightspeed Investing, and picked podcasting because it was the one place where he could build real relationships, learn from the people he wanted to work with, and let his personality carry the conversation instead of a script.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Philip shares how he invites ideal clients as podcast guests and builds trust without ever pitching his services, why he targets three to five quality connections per episode instead of chasing download numbers, how he uses case study guests who tell their own story so the proof speaks for itself, why his accumulated content library now answers sales objections before the first call even starts, and how matching his podcast format to his personality made consistency easy instead of forced. Philip also breaks down how he designs content specifically for white collar professionals and why audience awareness shapes everything he says and skips on his show.

Want to turn your podcast into a client conversion tool without sounding like a salesperson? Listen to how Philip built his pipeline through conversations, not campaigns. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies on growth, guesting, audience building, and long-term podcast success.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Philip Jayhawk Chan:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipchan333/
Website: https://www.lightspeedinvesting.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lightspeedinvestingpodcast
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lightspeed-investing-podcast/id1753962250
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qPzhfg7XWizedEFcFn8mo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philip_jayhawk_chan/

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Gino Barbaro didn't know what a podcast was when his business partner suggested starting one in 2016. He said yes anyway. That decision led to a bestselling book, a real estate education community, and four podcasts that each serve a different purpose in his business.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Gino shares how a guest who sold 8 million copies told him exactly what book to write during a live interview, why he gave up on retirement after two days to build a podcast empire from scratch, how the $120K broker math proves podcasters can skip sponsors entirely, and why the moment only six people showed up to his talk became the lesson that now drives everything he creates. With four shows running simultaneously and a legacy podcast he records with his 23 year old son, Gino proves that the podcast is not a side project. It is the business center.

Want to build a podcast that drives real business results, not just downloads? Focus on purpose first, build real conversations, and let the monetization follow the value. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies on growth, monetization, and podcast business building.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Gino Barbaro:

Website: barbaro360.com

LinkedIn: Gino Barbaro

YouTube: Barbaro 360

Jake and Gino: jakeandgino.com

Free Book: Download a free copy of Happy Money, Happy Family, Happy Legacy at barbaro360.com

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Most podcasters wait until everything is ready before they launch their next offer. Eileen Noyes signed 11 high-ticket coaching clients in two weeks, right before Thanksgiving, from a podcast she almost never started. A mom of eight who spent 16 years in a marriage where her voice was treated as property, Eileen rebuilt everything, launched The Unsidelined Life Podcast, and turned it into the engine behind a book, a coaching business, and a brand that sells without a sales pitch.

Eileen Noyes is the host of The Unsidelined Life Podcast, founder of Lady Bellator, author of Sidelined No More and Rise Up, Lady Bellator, speaker, mentor, and coach helping family-devoted women reclaim their identity, voice, and purpose.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Eileen shares how 90 shows wanted her as a guest in just two months and what she learned about saying no, why she launched coaching before Thanksgiving instead of waiting for the right moment and signed 11 high-ticket clients in two weeks, how she built a podcast and book as one connected ecosystem where each asset feeds the other, and the one question that sharpened her show and drives everything she creates.

Want a podcast that builds your brand, fills your offers, and grows without a sales pitch? Start before you feel ready. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building shows that grow and convert.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Eileen Noyes: Website: https://www.eileennoyes.com/ | Podcast: https://theunsidelinedlife.com/ | Lady Bellator: https://www.ladybellator.com/ | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileenpnoyes/ | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eileenpnoyes/ | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eileennoyes | Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unsidelined-life/id1759219138 | Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/54xYIHjkcIn2wbFFSExkxE |YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnsidelinedLife |Books: https://www.amazon.com/Eileen-Noyes/e/B0CXD2Y4RPEndFragment

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Most podcasters sit on a content library worth far more than any ad deal they will ever sign. J. Kevin Tumlinson launched the Wordslinger Podcast with a $25 Fiverr theme song and a soundproofed spare closet. Today that show reaches 80,000 listeners. He spent seven years as the public face of Draft2Digital, one of the leading indie publishing platforms, and has published more than 70 novels alongside it.

J. Kevin Tumlinson is the author of more than 70 award-winning novels, host of the Wordslinger Podcast, and a leading voice in the indie publishing world.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Kevin reveals why a nonfiction book built from your existing podcast episodes outperforms any business card, how Amazon's search engine gives nonfiction podcasters a built-in discoverability advantage, the content repurposing approach he calls using the whole buffalo, a psychological trigger from the book Influence that gets more listeners to share your show, and how to simplify production so burnout never becomes a reason to quit.

Want to turn your existing podcast content into revenue without waiting for a sponsor? Start treating your episodes as raw material. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators building businesses through their shows.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

J. Kevin Tumlinson:
Website: https://www.kevintumlinson.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevintumlinson/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinson
Substack: https://kevintumlinson.substack.com/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/kevintumlinson
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevintumlinson/
Wordslinger Podcast: https://wordslingerpodcast.com/

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Most podcasters spend hours preparing question lists. Marc Aflalo has produced more than 100 podcasts across 30 years in radio, TV, live events, and digital media. He has been doing it since before the word "podcast" existed. And his single biggest lesson is this: interviews get answers, but conversations create moments that move people to act.

Marc Aflalo is the CEO of Aflalo Communications and has spent three decades in broadcast, producing shows, engineering live events, and helping creators develop their voice and brand across borders.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Marc reveals how one unscripted conversation generated $38,000 in overnight product sales, why throwing out the question list is the most underrated podcasting strategy, how broadcasting live from events with real crowd noise creates authenticity studio recordings cannot match, and how technology lets podcasters build audiences across borders without a single flight.

Want to create episodes that actually connect and convert? Stop reading questions. Start listening. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube for weekly insights from creators and producers building shows that grow and convert.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Nathan Gwilliam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Marc Aflalo:
Website: https://aflalo.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcaflalo/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcaflalo/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Aflalo-Media/61566367914530/

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Most podcasters wait months to monetize, chasing sponsors who pay pennies per download. Tom Antion took the opposite approach and started making money from day one. He is the host of the Screw the Commute podcast with more than 1,060 episodes, an internet entrepreneur since 1994, and a lifelong entrepreneur who has never held a traditional job.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Tom reveals how one free ebook written during an airport layover became his top earning asset through residual affiliate income that paid him every month for 18 years, why he recorded 50 episodes before releasing a single one to crush pod fade, how editing every one of his 1,060 episodes himself kept his costs low and his profits high, why he refuses sponsors and sells his own products at every price point so anyone in his audience can buy from him, and how building a 100,000 person email list became the real engine behind his podcast business.

Ready to stop waiting on sponsors and start building real podcast revenue? Create your own products, move listeners to your email list, and monetize from episode one. Share this with any podcaster stuck chasing ad deals when they should be selling their own offers. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies on growth, monetization, audience building, and long-term podcast success.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Tom Antion:

Website: https://screwthecommute.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomantion/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ScrewTheCommute
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/screwthecommute/

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Most podcasters sit around waiting for sponsors who pay pennies per download. Danna Crawford, host of the Power Selling Podcast and known as Power Selling Mom, has been selling online since 1997 and built podcast revenue through e-commerce instead of chasing ad deals. Beanie Babies bought her a house in Florida, and she still sells across eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, Depop, and Facebook Marketplace today.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Danna shares why her reels and shorts consistently get more views than her full episodes, how she uses Google Lens to research and price products instantly at thrift stores, why she prints podcast branding on every shipping bag and sticker to turn customers into listeners, how an 83 year old woman runs an entire online selling business from her phone with no computer or printer, why A/B testing YouTube titles helped increase her downloads, and how the timer method keeps her productive without falling into social media rabbit holes.

Want to stop waiting on sponsors and start building podcast revenue through selling? Diversify across platforms, brand every package you ship, and turn your short form content into your biggest growth tool. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies on growth, monetization, and building a podcast that pays.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:-
Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Danna Crawford:-

Website: https://powersellingmom.com
Podcast: https://powersellingpodcast.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannacrawford/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dannacrawford

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Most podcasters chase downloads and algorithms, while Richard Kaufman built 1,400 episodes and a 99% guest share rate by doing things most creators stopped doing years ago. Richard Kaufman is the host of the Vertical Momentum Resiliency Podcast 2.0, a veteran, comeback coach, and author of The Podcasting Blueprint. After a Humvee crushed his skull and left him nearly blind, he spent 18 months on his couch before a single text pulled him back. He hit record and never stopped.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Richard reveals the one calendar checkbox that locks in a 99% guest share rate, how giving away free sponsorships for five years led to Monster Energy reaching out first, why tagging brands daily in real product content works better than any pitch, and how sending handwritten thank-you notes to every guest built a network that includes John Lee Dumas and Robert Kiyosaki. Richard also breaks down the three P's of podcasting, purpose, power, and profit, and why ignoring any one of them is exactly why the average podcast dies at 12 episodes.

Want to build a podcast that grows through relationships, not reach? Start by serving your audience and your guests before you ask for anything. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators who are building shows that last.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Richard Kaufman:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-kaufman-989757139/
YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCqH4fxTUerT6JaFIaJ0_Zew
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1AVDzGn31ZRpzBdBIREhgo
Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7NLYP2W
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/VerticalMomentum

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Most podcasters treat guests like content and wonder why the show never makes money. Andrew Chesnutt built two seven-figure companies by doing the opposite. He uses every podcast episode to build a real relationship, offers a free authority audit after recording, and lets the connection lead to business naturally, no pitch required.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Andrew breaks down his seven step, story driven conversion framework that replaces the Perfect Webinar's hard sell with a softer approach that still closes, why he runs live webinars twice weekly instead of going evergreen, how authority by proximity makes your guests' credibility flow through to you, and the single funnel strategy that replaced seventeen scattered lead magnets. He also shares why requiring guests to share their episodes is the growth lever most hosts miss, and how building systems behind the podcast freed him to focus on relationships instead of production.

Want to turn your podcast into an authority engine that converts guests into clients? Learn Andrew's full framework and see how podcast and webinar symbiosis creates warm leads without cold outreach.

Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube for weekly conversations with creators who are turning their shows into real businesses & grab the FREE 101 PODCASTING SECRETS GUIDE by signing up for the newsletter at podcastingsecrets.com

Try out the all-in-one platform to create, grow, and monetize your podcast without stitching together separate tools, start your free trial at PodUp.com.

PodcastingSecrets #PodcastMonetization #WebinarStrategy #AuthorityByProximity #PodcastGrowth #PodcastGuests #StoryDrivenSales #FunnelStrategy #PodUp #PodAllies #CreatorEconomy #ThoughtLeadership #PodcastMarketing

Follow, Like & Subscribe to the Podcasting Secrets Channel

Follow, Like & Subscribe to Nathan Gwilliam

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow, Like & Subscribe to Andrew Chesnutt

Website: https://theauthorityforge.com
Free Resource: https://theauthorityforge.com/quickstart
Masterclass: https://theauthorityforge.com/masterclass
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theauthorityforge/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575562620634
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-authority-forge/

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Most podcasters focus on growing their audience first and figuring out money later. Josh Thomas took the opposite approach. As host of the Leverage Everything Podcast and creator of the Conversion Podcast Blueprint, Josh generated over $1 million in income from a single guest relationship that started inside his first 20 episodes, then went on to sell a $27 podcast guide that made $100,000 in its first month.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Josh breaks down why the relationship with your guest matters more than audience size, how sponsoring yourself with a short anchor offer turns every episode into a conversion tool, and why keeping episodes tight with one repeatable ignition question removes prep time while creating better conversations. He also explains how turning transcripts into blog posts creates SEO content that search engines favor because it is original, not AI generated, and drives listeners back to the show long after episodes air.

Want to turn your podcast into a client conversion machine? Stop treating episodes as content and start treating guests as potential partners. Share this episode with podcasters who are stuck chasing downloads instead of building relationships. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators who monetize smarter, not louder.

Nathan Gwilliam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Josh Thomas:
PodCourse: https://getconversions.net/podcast
Website: https://vaiq.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jtliterally
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jtliterally
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtliterally/
Podcast: https://leverage-everythingpodcast.castos.com/

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Most podcasters lose momentum because they rely on motivation instead of a system. Leo Young, founder of Cornell Communities and host of the Journey with Leo Young, coded his own allowance tracker app that deposits $10 for every completed podcast action and deducts $10 for every miss. His consistency system runs on immediate reinforcement, not willpower.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Leo explains why consistency beats guest quality and distribution combined because without reps the host never improves enough for either to matter, how dropping scripted questions and following curiosity leads to better guest answers, why the bartering system of trading podcast interviews grows both shows without spending a dollar, and why Alex Hormozi created content for six years before making serious asks proving that delayed monetization builds stronger trust. A real estate investor who burned out on Instagram short form content, Leo rebuilt his creator strategy around depth, systems, and long-term habits.

Want to build a podcast that outlasts motivation? Build your own reinforcement system, focus on consistency over tactics, and stop scripting your best conversations. Share this with any creator who is struggling to stay consistent. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies on building shows that last.

Podcasting Secrets:

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Leo Young:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leo-young/
Website: https://leoyoungrealestate.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeoYoungRealEstate
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leoyoungrealestate/

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Most podcasters think monetization means waiting for sponsors. Jennifer Butcher never bought that idea. She built She Talks Money while running a 25-year mortgage business with her husband, owning a gym, and raising two teenagers. The strategy is straightforward: use the podcast to generate mortgage referrals, stack affiliate deals with guests who already serve your audience, and build systems that keep the show running without wearing you down.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Jennifer explains the Instagram outreach approach she uses to find aligned guests, how she committed to 52 consecutive weekly episodes before ever reevaluating, why batching recordings is the single biggest time-saver in her workflow, and the hormone health episode that generated more personal responses than anything else she has published. She also shares the daily habits, mindset shift, and wellness routine that keep her showing up at a high level week after week.

Want to stack affiliate income into your podcast and turn your existing skills into revenue? Focus on guest alignment and daily outreach, not just download counts. Share this episode with any podcaster still waiting for a sponsor deal before they start earning. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube for weekly conversations with creators who are turning their shows into real businesses.

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Jennifer Butcher:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-butcher-1717586/

Website: https://open.spotify.com/show/5BlfcvgVRT8hcBWK2kx1pL

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferbutcherofficial/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jenniferbutchermortgage

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Most podcasters chase downloads and revenue, while nonprofit leaders measure success differently. Michelle Saunders-Gottsch built the Altered Stories Ministry, reaching 80-plus countries and 160-plus women with God stories, focusing on kingdom impact rather than vanity metrics. Her measure of success is testimonies, faith transformations, marriage healing, and women feeling heard, not dollar signs.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Michelle reveals how childhood cult survivor story took 30 years to share becoming foundation for giving other women voices, why donations come FROM impact not the other way around when listeners in persecuted countries need hope, and multiple nonprofit monetization strategies including book royalties, fundraising events, sponsorships proving money enables MORE impact not less. Started after Focus on the Family broadcast training, Michelle demonstrates that kingdom metrics outweigh revenue metrics when building a sustainable ministry podcast.

Want to build a podcast waitlist through relationships, not transactions? Focus on kingdom metrics like testimonies and transformations, not just downloads. Share this approach with ministry leaders chasing vanity metrics without measuring real change. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building mission-driven shows through impact over income.

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Michelle Saunders-Gottsch:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mischelle-saunders-gottsch/

Website: https://alteredstories.org/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@alteredstoriesministryyout7063

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Most podcasters beg for guests, while successful hosts attract high-caliber experts effortlessly. Carl J. Cox of the Measure Success Podcast, built a six month podcast waitlist with 2-3 daily guest requests by stopping selling and starting giving. His biggest mistake was trying to sell too hard, forgetting the podcast wasn't about him but about guests wanting to share their knowledge, wisdom, and gifts to the world.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Carl reveals his transformation. He stopped scripting interviews and started being genuinely curious. He asked every guest for referrals, bringing Sean Covey and high-level experts to his show. He stopped doing prep interviews because time matters. Someone in a million dollar business makes 500 dollars per hour. Why waste it? Started in 2021 after a burst appendix during COVID, Carl built the fourth best strategic employment podcast by treating guests like real human beings with trust and caring instead of transactions.

Want to build a podcast waitlist through relationships, not transactions? Stop selling to guests and start giving first with genuine curiosity. Share this strategy with podcasters treating interviews like business deals without building trust. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building quality guest lists through relationships over vanity metrics.

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Carl J. Cox:

Website: https://40strategy.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carljcox/

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Most podcasters quit after three episodes when download numbers disappoint, chasing vanity metrics instead of serving an audience. Mischa Zvegintzov, host of the Table Rush Talk Show, took the opposite approach. He focused on service by asking how he could be of service and what he could bring to the table, building confidence to speak anywhere despite discouraging metrics.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Mischa explains why one person getting value from 100 episodes matters more than download numbers, how podcasting built the confidence to speak to more than 200 people with only two weeks’ notice, and an overlooked growth tactic of telling everyone you meet about your podcast and guiding them to follow immediately. With 39 years of sobriety and service in the recovery community, Mischa shows that consistency and service matter more than numbers or viral attention.

Want to grow your podcast without relying on paid ads? Stop chasing vanity metrics and start showing up consistently for one listener at a time. Share this mindset with podcasters refreshing analytics dashboards without clarity. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly insights from creators building sustainable shows through consistency over numbers.

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Mischa Zvegintzov:

Website: https://tablerush.simplecast.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mischaz/

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Most podcasters assume hitting the top charts requires massive marketing budgets and paid advertising campaigns spending thousands monthly. Andy Walsh, host of the Startups Decoded podcast, took the opposite approach. He hit the top 50 Apple Entrepreneur charts in 12 months without spending single dollar on ads through strategic guest selection and organic amplification.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Andy reveals how booking guests with 150K plus LinkedIn followers in top 0.1 percent creates native reach and engagement, why thinking like scientist eliminates podcast failure through hypothesis driven approach, and how six months persistence leads to sticky growth. After three exits and building audio branding for Skype and Coldplay, Andy demonstrates that guest caliber and storytelling depth outweigh marketing spend and algorithmic manipulation.

Grow your podcast organically? Stop chasing paid advertising and start booking strategic guests who become distribution partners. Share this guest selection strategy with podcasters spending thousands on ads without results. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators hitting top charts through quality guests over marketing budgets.
Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Andy Walsh:

Website: https://startupsdecoded.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anwalsh/

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Most podcasters assume building a profitable business requires borrowing capital to invest in professional equipment, marketing, and studio space before generating any revenue. Shana and Vanessa, hosts of the Budget Besties podcast, took the opposite approach building a multi-six figure business completely debt-free using Profit First methodology.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Budget Besties, Shana and Vanessa reveal how three episodes weekly accelerated growth from 4,000 to 1.5 million plays in two years without paid advertising, why one call to action per episode generates all revenue selling only their own coaching services and budget template. They demonstrate that bootstrap mentality, consistent imperfect action, and debt-free building outweigh borrowed capital and perfect planning.

Ready to start your show? Stop waiting for the perfect plan, perfect equipment, and perfect content. Click record today and publish imperfectly. Share this comprehensive growth strategy with aspiring podcasters convinced they need perfect setups before starting. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators building profitable shows on their own terms.Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Budget Besties:

Website: https://budgetbesties.com

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mybudgetbesties

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybudgetbesties

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyBudgetBesties

Email: hello@budgetbesties.comEndFragment

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Most podcasters assume monetization requires massive download numbers to attract advertisers or sponsors, spending years building an audience before generating meaningful revenue. Gabe Marusca, host of the Authority in the Wild podcast, took the opposite approach. He built a business model generating 50 percent of revenue directly from podcast relationships without running a single advertisement or selling sponsorships despite having the top 10 percent globally ranked show.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Gabe reveals how offering free breakthrough sessions to podcast guests converts 60 percent into discovery calls and 20 percent into long-term consulting clients, why strategic guest selection matters more than total downloads, and how building business around desired lifestyle creates sustainable success. After a journey from $200 monthly employee to living on a volcanic island in the Atlantic Ocean, Gabe demonstrates that adaptability, curiosity, and human connections outweigh traditional business metrics.

Discover practical guest-to-client conversion strategies, relationship-based monetization models, and lifestyle design principles that prioritize time protection over revenue maximization. Subscribe and follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators building profitable shows on their own terms.Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Gabe Marusca:

Podcast: https://www.gabemarusca.com/podcast

Website: https://www.gabemarusca.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabemarusca/

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Most podcasters unknowingly limit their growth by focusing only on the United States market, ignoring that 90 percent of internet users live outside America. Alejandra Avalos Carranza, founder and CEO of ACMG Digital, took the opposite approach. She built a global network through strategic podcasting, landing high-profile guests like the CEO of Dreamworks and 20th Century Fox as a relatively new podcaster.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Alejandra reveals how to pitch big-name guests on LinkedIn by offering marketing value they actually want, why podcasters should charge flat collaboration fees instead of giving away free audience access, and how to handle rejection after being turned down 20 to 30 times. After retiring through real estate and Airbnb investments, Alejandra discovered that podcasting opens doors to international business opportunities impossible through traditional marketing, connecting her with entrepreneurs across Europe, Mexico, and Latin America.

Discover how to grow your network globally through authentic collaborations. If you know a podcaster trying to expand their reach, share this with them. Subscribe and Follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators who've cracked the code.Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Alejandra Avalos Carranza:

Website: https://theacmgcompany.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandra-carranza-281788297/

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Most fitness coaches fail to build sustainable online businesses because they try to serve everyone, watering down their message until it resonates with no one. Tobias Young, former professional bodybuilder and now CEO of TNT Fit Pro Coaching, avoided that trap. Over 16 years, he built multiple six- and seven-figure coaching companies by focusing on one niche, solving one core problem, and following a structured, repeatable business framework.

In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Tobias breaks down his signature 9XSN method, a system that helps coaches clarify their bullseye client avatar, build authority, and create irresistible offers that consistently scale past six figures. With 26 years in the fitness industry, seven magazine covers, and a pro bodybuilding career, Tobias eventually realized something bigger: helping coaches build businesses creates multiplier impact. Helping one coach with 50 clients means impacting 50 lives at once, giving an exponential ripple effect.

Discover practical podcast monetization ideas, sponsorship approaches, and revenue strategies you can start exploring right away - without waiting years to get noticed. If you know a podcaster trying to figure this out, share this with them. Subscribe and Follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators who've cracked the code.
Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Tobias Young,TNT Fit Pro Coaching:

Podcast: https://thefitbizaccelerator.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiasyoung/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobiasyoung1/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tntfitprocoaching

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TNTfitprocoaching

Schedule Free Online Growth Call: https://www.tntfitprocoaching.com/schedule-page

Tobias Young Lead Magnet: https://tntfitprocoaching.com/10k-in-90-days-organic-growth

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How do successful podcasters monetize before recording episode one? Scott Carson generated $4000 monthly podcast revenue from four podcast sponsors before launching The Note Closer Show by building audience through 150 consecutive Facebook Lives, proving market demand first.

In this episode of the Podcasting Secrets, host Nathan Gwilliam explores Scott's podcast monetization strategy that reversed the traditional timeline, which entailed building an audience first, then podcast sponsorship commitments. Discover podcast marketing tactics showing guest episodes dropped engagement 50 percent compared to solo teaching episodes, forcing strategic format changes maximizing podcast growth. Learn how Scott launched six city-specific podcasts simultaneously. Explore AI podcast automation uploading 1000 episodes training clone answering questions 95 percent accurately, and email repurposing strategies boosting podcast downloads an additional 10 percent targeting non-openers. After 1000 episodes dominating niche podcasting over eight years, Scott reveals podcast consistency systems and podcast income strategies that replaced travel speaking with podcasting from home reaching larger audiences.

Get actionable podcast monetization secrets, podcast sponsorship tactics, and podcast revenue generation methods proving monetization solutions that beats waiting years hoping sponsors eventually notice your show. Share this with podcasters struggling to monetize; Subscribe and Follow Podcasting Secrets on Apple, Spotify and YouTube for weekly strategies from creators who've cracked the code.
Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-secrets/id1726056241

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0edA45tyPxFRfiUmDxYSUj

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Scott Carson, CEO, We Close Notes:

Website: https://weclosenotes.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/1scottcarson/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1scottcarson/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scott.carson.18049/

Twitter/X: https://x.com/1scottcarson

Podcast Note-Closers-Show-Podcast:

Website: https://weclosenotes.com/note-closers-show-podcast/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noteclosers/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WeCloseNotes

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Sadaf Beynon founder of Pod Junction podcast reveals how she discovered after two years that she was using guests as crutch to avoid being center stage, relying on their expertise to make her show sound credible instead of building her own authority voice. Discover why solo episodes simplify production by eliminating scheduling coordination follow-up emails and waiting on guest availability making process faster lighter and more agile, how monthly recording made every episode feel like starting from scratch while more frequent recording accelerates learning curve building voice confidence faster, the strategy of sprinkling your perspectives into guest conversations instead of just asking questions then handing microphone over, and why balance between solo episodes building your voice and guest interviews providing networking benefits prevents borrowed authority trap while maintaining audience reach.

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Sadaf Beynon:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadafbeynon/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PodJunctionPodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sadafbeynon/

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Brandy Maslowski reveals how she transformed from firefighter to award-winning Quilter on Fire podcast host serving the global quilting community through 230+ episodes over five years. After 100 failed episodes as Canadian Quilt Talk with regional branding that limited growth, Brandy rebranded inspired by Entrepreneurs on Fire, opening the USA market that now represents 75 percent of listeners and recently won the 'Women in Podcasting Award' for community-centered content creation. Discover the monetization strategy that invites 10 potential advertisers weekly until converting one, then bundling ads into media kits; Learn why hiring a professional podcast producer drastically improved quality and boosted listener-ship.

Share this with niche podcasters struggling to monetize specialized audiences and subscribe to Podcasting Secrets for weekly strategies from creators who've cracked the code.
Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Brandy Maslowski:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandy-maslowski-88017926/

Website: https://quilteronfire.com/

Podcast: https://quilteronfire.com/podcast/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@QuilteronFire

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quilteronfire/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/QuilteronFire/

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, Dan Claps reveals how 10 percent of Voda Cleaning and Restoration franchise buyers consumed his podcast content before investing while scaling to 240 markets across 30 states, despite never watching or listening to his own 160 episodes because if results are good it's for the audience not his ego. Discover the double dipping strategy that records business conversations you need to have anyway then shares with wider audiences eliminating entrepreneurial time conflict, how hiring part-time editors and podcast managers on Upwork for weekly project fees means you record 30 minutes then walk away never thinking about post-production again, why starting with terrible Zoom audio then upgrading gradually beats waiting for perfect equipment, how appearing on other established podcasts weekly creates network effect growth through cross-promotion, the Headliner software strategy creating Instagram LinkedIn reels that hook viewers before full episodes, and why making podcasts selfishly about topics you want to learn attracts genuinely curious audiences while teaching skills that grow your actual business simultaneously.

Share this with entrepreneurs struggling to justify podcast time investment and subscribe to Podcasting Secrets for weekly strategies from creators who've cracked the code.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets: Website: podcastingsecrets.com | YouTube: @podcasting-secrets | Instagram: @podcastingsecrets | LinkedIn: poduppodcasting

Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: nathangwilliam

Dan Claps: LinkedIn: @Dan-Claps | LinkedIn (Podcast): I Fired My Boss Podcast | Website: myvodafranchise.com

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In this episode of the Podcasting Secrets show with host Nathan Gwilliam and guest Brian Balduf, shares his journey from building and selling a video company over 25 years to launching CEO Bros After Hours with multi-camera production from day one. Discover why starting with video gives podcasters a competitive advantage during the industry's audio-to-video transition, the brutal truth about being all in as an entrepreneur that costs friendships and family time, and proven strategies for surviving economic crashes. Learn the product development approach that separates year one experimentation from monetization planning, how to handle YouTube's arbitrary content flags, and why most podcasters quit by episode five when reality hits. Plus, get tactical advice on guest management, understanding your audience beyond basic demographics, and marketing strategies after publishing dozens of episodes. Brian reveals financial planning mistakes entrepreneurs make, the power of sharing authentic failure stories, and networking tactics that compress learning curves significantly.

Subscribe to Podcasting Secrets for weekly strategies & tactics for podcast monetization and growth. Share this episode with fellow podcasters ready to turn their platform into revenue.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Brian Balduf:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianbalduf/

CEO Bros After Hours:

Website : https://www.ceobros.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CEOBros

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ceo-bros/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CEOBrosAH

X/Twitter: https://www.x.com/CeoBrosAH

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ceobrosah

E-Mail: suggestions@CEOBros.com

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In this episode of the Podcasting Secrets with host Nathan Gwilliam, guest Deborah Anne Coviello reveals her proven podcast monetization strategy on her show, Drop-In CEO that converted cold-pitch guests into $600 sponsored episodes covering 50% of production costs monthly. Discover the exact templated system she uses to filter 30-35 monthly pitches, why raising prices from $150 to $600 increased conversions, and the premium package that makes sponsors say yes. Learn podcast growth strategies that earned top 1.5% ranking through consistent quality over viral tactics, content buffer systems that prevent burnout, and authentic storytelling techniques that build loyal audiences. Plus, get the framework for balancing multiple weekly episodes, charging what your platform is worth, and turning podcast relationships into business opportunities without becoming a prisoner to your publishing schedule.

Subscribe to Podcasting Secrets for weekly monetization strategies and growth tactics that work. Share this episode with fellow podcasters ready to turn their platform into revenue.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Deb Coviello(The Drop-In CEO)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahcoviello/ (Deborah A. Coviello)

The Drop-In CEO:

Website: https://DropInCEO.com/

Free Gift: https://DropInCEO.com/gift

Podcast: https://DropInCEO.com/podcast/

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/DropInCEO/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/DropInCEO/

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Discover proven podcast growth strategies and network building techniques that helped Saadia Khan create 7 successful shows and secure $150,000 in funding from American Public Radio. Learn essential podcast tips for authentic storytelling, audience building tactics that work without millions of downloads, and podcast marketing strategies that attract broad audiences from niche topics. Get actionable content creation workflows, podcast monetization methods beyond CPM advertising, and the authenticity framework that builds genuine listener connections. Plus, discover YouTube podcast growth tactics, sponsorship strategies for smaller shows, and the network expansion blueprint that scales podcast businesses sustainably.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Saadia Khan:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itssaadiak/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/swkkhan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saadia-waqas-khan-bb7a765/

Personal Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com

Immigrantly Podcast Network:

Website: https://immigrantlypod.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/immigrantlypod/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/immigrantly_pod

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@Immigrantlypodcast

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Immigrantlypods

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/immigrantlypod/

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Most podcasters quit before episode 10, but elite hosts build shows lasting decades with thousands of episodes. In this episode, uncover the exact podcast growth strategies and systems that separate long-term success stories from the 90% who abandon their shows. Learn the time-blocking method that guarantees consistent podcast production, the one-command automation that eliminates hours of editing work, and the counterintuitive approach to podcast marketing that actually strengthens audience loyalty. Top podcasting business owners reveal their secret workflows for staying ahead of deadlines, the podcast monetization tactics that sustained them through years of minimal revenue, and the audience engagement strategies that keep listeners coming back after 20 years. Plus, get the exact framework for building genuine patron support and the simple podcast success metric that determines whether your show will survive year 10.

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Featured Guests:

Max Branstetter (Wild Business Growth Podcast)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maxbranstetter/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxbranstetter

Twitter (X): https://x.com/maxbranstetter

Website: https://maxpodcasting.com/

Podcast: https://maxpodcasting.com/wild-business-growth-podcast/

Marissa Eikenberry (Remarkable Leadership Podcast Producer)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marisaeikenbrry/

Twitter (X): https://x.com/marisaeikenbrry

Company Website: https://remarkablepodcast.com/

Podcast 2: https://kevineikenberry.com/podcasts/

James Cridland (Pod News)

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/jamescridland

Website: https://james.cridlan.net/

Twitter (X): https://x.com/jamescridland

Newsletter: https://podnews.net

Pete Turner (Break It Down Show)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peteaturner/

Twitter (X): https://x.com/peteexecutive

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteaturner

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pete.a.turner/

Website: https://www.breakitdownshow.com/

Personal Site: https://www.peteaturner.com/

Podcast: https://breakitdownshow.libsyn.com/

Chris Christensen (Amateur Traveler)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chris2x/

Twitter (X): https://x.com/chris2x

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.christensen/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisnchristensen/

Website: https://amateurtraveler.com/

Personal Blog: https://chris2x.com/

Podcast: https://amateurtraveler.com/

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In this summary episode of Podcasting Secrets with Nathan Gwilliam, discover the strategies that separate successful podcasters from the 90% who quit. We compiled insights from leading hosts and industry veterans to uncover what actually drives growth, audience engagement, and revenue. Learn why brain science proves clarity beats emotion in storytelling, the Disney content wheel strategy that creates unstoppable momentum across platforms, and the counterintuitive truth about letting your audience grow your show instead of chasing vanity metrics. Top hosts reveal why sponsors care about audience synergy over download numbers, the copying framework that helps you find your authentic voice, and why PR investment outperforms SEO tricks every time. Plus, the audacious question strategy used by award-winning documentary podcasters and the simple audience engagement tactics that turn listeners into advocates who promote your show better than any marketing campaign.

Featured Experts:

JJ Peterson (StoryBrand), Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn Podcast), Andrew Romans (Fireside with a VC), Lindsay McMahon (All Ears English Podcast), Rob Walch (Libsyn VP), Brian Tran (Winners Club Podcast), Pete Turner (Break it Down Show), Danielle Desir Corbett (The Thought Card Podcast), Rob Greenlee (Spoken Life Media), John Biewen (Scene on Radio)

Follow, Like & Subscribe:

Podcasting Secrets:

Website: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

JJ Peterson (StoryBrand Expert)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-j-j-peterson-1b4011a2

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjjpeterson/?hl=en

Story Brand LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/storybrand/

Website: https://storybrand.com/

Joanna Penn (Author & Podcaster)

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kLGYht30Y4

Website: https://www.CreativePennBooks.com

Reddit Profile: https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/12uhtr/i_am_joanna_penn_selfpublished_author_of/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCreativePenn/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jfpennauthor

Andrew Romans (VC & Podcaster)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Website: https://www.7bc.vc/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AndrewRomansVC

Lindsay McMahon (All Ears English)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-mcmahon-7a6236107

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AllEarsEnglishPodcast

Website: https://www.allearsenglish.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/all_ears_english/

Rob Walch (Podcasting Pioneer)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/podcast411/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robwalch/?hl=en

Podcast Website: https://podcast411.libsyn.com/

Brian Tran (Content Creator)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mr.briantran/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mrbriantran

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Mr.BrianTran

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-winners-club/id1558733170

Pete Turner (Live Podcast Host)

Website: https://www.breakitdownshow.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/peteaturner

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteaturner

Danielle Desir Corbett (The Thought Card)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielledesir

Portfolio: https://danielledesir.com/

Podcast: https://thoughtcard.com/podcast/

Rob Greenlee (Podcast Hall of Famer)

Website: https://robgreenlee.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robwgreenlee/?hl=en

Twitter/X: https://x.com/robgreenlee?lang=en

Mastodon: https://podcastindex.social/@robgreenlee

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RobGreenlee

Professional Profile: https://www.podheros.com/heroes/rob-greenlee

John Biewen (Scene on Radio)

Podcast Website: https://sceneonradio.org/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-biewen-3b199b13/

TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIZDtqWX6Fk

Seeing White Series: https://sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

Blog: https://buttondown.com/KeepingScOR

PodcastingSecrets #PodcastingSecretsShow #PodcastingTips #PodcastStrategy #PodcastGrowth #PodcastMonetization #PodcastMarketing #AudienceDevelopment #ContentStrategy #Storytelling #PodcastSponsorship #ContentCreation #PodcastCommunity #IndieCreators #PodcastingIndustry #YouTubePodcast #PodcastingBusiness #PodcastingAdvice #PodcasterLife #PodcastLife

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Meet Brian Tran, who built a multi-million dollar portfolio and launched nine companies before turning 30, all without ever working for someone else. Growing up in a rough neighborhood watching his immigrant parents struggle, Brian discovered Rich Dad Poor Dad as a kid and became obsessed with assets versus liabilities. He started as a 21-year-old realtor knocking on doors, then systematically reinvested every dollar into building his empire. In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with Nathan Gwilliam, Brian reveals his strategy for growing 200K social media followers by studying successful creators, why he takes his young children to Vietnamese orphanages to teach gratitude, and his approach to hiring teams that run his businesses while he focuses on his strengths. He shares the mindset techniques that carried him through tough months, why he gives equity to employees, and how his podcast opens doors that money alone cannot. Brian's journey proves that understanding money fundamentals early and staying focused on assets over liabilities creates compound success across multiple ventures.

Connect with Brian Tran:
Instagram: @MrBrianTran
TikTok: @MrBrianTran
Youtube: @Mr.BrianTran
Podcast: The Winner's Club

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets with Nathan Gwilliam, meet Nathalie Niddam, who transformed her declining magazine advertising career into a thriving longevity podcast that attracts premium sponsors within months of launch. After her 34,000-member Facebook community landed in "Facebook jail," Nathalie discovered the hard truth about building on platforms you don't control and pivoted to creating paid membership communities that generate sustainable revenue. She shares her strategy for landing sponsors in just 6-8 months by targeting niche audiences willing to pay premium rates, and reveals the sales skills from her advertising background that helped her negotiate deals most podcasters never achieve. Nathalie explains her transition from managing an overwhelming free community to building two profitable membership tiers, the guest vetting AI tool that saves hours weekly, and the production systems that keep her podcast running smoothly. With her unique blend of scientific expertise and business acumen, Nathalie proves that starting with authentic passion and strategic thinking can create a podcast empire that serves both audience and bottom line.

Connect with Nathalie Niddam:

Website:

https://www.natniddam.com/

Podcast:

Longevity with Nathalie Niddam (available on all platforms)

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathalie-niddam-78b5891/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/nathalieniddam/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Podcasting Secrets:

Website:

https://podcastingsecrets.com/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@podcasting-secrets

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/podcastingsecrets/

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/poduppodcasting/

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In this episode on Podcasting Secrets with Nathan Gwilliam, meet Joe Ingram, who transformed his embarrassing garage podcasting disasters into a top 5% global show that generates revenue through an unconventional VIP membership model. After his mother-in-law interrupted a live interview with a jar of pickles and his backdrop collapsed during a crucial Apple executive interview, Joe discovered that authentic failures create deeper audience connections than polished perfection. In this episode, Joe reveals his "edutainment" strategy that blends humor with education to drop ego barriers and boost memory retention by 300%. He shares why booking guests nine months in advance beats chasing celebrity interviews, his $49 VIP model that lets audience members join live recordings, and the brain chemistry secrets behind why people remember funny content longer. With over $1.7 billion in sales generated and 30+ years of training experience, Joe proves that starting imperfectly in your garage can lead to sustainable podcast success when you prioritize serving your audience over looking professional.

Connect with Joe Ingram:

Website - thegeniuslinks.com

Podcast - Sales Genius (available on all platforms)

LinkedIn - joeingram

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Meet Lance A. Slatton, who drove 280,000 miles across Michigan helping caregivers before discovering he could reach more people without leaving his studio. After caring for his father turned into a 2.5-year journey that sparked his home care company, Lance launched his podcast during COVID to continue serving the 64 million family caregivers in America. He reveals why turning down lucrative sponsorship deals protects his credibility, his "mini documentary" approach that earned him 120K YouTube subscribers, and why he produces four different shows while maintaining his day job as a senior case manager. Lance shares the difference between sponsorships and brand ambassadorships, why quality over quantity drives his content strategy, and the episode featuring an Australian mother's secret that still impacts his parenting decisions. His story proves that serving your community authentically creates more sustainable success than chasing viral fame.

Connect with Lance A Slatton:

Website: lanceaslatton.com

LinkedIn: lanceaslatton

Instagram: officiallanceaslatton

Podcast: allhomecarematters.com

Youtube: @AllHomeCareMatters

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What happens when you get a 15-minute phone call from Joe Rogan asking for help with his struggling podcast? Rob Walch found out in the early 2000s when the future king of podcasting was just another comedian whose hosting couldn't handle the traffic. As VP of Podcaster Relations at Libsyn and creator of the first podcast about podcasting (Podcast 411), Rob Walch has spent over 20 years watching the industry evolve from hand-coded RSS feeds to billion-download juggernauts. In this episode, he shares the behind-the-scenes stories and battle-tested strategies that shaped modern podcasting. Rob's journey from customer to employee at Libsyn gives him a unique perspective on what actually works versus what sounds good in theory. Whether you're just starting out or looking to optimize an existing show, his 20+ years of hands-on experience offer actionable insights you won't find anywhere else.

Connect with Rob Walch:

Email: rob@libsyn.com

The Feed Podcast (with Elsie Escobar): thefeed.libsyn.com

Try Libsyn hosting: libsyn.com

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Meet Rhea Wong, who transformed her "accidental fundraiser" background into one of the top voices in nonprofit podcasting through "Nonprofit Lowdown." Starting her podcast as an excuse to hang out with impressive friends in New York City, Rhea has built a loyal audience in her niche by delivering no-BS, tactical advice grounded in real trenches experience. She reveals why choosing a small pond over competing with Joe Rogan has made her a recognized authority, how podcasting became her secret weapon for opening doors with foundations and major donors, and the mistakes she wishes she'd avoided around monetization. Discover how consistency beats perfection, why being real about the struggles of running nonprofits resonates with audiences, and how Rhea mines her podcast content for her book, keynotes, and consulting sales. Her journey shows that sometimes the best podcasting strategy is simply being yourself while serving your community with practical solutions they can actually use.

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JJ Peterson holds a PhD in storytelling and has transformed marketing for companies from Microsoft to small bakeries using a simple seven-element story formula. In this episode, JJ reveals why most podcasters position themselves as the hero when they should make their audience the star of the story. He breaks down the exact framework that helped Tempur-Sealy become the world's largest mattress company and explains how your brain processes 35,000 decisions daily while filtering out anything that burns too many mental calories. JJ exposes the fatal mistake that causes audiences to tune out within seconds and shares his "empathy plus authority" method for becoming the guide your listeners desperately need. This isn't abstract theory—it's the battle-tested blueprint that turns confused audiences into devoted followers who take action.

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Silicon Valley tech executive Chris Christensen reveals how he built a six-figure podcasting business while working 60+ hour weeks at companies like Apple and eBay. Learn how his "stupid idea" for a travel show launched in 2005 grew to 4 million annual downloads and unlocked adventures to 75 countries, including press credentials alongside the Pope. Chris shares his counter-intuitive interview approach that radio consultants hated but listeners loved, his ruthless content standards that protect audience trust, and the exact revenue breakdown of his $100K business. Discover why consistency trumps talent, how 47 episodes per year created a retirement dream job, and why Chris believes podcasting is a marathon, not a sprint - with 97% of shows never reaching his download numbers.

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John Biewen transformed from a small-town Minnesota basketball player to a documentary podcaster with 18 million downloads and two Peabody nominations. His counterintuitive approach? Tackle the biggest, most controversial topics other hosts avoid. When John launched his series on whiteness and racism, he expected to lose half his audience -instead, his downloads exploded 20-fold and changed his podcast's entire trajectory. He reveals why asking audacious questions about history's thorniest subjects builds massive audiences while safe topics fail. John's university-backed model eliminates revenue pressure, letting him spend 12+ months researching single seasons that deliver life-changing content. This episode breaks down his proven formula for turning complex historical deep-dives into podcast gold without chasing trends or sacrificing editorial freedom.

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Lindsay McMahon turned a DIY launch into a global English‑learning phenomenon - and she's sharing every twist in the journey. In this episode you'll hear how a humbling moment around a Colombian campfire inspired her trademark "connection, not perfection" approach and why a bright yellow cover and two‑host format cut through the noise in 2013. Lindsay gets real about the year her original co‑host quit, the contracts she wishes she'd had in place, and the legal lessons every podcaster needs up front. You'll learn her exact guest‑appearance blueprint that unlocked 10, 000 downloads in the first months, plus how she balances four distinct revenue streams - from online courses and licensing to a premium app and big‑brand sponsorships. Finally, get Lindsay's advice on scaling live events without burning out and the key hires she's bringing on to take All Ears English past 3 000 episodes.

Ready to apply these podcast growth tactics to your own show? Hit play now and start building your six‑figure podcast brand!

Connect with Lindsay:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsaymcmahon

All Ears English:

Website - www.allearsenglish.com

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCajKaiBJSwYcDFbfMICpSpA

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6qXldSz1Ulq1Nvj2JK5kSR
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-ears-english-podcast/id751574016

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Meet Brent Thomas, the former corrections officer and self-described "late bloomer" who transformed his paranormal fascination into a podcast reaching 100,000 monthly downloads. Brent shares his journey from panic-reading three hours of material in twenty minutes during his first broadcast to developing the energetic presentation style that now defines his show. You'll discover why Bigfoot sightings from doctors and judges might deserve a second look, and how Brent structures his content differently across YouTube and podcast platforms to maximize audience engagement. His advice on monetization focuses on becoming "brand friendly" while his growth strategy emphasizes personality over equipment. For anyone curious about UFOs, time slips, or the mysterious Mandela Effect, Brent offers both paranormal insights and practical podcasting wisdom.

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Jason Fitzgerald traded elite running competitions for a digital media career while raising three kids under 12. His surprising discovery? Famous Olympians on his show delivered zero audience growth. Instead, Jason reveals his hidden SEO hack that landed New York Times backlinks without spending marketing dollars. His counterintuitive YouTube strategy and 20% download boost technique work while other running podcasts flatline. This episode exposes why traditional podcast growth tactics fail and delivers Jason's tested blueprint for building authority in your niche without sacrificing family life or authenticity.

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Mischa Zvegintzov stunned his boss by abandoning his lucrative mortgage career to raise his sons full time. Now he hosts Table Rush Talk Show!, ranked in the top 1.5% worldwide. Mischa exposes the hidden metrics most podcasters miss and shares his three-sentence email that lands him interviews while others struggle. He reveals the moment he knew sacrificing career ambition for fatherhood changed everything. This episode unveils how true influence begins at home before conquering the airwaves.

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When COVID wiped out 95% of Gary Arndt's income overnight, he launched a podcast that now generates substantial five-figure monthly revenue and 1.5 million downloads per month. Discover how Gary ignored the "niche down" advice and instead created a show about literally everything, writing a 2000-word "term paper" daily while competitors produce fluff content. Gary shares his exact subscriber value calculation ($10-14 per listener annually) and reveals why he spends $1-3 to acquire each new listener through podcast apps. Learn why social media marketing failed him, which podcast advertising platforms deliver the best ROI, and how he built a rabid fan base (including his "Completionist Club" for superfans who've heard all 1,700+ episodes). This is the blueprint for turning daily publishing into financial freedom in just 18 months.

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Lauren Davis's 15-year path from record store owner to marketing strategist reveals the untapped potential of authentic audience connections. She challenges the idea that giving away expertise hurts business, proving that sharing knowledge freely attracts ideal clients. Lauren breaks down podcast monetization myths, showing it's about building trust through consistent presence rather than aggressive sales tactics. Her three-point connection strategy exhibits how to convert listeners into clients, regardless of audience size. She emphasizes that successful consulting stems from meeting potential clients where they naturally gather, making every episode an opportunity to deepen relationships. This conversation serves as a practical guide to harnessing podcasting's unique power to build a thriving consulting practice through genuine connection and trust.

Connect with Lauren Davis:

Instagram: Lauren V. Davis

Website: Lauren V. Davis

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Imagine turning nervous mic trembles into 1,300 podcast episodes and landing in the top 1.5% of shows with The Proffitt Podcast. Krystal Proffitt transformed her corporate burnout and stay-at-home mom challenges into a powerful mission of helping creators amplify their voices. Peeling back the layers of her PREP'M method, Krystal uncovers the untold strategies of content creation that go far beyond simply pressing record. She exposes the core truth successful creators understand: meaningful content builds genuine audience connections before any sales pitch enters the picture. For bloggers stuck in a rut, podcast dreamers, and content creators hungry for breakthrough, Krystal's path reveals a transformative insight. Confidence isn't about flawless performance—it's about persistent effort, embracing your unique perspective, and consistently showing up. Her journey proves that with the right approach, your creative vision can cut through digital noise and resonate with thousands. Prepare for a raw exploration of content creation that will challenge, inspire, and propel your creative ambitions forward.

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Meet Deanna Seymour, who started with just 100 email subscribers and watched her list bloom when she launched her private podcast "Eff That." She flipped the script on traditional podcasting by creating a members-only audio experience that listeners actually lined up to join. Through her "Anti Hustle Holiday Countdown," she sits down with 21 fellow business owners each December, sparking real conversations that turn into lasting partnerships. Peek behind the scenes of her $9 all-access pass model that keeps subscribers hooked and her clever way of weaving private podcasts into online courses. Walk away with Deanna's tested methods for crafting audio content that makes your audience hit that subscribe button.

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Dive into the world of strategic business growth with Stephen Woessner, host of the Sell With Authority podcast and CEO of Predictive ROI. Learn how to build a powerful email list, create a unique business approach, and nurture leads that convert. Discover the entrepreneurial secrets passed down through generations, from his grandfather's immigrant success story to his own agency-building journey. Woessner reveals insider strategies for finding your niche, developing a compelling point of view, and connecting with potential clients through value-driven marketing. Uncover the art of warm email outreach, understand the true meaning of CAN-SPAM regulations, and transform your business development approach from pushy sales tactics to genuine relationship building. This episode is packed with actionable insights that can revolutionize how you approach marketing, sales, and business growth.

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Join author and podcaster Joanna Penn as she shares the key insights behind The Creative Penn Podcast's journey to 10 million downloads. Learn proven strategies for growing your audience, creating consistent value, and building multiple revenue streams through podcasting. Joanna breaks down her 14-year evolution from recording on a basic phone setup to running a profitable creative business. She delivers practical tips for content creation, audience engagement, and podcast monetization that will help you build a sustainable show with long-term success.

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Meet Taylor Mobley, host of "Hustle Like a Mother" podcast, who turned her blog into a thriving show while raising three young children. She shares game-changing strategies for content creators balancing business and family life, from staying three months ahead in content to knowing when to step back. Learn why scaling down her podcast temporarily actually grew her audience's loyalty, and discover practical tips for building a successful show without sacrificing what matters most. Her journey from biochemistry graduate to successful podcaster demonstrates how embracing flexibility and dropping perfectionism can lead to sustainable success. Whether you're a parent entrepreneur or aspiring podcaster, Taylor's candid insights reveal how to create success on your own terms while maintaining authenticity in both business and motherhood.

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Join Mike Grabham, host of "Whose Story Is It?" and seasoned entrepreneur, as he shares his journey from challenging times to finding his purpose through helping others. Learn about his unique podcast format where guests remain anonymous until the big reveal, and discover how focusing on adding value transformed his life and career. This candid conversation explores the power of asking uncomfortable questions, finding your groove, and using podcasting to build meaningful connections.

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Dive into the world of personal branding through podcasting with Dave Gulas, president of EZDC3PL and host of Beyond Fulfillment. Discover how Dave transitioned from pharmaceutical sales to building a thriving fulfillment company and podcast. Learn practical strategies for leveraging podcasting to boost your credibility, build valuable relationships, and drive business growth. This episode is packed with insights to help you stand out in your industry.

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This week we got into podcast growth with Pete Turner, host of the Break It Down Show. With over 1,500 episodes and 10 years of experience, Pete cuts through the usual advice to reveal what really works in building a successful podcast. Learn why he believes most growth strategies are BS, how to invest smartly in your show's future, and why building genuine relationships trumps chasing metrics. If you're ready to commit to the long game of podcasting, this episode will help you get started.

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Dive into the world of solo podcasting with Marisa Eikenberry, web developer and podcast editor. Discover how she balances editing a show with 500,000+ downloads while co-hosting her own podcast. From time management secrets to leveraging AI, Marisa shares practical tips for creating a successful podcast alongside a full-time job. Join us to learn why embracing imperfection might be the key to your podcasting success and how to overcome common challenges faced by solo creators.

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Karen Yankovich is an expert at leveraging LinkedIn for podcasts and shows. Discover how to craft an authentic LinkedIn presence that attracts high-profile guests and devoted listeners. Learn why being interviewed on other shows is your golden ticket to podcast growth, and get insider tips on turning media appearances into long-term audience engagement. This episode is packed with strategies to elevate your podcast game.

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Dive into the world of podcasting with industry veteran Matty Staudt. From his early days in radio to founding a successful podcast network, Matty shares invaluable insights on creating impactful content. Learn how to expand your podcast's reach, build a loyal community, and leverage SEO for maximum discoverability with strategies to elevate your show and engage your audience like never before.

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Unlock the secrets of podcast monetization with ad tech expert Bryan Berletta. Learn how to position your show for advertising success, create high-performing ads, and build a sustainable income stream. Discover why engagement matters more than downloads and how to navigate the complex world of podcast advertising. This episode is packed with actionable insights to help you turn your passion into profit.

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Welcome to the world of global podcasting with Enma Popli, host of Atalanta Diaries. Discover how Enma's journey from India to the US shaped her unique approach to celebrating the women blazing trails worldwide. Learn practical tips for navigating cultural sensitivities, managing time zones, and maintaining passion in your podcasting journey. Join us this week for invaluable insights into creating a podcast with global impact.

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Unlock the power of social selling for your podcast with Timothy Hughes, the world's top social selling influencer. Discover how to transform your social profiles into magnetic buyer-centric showcases, leverage your podcast for high-value networking, and build a thriving global community. Join us in this episode as Timothy reveals strategies that have boosted response rates from 1% to 9%, sharing proactive tips for podcasters at any level.

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Dive into the world of podcast domain names with Lauren Andrews, Podcast Producer at PodUp. Discover why choosing the right domain is crucial for your show's success and learn practical tips for securing a memorable, brand-boosting web address. From navigating top-level domains to avoiding common pitfalls, this episode is packed with insider knowledge to help you establish a solid online presence for your podcast. Whether you're launching a new show or rebranding an existing one, take advantage of these insights to create your podcast's perfect digital home.

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This week, we look into the secrets of efficient podcast production with Michelle Dale, founder of Virtual Miss Friday and creator of 1nSourcing. In this episode, Michelle shares her journey from UK traveler to digital nomad entrepreneur, revealing how she helps podcasters and business owners create scalable operations from anywhere in the world. Discover helpful tips for effective outsourcing. As a solo podcaster or managing a growing show, Michelle's insights can help streamline your production process and focus on creating exceptional content.

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets, I got to sit down with the multi-talented Molly Brandenburg, a voice artist, visual artist, writer, and veteran podcast host with over 600 episodes under her belt. Molly shares with us her unexpected transition into the world of podcasting, sharing fascinating stories from her time at Parcast Studios. Molly shares her tips on becoming a master storyteller, emphasizing the importance of finding the purpose of your story and maintaining structure as you tell your stories!

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Learn more about being a guest on other podcasts with Stacey Chillemi, a top 10 entrepreneur and bestselling author. Discover how Stacey uses guest appearances to build her health and wellness empire, reaching millions through her books, articles, and podcasts. Learn strategies for securing guest spots, delivering impactful interviews, and turning appearances into long-term success. Join us in this episode for actionable tips to help you expand your reach and make a lasting impact in the podcasting world.

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Join us this week for the secrets to booking A-list podcast guests with Travis Chappell, founder of Guestio and host of Travis Makes Friends. Travis has interviewed major names across sports, business, and entertainment. In this episode, he breaks down his step-by-step strategy for landing high-profile guests, even if you're just starting out. Learn why audience size matters less than you think, how to gradually build your way up to bigger names, and the #1 factor that determines whether busy people will say yes to your request.

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Unlock the secrets to help you skyrocket your online course revenue with John Ainsworth, CEO of Data Driven Marketing. Discover why creating your own course could be the game-changer your podcast needs, potentially boosting your income from six figures to millions. John reveals his three-pronged approach to selling courses successfully, including the often-overlooked "third leg of the stool" that many content creators miss. Plus, get insider tips on increasing student engagement and leveraging AI in course creation and marketing. This episode is packed with strategies to transform your online education business!

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Unlock Google's leaked algorithm secrets to improve your podcast's rankings! PodUp’s marketing specialist Hayley Foster reveals 7 game-changing SEO tips, from content pruning to entity mentions. Learn why image quality matters and how to create rich content Google loves. Don't miss this essential guide to dominating search results and taking your podcast to new heights!

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This week, we look into the secrets to attracting your ideal clients through podcasting with expert Erik K. Johnson. Uncover why traditional podcast monetization through ads and sponsors might be holding you back, and learn how to leverage your show to build powerful, profitable relationships with your audience. Erik shares the differences in your target market, niche, and avatar and explains why focusing on a specific ideal client can skyrocket your business success. Learn practical strategies for crafting content that resonates deeply with your listeners. You will get insider tips on growing your podcast audience organically and effectively. This episode is packed with actionable insights to transform your podcast into a client-attracting powerhouse.

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Unlock the secrets of podcast sponsorships with marketing coach Danielle Desir Corbett in this week’s episode. Discover why brand synergy trumps download numbers and learn how to build a compelling portfolio that attracts sponsors. Get insider tips on finding the right sponsors, creating innovative sponsorship formats, and demonstrating ROI to keep brands coming back. Learn from Danielle's success stories and avoid common pitfalls that hold podcasters back. This episode is packed with best practices to help you monetize your podcast and build lasting brand partnerships.

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Unlock the secrets of podcasting with pioneer Chris Doelle, the fifth ever podcaster who built a thriving empire from Texas football passion. Learn his "secret sauce" for growth, insights on AI's future role, and why podcasts are now the most trusted media. Discover how to leverage these trends, to help grow your podcast and have success in your niche.

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Join me this week with Dilip Kumar. Host of the wildly successful "Tastes of India" podcast, Dilip shares his strategies for turning passion projects into monetization opportunities. Discover why affiliate marketing is a great solution for podcasters at any stage, even those just starting out. Learn how to choose the right products, leverage affiliate networks, and seamlessly integrate promotions into your content. Dilip reveals his best practices that boosted his earnings and shares invaluable tips on building trust with your audience while navigating legal requirements. This episode is packed with advice to help you monetize your show and help your podcast become successful.

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Revolutionize your podcast with expert insights from Greg Wasserman. Learn why branding beats download obsession and master content repurposing. Uncover hidden monetization strategies, choose the right conferences, and harness authenticity for deeper audience connections. Explore untapped growth platforms and the "fourth wall" technique to boost engagement. This episode packs transformative tips for podcasters at any level.

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In this week’s episode, Katie Brinkley tells us why focusing on one platform might be the key to your success. Learn how to leverage Instagram's diverse features to connect with your ideal audience. Katie shares insider tips on optimizing your profile, mastering the Instagram algorithm, and how to use hashtags effectively. Plus, get the scoop on emerging trends like Threads. This episode is packed with insights to help you build a lasting community and boost your podcast's reach on Instagram.

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Discover what it takes to turn a passion project into a profitable venture with Kira Dineen, host of DNA Today and producer of 10 genetics-focused podcasts. In this episode, Kira shares how she managed to secure over 70 sponsors. Learn invaluable insights on crafting compelling sponsorship packages, avoiding common pricing pitfalls, and the power of collaboration in the podcasting world. Kira reveals her strategies for creating a 360-degree marketing approach that goes beyond traditional ad spots, helping you maximize your podcast's earning potential. This episode is packed with first-hand advice to help you turn your passion into profit

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Unlock the secrets to turning your podcast passion into a lucrative speaking career! In this week’s episode, bestselling author and two-time TEDx speaker Jonathan Jones reveals how podcasters can leverage their expertise to land paid speaking gigs. Discover why event organizers are hungry for podcast talent and learn the step-by-step process to position yourself as a sought-after speaker in your niche. From negotiating fees to creating multiple revenue streams, Jonathan shares insider tips that will transform your speaking game. You'll hear real success stories of podcasters who've skyrocketed their income through strategic speaking engagements.

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Uncover the secrets to improving your podcast's visibility on podcasting platforms with PodUp's Marketing Specialist, Hayley Foster. In this week's episode, Hayley reveals strategies to boost your show's rankings and attract more listeners. From crafting SEO-optimized titles to utilizing long-tail keywords, Hayley shares insider tips that could transform your podcast's success. Join us for advice to help you climb the charts and grow your audience!

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Unlock the secrets to monetizing your podcast beyond traditional advertising with Mathew Passy, founder of The Podcast Consultant. Discover why building a revenue stream is important for long-term success and learn simple strategies to start making money from day one. Passy gives us insider tips that could transform your podcast into profit. This episode is packed with valuable insights that can help you make the most of your passion project. You won't want to miss it!

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In this episode, Virginia Elder, founder of Podcast Abundance, reveals the secrets to leveraging podcasting as a powerful, sustainable marketing strategy for your business. Discover why podcasting outperforms traditional advertising and learn about realistic listener numbers and conversion rates you can expect. Virginia shares her insights on driving podcast listeners toward becoming paying customers and offers a game-changing perspective on podcast growth. This episode is packed with valuable strategies to take your podcast – and your business – to new heights. Don't miss this opportunity to transform your approach to podcast marketing and unlock your show's true potential!

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In this episode, I sit down with Parker Kane as he shares his journey from struggling college student to internet phenomenon, revealing how a moment of desperation led to unexpected stardom. Listen in for some valuable insights on content creation, including the art of repurposing, crafting attention-grabbing hooks, and staying ahead of podcasting trends. Parker brings with him strategies for networking and monetization that can help you make the most of your podcast. This episode is packed with inspiration and practical tips to help you on your way to keep up with changing times.

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets, award-winning podcast producer Keith Reynolds pulls back the curtain on what it takes to sell a podcast concept to a major network. As the founder of Spoke Media, Keith shares his experiences and insider knowledge, guiding you through the process of crafting a compelling pitch that will help you get into the world of networks. Discover the key elements of a pitch, from refining your concept and creating an enticing pitch deck to producing an attention-grabbing sizzle reel. Whether you're an established creator or just starting out, this episode is packed with valuable insights to increase your podcast stats exponentially through networks. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the best in the business!

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Unlock the secrets to creating irresistible podcast cover art that grabs attention and increases subscribers! In this game-changing episode of Podcasting Secrets, marketing Specialist Hayley Foster reveals the surprising results of her research on the cover art of Spotify's top 100 podcasts. Discover the perfect color palettes, font choices, and eye-catching design tricks used by the most successful shows to make your cover art stand out and entice listeners to hit "play." Get ready to revolutionize your podcast's visual appeal and watch your audience grow!

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This week I was joined by Stu Heinecke, growth strategist and author of "How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed," as he shared his groundbreaking strategies for keeping your business thriving in any environment. Stu reveals how to apply resilient and adaptable qualities to your podcasting approach, allowing you to be successful in even the most competitive markets. In this episode, Stu gives valuable insights and examples that will inspire you to think like a weed and achieve exponential growth you won't want to miss!

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In this episode, Chloe Thomas, a seasoned podcaster and e-commerce marketing expert, shares her invaluable insights on the world of podcasting. From securing sponsorships to effectively managing guest relationships, Chloe shares with us the strategies that have allowed her to become successful in the industry. Discover the three most important things you need to know to succeed with podcast sponsorships, and learn how to avoid common mistakes that can hinder your growth. Whether you're a seasoned podcaster or just starting out, this episode is packed with valuable tips that will help you better understand sponsorships in podcasting. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the best in the business and unlock the secrets to podcasting success!

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In this week’s episode, podcast innovator and AI expert Audrey Bell-Kearney joins host Nathan Gwilliam to reveal how AI tools can improve your show's success. Discover the secrets to effortlessly crafting captivating content, cloning voices, and building entire podcast networks. Audrey also takes a thoughtful look at the ethical considerations surrounding AI use and offers practical advice for maintaining authenticity and quality. With her unique perspective and actionable strategies, Audrey’s advice will help you navigate the evolving landscape of podcasting and prepare for the future of AI in the industry.

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Unlock the secrets of podcasting success with industry veteran James Cridland, the world's first "radio futurologist"! In this week’s episode, James shares his pioneering journey in podcasting, dating back to 2005 when he launched one of the UK's earliest podcasts. Discover his unique insights on the future of podcasting, innovative monetization strategies beyond advertising, and the power of workflow optimization. James also reveals the story behind his massively successful Pod News newsletter and podcast, reaching over 30,000 subscribers and 1 million monthly website views. You'll be captivated by his personal anecdotes illustrating the profound intimacy of audio and the life-changing impact podcasters can have on their listeners. This episode is packed with strategies, inspiration, and practical takeaways to help both seasoned podcasters and newcomers alike thrive in the exciting world of podcasting!

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In this episode, Michelle Kuei, the founder of Elevate Life Coaching and host of the Make It Visible podcast, shares her journey of overcoming physical disability and embracing a life of purpose and empowerment. Discover how empathy and relatability has helped Michelle build a thriving business and with a loyal podcast audience. Learn invaluable tips for creating engaging content, making content for you and your listeners, and utilizing the power of storytelling to captivate and inspire as you go. Michelle shares tools with us that can help improve your podcast’s ability to reach out to your listeners through our intentions. Join us this week as we uncover how to use our strengths to make our podcasts the best they can be!

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In this episode, Carey Green, the founder of Podcast Fast Track and host of the highly successful daily show The Morning Mindset, shares his secrets to creating and growing a thriving daily podcast. Discover the power of consistency, quality content, and fostering genuine relationships with your audience as Carey reveals his strategies for success. From building a reliable foundation that can help you succeed to daily recording, Carey provides invaluable insights for aspiring and established podcasters alike. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding the true value of your listeners' time and how to deliver content that far exceeds their expectations. Join us this week to learn the best ways you can help your audience maximize the value they receive for the time they invest in your content!

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Discover the secrets to crafting engaging podcast content with Rob Kirkpatrick, Executive Producer of the Focus on the Family podcast. This week, Rob shares his experiences and reveals the key objectives every podcast episode should accomplish to captivate listeners and keep them coming back for more. Learn how to create an emotional connection with your audience, provide tangible takeaways, and offer meaningful follow-ups that solidify your relationship with your listeners. Get valuable tips on selecting authentic guests and navigating the challenges of creating consistently compelling content. Whether you're a seasoned podcaster or just starting out, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to enrich their podcast and foster a dedicated, engaged audience.

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In this week’s episode, podcast consultant and editor Brittany Felix joins host Nathan Gwilliam to share valuable insights from her in-depth podcasting experience. Brittany shares lessons learned from creating over 400 episodes across four shows and emphasizes the three key elements to focus on when building a strong foundation for your podcast. Covering the most common mistakes, podcasters make that hinder growth and emphasizing the importance of audio quality, episode titles, and SEO. This episode offers valuable advice to help you create a high-quality show that attracts and retains listeners. Join us for a discussion filled with tips and tricks from Brittany's extensive podcasting career.

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Unlock the secrets of successfully pitching guests for your show with cold email and pitch expert Laura Lopuch. In this week’s episode, you’ll discover how to take control of your podcast's destiny by proactively reaching out to potential guests and crafting irresistible pitches that get a resounding "yes!" Laura shares her proven framework to overcome the fear of rejection and writing compelling cold emails, including the power of specific compliments, clear communication, and focusing on what's in it for the recipient. Whether you're looking to showcase diverse perspectives, fill content gaps, or bring star power to your show, this episode is a must-listen for any podcaster ready to take their podcast to the next level with exceptional guests and skyrocket their podcast's growth. Listen now and master the art of the pitch!

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Unlock the secrets to successful podcast advertising with Heather Osgood, CEO of True Native Media and podcast advertising expert. In this insightful episode, Heather shares her journey from traditional advertising to pioneering podcast ad monetization, revealing this rapidly evolving medium's unique advantages and challenges. Discover the power of host-read endorsement ads, the importance of knowing your audience, and the key steps to getting started with podcast advertising. Learn how to maximize your advertising potential and learn invaluable tips for creating compelling ad reads, building long-term advertiser relationships, and leveraging affiliate programs to boost your success. Gain the knowledge and strategies you need to effectively monetize your podcast and take your advertising game to the next level.

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Unlock the secrets to leveraging thought leadership to boost your business growth in this insightful interview with Josh Steimle. Josh is a marketing expert, best-selling author, and host of the Published Author Podcast. In this episode, Josh reveals the strategies he used to generate over $10 million in revenue for his business and explains how leveraging thought leadership can grow your business and help you build a strong platform and dedicated following. Hear how writing for major publications like Forbes, Fortune, and Time magazine opened doors to lucrative opportunities for Josh and helped establish his credibility. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or podcaster, you won’t want to miss these practical tips for using content to build authority, attract clients, and take your business to a new level.

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Unlock the secrets to leveraging podcasting for business growth in this value-packed episode featuring Ryan Helms, owner of Legacy Podcasting and the Content Agency Collective. Discover how to bridge the gap between your podcast content and product offers to generate meaningful revenue without relying on sponsorships. Ryan shares his proven strategies for creating "content funnels" that build trust with your audience and drive conversions, including real-world examples of businesses generating millions from organic YouTube content. If you're ready to transform your podcast from a hobby into a powerful business tool, this episode is a must-listen. Listen now and take the first step towards building a thriving content-driven business.

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Ever felt like your voice didn't matter? Courtney Elmer knows that feeling all too well - until a life-changing cancer surgery taught her the true power of finding her voice. In this eye-opening episode, Courtney reveals the psychology behind attracting your ideal podcast audience and skyrocketing your show to the top of the charts. Discover the five crucial "content gatekeepers" that will make or break your podcast's success, and learn from the game-changing strategies Courtney used to help clients increase downloads and become a top 100 podcast. If you're ready to differentiate yourself, build a binge-worthy show, and convert listeners into raving fans, you can't afford to miss Courtney's insider secrets!

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Unlock the secrets to growing your podcast audience with insights from Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity, and the Christian Podcasting Community. In this episode, Andrew shares his journey merging faith and podcasting, revealing how he's developed a community of podcasters with over 4.5 million downloads. Discover the power of creating bite-sized, high-value content that listeners can't resist sharing, and learn why focusing on competition can hinder your growth. If you're ready to take your podcast to the next level and make a lasting impact on your listeners, this episode is a must-listen!

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Discover the secrets to podcasting with confidence in this insightful episode featuring Melitta Campbell, the "Value Whisperer" and host of the Driven Female Entrepreneur Podcast. Melitta shares her journey from being a shy networker to becoming a confident podcaster and public speaker, revealing that true confidence comes after taking action, not before. Learn practical tips for overcoming perfectionism, preparing for interviews, and managing your inner critic by having a clear vision for your podcast and how to create a personalized "playbook" to boost your confidence before each episode. This episode provides valuable strategies to embrace your unique style, connect with your audience authentically, and grow your podcast with confidence. Tune in now and let Melitta's insights inspire you to take your podcasting journey to the next level!

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets, host Nathan Gwilliam interviews Chris Curran, the founder of Podcast Engineering School and a seasoned audio engineering pro. Chris shares his incredible journey from the music industry to becoming a top-tier podcast producer, revealing the secrets to achieving professional-grade audio that will make your episodes stand out. He breaks down the common mistakes to avoid and the essential equipment needed to elevate your podcast's sound quality. Chris also shares his tips for recording in imperfect environments and overcoming embarrassing moments during his career. Tune in to uncover audio production wisdom that will help you create an immersive listening experience and take your podcast to the next level.

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Are you ready to build your own platform and showcase your expertise? Join marketing consultant and podcast host Sharvette Mitchell as she shares her wisdom on building your own platform. Learn why podcasting helps build an audience and platform, secrets of podcast success like consistency and professionalism, how to create engaging content with video, tips for great interviews, common mistakes to avoid, and more. If you’re ready to leverage podcasting to grow your business and make an impact, this episode is for you!

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets, host Nathan Gwilliam interviews venture capitalist Andrew Romans about strategies for entrepreneurial success. Andrew shares the inside scoop on raising funding, finding hot startup deals, and using content to build your personal brand. He reveals his tips for mitigating downside risk when launching a new venture, including planning for the worst-case scenario. You'll also learn the pros and cons of venture capital versus bootstrapping your business. Tune in to uncover key insights on how to amplify your business growth and turn your podcast into a profitable venture.

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In this episode of Podcasting Secrets, host Nathan Gwilliam speaks with podcasting and business growth pro, Christoph Trappe about how to build a successful and engaging podcast through live-streaming. Christoph shares his secrets for getting high-profile guests like Seth Godin, how to set up a professional podcast studio on a budget, why live streaming builds your audience quicker than posting episodes alone, and how you can maximize engagement by responding to live listener comments in real time. Tune in to discover powerful tips and strategies to level up your podcast strategy and learn what the future holds for podcasting and live video in the age of AI and the metaverse.

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In this episode, Gordon Glenister shares the secrets behind leveraging influencers to help promote and monetize your podcast. Join us as we learn strategies to establish credibility quickly through high-profile guests and repurposing content across multiple platforms. From this episode, you’ll walk away with numerous tactics to score sponsorships, use exclusive member content, and build a podcast network. Don’t miss these key insider tips that can grow your audience and turn your podcast into a profitable venture.

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On this episode Ramon Ray shares the secrets behind finding your unique podcasting voice, and the importance of building trust and community as an entrepreneur. Join us as we learn how to overcome common challenges - from technical mishaps to embarrassing mistakes - with grace. From this episode you’ll walk away knowing how to leverage your unique perspective and consistently deliver compelling content. Don’t miss these key insider tips that can elevate your podcast and your connection with fans.

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Former Army intelligence officer turned podcaster Pete Turner reveals his counterintuitive "don't follow, repeat" method for building a successful podcast. In this episode, learn how starting small and staying consistent can be the key to your podcasting success. If you want to stop struggling and wish you had a clear path to podcasting success, this episode is a must-listen.

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Quality and consistency are some of the keys to podcasting success, but achieving both over the long run is easier said than done. In this episode, I interview Max Branstetter, founder of Max Podcasting and host of the Wild Business Growth podcast. Together we break down the essential elements for producing high-quality and consistent podcast content through amazing interviews and innovative ideas. This is a conversation you won't want to miss!

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Podcasting 2.0 has arrived and we are seeing a shift in the industry as an increasing number of podcasters are adding video to their podcasting strategy. On this episode I interview Rob Greenlee, founder of Spoken Life Media and we discuss this convergence of audio & video strategy in podcasting. Together we explore the up-tick in podcasters adding video to their show, the audience perceptional shift driving this convergence, why creators should adopt this strategy, and more. If you’re a podcaster wondering IF and HOW to incorporate video successfully? This episode is a must-listen. You’ll understand why quality video is becoming mandatory in podcasting's new era.

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This week on Podcasting Secrets, AI expert Jim Sterne shares how AI is revolutionizing the podcasting industry. Discover how podcasting can help you create, grow, and monetize next-level podcasts. In our discussion, Jim draws from first-hand experience implementing the latest AI tools - like automated episode outlines, searchable transcripts, optimized social media snippets, and more. Whether you're an aspiring podcaster or been podcasting for a while, this episode is an eye-opening introduction to AI capabilities for our industry. This is an episode you won't want to miss!

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Welcome to the Podcasting Secrets show where your host Nathan Gwilliam will share insider strategies and expert stories to help you take your podcast to the next level. In this episode you'll learn Nathan's backstory, why he decided to build the PodUp platform, and what to expect from Podcasting Secrets.

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Over the last few episodes, we've talked about the lessons that we've learned from a year of publishing a show every day. Yesterday, I talked about our plan going forward and how we're going to apply those lessons learned from the first year into our second year. We are also planning to take a break from publishing the show as we develop and launch some products. In today’s episode, I'm excited to announce our first product that will be launched here within the next week or two: the Marketing Megatrends Challenge course.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/finishing-season-1-whats-next/

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Today is one of the very last episodes of season one of Monetization Nation. As you've heard over the last two episodes, I've talked about 30 different key lessons that we've learned from publishing every day for a year. In today's episode, I'm going to talk to you about the application of those principles in our show and how it will affect the future of Monetization Nation.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-future-of-monetization-nation/

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I started the Monetization Nation podcast nearly one year ago and when I did, I made a commitment to publish content every single day for the year. As we’re finishing up, me and my team came up with 30 lessons we learned from publishing for a year. In the last episode, I shared the first 15 lessons we've learned and in this episode, I'm going to share with you the final 15 lessons that we've learned from publishing everyday for a year.

Read here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/30-lessons-i-learned-from-publishing-for-a-year-part-2/

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On February 5, 2021, when I started the Monetization Nation podcast, I made a commitment to publish content every single day for a year. As we’re finishing that year up, I have spent some time reflecting on my experience. In many ways, it has been much more time consuming than I expected, but I have also received a lot more out of it than I expected.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/30-lessons-i-learned-from-publishing-for-a-year-part-1/

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41% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly (Source: convinceandconvert.com) and 16 million people in the US are “avid podcast fans” (Source: PodcastHosting).The popularity of podcasts is growing rapidly and many businesses have already started to leverage this form of content to grow their businesses. Today we're going to discuss nine ways to monetize a podcast so we can use it as a viable option for growing our business.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/9-ways-to-monetize-a-podcast/

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Hello, Monetization Nation. Welcome back to another faith episode. Today we're going to talk about profiting with a purpose. Corporate social responsibility has become extremely important. Statistics have shown that it can actually drive greater employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and profit.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-profit-with-a-purpose/

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Welcome back to another episode with Timmy Bauer, the founder of Dinosaur House, a company that helps entrepreneurs create children’s books to grow their businesses. In the last episode, we discussed Timmy’s career and why entrepreneurs should consider writing children’s books. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss why we should create a podcast.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-should-i-build-a-podcast/

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Timmy Bauer is the author and illustrator of many children’s books including: Lucas the Dinosaur Entreprepreneur. He’s also the founder of Dinosaur House, a company that makes children's books for entrepreneurs, and the podcast host of five podcasts, including The Purpose Driven Entrepreneur. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Timmy’s career and why entrepreneurs should consider writing children’s books.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-entrepreneurs-should-write-childrens-books/

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Bryan Clayton is CEO and co-founder of GreenPal, an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. Before starting GreenPal, Bryan Clayton founded Peachtree Inc. one of the largest landscaping companies in the state of Tennessee growing it to over $10 million a year in annual revenue.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-tips-for-building-a-technology-business/

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John Weiler began his writing career as a hit TV writer, for shows such as National Geographic’s Alaska State Troopers. In 2014, he transitioned into copywriting, blogging, and book publishing, working for several marketing agencies along the way and publishing multiple bestselling books, including Instant Credibility Online. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss five ways we can establish our credibility and earn the trust of our customers.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-ways-to-establish-credibility/

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Welcome back to another episode with Kenny Harper, author of Amplified Business Breakthroughs. In the last episode, we discussed five easy and effective ways to maximize our profits. Today, we’re going to talk about three ways we can create predictable growth.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-ways-to-create-predictable-growth/

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Kenny Harper works with small business owners to achieve more freedom and fulfillment by increasing business profitability through implementing proven systems and effective strategies. He is also the author of Amplified Business Breakthroughs.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss five easy and effective ways to maximize our profits.

Read more at https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-easy-and-effective-ways-to-maximize-profits-episode-1-of-2-with-kenny-harper/

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This week I had to get an MRI and since I am a little claustrophobic, I was stressed about the procedure. As I was driving to the hospital I prayed for peace and as I prayed, the words, “My peace I give to you,” came into my mind. When this happened, a sweet peace and calmness came to my heart and I got through the MRI without further stress.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-build-a-kingdom-business/

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Robert Brown is an experienced executive and the CEO of the SaaS company, Olumo, which is focused on helping organizations get real time human sentiment data and insights to drive decision making. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can use data and insights to take better care of our employees.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-take-care-of-your-employees/

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Welcome back to another episode with John Jantsch, a marketing consultant, speaker, and author. In the last episode, we discussed duct tape marketing and how to implement better strategies. Today, we’re going to continue our conversation on marketing and discuss how we can create the ultimate marketing engine.

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John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of multiple books including Duct Tape Marketing. He is also the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, which trains and licenses independent consultants and agencies to use the Duct Tape Methodology. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss duct tape marketing.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-is-duct-tape-marketing/

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Andy Buyting is a serial entrepreneur and a bestselling author of three books. Through his company, Tulip Media Group, Andy and his team of marketing specialists help to fuel the revenue growth of numerous companies across North America. In today’s episode, we’re going to dive into Andy’s book, How to Win Clients and Influence People, in which we will go over the three pillars of marketing. We’ll also discuss his book Double Sales. Zero Sales People, and how we can increase sales without a sales team.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-pillars-of-marketing/

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Welcome back to another episode with Adrian Sandmeier, founder of youstream, an award-winning video marketing company and author of Video Marketing for Marketers. In the last episode, we discussed five video marketing tips. In today’s episode, we’re going to continue our conversation about video marketing and explain how we can get started with video marketing.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-get-started-with-video-marketing/

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Adrian Sandmeier is the founder of youstream, an award-winning video marketing company with clients across Europe. Over the past decade, he has helped hundreds of marketers realize their creative visions through video creation. Adrian is also the author of Video Marketing for Marketers. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss a few video marketing tricks.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-video-marketing-tips/

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Welcome back to another faith episode. Today, I'm going to talk to you about one of the greatest sources of guilt and conflict for an entrepreneur, or at least for me as an entrepreneur: balancing parenthood and entrepreneurship.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-balance-parenthood-and-entrepreneurship/

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Welcome back to another episode with Zack Condry, president at Everest Communications. In the last episode, we discussed the importance of a crisis management system. Today, we’re going to discuss how we can rebuild our reputation if it is damaged.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-rebuild-your-companys-reputation/

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Zack Condry, president at Everest Communications, specializes in developing and executing digital communications strategies to help organizations tackle critical public affair issues, major crises, regulatory obstacles, and reputation management challenges.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-you-should-have-a-crisis-management-system/

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Welcome back to another episode with Adam Witty, the CEO & founder of Advantage|ForbesBooks. In the last episode, we discussed the seven pillars of authority marketing and today, we’re going to continue our conversation and look at different examples of companies that have implemented authority marketing.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-benefits-of-authority-marketing/

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Adam Witty is the CEO & founder of Advantage|ForbesBooks. Witty is a sought-after speaker, teacher, and consultant on marketing and business growth techniques for entrepreneurs and authors. He is also the author of eight books including, Authority Marketing. In today’s episode, we’re going to dive into his book and discuss the seven pillars of authority marketing.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-7-pillars-of-authority-marketing/

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Welcome back to another faith episode. Today, we're going to discuss seven takeaways from the TV series, The Chosen.

If you haven't watched The Chosen, I highly recommend it. It is my favorite TV series of all time. The series is about the life of Jesus Christ and while I've seen many different series and Media Productions about Christ, none of them have resonated with me in the way that this production does.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/7-takeaways-from-the-chosen-for-entrepreneurs-2/

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Welcome back to another episode with Shalene Gupta, co-author of the book, The Power of Trust. In the last episode, we discussed how trust can empower our business. Today, we’re going to discuss ways we can build, lose, and regain trust.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-build-and-lose-customer-trust/

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Shalene Gupta is a former Fortune journalist and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and ESPN. She is also the co-author of the book, The Power of Trust. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how trust can empower our business.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-trust-can-empower-your-business/

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Mike Malatesta is an entrepreneur who has helped start, grow, and sell two successful waste management companies. He also created and hosts the How'd It Happen Podcast, where he explores stories, lessons, and wins with some of the most fascinating and successful people in the world. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how being selfish can be good for our business.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-being-selfish-can-be-good-for-your-business/

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Welcome back to another episode with Darshan Mehta, author of Getting to Ah-ha. In the last episode, we discussed how to improve our businesses through customer insights. Today, we’re going to look at seven key traits of successful businesses.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/7-key-traits-of-successful-businesses/

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Darshan Mehta is the Founder of iResearch.com–an insights platform to quickly and affordably extract insights from consumers worldwide, and ConnectQik.com–an app for instant connections and engaging interactions. He is also the author of Getting to Ah-ha.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-improve-your-business-using-customer-insights/

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Welcome back to another faith episode. Today, I want to tell you a story about a mistake that I've made recently and what I learned from it.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-it-means-to-have-faith/

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Studies have shown that about 80% of New Year's resolutions fail (Source: Forbes). Even though we are setting the goals, we need to find a much more effective way to achieve them. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can set better goals we can actually achieve.

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Welcome back to another episode with Jody Miller, author of The MISOGI Method. In the last episode, we discussed what the misogi method is and how we can find our misogi. Today, we’re going to continue our conversation and discuss misogi implementation and key benefits.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-implement-the-misogi-method-to-achieve-lasting-success/

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Jody Miller is an international speaker, TEDx Speaker, and author of multiple books, including Drift to Shift and The MISOGI Method. She contributes to numerous publications including Entrepreneur, HuffPost, and Business Success Magazine, and she is also the host of the top-ranked radio podcast, The MISOGI Method. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss what the misogi method is and how we can find our misogi.

Read more here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-is-the-misogi-method/

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Yaagneshwaran Ganesh, popularly known as Yaag, is an award-winning marketer, author, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. He is the director of marketing at Avoma and the podcast host of The ABM Conversations Podcast. He is also a best-selling author of eight books including The Revenue Marketing Book. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss revenue marketing and how we can implement it in our businesses.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-basics-of-revenue-marketing/

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Jon Weberg is an American entrepreneur, top 1% consultant, and super affiliate. By the age of 23, he was a 2X self-published author and had helped clients in industries such as SaaS, Ecommerce, coaching, and more. Jon currently spends his time helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses profitably without outside capital. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can instantly increase our ROI (return on investment).

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-instantly-increase-your-roi/

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According to DiscoverHappyHabbits, of the Americans who make New Year's resolutions, only 9% feel they are successful in keeping them by the end of the year. So how do we become part of that successful 9%? I believe accountability partners are the secret to success. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how we can achieve our goals with the help of accountability partners.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-achieve-your-goals-with-an-accountability-partner/

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Merry Christmas! I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season and spending time with your loved ones. One of my favourite Christmas movies is It's a Wonderful Life. In fact, it’s actually in my top three movies of all time. In today’s episode, I wanted to share 10 lessons we can learn from It’s a Wonderful Life and apply to our businesses.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/10-lessons-entrepreneurs-can-learn-from-its-a-wonderful-life/

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Before Adam O’Leary co-founded TrustScout, a successful video testimonial capture tool, he was $32k in debt working as an overnight custodian. Today, we’re going to discuss how Adam went from thousands of dollars in debt, to traveling the world and living the life he wants, largely because of the power of video testimonials.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-grow-your-business-with-video-testimonials/

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As the sales and marketing manager at Leadpages, Bob Sparkins helps his customers build top landing pages and websites to create conversion platforms. He is also the author of Take Action, Revise Later. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to create better landing pages that will generate more leads.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-create-better-landing-pages-that-generate-more-leads/

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Welcome back to another episode with Ethan Beute, chief evangelist at BombBomb and co-author of Human-Centered Communication. Today we’re going to discuss the power of video messages.

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Ethan Beute is the chief evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-author of Human-Centered Communication and Rehumanize Your Business. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can humanize our businesses by avoiding digital pollution.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-reduce-digital-pollution-and-create-valuable-online-content/

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Christmas is only one week away. As we get carried away in the craziness of the holiday season, I would encourage everyone to remember what the holiday is all about. Christmas isn’t so much about getting, but about giving. We can ask ourselves, “How can I give back?”

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Ross Rich is a co-founder and CEO of Accord. Accord is a customer collaboration platform for B2B sales, onboarding, and success. Before founding Accord, Ross spent more than four years at Stripe where he helped scale the sales team from three to 500.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/7-powerful-b2b-sales-tactics/

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Welcome back to another episode with Mitchell Levy, a credibility expert. In the last episode, we discussed three ways we can become credible internally. Today, we will define credibility and discuss things that build and hurt our credibility.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-builds-and-destroys-credibility/

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Mitchell Levy is an entrepreneur, global credibility expert, TEDx speaker, and an international bestselling author of over 60 books. After interviewing 500 thought leaders on credibility, he created the Credibility Nation community, published a five-country international bestselling book, created courses, and is working on getting the definition of credibility rewritten in the dictionary.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-be-a-credible-thought-leader/

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Welcome back to another episode with David Covey, author of Trap Tales: Outsmarting the 7 Hidden Obstacles to Success. As we discussed in the last episode, there are seven common work traps we may fall into: the busyness trap, the procrastination trap, the ego trap, the trigger trap, the silo trap, the settling trap, and the myopia trap. Today, we’re going to look at real world examples related to three of these traps.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-overcome-traps-at-work-to-find-success/

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Does your workforce struggle with staying focused, adapting to changes, working as a team, or taking initiative? You’re not alone. Many businesses run into these challenges. David Covey spent three years of study and research on human dynamics in the workplace to offer us solutions to these traps we fall into.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-avoid-the-7-modern-day-traps-at-work/

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Tim Notke, a high school basketball coach, said, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.” This is so true in business. As entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to work hard if we want to succeed. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the importance of hard work.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-hard-work-beats-out-natural-talent/

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Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, and the chief amazement officer of Shepard Presentations. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and has been inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame.

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Welcome back to another episode with Jake Jacobs. In the last episode, we discussed three ways we can leverage change in our businesses. Today, we’re going to explain why we should learn to embrace change and how we can work with people who are resistant to change.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-resistance-to-change-in-your-organization/

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Jake Jacobs helps organizations, teams, and individuals make monumental changes. Over the past 35 years, he has worked in 61 industries and has consulted 96 organizations, from Fortune 50 to national non-profits and community theaters.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-leverage-change-in-your-business/

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Welcome back to another episode with Jill Salzman. In the last episode, we discussed what credibility is and today, we will go over four tips for your brand’s credibility marketing strategy.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/4-tips-for-your-brands-credibility-marketing-strategy/

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Jill Salzman is the author of The Best Business Book In The World (According To My Mom) and the Amazon best-seller, Found It: A Field Guide for Mom Entrepreneurs. She also hosts the top-rated entertaining business podcast, Why Are We Shouting? MSN Live says she’s a “Cool Mom Entrepreneur We Love” and Forbes rated her a Top 100 Champion Small Business Influencer.

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Welcome back to another faith episode. Today we're going to talk about how to see our customers through “mom eyes.” In our home, everybody knows that my wife, Crystal, is really good at finding things. In fact, we know that if we can't find something, all we have to do is ask her and she will be able to find it. If we tell her we can't find something, my wife will often tell us to go back and look through “mom eyes.”

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/seeing-our-customers-through-mom-eyes/

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Nikki Nash is a podcast host, author of Market Your Genius, and the creator of the Genius Profit Society, a training and development program on a mission to equip entrepreneurs with the tools and resources they need to share their message. In today’s episode, Nikki is going to share her expertise with us and tell us how we can create a consistent flow of leads with our marketing strategies.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-create-a-consistent-flow-of-leads-with-your-marketing-strategy/

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Welcome back to another episode with Chris Mercer. In the last episode, we discussed three ways we can use measurement marketing in our business processes. Today, we will go over the measurement marketing framework and discuss ways we can listen to our customers.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-measurement-marketing-framework/

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Chris Mercer, co-founder of MeasurementMarketing.io, is a measurement marketing expert and has been helping marketers and agencies plan out what’s important to measure in their marketing, build measurement systems, create actionable dashboard reports, and finally use those reports to forecast and optimize their marketing results.

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Welcome back to another episode in our passion marketing series. In our previous episodes, we've talked about identifying our ideal customers, finding our customers’ passion statements, the five whys exercise, passion platforms, and more.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-create-great-marketing-messages/

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Welcome back to another episode with Chloe Thomas. In the last episode, we discussed five e-commerce tips and today, we will dive into e-commerce marketing, specifically 10 ways we can turn our website traffic into sales.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/10-ways-to-turn-website-traffic-into-sales/

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Chloë Thomas is an e-commerce marketing problem solver. She is the author of several bestselling books, including eCommerce Marketing: How to Get Traffic that Buys to Your Website. She is a keynote speaker, and host of both the award-winning eCommerce MasterPlan Podcast, and the Keep Optimising Marketing Podcast. Today, we’re going to discuss Chloe’s books and five of her e-commerce tips for your business.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-ecommerce-tips-for-your-business/

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Welcome back to another faith episode. Today we're going to talk about how to be a lifter so we can increase our influence for good.

What it Means to Be a Lifter

Some of you have heard me tell the story of a time when a website I managed accidentally published two offensive articles. We had an editorial process in place and a very talented editor who could have fixed those errors, but we didn’t catch it in time.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-be-a-lifter/

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Greg Stuart is an author and investment advisor. He is the CEO of MMA Global, the leading industry-body focused on architecting the future of marketing. During his time at MMA, Greg and his team have driven 400% revenue growth and energized the MMA’s 800+ member companies globally.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-advertising-has-evolved/

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Welcome back to another episode with David Jenyns. In the last episode we discussed a system for credibility and how David systemized his business. Today, we’re going to go over how to systemize our own businesses.

RogerDooley is an author and international keynote speaker. He wrote Friction: The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage, which was named one of the Best Business Books of 2019 by strategy+business. He also wrote Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing.

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For many of us who are digital marketers, we love the concept of split testing. The concept of split testing is to try several different methods in order to find the one that does the best. We learn which method does the worst and turn those off, and then create variations of the methods that do the best. Then we can repeat that split testing process so we can find more variations of what's working best.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-fail-successfully/

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Steve Jobs is one of the most well-known entrepreneurs in history since he co-founded Apple, a company now worth over $2 trillion (Source: Investopedia). There are currently more than 133 million iPhone users in the United States, which accounts for about 47% of all smartphone users (Source: Statista).

However, Steve Jobs wasn’t always widely successful. There were times in his career where Apple was nothing more than an idea in a cramped garage. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Steve Jobs’ entrepreneurial journey and a few lessons he learned along the way.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-steve-jobs-started-apple/

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Welcome back to another episode with Shannon Graham. In the last episode, we discussed unlocking our full potential, being honest about what we want, not ignoring red flags, and letting our results speak for themselves. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss potential, leadership, expressing ourselves, being responsible, and personal liberation.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-achieve-a-higher-level-of-potential/

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Shannon Graham is a motivational speaker, coach, and author. For over 15 years, he has coached visionary leaders who want to change the world by doing the impossible. His first book, The Revolution of Self, is focused on helping individuals find and fulfill their potential and purpose. His latest book, Expand, focuses on a new era of leadership.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-unlock-our-potential-by-being-honest-about-what-we-want/

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One of the hardest parts about starting a business is finding someone to buy our products or services. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can find the passion statements of our ideal customers so we can connect with them on a deeper level and win their loyalty.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-find-your-customers-passion-statements/

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In the last episode with Geno Church we discussed how to create a digital community. In today’s episode, we’re going to go over word of mouth marketing and how we can get our customers to talk about our brands.

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Geno Church is a strategist, creative director, and community designer with more than 20 years of experience utilizing human-centered discovery methodologies, branding, and word of mouth strategies. He is the author of The Passion Conversation: Understanding, Sparking, and Sustaining Word of Mouth Marketing, and he hosts The Shared Ship Podcast.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss word of mouth marketing strategies and the importance of building a digital community.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-build-a-digital-community/

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Hello Monetization Nation. Today I want to share with you a poem that has a lot of meaning to me on multiple levels. This poem is titled “The Race”, attributed to Dr. D.H. “Dee” Groberg.

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Winning isn’t a matter of crossing the finish line first; it is our ability to get back up each time we fall.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/getting-up-each-time-we-fall/

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Before Walt Disney created one of the best-known motion-picture production companies in the world, his editor fired him from the newspaper because he “lacked creativity.”

Now, Disney is worth $122.18 billion (Source: Global Rankings) and has 12 amusement parks around the world, including Florida, California, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo. The Magic Kingdom is the most visited theme park in the entire world and is estimated to have welcomed nearly 30 million guests in 2019 (Source: Blog Mickey).

Disney also has more than 25 Resort Hotels in the world (Source: Disney World) and the Disney Cruise Line currently operates four ships, with three more planned to come within the next couple of years (Source: Disney Cruise).

Read more at https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-walt-disney-started-a-120-billion-dollar-company-after-being-fired-and-told-he-lacked-creativity/

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Welcome back to another episode with Erik Deckers. In the first episode, we discussed two ways to gain credibility through knowledge, Erik’s career, and the importance of checking our work and pricing ourselves appropriately. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss personal branding strategies from Erik’s book Branding Yourself.

Branding Yourself is about how to use social media to invent or reinvent ourselves. The book discusses how to use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogging, public speaking, publishing, and networking to share information, build a social media presence, interact and engage with people, and measure how well we're doing with each of these things.

Read more at https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-build-a-personal-brand/

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Erik Deckers is a professional blogger and co-author of Branding Yourself and No BS Social Media. Erik has been blogging since 1997. He’s also been a newspaper humor columnist since 1994.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss two ways to gain credibility through knowledge. We’ll also discuss Erik’s career and the importance of checking our work and pricing ourselves appropriately.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-build-business-credibility-through-knowledge/

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Welcome back to another episode with Danny Levin. In the last episode, we discussed Danny’s journey and how we can do better at listening to ourselves and others.

Today, we’re going to discuss the four practices of connection in Danny’s book, The Mosaic.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/4-ways-to-create-our-mosaic-through-nurturing-diverse-connections/

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Danny Levin walked away from running a billion dollar company to find happiness and inner peace by living as a monk in a monastery for 10 years. He later helped lead Hay House grow from $3 million to $100 million a year in revenue. He is also the author of The Mosaic, which introduces the Four Practices of Connection, a completely new innovative strategy to re-connect people and help companies work together to innovate and achieve more.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Danny’s journey and how we can do better at listening.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/lessons-from-a-monk-learning-to-listen/

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Mike Lamborne is an artist, motorcyclist, and business owner. He and his wife started a trucking business, where he was first introduced to motorcycle rallies. But, when the recession hit, they lost everything. However, as one door closed, another door opened, and they started traveling for nine months of the year, working on a motorcycle circuit as “The Mountainman.” They are currently in their 36th year of traveling and run a very successful motorcycle art business.

Mike is also the co-author of the book, Faith Into Abundance: 30 Stories from Successful Christian Entrepreneurs. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Mike’s journey of faith through hardships and how we can apply the lessons he learned to our own entrepreneurial journeys.

Read more at https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-rely-on-god-during-the-storms-of-life/

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Max Branstetter is the founder & podcast producer at MaxPodcasting. His podcast is called the Wild Business Growth Podcast, where he interviews a new entrepreneur who’s turning wild ideas into wild growth every Wednesday morning. It was listed in Podcast Magazine’s “Hot 50” and has featured over 150 creative entrepreneurs.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Max’s journey, the benefits of podcasting, and how to grow a podcast’s reach.

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In the last episode with Jason Falls, we discussed why and how we should reframe the way we think about influencer marketing. In today’s episode, we’ll dive deeper into principles from Jason’s book Winfluence. Specifically, we’ll look at purposes, principles, and applications of influencer marketing.

4 Purposes of Influence

As we discussed in the last episode, influencer marketing can be a great way to increase brand awareness, build credibility, and ultimately, increase our sales. However, the purpose of influence typically comes down to these four reasons:

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-use-influencer-marketing/

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Jason Falls is an author, speaker, and podcast host. He is the senior influence strategist for Cornett, a full-service advertising agency, where he leads digital strategy and hosts two marketing podcasts, Digging Deeper and Winfluence. Over his career, his projects have been recognized with several national and regional awards such as a 2020 Shorty Award for his influencer marketing work.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-reframe-influencer-marketing/

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When I was a kid, we only had four TV stations. When we wanted to watch something on television, because there were only those four stations, we didn't have a lot of choices. In fact, I remember when the fifth TV station came out. It was such a big deal because we had a fifth show to choose from when we wanted to watch TV.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-passion-marketing/

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Welcome back to another episode with Erik Qualman. In the last episode, we discussed Erik’s book Socialnomics, Erik’s journey and lessons he learned in his career, and leveraging voice to text. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss another one of Erik’s books, The Focus Project, and how we can better focus on the most important things.

There is so much going on in the world; it pulls our attention this way and that, and we often have trouble focusing on the things that are important because we are constantly bombarded with notifications.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-improve-our-focus/

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Erik Qualman is a five-time best-selling author and keynote speaker who has performed in over 55 countries and reached 50 million people. He is the host of the popular Super U Podcast, and his work has been used by the National Guard to NBC Universal to NASA.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Erik’s book Socialnomics, Erik’s journey and lessons he learned in his career, and leveraging voice to text.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-is-socialnomics/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss prayer and how we can harness the power of prayer in our lives and in our businesses.

About 24 years ago, I was a college student without a lot of money, and I was starting my first business. One week our cash flow was really bad.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-harness-the-power-of-prayer/

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Steve Woodruff is a consultant, author, and speaker. He is the president of Impactiviti/Clarity Fuel, where he is known as the King of Clarity and offers life sciences training, consulting, and workshops. In a world full of noise and distraction, Steve helps businesses craft a clear message so they can be heard, remembered, and referred.

In today’s episode, we'll discuss the principles in Steve’s book Clarity Wins and how we can create a clear brand message that will help us stand out against our competitors.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-create-a-clear-brand-message/

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Eric Twiggs is a certified life and business coach, award-winning speaker, and author. He is the founding partner and president of The What Now Movement, where his mission is to build high-performing entrepreneurs, authors, and career professionals.

He is also the author of The Discipline of Now: 12 Practical Principles to Overcome Procrastination, a book which has been recognized as a Global Top Ten Finalist for the 2020 Author Elite Awards in the category of Best Self Help Book. Eric is also the host of a weekly inspirational podcast, The 30 Minute Hour.In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Eric’s journey and many principles to help us overcome procrastination.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-stop-procrastinating/

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Andrew Davis is a keynote speaker and a bestselling author of BRANDSCAPING: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships and TOWN Inc: Grow Your Business, Save Your Town, Leave Your Legacy. Before building and selling a thriving digital marketing agency, he produced for NBC and worked for The Muppets. He's appeared in the New York Times and on the Today Show. He's also crafted documentary films and award-winning content for tiny start-ups and Fortune 500 brands.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss public speaking, Andrew’s career, and brandscaping.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-write-a-good-speech-with-new-ideas/

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David J.P. Fisher (also known as D. Fish) is a speaker, coach, and author of nine books, including Networking in the 21st Century and Hyper-Connected Selling. David helps salespeople, business owners, and entrepreneurs understand the Sales Sherpa™ Path, where social media, networking, and traditional sales skills are the key to providing value and staying relevant.

In today’s episode, David shares with us why networking is so important and how to do it effectively.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-network-in-the-21st-century/

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Welcome back to another episode with Stephen Denny. In the last episode, we discussed four chapters from his book Killing Giants to help us beat our giant competitors. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss his new book, Unfiltered Marketing: 5 Rules to Win Back Trust, Credibility, and Customers in a Digitally Distracted World.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-win-back-customers-trust/

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Stephen Denny is a marketing consultant, author, and speaker. He is currently the president at Denny Marketing, a strategic marketing consultancy focused on competitive marketing strategy, channel marketing, sales enablement, and go-to-market strategies.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss his book, Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry, in which Stephen discusses how we can not only survive, but thrive against our competitors. Today we will go over four of the most important strategies.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-topple-the-goliaths-in-your-industry/

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Welcome back to the final episode of key takeaways from Funnel Hacking Live. Tony Robbins, Lisa Bilyeu, Garrett J. White, and Danielle K. White discussed how to leave an impact and a legacy on Day 4 of Funnel Hacking. Because there was so much valuable information from the event, I will just cover two of the speakers: Russell Brunson and Tony Robbins.

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Hello Monetization Nation. This is a Sunday episode and today I'm going to talk about business lessons we can learn from the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, who became the ruler of Egypt.

During his life, Joseph experienced many challenges. His brothers sold him to be a slave in Egypt and he ended up in prison based on a false accusation from Potiphar’s wife who tried to seduce him. When he refused, he was wrongly imprisoned. However, despite his challenges, he had faith in God and also achieved tremendous success.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-overcome-challenges-6-business-lessons-from-joseph-ruler-of-egypt/

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Welcome back to another episode of key takeaways from Funnel Hacking Live. Yesterday, I shared the most impactful points from Day 2, focused on using funnels to scale our businesses.

On Day 3 of Funnel Hacking, speakers Nick Santonastasso, Pedro Adao, Peng Joon, Lauren Golden, Sarah Petty, Eileen Wilder, and Kiana Danial shared their secrets to gain traffic into our funnels and turn our leads into customers. Here are my key takeaways from the event.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/funnel-hacking-live-2021-day-3-key-takeaways/

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Welcome back to another episode of key takeaways from Funnel Hacking Live. Yesterday, I shared the most impactful points from Day 1, focused on building a strong foundation for our funnels.

During Day 2 of Funnel Hacking Live, John Lee Dumas, Trent Shelton, Krista Mashore, McCall Jones, Matt Harward, Jason Harward, and Braven Grant shared exactly how their funnels are working to scale their companies. In today’s episode, I want to share my key takeaways with you.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/funnel-hacking-live-2021-day-2-key-takeaways-by-nathan-gwilliam/

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Funnel Hacking Live is a four day live conference hosted by Russell Brunson and the ClickFunnels team, and packed with incredible speakers.

I attended Funnel Hacking Live for Day 1 and I will be attending during the additional days. Each day I will host a live stream at Monetization Nation to share with you the most impactful points.

In today’s episode, I want to share my key takeaways with you.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/funnel-hacking-live-2021-day-1-key-takeaways/

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Srinivas Rao is the host and founder of the Unmistakable Creative Podcast, where he’s interviewed more than a thousand people ranging from bank robbers to billionaires. In today’s episode, we will discuss the impact zone, Srini’s journey, what creative habits are, how we develop them, and how we CREATE.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-develop-creative-habits-to-create-business-success/

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Welcome back to another episode with Christoph Trappe. In the last episode, we discussed how to start live streaming. In today’s episode, we’re going to get specific with six steps we can take to start live streaming.

Why Is Live Streaming Taking Off?

Live streaming is taking off for many reasons. From the streamer’s side, companies are looking for ways to stand out, and live streams are a great way to do that, especially if the streamer has a personality that stands out. They’re also fairly easy to produce; I could go live within a few minutes of deciding to do it if I wanted to. It’s another opportunity to reach and engage with people, and most major platforms have a way for us to do it.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/6-steps-to-start-live-streaming/

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Christoph Trappe is a global top 14 content marketer, a top 40 B2B marketer, a top 100 CX thought leader, and a top 24 digital marketer. His fourth book, Going Live, recently came out. It discusses how to get more out of your podcast and content strategy, particularly through live streaming.

In today’s episode, we're going to dive deep into leveraging live streaming. We’ll also discuss Christoph’s career, technology, and how to know if we’re producing “CRAP”.

What is Live Streaming?

At the basic level, live streaming means broadcasting on the internet, typically to social media. Most social media platforms have a way for users to live stream on them. What do people do while live streaming? It could be a podcast, interview, event, unboxing, or the streamer might be playing a video game, talking about products, answering questions, etc. There are many options for what to do while live streaming; it all depends on who the streamer is, what they are an expert in, and what their audience wants.

Read more: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-start-live-streaming/

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This a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation.

The Pride of Lord Voldemort

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, pride is one of the defining characteristics of many of the characters, but it leads to the downfall of Lord Voldemort. Voldemort is so proud, he can’t imagine not living forever. In his quest to prolong his life, he destroys the lives of others. In the end, his pride causes him to underestimate Harry, who is able to defeat him.

Voldemort only lived to about 71 years old—well under the life expectancy of wizards; Dumbledore lived to 116. If it weren’t for his pride, Voldemort could have lived much longer.

Though our pride likely won’t lead to our death, it could lead to the destruction of many things including faith, relationships, or our business. To combat pride we must choose humility.

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Welcome back to another episode with Kathleen Booth. In the last episode, we discussed how coupon extensions can erode our profit margins, how we can protect against coupon extensions, and how to use coupons effectively. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss three of the biggest threats in cybersecurity and how to protect ourselves from them. We’ll also discuss credibility marketing through influencers, recurring revenue streams that use emotional connections, and how HubSpot uses passion marketing.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-importance-of-cybersecurity-in-digital-marketing-how-to-stop-the-3-top-threats/

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Kathleen Booth is the VP of marketing at clean.io. She is a serial entrepreneur, marketing leader, and host of the long-running podcast Inbound Success. She was named by TopRank as one of the 50 Top B2B Marketing Influencers of 2019.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how coupon extensions can erode our profit margins, and how we can protect against coupon extensions and use coupons effectively. We’ll also discuss Kathleen’s journey and the impact COVID-19 has had on buying behaviors.

Read more at - https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-use-coupons-in-your-business/

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Welcome back to another episode with Scott Abel. In the last episode, we discussed three key aspects of creating great content, including why we need to plan and organize our content.

In today’s episode, we’ll continue the discussion of content marketing by discussing content operations, or how we can manage and protect our content. We’ll go over one strategy for content creation and monetization, and we’ll touch on internal and external credibility marketing.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-is-content-operations-and-why-is-it-important/

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Scott Abel is known as the “Content Wrangler.” He is a content strategist who helps companies improve the way they author, maintain, and deliver information to those who need it. He co-authored Intelligent Content: A Primer and The Language of Content Strategy. He's also the creator of the Content Strategy Series of books from XML Press. Brand Quarterly Magazine ranked Scott as one of the 50 most influential marketing thought leaders.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss why we need to plan and organize our content so that computers can understand it and we can access our content whenever we need it.

Read more at https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-create-good-content/

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In the last episode with Ryo Chiba, we discussed how to increase organic traffic by creating a product that markets itself. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss three shifts impacting content marketing and how we can leverage them to grow our business: artificial intelligence, user-generated content, and credibility marketing. We will also go over one tip on how to organize a content team.

Impact of Artificial Intelligence

How is artificial intelligence influencing marketing?

“Marketers are just starting to implement and discover tools around more advanced text generation systems,” Ryo said. “Really what it's going to result in is a commodification of basic content. It's really going to drive the price of creating rudimentary content down to zero, and it's going to put more emphasis for marketers on being able to create content that stands out from the rest of the pack.”

Read more at https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-use-content-marketing-to-grow-your-business/

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Ryo Chiba is an entrepreneur who started the multimillion dollar SaaS company, TINT, in college using SEO and content marketing. He bootstrapped it with his two co-founders to 40 full-time employees, with $5 million in annual recurring revenue. After successfully selling the company in 2018, he is now working on his new business, Topic, to help others achieve similar marketing success for their businesses.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to increase organic traffic to create a product that markets itself.

Read more at https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-increase-organic-traffic/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we're going to talk about patriotism through entrepreneurship.

Publix in the Great Depression

During the Great Depression, there was a 22-year-old man named George Jenkins. Jenkins was the manager of a Florida Piggly Wiggly, but he quit his job and started his own grocery store chain next door. The store not only survived, but it has grown to be a 1000-store chain today that is known as Publix. President Ronald Reagan said, “Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.” That's a little bit of an exaggeration, but America's 31 million small businesses generate nearly half of all US economic activity. The nominal GDP (gross domestic product) of American small businesses comes out to roughly $6 trillion—more than the entire GDP of Japan, the world’s third largest economy (Source: Independent.org).

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/patriotism-through-entrepreneurship/

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Welcome back to another episode with Troy Howard. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss seven strategies for leveraging customer reviews to build our credibility and promote our business.

7 Strategies for Leveraging Reviews

Are we truly leveraging our customer reviews to their fullest potential? Customer reviews are a great way for us to spread the word about our business and build our credibility. When other people discuss how great we are, people are much more likely to believe it than when we do it ourselves.

Here are seven strategies that businesses should be utilizing today to improve their market and to grow their business by putting social proof in all of their marketing.

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Video marketing is a major tectonic shift transforming the business world today. People love video; they’re constantly watching TV, movies, YouTube videos, TikToks, and more. It is the preferred form of content for many people. In fact, 68% of consumers would rather watch videos to learn about new products or services compared to consuming other content, and 82% of consumers would rather watch live video than read social media posts (Source: WordStream).

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss four great benefits of video marketing and reviewing that Troy Howard has seen in his career. We’ll also discuss challenges and opportunities, recurring revenue, and picking the right business partner.

Troy Howard is one of the founders of SoTellUs, which I believe is the best review platform technology for businesses and I recommend it to all of my clients. Troy started his own marketing agency that has more than 3,800 clients in 27 countries.

Continue reading at - https://monetizationnation.com/blog/4-benefits-of-video-marketing/

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In the last episode with Viveka Von Rosen, we discussed how we can make our LinkedIn profiles stand out and ways we can build credibility through LinkedIn. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to create a LinkedIn business page.

How to Create a LinkedIn Page

Here are five key aspects of our LinkedIn profile we should use:

Banner Image
Headline
Profile Photo
About Section
Content, Experience, and Featured Sections

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According to Hootsuite, LinkedIn is the most trusted social network in the United States with 722 million members. While LinkedIn was primarily used to connect potential employees with employers in the past, it is now a platform for publishing and sharing content as well. Not only can we use LinkedIn as a way to present our credentials to employers, we can also use it to show our credentials to our customers while building brand awareness, growing customer relationships, and generating leads.

Viveka Von Rosen is the co-founder and chief visibility officer of Vengreso, the largest provider of modern digital sales transformation solutions. She is known internationally as the “LinkedIn Expert” and has trained more than 10,000 business professionals on using this popular social platform. She's also authored the best selling books LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day and LinkedIn: 101 Ways to Rock Your Personal Brand. Her business mission is to help sales professionals and business owners create more quality and qualified conversions on LinkedIn.

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In the last episode with Kristin Swanson, we discussed how we can overcome resistance to achieve our “someday when…” projects and goals. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can achieve our soul-led goals.

Soul-Led Goals

Soul-led goals are what Kristin calls our greatest dreams. They are the goals that resonate deeply with our souls. They are the projects we desire to accomplish in our lifetime.

We can ask ourselves, “What do I want? How do I want people to remember me? What difference do I want to make in whose life and what do I want my legacy to be?” The answers to those questions are clues to what our soul-led goals are.

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“Someday when I have more time, I will start my own business.” Does this phrase feel familiar? We often find ourselves putting our goals and dreams on hold because we experience resistance or challenges such as time restraints or a lack of money. Kristen Swanson, a breast cancer survivor, learned that we don’t have to wait for “someday” through a life changing event. Her experience helped her realize that we don’t have to wait for “someday”. We can go after our goals now.

Kristen helps thought leaders execute their “Someday when…” procrastination projects with ease. As a breast cancer survivor and trained coach at the Coaches Institute, Kristen has learned the importance of getting out of one's own way and how to stop waiting until “someday” to make a unique impact. Realizing that you only live once, she has gained perspective tools and strategies to overcome the illusions fear instills in us.

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss an article written by clinical mental health counselor, Rod Jeppsen. In his article, Jeppsen teaches us how we can more effectively communicate with our spouses.

It can be hard to be the spouse of an entrepreneur. We often get sucked into projects and responsibilities or have to work long and odd hours, especially when we’re first starting our businesses. We’re asking a lot of our spouses; that’s why it is important to continue to put effort into our relationships and learn how to communicate more effectively with our spouse.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/together-or-apart-how-to-effectively-communicate-with-our-spouses/

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Bob Tiede is an expert at asking great questions and teaching other people to ask great questions. Bob has a blog called Leading with Questions, where he just celebrated his ninth anniversary. The blog is followed by leaders in more than 190 different countries. Bob is also the author of four very popular books: Now That's a Great Question, 339 Questions Jesus Asked, Great Leaders Ask Questions, and the Little Book of Big Leading with Questions Quotes.

In today’s episode we’ll be discussing the best strategies to become a good leader in our businesses by asking questions.

What makes a good leader?

In 1997, Navy Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, took over command of the USS Benfold, one of America's warships. Morale on that ship was the lowest in the Navy at that time and 18 months after Abrashoff took over as captain, morale was the highest in the Navy. His key strategy to solve this problem was to listen.

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Welcome back to another episode with Andrew Romans. In the last episode, we defined venture capital (VC), angel investing, and private equity, and we discussed three ways to de-risk venture capital, and how entrepreneurs can leverage technology. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss how to raise capital for your business.

How to Start Raising Capital

Here are a few of Andrew's ideas on how to start raising capital for a business.

Build the Team First

When Andrew founded Global Telecom, he recognized that he was young and didn't have a lot of experience, so he decided to build a great team. He recruited the former CFO of AT&T and other top professionals in different fields and signed employment agreements with them contingent upon $5 million of funding. Then he was able to go into the VCs and say, “It's not just me, here's the team.”

Andrew said, “Go out and recruit people. If you can recruit really top people in this talent war where they have so many choices, that says something to investors.”

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Andrew Romans is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and advisor for governments and corporations on Corporate Venture Capital programs. He is the CEO and General Partner of 7BC Venture Capital and the co-founder of Rubicon venture capital, a venture capital fund focused on investing in and supporting artificial intelligence (AI), FinTech, and software infrastructure startups. By the time he was 28 years old, he’d raised more than $48 million for tech startups he founded.

Andrew is also the author of three books: The Entrepreneurial Bible to Venture Capital, Masters of Corporate Venture Capital, and Masters of Blockchain. He also hosts the podcast Fireside with a Venture Capitalist. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss the difference between venture capital, angel investing, and private equity, three ways we can reduce risk in venture capital, how entrepreneurs can leverage data and technology, and Andrew’s career.

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-is-venture-capital-and-3-ways-to-reduce-its-risk/

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Justin and Alexis Black are authors, speakers, and serial entrepreneurs. Together, they've created ventures such as the Scholarship Expert and the Rose Empowerment Group, which supports hundreds of young people. Their current venture is called Redefining Normal. They've published a book called Redefining Normal, which shares their journey of two foster kids overcoming their pasts.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss their journey and how we, as entrepreneurs, can make an impact on our communities.

Overcoming the Past

Alexis and Justin are both foster care alumni. Justin entered the foster care system when he was 9 years old and bounced from home to home throughout his childhood years. This created a lot of mental health struggles, leading to unhealthy habits such as substance abuse.

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In the last episode with Rachel Haley, we discussed five ways to scale a business: making goals, establishing priorities, communicating with our teams, focusing on our customers, and hiring the right people. In today’s episode, we will continue our discussion on how to scale a business by going over how to delegate, how to hire the right employees, and a lesson we can learn from credibility marketing.

How to Delegate

Scaling a business requires delegation. We can’t do everything on our own, meaning we have to get other people to do some tasks and projects for us. Delegation is required if we want to scale; this is something most entrepreneurs struggle with at some point or another.

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Rachel Haley is the co-founder and CEO of Clarus Designs, a consulting and outsourcing firm for startups targeted at optimizing rapid scale through improved operational strategy.

Her core focus is flawless execution. She says, “I'd rather have a sub optimal strategy with flawless execution, as opposed to constantly shifting strategy to fit a particular box.”

In today’s episode, Rachel is going to share some of her best strategies to help scale a business.

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to be a stonecatcher.

What is a stonecatcher?

There was once a man who had been falsely accused of murder and was condemned to die. His attorney, Bryan Stevenson, was dedicated to defending the wrongly accused.

Stevenson asked the man’s local church for support even though the man wasn’t active in the church and was scorned in the community because of a widely-known affair. Stevenson reminded them of the story of the woman accused of adultery, and surrounded by a crowd who wanted to stone her to death. Christ said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (KJV John 8:7)

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-become-a-stonecatcher/

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In the last episode with Nick Panayi, we discussed the benefits of leveraging artificial intelligence in our businesses. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Nick’s greatest monetization secret: pursuit marketing.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-market-your-business-through-pursuit-marketing/

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Nick Panayi is the Chief Marketing Officer at Amelia, a leading software firm focused on conversational AI. Before joining Amelia as the CMO in 2018, Nick was the vice president of brand, demand, and digital marketing at DXC Technology. DXC is a $20 billion global IT services leader formed in 2017 after the merger of CSC and HPE Enterprise Services.

In addition to DXC, Nick’s 20 plus years of marketing experience in the technology industry includes a variety of marketing leadership roles with Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Avaya. Nick was named one of the top 25 digital marketers by B2B Magazine, and his marketing teams have won multiple awards and distinctions from Serious Decisions, ITSMA, and other marketing analyst firms in recent years.

In today’s episode, we’re going to dive into the topic of artificial intelligence.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-artificial-intelligence-can-benefit-businesses/

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In the last episode with Kashem Miah, we discussed how to build a brand community and the benefits it can bring us. In today's episode, we’re going to discuss how we can take advantage of lucky opportunities.

Warren Buffett, an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist, is worth more than $100 billion according to Forbes. While he recognizes his own hard work and determination, he contributes much of his success to luck.

In 2013, Buffett told a journalist, "The womb from which you emerge determines your fate to an enormous degree for most of the seven billion people in the world.” He calls this idea the “ovarian lottery,” meaning that many of our life situations are based on luck. For example, he says he is lucky to be born in the United States since he could have just as easily been born in Bangladesh as a farmer in which his life would have been completely different.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-get-lucky-in-business/

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Kashem Miah is the VP of brand marketing at a Fintech startup called GoHenry. Kashem has spent more than 12 years in a variety of marketing roles from content marketing to growth marketing to brand building. He's previously worked at other tech companies such as Shutterstock and Fiverr.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss why we should build a loyal brand community and how we can do that.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-build-a-community-for-your-brand/

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Welcome back to another episode with Alinka Rutkowska. Today, we will go through the 17 steps to create a bestselling business book.

There are many reasons an entrepreneur might write a book, and it often isn’t for the revenue the book will make. Business books have other benefits such as bringing exposure to a business. They can help an entrepreneur build a personal brand and become a thought leader on the topic they write about. Books can also help an entrepreneur advance their career.

A book is the ultimate instant authority and credibility builder. A LinkedIn profile that says, “CEO of [company name],” doesn’t seem as credible as one that says, “Bestselling author of [book], CEO of [company name].”

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-write-and-publish-a-bestselling-business-book-in-17-steps/

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Alinka Rutkowska is the CEO of Leaders Press, a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling press, which creates books for entrepreneurs from scratch and launches them to bestseller status with a 100% success rate. She works with top business leaders such as Po Chung, the co-founder of DHL International. Leaders Press releases have landed on bookshelves together with Nobel Prize winners and World Economic Forum speakers alike. Alinka is an official member of the Forbes Business Council, and her cutting-edge book creation process has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss a few things to do before and after working with a client to win and maintain their business. We’ll also discuss Alinka’s passion, career, and a couple of other things she’s learned in her journey.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-powerful-steps-to-get-and-keep-a-client/

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Rovio Entertainment, a video game developer company, experienced failure after failure before they eventually found success. From when they were founded in 2003 to the launch of Angry Birds in 2009, Rovio only knew failure. Rovio had released 51 new games before they released Angry Birds, all of which failed to become popular (Source: Fast Company).

However, with each failure, Rovio looked to the future. Instead of giving up, instead of letting their past mistakes consume them, they pushed forward. Because the developers at Rovio looked to the future with faith and hope, their company eventually earned millions. By July 2015, the Angry Birds games had been downloaded more than 3 billion times collectively. (source: Wikipedia). In 2015, they launched Angry Birds 2, which has already generated more than $600 million (Source: PocketGamer).

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-let-go-of-the-past-and-focus-on-the-future/

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In the last episode with Greg Poirier, we discussed his career journey and three traits of a strong leader. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss what the enterprise sales model is and how our companies can switch over to this model.

According to Lighter Capital, “Enterprise sales, also known as complex sales, refers to the procurement of large contracts that typically involve long sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, and a higher level of risk than traditional sales.”

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-shift-to-enterprise-sales/

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Greg Poirier is the founder and CEO of CloudKettle, a consultancy focused on improving operations and revenue growth for large organizations. He spent more than 12 years in the Salesforce ecosystem and as a five-time Dreamforce speaker. He's a sought-after presenter and advisor specializing in marketing and sales operations for SaaS companies.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Greg’s entrepreneurial journey and what it takes to have a strong leadership team.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-traits-of-a-strong-leadership-team/

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Welcome back to another episode with Ken Moskowitz. In the last episode, we discussed Ken’s career journey and what it was like for him to leave his job and start his own business. We discussed what to expect when starting a business and how Ken grew his business by taking on a partner. In today’s episode, we will discuss seven tips we can use to start or improve our business.

1. Move Forward without Gatekeepers

In the corporate world, there are gatekeepers who stop us from going where we want to go. We have to get approval to launch a new project or to hire a new employee. Often, we have to think about how we can get past them. The good news is that there are no gatekeepers for starting a business.

I could have an idea for a new business today, go on the internet, and create a website using Squarespace or another website builder, and have version one of my website by the end of the day. I could set up a payment processor like PayPal. Tomorrow I can file the necessary paperwork with the state and set up an email address.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/7-tips-for-starting-a-business/

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Considering quitting your job to start a business is a scary thing. It often comes with a fear of the unknown and a fear of failure. In today’s episode, we’re going to walk through how Ken Moskowitz quit his job to start his business and what he experienced when he did that. We’ll also discuss a strategy Ken used to grow and scale his business and one of Ken’s passions.

Ken “Spanky” Moskowitz is a storytelling expert. He is the bestselling author of the book Jab Till It Hurts. He's a keynote speaker, and he hosts a podcast called Entre Grow, a brand under which he also does some consulting. He's also the founder and CEO of Ad Zombies.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-leave-a-lasting-legacy-2/

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In the last episode with Craig Willett, we discussed his entrepreneurial journey and four secrets to success and happiness he learned over his career. In today’s lesson, we’re going to discuss what it means to leave a legacy with our businesses.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-leave-a-lasting-legacy/

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Craig Willett is the founder of Utaz Development Corporation, an innovative real estate development company that pioneered the “Own For Less Than Rent” concept in a professional village. He developed more than $750 million in real estate projects. Craig has also been the founding shareholder and director of a community bank, a public biotech company, a CPA firm that grew to more than 700 small business clients, and a strategic advisory firm.

Craig is also a world champion equestrian and the voice of The Biz Sherpa Podcast, a podcast that inspires others to step on the path to small business success. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Craig’s entrepreneurial journey and the four keys to success he learned along the way.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/4-secrets-to-business-success-and-happiness/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss mental health and reference a sermon given by educator and religious leader Jeffrey Holland called “Like a Broken Vessel”. In this sermon, Holland talks about mental health and the need we all have to care for our own mental health and the mental health of others.

This is a topic that's particularly close to my heart. In one of the previous episodes, I told a story about my business partner who committed suicide, and I want to retell that story because I think it's particularly appropriate for this episode.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-entrepreneurs-can-care-for-their-mental-health/

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Welcome back to another episode with Noah St. John. In the last episode, we discussed what head trash is and why we need to get rid of it. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss three levels of service Noah offers to his clients, the inner game of success, and five habits that will help us with that inner success game.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-habits-to-help-us-work-on-the-inner-game-of-success/

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Sometimes the only thing holding us back is what’s in our head. We may consciously or unconsciously think we can’t do something, and that leads us to not being able to do it. Noah St. John is an expert in “head trash” or the mental blocks that hold us back. In today’s episode, we’ll define head trash, learn how to identify it, and discuss one method for getting rid of our head trash. In episode two with Noah, we’ll discuss more habits that can help us with our mental blocks.

Noah St. John is known as the millionaire habits coach. He's the author of books, such as The Secret Code of Success and Power Habits. Noah’s coaching clients have added more than $2.7 billion in sales by following his legendary methods. He’s appeared on more than 1,000 media outlets, including ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, Entrepreneur, and The Huffington Post.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-is-head-trash-and-why-do-we-need-to-get-rid-of-it/

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Welcome back to another episode with Jay Samit. In the last episode, we discussed how to get other people’s money, learning from failure, and the requirements for success. We also discussed the first three truths in Jay’s book Future Proofing You – Twelve Truths for Creating Opportunity, Maximizing Wealth, and Controlling Your Destiny in an Uncertain World. These truths are we must have a growth mindset, obstacles are opportunities in disguise, and fear is good. In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing the remaining nine truths from the book.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-12-truths-for-creating-opportunity-maximizing-wealth-and-controlling-destiny/

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Jay Samit is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and an expert on disruption and innovation. He has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups and advised Fortune 500 firms. Jay has created strategic partnerships with McDonald's, Coca-Cola, United Airlines, Microsoft, Ford, GM, Best Buy, and many others.

In today’s episode, Jay and I will discuss how to get free marketing. We’ll also discuss the first three truths in his book Future Proofing You – Twelve Truths for Creating Opportunity, Maximizing Wealth, and Controlling Your Destiny in an Uncertain World.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-get-free-marketing/

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Coach David Houle has the most wins of any high school coach in American history. He and his teams have earned nearly 2,000 victories in basketball, football, baseball, track, and cross country. His teams have won 68 state championships and seven national championships. David is a member of the National Sports Hall of Fame and was named by USA Today as the most successful high school coach in America. His athletes are known for their love and support towards each other and opponents, and for years of community service.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss David’s journey to success and three principles that helped him become the most successful high school coach in American history.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-principles-of-success-from-the-most-accomplished-high-school-coach-in-american-history/

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Rylee Meek is the host of the Sales Conversion Podcast and founder and CEO of Social Dynamic Selling, which turns dinner seminar marketing into a science. After responding to an ad on Craigslist in 2009, Rylee was introduced to a new way of selling, radically changing his life forever. Having just $673 in his bank account and a burning desire for more, Rylee went on to produce over $125 million in sales.

Now that he has perfected his model, Rylee is sharing his learned wisdom. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Rylee’s entrepreneurial journey to learning the social dynamic selling method and we’ll dive into how to use this method.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-social-dynamic-selling-method/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the attribute of patience based on a sermon given by American scholar, educator, and religious leader Neal Maxwell.

Maxwell explained, “Patience is not indifference. Actually, it means caring very much but being willing, nevertheless, to submit to the Lord and to what the scriptures call the ‘process of time.’”

As entrepreneurs, we often have to be patient for success. According to Freshbooks.com, most small businesses take at least two to three years to become profitable and only become truly successful once they’ve hit the seven to the 10-year mark.

Seven years is a long time to wait for success. We may get discouraged and want to quit. However, we should trust in the Lord’s timing. “When we are unduly impatient we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than [God does]. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His,” Maxwell said.

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Welcome back to another episode with Dario Sipos. In the last episode, we discussed how to increase our credibility through digital retail marketing. In today’s episode, Dario and I will be discussing six principles from his book Digital Retail Marketing.

The Future of Advertising and Dario’s Book

Dario always starts client meetings by asking, “How many of you woke up today wanting to see an advertisement on the internet?” After a moment of surprise, his clients grasp the concept; no one wants to see ads. Then Dario asks, “So why are you paying for ads?”

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/6-digital-marketing-tips-to-strengthen-our-online-presence/

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Around 90% of mobile users don’t know where they will buy a product before looking for information about it (Source: goremotely.net). This is one reason why having a strong online presence is important, but having a strong online presence can also give us tremendous credibility. In today’s episode, Dario Sipos and I will discuss how he gained credibility in his career and how the internet can build our credibility and expand our reach.

Dario Sipos is the author of Digital Retail Marketing: The Essential Guide to Low-Cost Successful Content Marketing. He is also a digital marketing strategist, branding expert, keynote public speaker, business columnist, and entrepreneur.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-grow-credibility-with-retail-digital-marketing/

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In the last episode with Sam Taggart, we discussed Sam’s journey to becoming an expert at door-to-door sales and some of his secrets to success. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to find success with door-to-door sales.

Get Training and Be a Leader

Door-to-door sales require a lot of hard work. It isn’t something we can just go out and do without any training or planning.

Sam recommends we spend at least a month going out and trying door-to-door sales ourselves. Too many people send out their employees to do sales, but they don’t give them enough support on what they should be doing or selling because they don’t know what to do themselves.

If we send out our sales team to try door-to-door sales without ever trying it ourselves first, we’re not going to be able to help them find success or answer their questions. We should go and sell ourselves so we can learn what works and what doesn’t then give our sales team the proper coaching. We need to be the leader that is willing to get out with our team and work by their sides.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-achieve-success-with-door-to-door-sales/

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Sam Taggart is an author, podcast host, and the CEO of D2D (door to door) Experts, which grew to a multiple seven-figure consulting business in under seven years. He is the author of ABC’s of Closing: Experts’ Secrets to Closing More Deals in Door to Door Sales and the host of the D2D podcast. He runs a conference called D2D con and an online education platform called D2D University, and he created a non-profit service called the D2D Association. He also has two SaaS platforms: Vanilla Message and Recruit Ematic. Sam also has a team of experts that do door to door coaching and consulting.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Sam’s journey to door to door sales and a few things he has learned over his career.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-tips-from-a-millionaire-door-to-door-sales-rep/

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Welcome back to another episode with LaVon Lewis. In the last episode, we discussed why it is so important to not compete on price. In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing concepts from LaVon’s book, Today is a Great Day for a WOW Image!, and his branding and credibility marketing tips.

The reason LaVon used “WOW” in his book title is that WOW represents a customer's reaction, the point where our product, service, and branding connects with that customer. The book walks through the creative side of branding. It breaks down the psychology of how people think, what colors mean, how to build a good website that attracts an audience and more branding concepts in addition to samples of work throughout the book. It details what creates a WOW image in a customer's mind.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/8-branding-and-credibility-marketing-tips/

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LaVon Lewis is a branding design and marketing expert. He is the co-founder, president, and creative director of Connect Branding and Marketing, an Atlanta-based award-winning branding and marketing firm. LaVon has led the creative direction for several Fortune 100 companies and thousands of small businesses, including SeaWorld, Panasonic, The Home Depot, Walmart, AT&T, Coca-Cola, and many others. His award list includes over 50 design, professional, and marketing awards.

LaVon wrote the book Today is a Great Day for a WOW Image! In today’s episode, we’ll discuss LaVon’s entrepreneurial journey, tips from his career, and pricing and positioning in our branding, including three reasons why we shouldn’t compete on price.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/21-3-reasons-why-we-shouldnt-compete-on-price/

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This is a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to determine our priorities and make good, better, and best choices.

Good, Better, Best

We all know the difference between a good choice and a bad choice. But while it may seem easy to identify and avoid the bad choices, how do we make the best choices? There aren’t just good and bad choices. There are also better choices and best choices.

In 2007, Dallin H. Oaks, a former university president, and state supreme court justice, and a religious leader, gave a sermon titled, “Good, Better, Best.” In his sermon, he explained that as we make choices, we need to carefully reflect on the good, better, or best choice.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-ways-to-establish-our-priorities-at-work/

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Steven Twohig has spent two decades being mentored by and studying with some of the greatest minds in influence and human transformation. He spent a decade working under Tony Robbins as the linchpin for his business mastery division. He spent two decades facilitating any methods of change he could get his hands on. He recently started a company called Mastering Change, which is tasked with creating experiential exercises that transform and educate.

His travels have led him around the world, teaching business owners and individuals about how to lead a more fulfilling and impactful life. He is a coach, a guide, a facilitator, and an agent of change helping businesses to transform.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss change and the seven influence points, along with the shazam moment and our two core fears.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-use-the-7-influence-points/

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Sponsorship can be tricky to navigate. We may be doing our best to get sponsors, but find that no one wants to sponsor us. In today’s episode, Lori A. Manns and I are going to discuss the different kinds of sponsorship, the benefits, and the most common reasons businesses don’t get sponsored. We’ll also discuss Lori’s career, the lessons she’s learned from it, and two lessons from her book, Divine Downloads, Loriology: 33 Lessons On Life, Love & Leadership.

Lori A. Manns is the president of Quality Media Consulting Group, a consulting firm specializing in advertising, marketing, and sales solutions. Lori has numerous awards and recognitions, including the Nonprofit Leader of the Year Award, Businesswoman of the Year, and the Legacy Award. Lori is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council and a regular content contributor for Forbes.com.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-benefits-of-sponsorships-and-why-you-arent-getting-sponsors/

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Dave Ruel is a former competitive physique athlete turned into a serial entrepreneur, speaker, leadership mentor, and author of the best-selling book, Done by Noon: How to Achieve More by Noon Than Other Entrepreneurs in a Full Day.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Dave’s entrepreneurial journey and a few lessons he learned about freedom in the process.

Dave’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Dave’s journey started with his passion for fitness. In 2007, he competed in a bodybuilder show in Newfoundland, Canada, and he met Lee Hayward, a competitive bodybuilder, and owner of Total Fitness Bodybuilding. Hayward told Dave he was making six figures a year from his fitness blog, inspiring a drive and desire for Dave to do the same.

Dave traded his passion for fitness for an obsession with business. He learned as much as he could about starting a digital business until he could go full-time with his own blog and business, Muscle Cook, in 2009. His business aimed to help fitness lovers with meal plans and nutrition.

“Becoming an entrepreneur is like becoming an athlete,” Dave said. “You can start with natural tendencies or natural talent but eventually you need to acquire the skills to become a champion.”

Dave launched cookbooks, and from there he started getting attention. Dave explained that his biggest home run was creating that first product, the cookbook since it was the first thing that helped propel his career forward. Since then, he has helped found and grow multimillion-dollar online companies in the field of health, fitness, and sports nutrition for nearly a decade.

However, Dave saw the dark side of entrepreneurship, and the side gradually robbed him of his freedom, leaving him burned out and unfulfilled. Refusing to conform to a broken business culture that promotes workaholism and non-stop hustle, Dave created sustainable structures and systems for his life and business to reclaim his freedom without sacrificing the growth of his companies.

Fueled by his passion for entrepreneurship and human performance, he launched Ethic, an innovative leadership development company that helps busy entrepreneurs maximize their impact and freedom.

5 Truths About Entrepreneurship

As entrepreneurs, it can be easy to get buried in our workloads and overwhelmed with to-do lists; we get lost and burnt out. In the process of trying to find our freedoms with entrepreneurship, we end up losing them, just as Dave did in his fitness businesses. In his book, Done by Noon, Dave shared five truths about life and business as entrepreneurs we should be aware of to help us avoid burnout.

All Entrepreneurs Want Freedom

Dave explained that entrepreneurs want one thing: freedom. We want the freedom of time, the freedom of creation, and financial freedom. That’s why we do what we do.

The freedom of time allows us to do what we want to do when we want to do it. With the freedom of time, we can choose to spend more time with our family or choose to go on frequent trips. We want the freedom of creativity to work on whatever we want. Instead of working for someone else, we can choose to design new products or create new services to help others. And we want financial freedom. We want a business that can provide enough income for us to live the lifestyle we want.

However, in order to achieve these freedoms, we need to work hard. In Dave’s book, he explained that we need to learn to juggle our skills and use our time and energy as fuel for our businesses.

Entrepreneurs Love to Work

Entrepreneurs love to work. In his book, Dave explained that when he asked entrepreneurs what they would do if their business made them enough money to never work again, true entrepreneurs said they would still continue to work. That is because our work and our businesses give us creative freedom. If we aren’t working, we miss an important link. We may have the freedom of time and money, but we won’t be able to be as creative as we’d like.

In his book, Dave wrote, “In the early stages of your entrepreneurial journey, the truth is that you’ll be focused on earning enough money to support your lifestyle. Then, once you’ve achieved financial freedom, you can start enjoying the freedom of time and freedom of creation.”

Deep down inside, we are creators. The desire to create and have momentum and growth fuels our desire to work.

“You could be a great business owner . . . who has amazing, fantastic business management skills, . . . [but] this doesn't make you an entrepreneur necessarily,” Dave said. “An entrepreneur is like a practical artist.”

Drift Happens

Even though we want freedom, we will eventually start drifting away from that freedom because business happens. At one point or another, we will find that we wander off the path of our main goal.

“The truth is along the way drift will happen,” Dave said. “Why? Because of business habits. You will do things that you never thought you would do. You will do things that will prevent you from working. . . . It happens to every single entrepreneur.”

When we start a business, our main goal is often very clear to us. We know our expertise. But, as things get busier and busier, we may find ourselves doing other tasks that lead away from our main goal. We begin to drift. This will often lead to wasted time and energy as we slowly move away from focusing on our area of expertise.

To avoid drifting, we should constantly check in on our daily tasks and make sure we are focusing on our superpowers, strengths, and what we are best at to maximize success.

Work and Life Balance Doesn’t Work

“Work/life balance doesn't work,” Dave said. “And the reason being is that when you look at it from a perspective that work and life are two different things, they compete against each other.”

Instead of trying to balance two separate lives, our work life, and our personal life, we can strive to merge them together. Dave’s entrepreneurial journey started by forming a business around his lifestyle. He had a passion for fitness and began to share fitness and health information with others. His life's passion became his business.

Our Priorities Will Change

Over time, our priorities may change. As entrepreneurs, we could start off with one goal but slowly shift to something else as things change. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s okay for us to make new goals and start new projects.

We talk a lot about business tectonic shifts on this show, and if we aren’t willing to change or switch our priorities when we see business tectonic shifts, our business may suffer.

3 “S’s” of Leverage

In addition to the five truths of entrepreneurs in business, Dave shared the three “S’s” of leverage. These three things will help us beat out our competition.

Strengths

We need to understand our strengths. What are our superpowers? What are we the best at? We should focus our time, energy, and resources on working in areas we are the expert in.

“Using your strengths is the best way for you to manage your resources properly,” Dave said. “Every single time you're going to do something that you're not that great at, it's going to take quite a bit of effort, quite a bit of energy, and more time.”

By focusing on using our strengths to grow our businesses, we become more efficient. It may not be easy to understand what those strengths are at first, but we can start to review our work and performance to determine what areas we are the best in.

When I asked Dave to share a secret for entrepreneurs to achieve sustainable performance and productivity, he said it is to manage our resources effectively, and one of the best ways we can do this is to understand our strengths. Efficiency is the ability to produce something with the least amount of resources.

As we manage our time, resources, and attention based on our strengths, we will find more success.

Structure

“If you don't have structure, you will not get the results that you want. Leverage a good structure that is sustainable, that is solid and that obeys efficiency,” Dave said.

In order to be successful in our business and maintain efficiency, we need to establish a strong structure that will help us run the overall goals of our business. To start building a strong structure, we need to set clear goals and objectives.

“What's the desired outcome? What do you really want to accomplish? Be very, very clear on that,” Dave said. “And based on that, look at your input and say, ‘How can I manage my three finite resources: my time, my energy, and my attention? Those are resources that I have as an entrepreneur. How can I manage that to make sure that the machine has a long life?’”

Systems

The third “S” we need to focus on is our systems. How can we efficiently use systems to work within the structures we have in place? “Understand that you will need to implement different systems in your life and your business in order . . . to optimize what you're doing,” Dave said.

The systems in our business help the day-to-day tasks run smoothly. We should have clear communication within and between systems so that everyone can stay on the same page and do their job effectively.

“It's [about] understanding . . . what my strengths are, understanding what's the best structure for me and my business, understanding what the best systems are for me and my business, and using that as leverage to really create what you want,” Dave said.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Entrepreneurs want the freedom of time, the freedom of creation, and financial freedom, and entrepreneurship can often help us achieve those freedoms.
Entrepreneurs love to work their craft because it gives us creative freedom. The desire to create and have momentum and growth fuels our desire to work.
Instead of trying to balance two separate lives, our work life, and our personal life, we can strive to merge them together in a healthy way.
Over time, our priorities will probably change. That’s normal. When that happens, we can set new goals.
We should develop and leverage our strengths, structures, and systems to create and manage a successful business.

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about or connect with Dave you can:

Connect with him on LinkedIn
Visit his company website at effic.co or his personal website, DaveRuel.com

Next Steps

Do you want to take your digital monetization to the next level?

Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.

Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-truths-about-life-and-business-as-entrepreneurs/

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Welcome back to another episode with Dr. Leigh George. In the last episode, we discussed what branding is, why it’s important, and some of the benefits along with Leigh’s career, failure, and value-based pricing. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss the steps for creating a successful brand along with knowing when our brand is working, being in control of our brand, mistaking branding for visual identity, and some examples of successful brands.

Steps for Creating a Successful Brand

Here are two steps to create a successful brand.

Know Our Audience and Brand Narrative

The audience is arguably the most important part of having a successful brand. Leigh recently met with a startup that needed branding help. She asked them some questions and learned that they didn’t have a problem they were solving for. They had a business idea, something they thought would be cool and useful, but they didn’t know how it was going to make their audience's life easier.

“To be a successful brand, there has to be something at stake for your audience, some challenge that they're faced with that you can help them overcome,” Leigh said. We have to find the intersection between what is motivating the founders and what the audience cares about. That intersection is the brand narrative; it is the story of how our business can help our audience.

Create a Brand Manifesto

Once we know the narrative of how our business will help our audience, it is time to do our brand manifesto. A brand manifesto, purpose, or mission statement acts as an emotional representation of our brand purpose. It’s a rallying cry that crystalizes why we’re here and what we’re here to do.

Nike has a great example of a brand manifesto. It reads, “Nike exists to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. Our purpose is to move the world forward through the power of sport—breaking barriers and building community to change the game for all. If you have a body, you are an athlete.” (Source: purpose.nike.com)

Anyone who works at Nike could read this and be excited about what their company is doing. They likely feel like they are helping bring inspiration and innovation and are helping break barriers and build community.

Our manifesto should unify our company and our brand, so we’re all working towards the same purpose. It should bring us together to accomplish the same goals. It should also resonate with our audience and be something they want to support.

How do we know if our branding is working?

To know if our branding is successful, we have to talk to people, customers, and non-customers alike. We need to survey them to learn what they think of when they hear our name. We need to ask them to tell us about their last experience with our company.

Through getting out there and talking to people, we’ll be able to learn about the general perception of our brand. What do people think of us? How do we come off? What are we known for?

Once they answer these questions for us, we can determine if their answers are in line with the vision we had for our brand. Are we aligned with our manifesto? Do our customers see us working towards our purpose?

If their answers match the vision of our brand, great; we can keep doing what we’re doing. If not, we likely need to do some rebranding. Rebranding must happen when there is a disconnect between how the company sees itself and how the world sees it. It usually happens when there is new leadership or a new vision for the company.

Do we want to be in control of our brand?

There are some people out there who think that branding doesn’t matter. They think we can just throw some text up on our website without creating a real logo or thinking about the company’s image. They think we can make just as much money without worrying about any of that.

Perhaps we can make just as much money, but that isn’t the important part. Leigh said, “Even if you commit no resources to a logo or colors or messaging, you will have a brand. Because if you don't create it, the public will.”

The question then is do we want to be in control of the brand? It will be created regardless of what we do, so do we want to have a say in how our company is perceived? Do we want our brand to just be black text on a white background? If we’re going for a minimalist image, then that might be a good option, but if we want to be known for something else such as creativity, it won’t be a good option.

Our branding and our design choices create expectations in our audience’s minds. If we don’t control our branding, we don’t control what our audience expects from us. We want to take charge of those expectations and tell our audience through our image and communication what to expect from us.

Mistaking Branding for Visual Identity

One of the biggest mistakes Leigh sees companies make is treating their branding like a cosmetic exercise. In 2021 many companies such as Pfizer, GM, and Burger King have come out with new logos, colors, typography, etc. This can make it feel like a fashion trend or a seasonal look.

To Leigh, branding is more about what you stand for. It can be expressed in visuals, but Leigh said, “You shouldn't reduce your company to a look and feel because then that sort of cheapens your value to a certain extent.” Instead, we should focus on the narrative behind our business and manifest that story in our design.

Examples of Well-Done Branding

Here are a couple of brands Leigh and I discussed that do their branding very well.

Uncle Terry Smells

Leigh recently got a candle from a company called Uncle Terry Smells. She usually doesn’t buy candles because she isn’t really a candle person. She doesn’t like clutter, and she isn’t sure what the point of candles is. However, when she saw Uncle Terry Smells’ social media posts, she became obsessed.

The company has a blue and orange color palette and they curate images from pop culture, kitsch culture, and high and low culture with the same color palette. Leigh said, “The brand was so much about identity and appealing to a certain kind of person. And I was clearly that kind of person because I was just totally drawn to that imagery. . . . This brand ostensibly sells candles, but they could sell anything because the brand is so clear and so strong.”

This brand speaks to a very particular audience. They're not trying to appeal to everyone. Their voice is very specific, and it's like a beacon to their people. You either get it or you don't. We don’t have to try to attract everyone into our audience. In fact, it is better if we focus on a specific group of people who we know will love our products or services.

Apple

Apple is all about creativity and innovation, and they just happen to sell computers. The strongest brands have a very distinct point of view and we’re never going to confuse them with another brand. Apple is very distinct; they aren’t afraid of being different. Just like Uncle Terry Smells, they’ve committed to who they are and they are never going to waver. They don’t care that there’s a whole group of PC buyers out there because they know who their audience is.

When Leigh was in college as soon as she could save enough money, she bought a Performa Apple computer. She’s bought Apple computers ever since. To write her dissertation, she bought the Apple Cube computer, which she still has because she thinks it’s beautiful even though it doesn’t work anymore.

Apple has created an audience that may even be loyal to a fault. We’re counting down the days until the next MacBook Pro comes out. We’re willing to pay more even though we could probably get better computing power for a cheaper price somewhere else. Leigh said the number one reason to have a brand is that we can charge more. People are willing to pay more for the brand they love.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Leigh for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The first step to creating a successful brand is knowing our audience.
A brand manifesto should unify our company and resonate with our audience.
If our audience’s perception of us doesn’t line up with our vision then we may need to rebrand.
If we don’t actively create our own brand, it will be created for us and may not line up with what we want it to be.
Branding is more than visual identity, but it can be expressed visually. We should focus on the narrative behind our business and manifest that story in our design.
Many successful brands don’t try to appeal to everyone. They pick a specific audience and focus on them.

Connect with Leigh

To learn more about or connect with Leigh:

Connect on LinkedIn or Twitter
Visit her website at Find-Freedom.co.

Next Steps

Do you want to take your digital monetization to the next level?

Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.

Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-create-a-successful-brand/

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A huge chasm has opened up between companies and consumers. Many businesses think we’re still in the 20th century in an attention economy; they think they’re competing for as many eyes on their company as possible. They think they can gain sales from simply blanketing the media with enough messages.

Technology, customers, and businesses have moved past that splatter approach to marketing. Instead of trying to catch the attention of every consumer we can, we should create a personal brand to target our products and services towards a specific niche audience. We need to be designing our products and services to bridge the gap between business and people.

One thing that can help us bridge this gap is branding. But what is branding and why is it important? In today’s episode, we’ll discuss this and other things Leigh George has learned in her career such as the small moments, failing forward, and value-based pricing.

Dr. Leigh George is the founder of Freedom, a strategic branding and marketing un-agency. She worked as vice president at Ogilvy for over 20 years, and she helps marketing teams eliminate noise, gain clarity, build consensus, and develop actionable strategies to reach and persuade customers. Leigh has a Ph.D. in branding, making her one of the very few people in the country with that distinction.

What is branding?

Branding is often confused with visual identity: logo, colors, typography, etc. Leigh explained that a brand is more than that. A brand is why we started our business in the first place, answering these questions: Why are we doing this? What do we stand for? What’s the purpose of the business?

The reason we started our business can’t be that we want to make a million dollars because our customers don’t care about us making money. The purpose doesn’t have to be a social purpose, but our customers should be at the center of our purpose.

Once we know the purpose, our brand should be the story around that aim. Our brand should show how our purpose relates to what matters to our customers, a central challenge that they face, so we can show the impact we can have in their lives.

Our brand should be there from the very beginning of the business. It isn’t something we tack on later to make selling easier. Once we know our brand we can express it through things like logo, colors, tone, products, services, etc.

Why is branding important and what are the benefits?

“Your brand should act as a foundation and a touchstone for every business decision,” Leigh said. Should we develop a new product? Is it in line with our brand? Should we open an office? Is it in line with our brand?

A brand helps us differentiate from someone else who's selling the exact same thing. It sets us apart from the competition. Customers have many alternatives to choose from, including alternatives that aren’t in the same space.

For example, if someone is shopping for a car, an alternative could be taking public transportation, riding a bike, walking, carpooling with someone, or living somewhere they don’t have to worry about transportation. “If you don't have a brand, then it's very difficult for someone to weigh why and how you're valuable to them versus an alternative,” Leigh said.

Branding is also important for our company internally. If our purpose is just to make a bunch of money and our employees are making minimum wage, they won’t have anything to believe in, and they’ll feel like they don’t have a purpose within the company. Branding creates something our employees can be excited about. It can give them a reason to wake up and come to work every morning. It can help them feel like they’re making a difference because they have a greater purpose in their work than just a job.

Customers are the Disruptors

Sometimes in companies, we are so focused on our own products or services, but customers are the ones who are able to disrupt industries. “If you think about Apple, or Blockbuster, or any of these case studies that people tend to turn to as examples of big technology, innovation, or disruption, what's behind that is really a change in customer behavior that was just accelerated by technology,” Leigh said.

This is an idea that Leigh is super passionate about. In everything she does with the companies she works with, she strives to develop a deep empathy, understanding, and interest in her clients’ customers to really understand how the customers’ passion intersects with what is unique and special about the brand.

Leigh’s Entrepreneurial Journey

When Leigh was in graduate school, she thought she was going to be a professor. However, over the course of her studies, she became fascinated with the branding work of the companies she was studying. She also felt that academia could be isolating and separate from the rest of the world, so she redirected her career towards branding.

Leigh made a big pivot, working at many different agencies, big and small. She got to a point where she felt the agency model was not keeping up with the needs of clients. Agencies were more interested in their awards, their egos, and talking about themselves. “To me,” Leigh said, “my job is to help clients improve their business, help them change the perception about the brand, help them get more attention, help them attract and engage and spur action among customers. So it's really more about clients than it was about me.”

One night, Leigh was complaining about this to her husband, and he said, “Why don't you just do something about it instead of just complaining?” So Leigh started her un-agency, using that word on purpose to show that it is different from traditional agencies. For example, unlike most other agencies, she doesn’t bill by the hour so that she can focus on the value of the work and build strong relationships with her clients without either of them worrying about tracking time.

The Little Things

The moments in Leigh’s career that she’s most proud of are when she is able to see the difference she’s made for her clients. One of Leigh’s clients was a global company. One day, she was presenting to the company’s president and board, showing them the findings and analysis from some customer research she’d done with the marketing department. The presentation went well, and as Leigh was leaving, the president ran down the hall after her. He had a look of wonder on his face, and he said, “Thank you so much. That was so valuable.”

Leigh also remembers a time when she was working with a different company, and a member of the marketing staff told her, “You've hit the nail on the head. It's like you reached inside our brains and you intuited exactly what makes us us. I'm already imagining how I'm going to be using this.”

For Leigh, these small moments are the best moments in her career. She can see that she’s helping people and making a difference in their companies. Sometimes we get caught up in having big results or making big changes, but we need to remember to appreciate the small things too.

Failing Forward

Leigh believes in what she calls failing forward. She said, “Anytime something doesn't go as planned or goes sideways, to me it's a moment to reflect and say, ‘Hmm, why did that happen? What does that allow me to do or not do?’”

One of the biggest mistakes Leigh made was with managing her time and energy. Because she runs her own company, she has a lot more control over her time than many other people, but she often gets caught up in the needs of others.

She had to learn how to schedule things for her and her clients’ benefit. Her creative thinking is better in the morning, so she blocks that time off. Her energy is lowest in the afternoon, so she tends to schedule meetings then. She doesn’t have meetings on Mondays and Fridays because she knows she’s either recovering from the weekend or exhausted from the week and getting ready for the weekend.

From her failure, Leigh has learned to not overpromise or overextend herself. Failure has been stigmatized in our society; it’s viewed as negative and shameful. Failing forward is a concept trying to destigmatize failure. Instead of thinking of failure negatively, we can turn it into a learning opportunity. “Failure shows that you tried,” Leigh said. “It's about experimentation, and not every experiment will be successful, [but] it gives you feedback and input and learnings that you can apply next time.”

Value-Based Pricing and Customer Loyalty

Leigh’s best monetization strategy is to use value-based pricing rather than billing by the hour. Value-based pricing is billing based on the perceived value of a product or service, no matter how much time it takes.

This kind of pricing helps maintain a stronger relationship with our clients because we're not having to nickel and dime them for every minute, and they’re getting a great result. They don’t have to pay a bill with perhaps not much to show for it.

It is a great way to create loyalty with clients and customers because it shows them that we care about them and that we’ll be there for them. Being there for our clients, especially during the hard times, is one of the best ways to foster deep loyalty.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Leigh for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Our brand should reflect the purpose and story behind our company, our why, and the reason we started it in the first place.
Our brand should inform every business decision we make.
A brand helps us differentiate between our competitors or alternatives.
With a brand, our employees will feel like they are working for something bigger.
Customers are the most important thing. They are the disruptors.
Often the small moments are our biggest successes.
We should look at failures as learning opportunities.
Value-based pricing is a great way to build strong relationships with our clients.

Connect with Leigh

To learn more about or connect with Leigh:

Connect on LinkedIn or Twitter
Visit her website at Find-Freedom.co.

Next Steps

Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.

Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/what-is-branding-and-why-is-it-important/

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Rael Bricker is a professional speaker, mentor, and coach with a diverse work background. His career ranged from being 6,000 feet underground in a mine to start an education business that grew to have more than 4,000 students to spending years working in venture capital. Rael has listed multiple companies on international stock exchanges, and his financial services group has settled more than $3 billion in loans for the last seven years.

Rael is also the author of Dive in Lessons Learnt Since Business School. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss some of those lessons and how we can foster a healthy company culture.

Bottom-Up Culture

Rael believes company culture is driven from the “top” and the “bottom” of the company; however, while executives and CEOs have an impact on company culture, he believes the staff is the members who really define what the culture is.

“The truth of it is, the actions of the majority of staff are what define the culture,” Rael said. “Culture only makes sense if it's actually reflected by the actions of the team. And that's what bottom-up culture is. The management and the C suite have to be defining the course of action, but really have to take dramatic steps to make that [happen] to get the team to come along.”

If we want to have a healthy company culture, we need to make sure every staff member reflects the values and morals we want to be known for.

Rael interviewed 87 companies in over 25 countries about what makes their company culture great. To his surprise, he found that 25 of those companies talked about how toxic their culture was, while the rest of them talked about how great their culture was. So what was the difference between a healthy culture and a toxic one?

Rael found that the two driving factors that make great cultures are purpose and values, not a mission or vision statements.

“It's [about] having a purpose that's greater than the organization and the set of values that drives the actions of the team,” Real said. “The actions of the team drive the culture (bottom-up). And if you have a set of values that everyone buys into, then that defines the actions of the team, and therefore creates a rich and robust culture.”

If we want to foster healthy company culture, we need to make sure everyone on our teams has aligned their values with the values of the company. We shouldn’t be so focused on our mission statement that we neglect our values and central purpose. As we work with everyone on the team, our companies will see greater long-term success.

Value Each Team Member

In 1962, John F. Kennedy visited the NASA space center for the first time, just seven years before the first man landed on the moon. While he toured the halls, he noticed a janitor carrying a broom. Kennedy paused the tour, walked over to the janitor, and introduced himself. He asked the janitor what he did for NASA and in response, the man said, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” (Source: The Business Journals)

While the janitor may have been cleaning the building, he understood the bigger picture. He knew he was helping make history in his small role. “At NASA, they created a culture where everybody felt that they were part of the machinery in getting a man to the moon,” Rael said.

Every team member has an important role. In our businesses, we should strive to create a culture where every team member understands the impact they can have on our business as a whole.

Though Rael worked in management consulting, venture capital, financial services, education, and coaching and speaking, he learned one of the most important business lessons while he worked in the mines as a junior engineer. In the mines, he realized he needed to be a part of the bigger picture. Instead of solely focusing on his personal role, he learned how to focus on the impact of his role in the grand scheme of things.

“The defining thing of my life is understanding that everybody has an incredibly important role in the business, no matter what their role is in the business,” Rael said.

One of the best ways to foster a healthy company culture is to help every employee understand the purpose of their role in the main goal of the business. Every employee should feel valued and important. If we can give every employee and team member a purpose in our business, our employees will stay longer, have greater satisfaction, and be more efficient and productive.

Build Relationships

The biggest monetization secret Rael has is to go back to the basics and focus on relationships. In our company, we should create a healthy culture by making sure every employee, partner, and team member know the importance of our customers. Our customers are our best asset and we should treat them as such.

“The truth of the growth of my business and how we've monetized our business is through referrals and not being afraid to ask for referrals when a client is happy,” Rael said.

Rael never had to focus on advertising for his mortgage business because he had customer referrals. When his customers were happy with his service, he would reach out to them and ask if they could refer him to others. “How do we monetize that happiness?” Rael said. “[By] asking them to refer other people.”

We can ask our customers, “Who do you know that would benefit from our services?” If we are spending all this time and money to gain a customer and make them happy, we should take it a step further to gain some return on investment. Statistics have found that people are 4X more likely to make a purchase when it is referred by a friend (Source: Extole).

Building strong relationships with our customers is essential in today’s digital world. Our customers want to feel like they are buying from someone who knows their needs and wants. Even in the digital business world, Rael still sends out birthday cards in the mail to his customers instead of emailing a digital card. He goes out of his way to make his customers know they are valued.

We should make sure every member of our team prioritizes the customer. While it is important to have healthy customer relationships, we should also make sure we establish healthy relationships within our business. As we go out of our way to make sure every team member and customer is valued, our success rates will increase.

Give Up Control

In Real’s book, he said, “Give up control to gain control.”

When Rael started his education business, he did everything. He sat on the phones, he did the marketing, he answered emails, he stood at the photocopier, etc. He had control of his entire business, but he needed to give that up. Rael explained that entrepreneurs are often control-freaks and so it takes a lot of courage to give up control, but it is necessary.

As soon as Rael employed staff, he empowered them to make decisions and he gave up his own control. However, by giving up control of the simple day-to-day tasks, Rael gained control of his time. Instead of focusing on the small things to keep the business running, he could focus on the bigger picture and invest his time into what was raelly important.

“It’s about empowering your team members to know that they're allowed to mess up. It's not about standing there with a whip saying, ‘You'd better get this right.’ It's actually [giving] enough space for them to get it wrong. That's how you give up control,” Rael said.

As we give up control and show our staff and team members we trust them, we will see more growth in our business. Instead of relying on our ideas alone, we gain the thoughts and ideas of everyone that works with us. As we do this, we actually gain more control of the important things as it frees up our time.

“It's about . . . empowering people with the ability to make a mistake, whilst you go out and generate more business because you are the most passionate advocate of your own business,” Rael said.

Create an Atmosphere of Inclusion

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” - Nelson Mandela

It is so important to make sure everyone feels included and valued. No one should feel like a lesser person because of their background, race, skin color, religion, role, gender, etc. In our businesses, we should strive to understand others. Rael explained that it is only by reflection that we learn things, and if we don’t take the time to reflect and understand our employees or partners, we will never learn.

“You can't have diversity without inclusion. A lot of companies just go for diversity, but don't do anything to build the inclusive nature of their organization,” Rael said. “If I've learned anything over the last 30 years in business, . . . [I’ve learned] it's about having diversity and inclusion together. You can't have one without the other.

In Rael’s business, he had team members from six different country backgrounds, six different places of birth, and three different religions. He made it a priority to not only promote diversity but to also promote inclusion. We should make sure everyone feels comfortable in our business. As we do so, we will create a healthy company culture our employees will feel safe and valued.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Rael for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The actions of the entire team drive the company culture. While management needs to define the course of action, they have to get the team to come along.
Every member of our team has an important role. We should strive to create a culture where every team member understands the impact they can have on our overall purpose.
If we can give every employee and team member a purpose in our business, our employees will stay longer, have greater satisfaction, be more efficient, and be more productive.
We should make sure every employee, partner, and team member knows the importance of our customers.
As we give up control and show our staff we trust them, we will probably see more growth in our business.
We can't have diversity without inclusion. We should make sure everyone feels comfortable, safe, and valued in our business no matter their background.

Connect with Rael

If you want to learn more about or connect with Rael you can find him on LinkedIn or visit RaelBricker.com.

Next Steps

Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.
Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-foster-a-healthy-company-culture/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, I want to share with you a couple of stories that are on my mind and scripture that goes with them.

Aaron and Amie Cook

Over a decade ago, I did a lot of consulting work in Brazil. I spent about half of three years in Brazil; I would go to Brazil for about two weeks, come home to the United States for about two weeks, and then go back. During that time, I was blessed to help build Azul Airlines and several ventures to provide for my family.

Being so far away from my family for extended periods of time was very difficult for me, so I would call home as often as I could. One night when I was talking to my wife on a video call, in the background I heard a huge shattering of glass. In my mind, as the over-protective husband and father, I imagined that someone had just come through a glass door or glass window.

My wife was very, very tired, and she was done for the day. She didn't even want to go check out the glass-shattering sound. Being on the other side of the world and not being there to help protect and take care of my family, I was really worried. After some cajoling, she finally went and checked it out and showed me on the video camera what it was.

In our master bathroom, we had a very large mirror that spanned two sinks. That mirror had not been attached to the wall very well; they had glued it on in an insufficient way. And so with hot showers and steam, that huge mirror fell off the wall and completely shattered that night when I was on the phone with my wife.

My wife has some serious health conditions and it was just too much for her to deal with that evening so she closed the door, we finished our conversation, and she went to bed. The next day, some of our dear friends from the neighborhood, Aaron and Amie Cook, came and cleaned up the mess for her. And that wasn't the only time they helped our family. I believe, while I was traveling on business trips, Amie and/or Aaron came and helped multiple times when water flooded in our basement.

It was very hard for me to have these emergencies as I was traveling and to not be there to provide and protect my family as they needed it. However, I'm eternally grateful for Aaron and Amie Cook who were there for my family, along with many others. Even though I was doing what I needed to do and I was where I needed to be, it was still hard to not be there for my family and I am so grateful that there were other people who loved my family to help out when I couldn't.

Josh Clark

I want to tell you another story about Josh Clark. While I was on a business trip in Texas, my daughter was driving to school and her car broke down on the side of the road. As I mentioned before, my wife has some serious health conditions. She's in a wheelchair and is not able to drive so she couldn’t go help our daughter.

My daughter called me and asked me to help her. I was on the other side of the country, and couldn’t get there physically. So, I stepped out of my meeting and called a tow truck to help her in the best way I could. Just after I'd called and scheduled a tow truck to come, she called me back because a friend of ours from church, Josh Clark, had pulled up behind her. He opened her car’s hood, diagnosed the problem, fixed the issue, and my daughter was able to get her to school on time. I will forever be grateful to Josh Clark for being there for my daughter when I was unable to be there.

I recently heard Josh tell a story of a time where the tables were turned on him. He had taken a job in North Dakota and was driving a truck in the oil fields. His wife was pregnant and while she was on a trip, she went into premature labor. They took her to a hospital and she and the baby were not in great condition. When his parents and his wife’s parents heard about this, they immediately got in their cars and drove to meet Josh’s wife at the hospital. They were able to be there for Josh's wife and his new child, to pray for them, bless them, and do the things that Josh wanted to do, while he was on the other side of the country.

Josh was doing what he had to do to provide for his family, but it was tearing his heart out that he wasn't able to be there when his family needed him. He was so grateful for those extended family members that we’re able to be there for his wife and child when he could not be there. It's interesting to see how good works are often returned to us.

Luke 7:47: Much Love

There's a scripture in the Bible I have been thinking a lot about this week in Luke 7:47.

This is the story of the woman who came to Christ and washed his feet. She kissed Christ’s feet, anointed his feet with ointment, and washed Christ's feet with her hair as well. While she did this, there was a man there with them named Simon. Simon was critical of what Christ had allowed this woman to do. He essentially said, “If you knew the sins this woman had committed, you would not have let her touch you and do this to you.”

To this Christ said something very profound. He said, “Her sins which were many were forgiven because she loved much.” (Source: KJV Luke 7:47)

That gospel principle resonates with me. The woman was forgiven because she loved much. As we love, serve others, and bless the lives of others, we do what Christ would do if He were here and we often receive grace in our lives. We don't earn it, it doesn't come because we do X or check some box. It comes because we are seeking to love much; we are seeking to be like Jesus Christ.

I think heaven is going to be filled with people like Josh Clark and Aaron and Amie Cook, who have shown much love to so many people around them. I'm grateful to have those kinds of people in my life and I'm grateful for their examples. I'm striving to be more like them and to love much.

Thanks for joining me for this episode. I wish you success as you strive to love much.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

When we love much we are coming closer to and becoming more like God.
When we love much, we will often receive grace and forgiveness.
As we love, serve, and bless the lives of others, we do what Christ would do if He were here.

Next Steps

Pray to see opportunities where God would like you to love and serve others.
Decide on someone to whom you are going to show much love today.

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Jim Cathcart is the author of 20 books, including The Acorn Principle and Relationship Selling, which are both international bestsellers. His TEDx talk “How to Believe in Yourself” is in the top 1% of all TEDx talks with more than 2 million views. Jim was inducted into the Professional Speaker Hall of Fame and the Sales and Marketing Hall of Fame. He's a university professor, teaching in an executive MBA program.

In today’s episode, Jim and I will discuss his journey to become a wildly successful speaker. Jim will also teach us the acorn principle. “The seed of your future successes already lives within you. . . .”

Jim’s Passions and Advice About Speaking

Jim is passionate about many things—homemade ice cream, barbecue, fitness, and music among them—but he also loves helping people succeed. When someone says to him, “You’re just a speaker because you love the applause,” he says, “No; the applause is just a sign that it went well.”

Jim loves when a person walks out of one of his speeches or seminars and thinks, “Wow, I never thought about it like that before; that makes perfect sense. I can do that.” Often people send him a note a few months later, saying it worked. He loves when he can help people.

Jim said the key to good speaking is audience improvement. His advice for someone who’s nervous about speaking is to change their point of view. “Stop thinking about you, and think about the audience. Start thinking about how your message is going to help them, and help them understand it. Then you won't be nervous about giving your speech,” he said.

Thinking about the audience will shift our point of view and can relieve our nerves, and we’ll likely give a better speech because we’re trying to help them.

Jim’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Jim grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father was a telephone repairman, who often had to be on the road, and his mother had her hands full taking care of Jim, his sister, and his grandfather. Growing up, there weren’t any high expectations for him. Jim thought he would be a good person, get decent grades in school, get a job, and live a pleasant but ordinary life.

By 23 years old, Jim was married and had a new baby at home. He was working a dead-end job as an assistant for someone who didn’t need one. He’d dropped out of college, he’d had about every job imaginable, he was overweight and smoking two packs a day, and he was bored to tears because his boss didn’t need him.

One day at work while Jim listened to the radio, a five-minute, motivational show called Our Changing World with Earl Nightingale came on. Jim heard Earl say, “If you will spend one extra hour every day studying your chosen field, in five years or less, you'll be a leading authority in that field.” Jim did the math and figured that would be 1250 hours.

He asked himself, “What do I want to be an expert at?” He didn’t want to be an expert in urban renewal, his current job. A week or two later, it occurred to him that he wanted to do what Earl Nightingale was doing: personal development and applied behavioral science. Jim didn’t have any experience in the field, but he did have plenty of time at his job.

He became a fanatic, reading every book he could find, listening to audio recordings, going to whatever seminar he could find. For the next several years it was all he wanted to talk about, all he wanted to think about. As he studied, his mindset changed, and he got better at his job and received many promotions. Eventually, he had the chance to move into the field of training and development, and after a few years, became a full-time speaker and trainer.

Jim wrote a book with Tony Alessandra, and they formed a corporation together. One day, Jim sat at the desk, and the phone rang. It was Earl Nightingale, the man from the radio. Earl told him he’d just read an article of Jim’s and thought it would make a great audio album.

Jim sent Earl his and Tony’s audio program. Earl liked it, so they published this program called Relationship Strategies for Dealing with the Differences in People, the first widely published audio program on personality types. In the next two years, it made $3.5 million and led to speaking engagements all over the world.

Jim progressed in his career, becoming president of the National Speakers Association. Jim called Earl, asking him to join him speaking at a convention on the evolution of the personal development industry. Earl said he would consider it. Unfortunately, Earl passed away before it could happen. They decided to do a memorial at the convention. Earl’s wife asked Jim to speak. He didn’t feel like he was worthy, but Earl’s wife told him, “Jim, you are the product of what he was teaching. That's why you should speak at his memorial service.”

He and Earl’s wife were the only speakers at the memorial. Jim is truly a testament to the principles he and Earl taught. He went from a clerk to a worldwide speaker and author of 20 books using the principles he and Earl taught.

The Acorn Principle

Jim’s book The Acorn Principle dives into many subjects such as the reader’s type of intellect, their personality, their personal velocity, the values that motivate them, along the acorn principle itself.

“The acorn principle is, the seed of your future successes already lives within you. . . . An acorn is the universal symbol of potential,” Jim said. He explained that an acorn has three parts: the stem, the cap, and the seed.

The stem represents the legacy between us and all the people in our line that have ever existed. Their DNA imprint has been passed along the chain to us, and we carry it with us—the good, the bad, and the ugly—it's all part of who we are genetically.

The cap represents all the guides and mentors we have in our lives: our parents, teachers, role models, coaches, heroes, and mentors. They have also had an impact on us.

The seed represents the potential that lives within us. Jim said, “An acorn will never be a racehorse. It'll never be cedar or pine, it will only be an oak tree. But whether it's a wonderful mighty oak or whether it's a little scrub oak . . . depends on what happens with that acorn.”

Unlike an actual acorn, we can choose what we do with our seed. The seed that’s within us is destined to be exceptionally impressive at something, or multiple things, but not everything. We may not have the talent to play basketball like Michael Jordan, but everyone has a unique potential. “Every one of us has a gift in that seed, waiting for us to give it the opportunity and the attention so that it can grow fully into what it's capable of,” Jim said.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jim for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Thinking about how we can help our audience will shift our point of view, relieving our nerves, and we’ll likely give a better speech because we’re trying to help them.
If we spend one extra hour every day studying our chosen field, we can become a leading authority in that field in five years or less.
We all have the potential inside of us to become something great, like a mighty oak tree. If we effectively nurture our potential, we will grow into something exceptional.

Connect with Jim

To learn more about or connect with Jim:

Connect on LinkedIn
Visit his website at Cathcart.com
Check out his book The Acorn Principle

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Download the free Passion Marketing ebook at PassionMarketing.com.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast.
How can we shift our marketing to be more human-centered? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.
Need help with your digital monetization strategy? Visit MonetizationPartners.com to schedule a free consultation.

What is the seed of potential within you that needs to be nurtured? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-acorn-principle-the-seed-of-your-future-success-already-lives-within-you/

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Welcome back to another episode with Mark Schaefer. In the last episode, we talked about Mark’s book Marketing Rebellion and the need for human-centered marketing. Today, we will continue the discussion of Mark’s book by discussing four strategies for human-centered marketing: constant human truths, values-based marketing, customers as our marketers, and honesty and consistency. We’ll also discuss tectonic shifts and fractures in the status quo.

Focus on Constant Human Truths

Many companies Mark consults with feel overwhelmed. There are so many options and things to do. He often tries to emphasize the constant human truths, which he discusses in his book. These truths are that people want to be loved, belong, be acknowledged, and be respected.

Mark said we are too focused on technology. We need to put these human truths first, and then we can think about how technology can help us provide for these needs. “I'm not anti-technology. [But] I'm anti-technology when it creates barriers with our customers. When we do things like spam them or send them robocalls, that will just tarnish our brand,” Mark said.

Being acknowledged is one of these important truths. In Mark’s book, he discusses statistics that say 50% of young people said, “It's important for me to be acknowledged by my friends on social media,” but 60% said, “It's important to be acknowledged by my favorite brands.” It is more important for them to be acknowledged by their favorite brands than their friends. There’s a longing to be acknowledged.

The pandemic has made a lot of these needs more prevalent. People are feeling more lonely, isolated, and depressed. Mark believes companies have a role to play in this. Customers are telling us there’s a way to engage with them: give them a place where they belong.

Consider Values-Based Marketing

There is a lot of research from companies like Deloitte, Accenture, and McKinsey that shows loyalty has been declining over the last 20 years. 87% of our customers are “shop around” customers. Research by Harvard shows that almost all of our traditional marketing activities are not building loyalty except for one: demonstrating shared meaning or shared values.

A well-known example of this is Nike and Colin Kaepernick. Some people think Kaepernick is a patriot and a hero and others think he’s not. Nike made a deal to do a line of clothes with him. When they did that, Nike’s value went down by about $4 billion in one day and people were burning their merchandise in the streets. Two weeks later, however, Nike’s valuation was even higher than it was before.

Mark had a friend who said he was so mad he was never going to buy from Nike again. Mark told him, “They don’t care.” Nike realized that in order to earn their audience’s trust, they have to show what they stand for.

Nike also knew that Adidas was trying to make a deal with Kaepernick. They had both looked at research to find out what their customers believe, and they were looking for ways to align themselves with those beliefs. It was a race for shared values.

This is a very, very effective way to create loyalty, but it's not for everybody and it’s not necessary for every company. We don’t all have to express our political or other views. If we think about all the products we’ve purchased in the last two weeks, how many of them do we know where they stand on political or other issues? For me, it’s none of them. Values-based marketing can work very well, but it isn’t necessary for every brand and many brands do well without it.

Embrace Customers as Our Marketers

In the past, we were the markers; we viewed ourselves as the marketing team and the marketing agency, and we decided how to market our brand. There is a fundamental shift happening as our customers become our primary marketers. As we discussed in the last episode with Mark, two-thirds of our marketing is occurring without us.

As Mark found this research for his book, he was overwhelmed by how wrong we were in the past. He thought, “I don't know what it means to be a marketer anymore,” because the customers have control now.

Instead of trying to hold on to this control, we should embrace it and earn our way into being part of the dialogue. We shouldn’t bother, annoy, or interrupt our customers. We should let them speak and then join the narrative.

Many people are in love with content marketing, but the content has no value unless it’s seen and shared. Mark said, “The value is in transmission. It's getting that story, getting that content, to move in that two-thirds. That's where the marketing is occurring.”

Be Honest and Consistent

A long time ago, Mark realized he can’t depend on social media, Facebook’s algorithms, Google, or SEO. There are thousands of other digital marketing consultants out there, so he’s never going to have a number one ranking on Google or beat out the richest competitors. He can only depend on himself.

Mark creates content that is so honest, it’s unmissable. People know from his content that he doesn’t have an agenda. He’s just trying to find the truth; he’s on the journey with them through the good, the bad, the success, and the failure. He’s consistent through it all.

We often think that success will happen overnight, but most often success comes from consistently showing up.

Mark shared the example of a band called the Black Keys. Before the band was big enough to play arenas and sell out Madison Square Garden in 15 minutes, Mark had the chance to talk to them when they were playing shows for about 1,000-2,000 people. Mark asked the drummer, “What was the catalytic point that took you to the top?” The drummer said, “There wasn't one. We've been touring for seven years, we've made seven albums, and every year we do a little bit better.”

Hard, consistent work will eventually lead us to where we want to be. Mark said, “There is no overnight success. You just [have] to keep on working, working, working [with] patience. Consistency is more important than genius.”

Gain Momentum through Fractures in the Status Quo

On this show, we talk a lot about tectonic shifts or changes in the business landscape we can leverage to help us grow. Mark talks about a similar idea that he refers to as fractures in the status quo. Like tectonic shifts, these fractures can lead to great success.

Fractures in the status quo create new and unmet or underserved customer needs and provide opportunities when we can meet them with our core competencies. When our initiative meets that fracture, we can burst through it with all our might and speed to create winning momentum.

Bill Gates was able to leverage one of these fractures. He had access to early computer prototypes as a teenager, allowing him to learn how to code—his core competency. When the fracture came, personal computers, Gates leveraged that competency to build software and find success.

We need to be aware of our own core competencies and the fractures or shifts happening in the world. Then we can leverage them and gain momentum.

Mark’s Manifesto

While Mark was writing Marketing Rebellion, he reached about the halfway point and realized there was no way people would be able to remember everything he was covering. Mark challenged himself to write a 10-point summary of the first half of the book. This summary became the Manifesto for Human-Centered Marketing. A hand-drawn copy of this manifest is available here. We should also create manifestos to communicate our core mission in a way that will inspire our audience and help them remember what we’re about.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Mark for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

People want to be loved, belong, be acknowledged, and be respected. We can help fill those needs for our customers by acknowledging them and creating a place where they belong.
Almost all of our traditional marketing activities are not building loyalty except for one: demonstrating shared meaning or shared values.
Customers are in control of our marketing now. Instead of trying to hold on to this control, we should embrace it and earn our way into being part of the dialogue.
Consistency is more important than genius.
Being authentic and consistent with our customers will help us gain big success little by little.
Fractures in the status quo provide great opportunities for us to gain momentum. We need to be aware of these fractures.

Connect with Mark

To learn more about or connect with Mark:

Connect on LinkedIn
Visit his website at BusinessesGrow.com
Check out his book Marketing Rebellion

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Download the free Passion Marketing ebook at PassionMarketing.com.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast.
How can we shift our marketing to be more human-centered? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Need help with your digital monetization strategy? Visit MonetizationPartners.com to schedule a free consultation.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/4-strategies-for-human-centered-marketing/

Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins

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Mark Schaefer is a globally-recognized author, speaker, podcaster, and business consultant who blogs at Grow, one of the top five marketing blogs in the world. He teaches graduate marketing classes at Rutgers University. Mark has written eight bestselling books, and his newest book is called Cumulative Advantage. Mark has many global clients including Pfizer, Cisco, Dell, Adidas, and the US Air Force. He's been a keynote speaker at prestigious events all over the world. He's also appeared as a guest on CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and CBS News.

Today, we're going to talk about one of Mark’s books, Marketing Rebellion, and the need for human-centered marketing.

Why We Need Human-Centered Marketing

Mark was recently on a Zoom call with a client and an agency that’s working with them. He was on mute during the call, but they could see his face was getting more and more disturbed because they were proposing spamming customers. “The first thing we need to do in our marketing is to stop doing what people hate. We need to treat each other like human beings and treat our customers like we would like to be treated,” Mark said.

Those old strategies used to work, so many people still lean toward them today, but they aren’t working well anymore, and eventually, they’re going to go away. Our customers won’t put up with it; if we do something that annoys or interrupts our customers, the customers will rebel and they’ll win. So we have to adapt to a more human, customer-centric model.

If we want to keep our customers and get ahead of the curve, we need to market in a new way, a way that respects our customers, their lives, their time, and their privacy. This is why Apple is updating its privacy features and why Google is trying to figure out how to protect its customers in regard to third-party cookies. These companies are trying to position themselves with the right side of the rebellion; they want to be on the customers’ side. They don’t want to be who the customers are rebelling against.

This is the time for traditional marketers to be humbled and listen to the newer people who may be more in tune with what the customers want and how to better market to them.

Treating Our Customers as Humans

Mark greatly admires Seth Godin, an author, and former dot com business executive, but he disagrees with something Seth said in his book This is Marketing. In that book, Seth says that marketing is about changing and manipulating people. Mark thinks that maybe this was true in the 1970s, 80s, or even 90s, but customers are different than people were back then.

We have the world at our fingertips. We have the accumulated knowledge of the human race in the palm of our hands. Customers can make really good decisions by looking at reviews or seeing testimonials; they can go down the rabbit hole on any product out there.

Mark said, “Marketing is not about trying to manipulate people. It's about coming alongside them at their point of need and saying, ‘You know what, we respect you. We respect your intelligence. We respect your privacy. What can we do to help you?’”

We should be asking “How can we help you save money? Make money? Have a more healthy life? A more entertaining life?” It doesn’t matter what we are selling, the role of our company should be to help them in whatever our field is. We shouldn’t view them as just the people who give us money. We should treat them as human beings who have real lives and real problems.

Helping them may not be enough. We talk a lot about passion marketing on this show because it is such a relevant topic. Our customers have so many options to choose from, so we have to show them why they should choose us by building our products and services around the things they are most passionate about. If we don’t, we will never become a priority or differentiate ourselves from a sea of good options.

Being In vs. Being Part of the Community

To be a successful brand today, we can't just be in a community, we have to be part of a community. Being in a community is donating money to a charity for example. Being part of a community is something more.

For example, a few months ago, an ice storm hit the US, impacting many places not accustomed to that kind of weather. In Texas, many people lost their power and their heating. There was one furniture store that didn’t lose its power. They told people to come to their store if they were cold. They brought in food, set up a play area for children, and had more than 500 people sleeping overnight on the mattresses in their store.

That store was part of the community. They asked, “How do we act like human beings? How do we act like friends?” If our friend is cold, we say come warm yourself. If our friend is hungry, we say come and let me feed you.

“In this era right now where so many people are suffering, there are so many unmet and underserved needs, we have this opportunity to not only be memorable but to be legendary. I can guarantee you there's no one in the city of Houston that will ever buy furniture from anyone again, other than Mattress Mack. . . . You're just acting like a human being. You don't have to be a marketing wizard, you just have to be a good person,” Mark said.

The companies that get down in the trenches, roll up their sleeves and become part of the community will thrive. The companies that are wed to the old ways and advertising agencies’ scripts are going to become irrelevant.

In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this change. There was a video on YouTube called “Every COVID-19 Commercial Is Exactly The Same”. It has taken the ads from many large companies and edited them together to show that they all had essentially the same script.

These companies that couldn’t break through the old ways became laughing stocks, but the companies that act as part of the community and do things that mean something to their customers will become legendary.

The End of Control

In Mark’s book, he discusses some research done by McKinsey. Over 10 years, they looked at 200,000 customer journeys across 90 different industries and found that two-thirds of our marketing is occurring without us. A brand used to be what it told us. Customers didn’t have a choice. They didn’t have the internet or social media. If they wanted to learn about a company, they had to engage with their ads.

Now a brand is what people are telling each other. They're in control. They're defining the message based on their experience. We don't have a choice. We have to understand how we get invited to that conversation.

Mark got sick with COVID-19 at the end of March 2020. His business crashed to almost zero. He had to pivot and work in different ways. He had to connect to the opportunities and needs that were present right then. He stopped his marketing and asked himself, “How do I help people? How do I help my community?”

Mark is a teacher, so he started teaching how to handle things like anxiety, disorientation, and uncertainty in his blog posts. The traffic on his website doubled, so he turned those blog posts into an ebook and gave it away for free. He turned that into a speech to inspire people at leadership meetings. In June, July, and August of 2020, Mark had record-breaking months because he let the people’s needs control his business.

We shouldn’t try to control our brand or our messaging. We need to come alongside our customers and listen to their needs. They have to invite us to that conversation.

Just like in a marriage, we can’t trick someone into loving us. We can’t trick someone into marrying us. If we trick someone, even if we're successful, it's not going to work long-term. Our goal is the long-term, lifetime valuable relationship with that customer. If we trick someone into marrying us, how well is that marriage going to work out? How happy is that marriage going to be?

We can’t change our customers just like we can’t change our spouses. A marriage only works well if there is respect, love, and understanding. We must do the same thing with our customers. We must accept them and love them for the unique person they are.

A chef needs many different spices in a kitchen to make many different kinds of food. If their only option was cinnamon, their food would be pretty boring. Some foods call for cayenne pepper or oregano. Each spice brings value to the kitchen just like each unique person brings value to our life.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Mark for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Customers won’t put up with annoying or manipulative marketing anymore. We need to shift to a human-centered approach.
We must treat our customers as humans, think about their needs, and build our brand around their passions.
To be part of the community, we need to serve our customers during the good and the bad times. We need to treat them like friends.
Two-thirds of our marketing is happening without us. Customers control our messaging, especially with the internet. We need to listen to them and join the conversation, but not control it. Now a brand is what people are telling each other. They're in control.
We can’t trick our customers into loving us. Like a marriage, long-term relationships with customers will only work when there is respect, love, and understanding.

Connect with Mark

To learn more about or connect with Mark:

Connect on LinkedIn
Visit his website at BusinessesGrow.com
Check out his book Marketing Rebellion

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Download the free Passion Marketing ebook at PassionMarketing.com.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast.
How can we shift our marketing to be more human-centered? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.
Need help with your digital monetization strategy? Visit MonetizationPartners.com to schedule a free consultation.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-we-need-human-centered-marketing/

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In today’s episode, I interview an inspiring entrepreneur named Rebecca Clyde. Rebecca and I will be discussing how women influence technological advancements. She also shares great advice for any entrepreneur, such as finding opportunities in crises, artificial intelligence, trusting our instincts, and building a team.

Rebecca Clyde is the co-founder and CEO of Botco.ai, a company that is modernizing healthcare with intelligent chat for patient engagement. Rebecca is on the 2020 list of most influential women in Arizona. She was listed as a Most Admired Leader by Phoenix Business Journal and was a recipient of the ATHENA Businesswoman of the Year Award. She has also been recognized as one of "35 Entrepreneurs 35 and Younger" by the Arizona Republic.

Rebecca’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Rebecca moved to the US to go to college. When she was graduating, she was recruited by Intel. She stayed there for about eight years learning important business fundamentals and going through their management and leadership development program.

She left Intel to start her own company, a marketing agency. She was able to take everything she’d learned at Intel and consult clients with that knowledge. The business grew, turning into a thriving marketing agency.

Rebecca is now working on her next company, Botco, which is a software product aimed at solving a problem she saw in her last two jobs. She noticed marketing automation platforms were no longer suited to today's modern customer and modern expectations. She wanted to bring that technology up to date, making it easier for people to accomplish the task they went to a website for or get the information they need, and then complete the next step in their journey. Botco just raised $2.2 million of seed capital.

Digital Shifts and the Role of Women

Digital engagement and the transition to remote business is a huge tectonic shift happening in the business landscape right now, especially in the healthcare industry. People are no longer willing to sit in waiting rooms for hours to see a doctor, so the healthcare industry must embrace digital technologies to accommodate for that shift.

One thing that is driving this change is women. They are saying, “I can’t wait on the phone for 45 minutes to make a doctor's appointment. That's not worth my time; my time has value. You need to improve your systems so I don't have to waste my time doing that.”

Rebecca is passionate about women and their roles in technological advancement, along with women in business in general. She said, “Technologists need to listen to what women have to say, understand that their time is valuable, and start to create solutions that actually deliver on the promise of a truly frictionless engagement experience. When we do that, we will realize that we will jump ahead leaps and bounds, or we can fail to listen at our own peril.”

How Women Influence the Creation and Consumption of Technology

When Rebecca worked at Intel in the early 2000s, they had a discussion about mobile computing. Francine Hardaway, who worked at Intel at the time, said she was sitting in a meeting trying to explain to the executives that they needed to pay more attention to mobile for one reason: women don’t like to carry large bags and they want more computing power that they can fit in their purse. She told them women make up half of the world’s economy. Women played a big role in the shift to mobile, and Intel missed the shift to mobile because they didn’t listen.

Women have been a contributing factor to many technological changes and advancements. Cars started to change when they shifted to make them appeal to women more. In 2001, the first all-female team designed a car; on their wish list was better visibility, practical storage, parking assistance, and smoother ingress and egress (Source: Vice.com). Women influence many products for families and households.

They are conscientious and think about the waste we generate, the value to the community that something may or may not contribute, being good citizens, adverse effects of certain products or ingredients, etc. They tend to approach things with a little bit more of that holistic thinking and put pressure on companies to pay attention to those sorts of things.

Rebecca’s Advice to Female Entrepreneurs

Rebecca said, “Don't be afraid of making mistakes or failing. . . . That goes with the territory.” There’s a lot of risk that comes with being an entrepreneur and some of those risks aren’t going to work out. It is important to bring people along and find great mentors to help avoid roadblocks and pitfalls.

“There's a lot of socialization that women or girls deal with even from a very young age that we have to unwind in our minds,” Rebecca said. “Realize your job isn't to make people comfortable, your job isn't to be the nice one in the room, your job isn't to be the amenable one. Your job is to know your truth. Speak it.”

Rebecca said one of her biggest mistakes has been not listening to her intuition sufficiently and allowing too many outside voices to prevail. One of her investors told her he's never met somebody with better instincts and she needs to listen to them more. Rebecca has noticed when she doesn’t let her instincts be the driving force, things don’t go as well as they could have.

Never Waste a Great Crisis

Rebecca started both of her businesses right before big crises. She started her first business going into 2008. When the market crashed, Rebecca’s clients’ budgets were reduced to almost nothing. She was faced with the harsh reality that she had just left her reliable Intel job to start a business during a terrible time.

Rebecca discovered that being small, nimble, and unattached to any big overhead company allowed her to navigate the white spaces and find unique opportunities and solutions she would have never been able to see had it not been in a crisis. “That moment taught me to never waste a great crisis,” Rebecca said.

Hard times can be horrible, but they can also give us opportunities and perspectives we wouldn’t have had otherwise. I remember when the dot-com bubble burst in 1999, most of the funding for dot-com companies dried up and they pulled their advertising. There was a company called Classmates.com that saw this happening and did the opposite. Advertising became crazy cheap so they bought hordes of advertising. They launched their company, became mainstream, and achieved a huge valuation because they saw the opportunity in crisis.

During this worldwide pandemic, we’ve seen companies that pulled back are now really struggling to regain their momentum and pick up where they left off. Rebecca was in the early days of her new business when COVID-19 shut down the world. Her entire pipeline was made of fitness and wellness businesses, but they all went dark. Rebecca was left in a moment of panic. She’d worked so hard to get the software ready and wanted to see it succeed.

Then a couple of old relationships reignited. She knew some people in healthcare who reached out to her with a need, and her business could fill that need. Pretty soon they had a really great business from the opportunities that came with those connections. It was hard, but Rebecca and her business got through it. She considers getting through 2020 to be one of her greatest home runs.

Crises can be terrifying, but if we keep our heads we may be able to see many great opportunities that come from them.

How to Leverage AI

Rebecca’s current business works with AI. She said the best thing to do is train the AI to answer all the questions our customers and employees might have and train the AI to help us find things faster. Then we can be more available to do the high-value work.

AI shouldn’t replace us because humans have a great ability to think complexly and creatively. We should let the machines do what they’re good at, the rudimentary things, and leave the human mind to take care of the exciting, rich problem-solving.

To learn more about AI, we can check out conferences like AI World or groups such as the AI Consortium. There’s a misconception that we need to be good computer programmers to do AI. There are many great programmers and scientists working on it, but they need more people who are creative and humanistic to help apply the applications to human problems and real-life situations.

Building a Team

Rebecca’s best monetization strategy is building a great team and multiplying herself with that team. “All the work ethic and time in the world that I can put into something will never be sufficient. . . . My dreams are much bigger than my time allows,” she said.

With a great team, we can accomplish more than we ever could on our own. Not only does a team help with timing, but we can also fill a team with thought leaders and learn and improve from their ideas. Great team members can expand on what we’ve started and through them, great things can happen.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Rebecca for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Women have played a large role in technological advancements such as the shift from desktop to mobile. We need to be listening to them to keep up with these tectonic shifts.
Mistakes are a normal part of being an entrepreneur. Learn from them.
Rebecca’s advice to young female entrepreneurs is to know the truth and speak it.
Crises can provide us with great opportunities to look at things from a new perspective.
If we’re using AI, we should let the machines do the rudimentary tasks, so we can focus more on the creative side.
We should listen to our instincts when we’re making decisions.
With a team, we can achieve more than we ever could alone.

Connect with Rebecca

If you want to learn more about or connect with Rebecca, you can:

Find her on LinkedIn or
Visit her website at Botco.ai.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story How have you made money off your podcast? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-role-of-women-in-technological-advancements/

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In the last episode with podcasting expert Dave Jackson, we discussed podcasting hacks we can use to create and grow a successful podcast. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss five ways we can monetize our podcast from Dave’s book, Profit From Your Podcast.

Products

One of the easiest ways to make the most money from our podcast is to sell our own products. Chances are, our listeners are listening to us because they like what we have to say. According to research done by PodcastInsights, podcast listeners are “loyal, affluent, and educated” and 80% of podcast listeners listen to all or the majority of each episode (Source: CreativeFixAudio.com).

If we have listeners, we have an audience who likely feels connected and loyal to us, especially if they are downloading our content each time we release an episode. And if we have a loyal audience, we have buyers. We already deliver value through the episodes our audience likes, why not add additional value through products?

If we can make a product our audience can’t get anywhere else, they will love it. For example, Dave knew a podcaster who was a chameleon breeder, and that’s what he talked about on his podcast. He had an incredibly hyper-niche so he could target his products to his audience in a very specific way. He sold chameleon cages and his listeners wanted to buy from him because they trusted him and had already developed loyalty.

The bonus of already having an audience is we can figure out what they want before we create a product. We can ask for their feedback and advice, and then create a project targeted directly to them, something we know they will like. Here are just a few examples of products we can sell:

Books
Products we manufacture
Swag
Consulting/coaching
A service
Membership site
Courses

Of these options, Dave said membership sites are the best. Instead of relying on a one-time purchase, recurring revenue allows us to make money each month. With School of Podcasting, Dave makes a lot of money on recurring fees from his membership site, and it provides great value to his audience.

“I still have a guy who’s been [a member] for probably 10 years,” Dave said. “He [said], ‘When I send you an email and I have a question about podcasting, I know I'm probably going to get an answer.’ . . . They come for the content but they stay for the community if you're doing it right.”

While we can produce valuable content on our membership sites, our customers also stay because they build a community. They build a relationship with us. This is the same reason they will listen to our podcast episode after episode. They feel connected to us and build a community.

Affiliate Marketing

The second best way to make money from podcasting is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when we promote another company’s product or service and make a profit based on a percentage of each sale we generate. While many people can find ads to be annoying, 40% of people find podcast ads to be less intrusive than other types of ads (Source: SemRush). This can be a very effective way to make money.

The best way to find success with affiliate marketing is to find something we love. We should only promote a product we have used and liked. This will help us sound genuine and retain trust with our customers. If we promote a product our listeners buy and don’t like, it can damage the trust we have developed with them.

“I switched to using affiliate marketing, and I'm blowing it out of the water because I found something that fits my audience. It really does come down to [choosing] the right product for the right audience,” Dave said.

Dave explained that, whatever market we are in, we should find a product we’d love to talk about that our audience will also love. We can reach out to the companies and brands we like and ask if they have an affiliate program for us. Even if we don’t have thousands of listeners, brands will want to work with us if we have a specific niche audience.

As part of finding something we love, we also need to find a product we think our audience will love. What product or service will resonate with our audience? With affiliate marketing, we don’t get paid until we’ve made a sale. Even if our listeners are loyal to us, they aren’t going to buy something they don’t want or need. If we can find a product we love and a product our audience will love, our sales and profit will increase.

While affiliate marketing can be slow at the beginning, it often grows in the long run. One of the best parts of affiliate marketing with podcasts is that it creates permanent ads. Podcasts are not radio. People often don’t listen to podcasts live, or even when they first become available for download. Sometimes a listener may listen to our podcast a week after it became available, or even years after. When we talk about a company’s product on our podcast, it is there forever and can be watched forever. This increases our chances of making more sales and more money.

Sponsorships

A sponsorship is similar to affiliate marketing, except we don’t make money based on the sales we make. We make money for simply promoting the other business. We get paid for the ads or promotions we run and based on the number of listeners we have on each episode, regardless if we make a sale or not. On average, a 30-second ad will bring in $18 CPM (cost per 1000 listeners) and $25 CPM for a 60-second ad (Source: PodcastArticles).

As with affiliate marketing, for sponsorships, we want to make sure we only talk about a product we’d use ourselves. We want to keep our trust with our audience, and they aren’t going to trust us if we promote a product that doesn’t work just because they know we are getting paid.

Dave believes that sponsorships aren’t as effective as people may think and prefers affiliate marketing. Dave explained that at Libsyn, an official podcast launch partner, they get an average of about 1200 downloads per episode, but their median number is about 300 downloads. This means 50% of their episodes get below 300 downloads and 50% get more than 300 downloads. Potentially, we may only make $10 or less off an episode we put a lot of work into, and sometimes it doesn’t pay off.

Dave also mentioned that sponsorships can be extra work as we have to send in reports of how many downloads we get with each episode. However, if we have a lot of listeners, sponsorship can make us a lot of money. We can even charge more than the average price of a 30- or 60-second ad based on how popular our show is.

Crowdfunding

Another great way to monetize our podcasts is through crowdfunding. We can ask for donations to help support our podcast content.

Dave has seen a lot of podcasters use Patreon, a membership platform that allows creators to run a subscription service. We can charge a monthly membership fee for exclusive content on our podcast, access to a community, and additional behind-the-scenes content.

If we have a very loyal listener base, our audience will pay us just because they want more content and want to support us. Chapo Trap House, an American political podcast, has generated more than $170,000 in a month from their subscribers with nearly 40,000 patrons, and as of 2020, the podcast was the highest-grossing user on Patreon (Source: SFGATE). For every two free episodes they release, they also offer two additional podcasts for a fee and people are willing to pay for that because they love their content.

We can also start charging people who want to pitch ideas for us to talk about on our show. We can charge even more for people who want to be interviewed on our show.

“It's a matter of figuring out what my audience wants,” Dave said. “In some cases, . . . the podcast is the product.”

Events

We can also host events and charge our audience for tickets. These events could be hosted in person, or through an online platform such as Zoom. Not only can we earn a profit off our events, but we also build relationships with our customers and bring in the value of a community. Events can be great ways to grow our email lists.

We can also use our events to build our membership sites. A virtual summit is a great way to create content. We can take the recordings and split them into different video segments. These videos can stand on their own or be turned into a series of videos for an online course.

Above all else, if we want to monetize our podcasts, we have to be focused on the needs and wants of our listeners.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

One of the easiest ways to make the most money from our podcast is to sell our own products. If we have a loyal audience, we will probably have buyers for our great products and services.
Our listeners often come for the content but stay for the community.
While affiliate marketing can be slow at the beginning, we often make more money in the long run, especially if the affiliate programs pay us a recurring affiliate commission. On the other hand, sponsorships can provide better short-term profit for each ad.
To be successful with affiliate marketing and sponsorships, we should only promote products we love and products we believe our audience will love.
If we have a very loyal listener base, our audience may pay us just because they want more content and want to support us.
We can host events and charge our audience for tickets, while also reusing the content on our membership sites and other places.

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about or connect with Dave, you can:

Find him on LinkedIn
Listen to his podcasts School of Podcasting or Profit from Your Podcast

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How have you made money off your podcast? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/5-ways-to-monetize-a-podcast/

Profit from Your Podcast: Proven Strategies to Turn Listeners into a Livelihood

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Dave Jackson is a podcast consultant who helps people plan, launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. He began podcasting in 2005 and launched the School of Podcasting, which has more than 2.7 million downloads. He's the author of the book Profit From Your Podcast and is a featured speaker at events. In 2016, Dave joined Libsyn, which is one of the largest podcast hosting companies.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Dave’s journey to podcasting and three of his key strategies to hosting a successful podcast.

Dave’s Journey to Podcasting

Dave began his journey as a teacher and taught in the corporate world for about 20 years. “The great thing about being a teacher is you get to help people all the time,” Dave said.

While he loved teaching, he wanted to find a new way to help people beyond the corporate world. A friend told him about podcasting, so he googled it to find one and a half pages of results. Podcasts weren’t big at the time, but as he continued to do his research, he realized the shift towards podcasts was going to be a tectonic shift in the future.

Dave went back to school to get his degree and started a podcast, while also working other side jobs to help support himself until he could build a big-enough audience to make money with his podcast. What really got him hooked on the idea was his first voicemail from an audience member. Someone from Germany reached out to him to let him know how inspired he was from his podcast. That’s when Dave realized he could teach through podcasts and help people from around the world.

“I got to help people, and I [thought it was] the best thing ever,” Dave said. “That's when I decided I was going to launch the School of Podcasting. I just knew if I waited long enough, it would catch up.”

Since then, podcasting has grown exponentially with more than two million active podcasts and more than 48 million episodes as of April 2021 (Source: Podcast Insights).

In 2016, Dave joined Libsyn where he helps customers with questions about building their own podcast. He’d been a customer for Libsyn for 10 years when he gave them a call. He told them he had bad news and good news. He was out of a job, but it meant he was available to work for them. He also told them about his podcast, School of Podcasting.

His podcast wasn’t just a way for him to make a profit or to help his listeners. It also helped him get a job. He has been hired three times because of his podcast. His podcast gave him an opportunity to show people he knew what he was talking about. “Our podcast isn't, in many cases, our business, it's our business card. It's what allows people to get to know you without making a giant commercial,” Dave said.

While Dave works at Libsyn, he continues to host his own podcast at the same time. With years of experience in the podcasting world, he has learned many lessons and key strategies we should implement in our own podcast. Here are three of them.

Focus on a Specific Niche

The biggest mistake Dave sees podcasters make is trying to be everything for everyone. People often want to start a podcast with a very vague goal in mind. For example, someone may start a podcast with the idea to interview people with interesting stories. But what are those interesting stories? What is going to make someone want to listen to us over others?

If we don't bring in an audience, we don't have a podcast. Generic and wide-ranging goals don’t work 99% of the time. If we want to host a successful podcast, we need to focus on a specific niche audience.

Dave said that people often come to him with a goal to get sponsored, but sponsorships only happen if we have a large audience and can get massive downloads. And we only get massive downloads, if we are speaking to a specific group. We want to appeal to the needs and wants of a target audience. If we aim to meet the needs of everyone, we will end up meeting the needs of no one.

Even if we host a great podcast with a specific audience in mind, it can still be really difficult to get enough downloads to actually make money off a sponsorship. Instead, Dave recommends going even further and directing our podcast to an ever-smaller audience. “You don't have to have a ton of listeners if you have a hyper-niche show,” Dave said.

If we have a very direct, niche audience, we can get sponsored by other companies who have a similar audience to us. They will choose to sponsor us over others because we have such a specific audience that their product or service will resonate with.

For example, Dave had a client who ran a podcast called Special Mouse, a guide to the Disney Parks for guests with health issues and special needs. She didn't even have a thousand downloads in an episode, and yet she got a sponsor. Why? Because there was somebody in Florida that specialized in transporting people with special needs. The sponsor knew Special Mouse would reach their audience because it was such a hyper-niche.

Get Personal

In our podcasts, we should get personal.

Dave explained that one of the biggest business tectonic shifts that have happened over the last decade is the shift towards podcasts. Podcasts have become easier and easier to create. Technology exists that allows anyone to create a podcast. This is both good and bad. While podcasting has gotten easier, it also means the number of podcasts out there has increased. We can find a podcast on just about anything so why is someone going to choose to listen to our podcast over the millions of others out there?

“Why are you doing this? How are you going to be different [from] the other people you know?” Dave asked. “You have to have [something] that's going to set you apart, that is going to make a difference. You have to share a little bit about yourself if you really want people to connect with you.”

This doesn’t mean we have to reveal our darkest secrets or tell our audience everything that goes on in our days. It means we have to show our personality. We have to show what makes us unique. Sometimes this means sharing our hobbies or a funny story that happened during our day, but it has to be something that relates to the topic of our episodes.

“If you can share stories about your life that help accentuates whatever point you're trying to make, you do two things: you make your point, and you allow your audience to get to know you. You start to build that relationship,” Dave said.

Talk to One Person

We should talk to one person when we talk on a podcast. This means referencing our listeners as “you” instead of referencing a group of people as if we are speaking at a live event.

Most people don’t listen to podcasts with others. It’s often an independent activity. They don’t sit down with a group of friends on a couch to listen to an audio-only file while staring at the wall. They listen to podcasts while they’re driving, cleaning, or they slip in headphones and listen to a podcast while they are at the gym.

64% of podcast listeners listen to podcasts while on the road (Source: Semrush Blog) and 76% of Americans drive to work alone every day (Source: Brookings.edu). 59% of people listen to podcasts while doing housework or chores, and 87% of podcast listeners said podcasts are enjoyable because they can listen to them while doing other things (Source: Semrush Blog). This means, when someone is listening to our podcasts, they are often alone. Our podcast episodes can feel a lot more personal because of this as it will feel like we are talking directly to the listener.

“When you do a solo show, number one, do not follow the advice of a YouTuber and start off with ‘Hey guys,’” Dave said. Instead, we should talk to the listener as if it is a one-on-one conversation with them. At the end of the podcast, we can thank them for listening, not “thanks, everyone.”

“I have people tell me all the time, ‘I always kind of feel like you're talking to me’ and I would say, ‘It's because I am,’” Dave said. Podcasts are a great way to connect with our listeners since it is such an independent activity. We can take advantage of this personal “conversation” and make sure we talk to them specifically, not a general group of people.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Our podcast isn't just our business, it can also be our business card.
If we want to host a successful podcast, we need to focus on a specific niche audience. We don’t have to have thousands of listeners to be successful if we can really narrow down our target audience and serve them well.
In our podcasts, we should get personal. There are millions of podcasts out there so we need to find what makes us unique and share it so our listeners will choose us.
We can share stories about our life to help get our point across and allow our audience to get to know us and connect with us.
We should talk to one person when we talk on a podcast. This means referencing our listeners as “you” instead of referencing a group of people.

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about or connect with Dave, you can:

Find him on LinkedIn
Listen to his podcasts School of Podcasting or Profit from Your Podcast

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Do you have a podcast? If so, what strategies have helped you find success? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/3-podcasting-hacks/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. I was named after an inspiring business leader named Nathan Tanner. When I went to college, the building that housed the business school I attended was the Tanner Building, named after Nathan Eldon Tanner.

Nathan Eldon Tanner was known as a man of outstanding executive ability and unquestioned integrity. Throughout his public career, he was known, even by his political opponents, for his rugged and undeviating honesty. His high moral standards were said to be constant, undeviating, and immovable. I have a long way to go to live up to Nathan Tanner’s example. However, in today’s episode, we’re going to tell Nathan’s story and discuss how to build a business with integrity.

One of Tanner’s favorite sayings was, “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight; but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upwards in the night.” Tanner’s wife said. “And he tried to accomplish what he set out to do by doing just that: By rising at five A.M. to teach himself typing when he was running the store in Hill Spring.” (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org)

Tanner’s Life

Nathan Eldon Tanner was born on May 9, 1898, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and he grew up in Canada in the small town of Aetna, near Cardston, Alberta. On his family’s farm, he learned how to work hard, driving a four-horse team at the age of twelve, caring for livestock, and nursing his entire family back to health when all but him had smallpox (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

In Alberta, Tanner worked as a teacher and school principal before being elected to the Alberta Legislature, where he served as speaker of the Assembly. He was chosen as Speaker of the House, but before he had never even attended a session of the legislature and was elected to act as chairman of sixty-three members. On the subject, his wife said, “We were given an elegant suite of rooms in the legislative buildings, to use as we liked, and … it seemed that he had fallen into the ‘lap of the Gods,’ but only he and I knew the hours, day and night, that he spent studying parliamentary procedure. This was the beginning of jobs which he was given, which he said were far beyond his ability to cope with.”

When Tanner was acting as Minister in the Alberta government, he earned the well-deserved nickname of “Mr. Integrity” because he refused to compromise by accepting gifts of any kind and was strictly honest in his dealings. The affectionate title followed him through a lifetime of success based on principles of fairness and integrity (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org).

Later, he served as president of Merrill Petroleum Ltd. and director of the Toronto Dominion Bank of Canada. In 1954, he became president of Trans-Canada Pipelines. As president, he directed the construction of a $350 million, 2,000-mile pipeline from Alberta to Montreal (Source: NYTimes.com).

Tanner later moved to Salt Lake City and quickly established himself as a business and civic leader. He served on the board of directors of First Security Corporation and Mountain Fuel Supply Company. He helped plan, develop, and promote building projects in Salt Lake such as the Salt Palace, Symphony Hall, the Fine Arts Center, and the restored Capitol Theater (Source: NYTimes.com).

Decision-Making and Concentration

Tanner was said to have near flawless judgment when he was making decisions. Religious leader Victor L. Brown said, “He gathered all possible facts before making a decision, never making an impetuous or off-the-cuff decision. He had an unusual talent for setting bias and prejudice aside if such existed. He did not make the mistake of having pet projects that would tend to warp judgment.”

Another of Tanner’s favorite sayings was, “I’d much rather be part of the solution to a problem than a part of the problem.”

Tanner used his power of concentration to help him make quick and well-informed decisions. For example, one day a group was making a very detailed and technical presentation that lasted over two hours. There was little time for discussion. At the conclusion of the presentation, Tanner said something like this:

“Recommendations one and two can be implemented with little difficulty. Recommendation number three needs more study, and your chart covering this portion of the presentation needs to be redone for the following reasons (which he listed). Recommendation number four will require much more study and appears to be untimely at the moment.”

This experience occurred after Tanner’s eyesight had been seriously impaired, so he hadn’t seen the chart—it had only been described to him.

Tanner was able to concentrate for the whole of the two hours and concisely relate his conclusions at the end of it. He didn’t let his bad eyesight become an excuse for him to not be part of the solution. (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org)

Service and Caring for Others

“Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

When Tanner was still living in Cardston, he led a group of boys in his church’s youth program. Some of the boys hadn’t been coming to meetings, and Tanner went to their homes to find out why. He discovered that some of the boys didn’t have the right clothes and had been too embarrassed to attend church meetings without them (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

Tanner and the rest of the boys in the group all agreed to wear overalls to meetings on Sunday mornings. Because of Tanner, all the boys became active in attendance, and they grew to love their sensitive and dauntless leader (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

Tanner was willing to forgo a formal look to make all the boys feel comfortable. He cared about the boys and it was more important to him that they were all there than looking a certain way. He kept the important things in mind and pushed aside the worldly focus on the image.

“It is easy to do things for our own families and loved ones, but to give of our substance for the stranger who is in need is the real test of our charity and love for our fellowmen.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

Keeping Our Commitments

“Self-discipline is doing what you know you should do when you don’t want to do it.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

As Tanner was asked to serve as president of Trans-Canada Pipelines, the backers of the company planned to set up headquarters in Toronto. Tanner was living near Calgary at the time and had committed to a leadership role in his church. Because of this duty, Tanner refused to move to act as president of the company. Instead of finding someone else, the company owners set up their headquarters in Calgary (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

This shows not only how much they valued his leadership, but also how committed Tanner was to keep his commitments. He was willing to risk losing a job because he wouldn’t back out of a commitment. Tanner often had to take the time to travel to eastern Canada since that’s where much of the company’s business was transacted (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

Tanner stood his ground with his promises. We must do the same thing with our commitments. When we take a stand for what we know is right, it shows people we can be relied upon and we’re not going to give in when outside influences pressure us.

“To meet the serious issues facing us in our respective communities today, we must be examples of virtue and righteousness ourselves and choose today to take our stand on the moral issues which threaten us.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

Enduring through Hardships

When Tanner was about 15, he was herding cattle when he was thrown from his horse. Getting to his feet, he looked down to see three fingers on his left hand were broken. They had snapped at his knuckle joints and were twisted back against his hand, the bones of his middle finger sticking out of his flesh. Tanner took hold of his fingers, put them back in place, got back on his horse, and rode to a doctor. The doctor marveled at him; all the bones were in the right place and he only had to stitch him up.

This is the kind of attitude Tanner had throughout his life. When something unexpected happened, he didn’t complain. He didn’t give up. Instead, he took care of the situation as best he could, got help if he needed it, and kept going.

Tanner also tried to be grateful for what he did have. He was working as a schoolteacher during the depression, and the teachers weren’t very well paid. Instead of moping about his situation, the Tanners sold their only valuable possession: a new Ford sedan. They used the money they got to purchase a small general store.

He also supplemented his income by selling insurance and suits of clothing. The family had milk cows and his two oldest daughters delivered milk daily, often wading through heavy snow with the milk strapped to them. The Tanners kept their household too busy to dwell on the negative. One of his daughters even remarked, “During those depression years all the other kids seemed to feel poor, but we never did; we were too busy.” (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org)

Like the Tanner family, sometimes the best thing to do in hard times is to find ways to keep busy and focused on good things to solve our problems. Dwelling on our trials won’t make them go away.

“As we express our appreciation of our many blessings, we become more conscious of what the Lord has done for us, and thereby we become more appreciative.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Having true integrity builds credibility and trust, and opens doors.
Sometimes we must put the care of others before other things such as keeping up appearances.
We can often show charity best when we serve those we don’t know very well.
Self-discipline is doing what we know we should do even when we don’t want to do it.
Tanner was willing to give up a job to keep his commitment. We must also be willing to do what it takes to keep our word.
When we go through hard things, it can help to not dwell on the hardships, but keep busy and focus on filling our life with good things, such as working towards solutions.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive future episodes of Entrepreneurs of Faith.

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Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-lead-a-business-with-integrity/

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Welcome back to another episode with email marketing expert Brittany Bayley. In the last episode, we discussed how to grow our email lists and essential email sequences. In today’s episode, Brittany answers common email marketing questions.

How often should we email our list?

How many times per week should we email our list? For nurture emails, Brittany said we should be emailed at least twice a week. She recommended sending one email highlighting something external such as an interview or podcast episode we’ve done. This trains our readers to open the email and click to go somewhere else.

If a YouTuber, podcaster, or blogger publishes something daily, it is usually best not to send an email every day because we may overwhelm our audience. We can send something like a weekly summary or highlights for all the episodes we’ve published that week.

There are some situations where a daily email would be acceptable. If “daily” is in the title of our show, our audience members will likely expect to get daily emails. Or if we set it up so they know it will be daily emails, then they may not be overwhelmed. If we aren’t sure what will work well for our audience, we can test different frequencies and see how they respond.

We can also give our audience options for how often they want to receive emails or which kinds of emails they’d like to receive. When they sign up we can ask if they’d prefer highlights or daily emails or perhaps they only want to hear from us when we have a new product or a sale. Brittany said, “Segmentation is . . . a great way to show that you respect your subscriber and that you respect their time.”

How do we find the best incentives or lead magnets?

To find the best incentives and lead magnets, we need to turn to our audience and be aware of what they are going through. What experiences are they having? What’s going on in their world? How can we help them get through that?

Brittany saw many successful lead magnets related to COVID-19. She saw things like “How to deal with stress in a pandemic” or “How to take your business online in a short period of time.”

“It's much more about the intention and what you're teaching versus the container like a challenge or an ebook,” Brittany said. We need to be offering incentives and lead magnets based on what the customer needs, not based on what we want to offer or sell.

The most successful lead magnets Brittany has seen relate well to their audience. Instead of using techie business jargon, they use simple terms their customers use and understand, making it clear for the audience.

How do we write subject lines?

Subject lines should be eye-catching and pattern-interrupting without being unclear. We don’t want to just put something random in the subject line that has nothing to do with the email’s content just to get people to open the email. When we do the random eye-catching thing but don’t give them the context behind it, our audience will feel tricked and they may not continue reading our emails.

Asking questions, having statements, and using emojis can be great ways to draw attention. We can also use things like caps, parenthesis, or brackets to draw attention to the subject line. Anything that varies from the typical subject line can be eye-catching. Depending on our audience and what they’re expecting from us, lists such as “5 Ways to…” can also work.

Brittany recently received an email with the subject line, “Brittany, do you have time today? I want to run something by you?” Brittany is acquainted with the sender, so she was immediately intrigued and opened the email. The sender had written a great email and wanted responses from her list, so it was a great way to pull her readers in.

Everything with emails should be based on our benchmarks. To get benchmarks, we need to make sure we’re emailing one to two times a week for 60 to 90 days to see what they are, then we can go from there and test to see what works well for our audience.

How do we improve our calls to action?

Calls to action (CTAs) can be tricky because we want our readers to take the action but we don’t want to be annoying when we give them that CTA. Though we may want to pack everything into one email, we should only have one clear and concise CTA in each email. It should be set apart from the rest of the email, not buried in a block of text.

Brittany usually writes her emails out of order. She writes her CTA first, then she’ll write the hook. Last, she bridges those two together through the middle or main body of the email. When we’re writing our hooks, we need to keep the CTA in mind, so every word should be leading to that call to action. When we write the email in reverse it is easier to carve the path leading to the CTA and our readers will have a better time following it.

How long should emails be?

The length of our emails can also vary depending on our audience and what they’re expecting from us. If we promise them content-heavy, blog-style emails then we should be giving them those kinds of emails. If our audience wants something shorter and more to the point, we can try that kind of email.

What are the best ways to personalize an email?

One of the best ways to personalize an email is by adding the reader’s name. People love to hear people say their names and it is the same way in emails. When we are collecting their information, we need to make sure we have space for them to put their name so we can do this.

Another great way to personalize is to show them we know who they are, what action they took, and where they are in their journey. We can do this by asking them in our onboarding sequence how they are liking the specific product they purchased or the lead magnet they received.

Many technologies like ConvertKit have these personalization options built into them, so we need to ensure we are taking advantage of those.

Should we use a tactical or humanistic approach?

Email marketing is often a combination of tactical and humanistic approaches.

Through a tactical lens, we can think about things like personalization or inserting the audience member's name at the beginning of the email. We can also focus on concision and make sure our emails aren’t full of big blocks of text that are hard to read.

We can also come at it from a more humanistic standpoint by thinking about the person we’re writing to and what kinds of stories they are telling in their mind that are stopping them from taking our call to action. What is their belief system? What questions are coming up for them?

To create great, successful emails, we need a combination of these approaches.

Why should small brands use email marketing?

Brittany recently did an order bump with one of her services. She emailed her list to let them know about the bump and then went to the gym. While she was there she got all these notifications about purchases. That day she made $500 just from emailing her list.

If we have a small brand like that and we’re used to spending money on ads or in other places or we're used to jumping through hoops to get sales and doing big launches, there is great power in being able to just write an email. Email marketing gives us a line directly to our customers, so we can avoid all the hassle of other advertising.

What do we need to know about spam laws?

Spam laws can be tricky because they can change depending on the region. We must make sure to check the laws for whatever area we live in. Brittany said the bottom line for these rules and regulations is do we have permission to email them promotional or marketing material?

One thing to note is that when asking for permission it can’t be a conditional part of the purchase. The checkmark to receive promotional emails can’t already be checked even if we’re using it with a lead magnet.

What are the biggest mistakes with email marketing?

Two of the biggest mistakes Brittany has seen with email marketing are having a cold list and only emailing when we need sales or are launching something.

We need to be consistent with our email list, having a long-term nurture strategy in place. We shouldn’t freeze and not use our lists at all, and we also shouldn’t do a burst of emails, then stop, then do another burst. Brittany said, “Know what you want to say to your person, understand what they're asking from you, understand what questions they have on their mind, nurture them, and have a long-term strategy in place so that they feel supported.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Brittany for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We should probably be emailing our list with value at least twice a week.
Subject lines should be eye-catching and clear.
Each email should only have one call to action and everything should lead to it.
We can personalize by adding readers’ names and referencing their specific experiences with us in the emails.
Email marketing should combine tactical and humanistic approaches.
Every company can benefit from the direct connection to customers email marketing provides.
We should understand and comply with anti-spam laws in our countries.

Connect with Brittany

If you want to learn more about Brittany or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, or visit her website at BrittanyBayley.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What questions do you have about email marketing? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/answers-to-10-questions-about-email-marketing/

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In today’s episode, I’m joined by Brittany Bayley, and we’re going to discuss the ins and outs of email marketing including how to grow our lists and the essential email sequences.

Brittany Bayley is an email marketing expert, coach, and copywriter who helps her clients monetize their email lists and create unstoppable marketing channels for their businesses. She has penned successful campaigns for some widely recognized brands such as Russell Brunson. She's the founder of the popular email template system Swipes That Sell. She focuses on making email marketing simple, so it's easy to stay consistent and get ongoing and sustainable results.

How to Effectively Grow a List

Here are a few strategies for growing our email list.

Focus on the Customer’s Point of View

We can grow our list by thinking about things from the customer’s perspective. We can ask questions about their perspective and what they are dealing with to attract them to our list. We can do things like low ticket offers, freebies, or other hooks to invite the ideal reader onto our list.

A lot of people come at it from, “What do I want to offer?” But they don’t see great results from this kind of approach. If instead, we say, “Here's my person. What do they need from me?” our list is going to grow significantly faster because we’re coming at it with them as our focus.

Paid Advertising

The same mindset will work with paid advertising, we just have to put some money behind it. We do need to be careful with trying to scale it and putting a bunch of money behind it before we've proven and tested it. We should test it organically to make sure it works before we start paid advertising.

To test this, Brittany recommends split testing one thing at a time. Generally, the three things we will be testing are the subject line, calls to action, and our story. When we do this we should be watching our open rates, our click rates, and our conversion rates to see how they change. Brittany personally uses ConvertKit to do this, but she said she thinks ActiveCampaign is great and she’s heard great things about Mailgun.

Networking

Getting on other people's shows, or Facebook Lives, or having other people talk about us on their email lists is a great way to bring in traffic. Brittany was recently in a mastermind bundle called Digital Insiders and her list grew by about 1,500 people. They all got together and were sharing each other’s audiences. “It’s a really good way to jumpstart your list and to get some fresh people onto your list and then get that ball rolling,” Brittany said.

3 Essential Email Sequences

Here are three different email sequences we should implement and how to get a start on setting them up.

Nurture Sequences

Whenever someone gives us their email address, we should start with a nurture or onboarding sequence. This is an introduction to us and our brand. It should tell our audience about who we are as an expert or coach, and it will set the foundation for the rest of our relationship with that new subscriber.

Typically, this is a five-part series that will tell our story and set us up to coach them and give them some of our resources. Once we’ve done this sequence we can drop them into our main list.

“That's an example of a core sequence that every coach, every single online coach, should have. There [are] no exceptions. We all need a nurture sequence to onboard our customers, to onboard our new subscribers, to set ourselves up for success with every other aspect of the email list,” Brittany said.

Launch Sequences

Launch sequences introduce a new product or highlight a product we already have in existence that we haven’t brought up for a while. This can be a 5-10 part email sequence saying, “Here's what it is, here's why I created it, here's how it's gonna serve you.”

Abandoned Cart Sequence

We can set up an abandoned cart sequence by having them enter their name and email address before they get to the order form. Then, if they do that but they don't complete the purchase, an abandoned cart sequence would remind them of their cart and ask them if something went wrong on our end. It’s a great way to save some sales.

How do we set this up?

It can be overwhelming to try to figure all of this out and expensive to hire a copywriter to do it for us. Brittany offers a more affordable way to at least get a start on our email lists called Swipes That Sell. The product has templates for the core sequences and training to teach us how to infuse our stories into them so they don't look or sound like templates. Swipes That Sell is just $37 compared to the thousands of dollars an email copywriter will charge to set this up.

Brittany’s Journey to Become an Email Marketing Expert

In college, Brittany studied journalism and wrote for the paper. She started writing more for herself, doing blogs. A woman came to her blog and told Brittany that she liked what she was writing; she asked if Brittany would ghostwrite for her. Brittany didn’t know what that was, but she accepted the job, figuring out freelancing as she went.

Brittany wrote for her for years, and she did some of her landing pages, registration pages, and other pieces for her. She started getting referred more, finding herself in a place that wasn’t corporate that she really enjoyed.

One day a client came to her, asking her to do her email campaigns. It was a great moment for Brittany because things started coming together. She could use what she’d been learning with freelance writing and one of her passions, psychology. She loved it, and from there she worked her way to exclusively doing emails for online coaches.

Her greatest home run was the opportunity to write a campaign for the Mastermind.com launch with Dean Graziozi, Tony Robbin, and Russell Brunson. She said it was one of the coolest experiences she’s ever had to write the campaign and to see the sales coming in live.

Narrowing Your Niche

When I asked Brittany what the biggest failure or mistake of her career was, she said it was not being specific enough in her niche. She didn’t specify what kind of emails she would be writing and for whom; she just said emails. She realized that emails for webinars and follow-up sequences for sales calls are significantly different from emails for infopreneurs.

“I made the mistake of assuming that just reaching into email marketing would make me an expert in all email marketing when really you have to know your industry,” Brittany said.

Narrowing our niche is one of the secrets to how we can become number one in the world at something. As we narrow it down, there are fewer people that are experts in something so specific, so we become the expert of a niche within a niche within a niche. When we do this, we can become one of the best people that our clients could possibly hire to do that and we're worth a lot more.

Long-Term vs Short-Term Monetization

Brittany said one of her favorite monetization strategies for email marketing is focusing on long-term and short-term monetization. For long-term monetization, we want to have strategies such as ongoing content going out, ongoing nurturing of our list, funnels that fire a couple of weeks after someone buys, etc.

But we can also monetize in the short term. We can do flash sales or if someone came through our funnel and didn’t buy the bump or the OTO, we can say, “Hey, how are you liking this product? Here's something that you might have missed in the haste of buying this.”

These are a couple of easy ways to monetize long-term and short-term. We should always be leveraging our list to the max, not just focusing on one side or the other.

The Best Way to Provide Value

We need to make sure we are nurturing our list. Brittany said, “If all we're doing is . . . hopping in and doing these little sales, we're never going to nurture them. We're going to have a lot more unsubscribes. We're not going to build loyal customers or loyal brand credibility. We're just going to be those people who are hopping in when they need money.”

If we make sure we’re consistently providing value to them and nurturing them, then when we do come back with a short term offer or short term sale, they're much more likely to realize that we're bringing that to them for the best interest because we've been investing in that relationship in the long-term.

“It all comes back to who you're talking to,” Brittany said. “Sometimes we get really over-complicated with how to nurture lists or how to do these things. It all comes back to . . . the person in your list. What can we do for them? When you come from that standpoint, all of the strategies, everything else, makes sense when you come from a place of, what do they need from me?”

We should be thinking about what we can do to improve their circumstances. What questions are running through their mind at night? What things are they coming up against based on current events? What is coming up for them that we can solve or answer? What resources do we have that you can give to them? It can be as simple as what they need and how we can fill that.

Owning Our Database

Brittany sees an increasing need to build our list, own our database of customers, and have a way to directly contact them. There is so much going on with social media, with algorithms, with changes to how we're able to relate to our customers, and with what we're able to stay in our ads. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be on social media, but it is important to be able to have a direct-to-customer line in case something happens with social media that negatively impact our business.

This is an example of the tectonic shift of building a “skyscraper” on “land” we own. In this case, the skyscraper is our business and our customer database, and the land we own is our email list. If we don’t own the land, someone could come in and disrupt things for us. However, if we do own it, we can control what goes on on it.

It is important to sell in a way that we can get their contact information and permission so we can build that relationship through our list. The long-term value of a business comes in the ability to have that list and continually be able to sell new products to that list.

“Until you have a list, you don’t have a business.” - Russell Brunson

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Brittany for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Focusing on the customer’s point of view will better attract them to our email lists.
Before we do paid advertising, we should test it organically to make sure it works.
We can grow our list through networking and leveraging other people’s audiences.
Everyone should have a nurture sequence to introduce customers to us and our brand.
Abandoned cart sequences are a great way to save a sale.
When choosing our path, we should narrow our niche, so we become an expert in that specific thing and increase our value.
We should focus on both long-term and short-term monetization.
The best way to provide value is to look at things from our customer’s perspective and ask, “What do they need and how can I give it to them?”
It is important to be able to control our connection with our customers and have a direct way to contact them.

Connect with Brittany

If you want to learn more about Brittany or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, or visit her website at BrittanyBayley.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What email marketing strategies have worked best for you? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/?p=8787

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Dave Woodward is the CEO of ClickFunnels, the premier sales funnel software that generates more than $100 million per year, and has been used to create more than 1,000 million-dollar funnels (This page contains affiliate links and we may earn a commission if you click on the links and buy).

In the last episode with Dave Woodward, we discussed the benefits of using sales funnels to monetize a business. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can create a value ladder for our business to guide our customers on the buyer’s journey.

The Value Ladder

Part of creating a sales funnel is creating our value ladder. A value ladder is a lineup of value we offer to our customers at each step of their customer journey so they move from a visitor to a repeat, loyal customer. At each step, the value and cost increase. For example, the bottom of our value ladder may be a free newsletter or downloadable workbook while the top of our value ladder maybe a subscription to our software.

Determine What Value We Want to Offer

The first thing we need to do is figure out what our offers are going to be. What are the steps of our value ladder? “I always look at trying to create the offer before you create the funnel, and then from that determine what type of funnel you're going to create,” Dave said.

There are many different ways to provide value to our customers, and we certainly don’t need to provide them all. The best way to determine what value to provide is by first determining our core offer. What are we trying to get our customers to buy? A product? A software? Tickets to an event? The best offers aren’t usually just one product, but instead are a bundle of products and services that are related and make our offer very valuable and unique. Whatever the case, once we have our main offer, we can work backward from there. What will lead our customers to buy our product or service?

Here are many different ways we can provide value to our customers in our value ladder. And, the concept of a value ladder is that we pay to acquire a customer once, and then we nurture that relationship and help them progress up the value ladder to buy more and higher value offers from us. Here are a few examples of different types of products and services we could provide on our value ladder to our ideal customers:

Books/eBooks
Workbooks
Webinars
Events
Courses
Challenges
Free trials
SaaS products
Coaching
Podcasts
Reviews
Products
Newsletters
Blog content
Videos
Pictures
Inspiring quotes
Social media posts
Speeches/talks
Seminars
Memberships
Programs
Communities

At ClickFunnels, their value ladder includes books, software, virtual summits, live events, challenges, coaching sessions, a membership site, virtual summits, webinars, and more. I’ve purchased all of those products and services from ClickFunnels. Within those steps are additional steps. For example, they offer different coaching bundles for different prices. One of the programs they offer is a five-day challenge where they teach their customers how to generate leads.

They look at their audience and create many front-end offers to attract them to their business. After ClickFunnels customers receive the initial value, ClickFunnels tells them how they can get access to their software. ClickFunnels offers a free trial and additional access to a bunch of great content and training to help their customers make and be excited about a purchase decision.

While creating a value ladder can seem overwhelming as there are so many different ways to provide value for our audience, there are tools to help us create our own value ladder. ClickFunnels is a software that lets people design and creates sales funnels, landing pages, order forms, and membership sites to help businesses with their sales funnels and customer journey so we don’t have to do it on our own. By signing up today, you can get two months free at ClickFunnels.com.

Design Our Offers

Once we’ve mapped out our value ladders, we can start designing and developing our offers. If we want to use a book to attract our customers, we need to write it. If we want our customers to subscribe to weekly newsletters, we need to design them. On top of that, we also have to determine how we will present our offers to our audience.

We can design our value offers as one-time offers (OTOs) or give them away for free in exchange for an email address. Dave explained that he sees a conversion rate of about 10% to 20% with his one-time offers. On top of OTOs, we can also consider recurring revenue models. Instead of making a single purchase, customers can subscribe to a software, membership site, coaching, or other product or service for which we charge a monthly fee.

Dave sees 85% of his revenue coming from monthly recurring revenue plans. No matter what business we are in, we want recurring revenue whenever possible. Recurring revenue provides value every month to our customers and provides income and stability for us each month.

However, no matter if we are using an OTO, a recurring revenue plan, or giving away value for free, we have to work just as hard to sell it. “No matter if you're exchanging [value for an] email, you have to sell things that are free just as hard as you have to sell something that has a price tag to it,” Dave said. “I think the biggest mistake a lot of people make is thinking that because it's free, [they can] just give it away and people are going to want it. It doesn't work that way. The whole idea behind building a list is to create an offer that has value.”

Choosing between an OTO or a subscription model is just the beginning. Once we determine our price model, we can look at different ways of offering our products or services.

“Order form bumps are one of the [best] kinds of secrets we see,” Dave said. “Usually you'll find a successful order form bump is typically in the neighborhood of anywhere from 20% to 30% of people clicking on that. For us, I know that's probably one of the fastest ways of recapturing some of our ad spendings, and then breaking even.”

An order form bump is an offer of something that is related to a previous purchase of a custom-made. For example, when a customer goes to checkout, we may include links to other related products or services they can buy along with what they have in their cart. Or, in the order confirmation email, we can include additional links to similar products our customers may like.

Where we position our offers on our website, our newsletters, or landing pages matters. We also can implement different strategies to encourage our customers to take our offers.

Here are a few strategies we can consider:

Bundles
Membership programs
1. Buy one, get one free
2. 15% off if they subscribe
3. 10% off for recommendations
4. Seasonal discounts
Discounts
Subscriptions
Free shipping
Free samples

As we design our offers we should always keep our audience in mind. What discounts will they appreciate the most? What areas on our website get the most traffic? By designing our offers to meet the needs of our customers, we will see a much higher return on our advertising investment.

Look at Metrics and Test

Once we have our value ladder completed, one of the best things we can do to ensure its success is to look at metrics and data. “The most important thing is to really understand metrics and do some testing,” Dave said.

One key metric we want to pay attention to is our opt-in rates. What is our opt-in percentage? We should look at the metrics of our funnel to determine if our marketing strategies are effective. One of our main goals should be to get a customer to “opt-in” by giving us their name and email address. Even before a customer makes a purchase, we want to get their contact information so we don’t lose that lead. If we find that visitors on our website often leave without opting into our newsletter or program, we know we need to make a change.

The next step is to get our leads into the check-out so we can get their address and credit card information. This is where we start to see conversion rates. Dave said, “I don’t think you have a real business until you can start driving paid traffic.” In order to get paid traffic, it may take a few months or even years of trial and error.

The first thing Dave does with a funnel is trying to break even on his customer acquisition costs. If he can make enough money in the first purchase a customer makes to cover his marketing or advertising costs, he essentially gets customers for free.

After looking at opt-in and conversion rates, we want to take a look at the metrics of our steps inside the actual funnel. Are customers accepting our offers? Are customers following the journey we mapped out with our funnels? If they aren't, what can we change? If they are, how can we do better?

Dave explained that the biggest mistake people make is giving up too early. He finds that entrepreneurs often try one funnel, find that it doesn’t work, and then give up. No one can expect to create a perfect funnel on the first attempt. This is why testing and tweaking are so important. We need to look at the metrics to find ways we can improve our sales funnels to increase customer opt-in rates.

“There [have been] so many times where we've created funnels that just didn't work,” Dave said. “The numbers weren't where we needed to be. And so for us, it's [about] going back and testing and re-tweaking and changing and doing whatever we can to get to where we need to be. Sometimes it's a pricing thing and sometimes it's a different offer.”

Dave created ClickFunnels to help entrepreneurs manage their sales funnels. ClickFunnels provides the opportunity of seeing the entire customer journey. As a person comes into our funnel, we want to see where they fall out. ClickFunnels is a great tool that allows us to do a lot of testing and make changes to the order form to find what works and what doesn't. As we use metrics and data, our sales funnels will become much more successful.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

A value ladder is a lineup of values we offer to our customers at each step of their customer journey. At each step, the value and cost increase.
The best way to determine what value to provide is by first determining our core offer. Once we have our main offer, we can work backward from there.
There are many different ways to provide value to our customers such as books, courses, software, membership sites, and events.
We can choose to sell our offers as OTOs, subscriptions, or give value for free in exchange for customer information.
We have to work just as hard to sell things that are free as we do to sell something with a price tag on it.
We can implement different strategies to encourage our customers to take our offers such as using discounts, order form bumps, and promotions.
Once we have our value ladder completed, one of the best things we can do to ensure its success is to look at metrics and data. We need to look at the metrics to find ways we can improve our sales funnels conversion rates, increase customer opt-in rates, and optimize our customer lifetime value.

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about Dave or connect with him you can:

Connect with him on LinkedIn
Visit his company’s website at ClickFunnels.com, or go to SecretsTrilogy.com.
Join ClickFunnels today to get two months free.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What value do you offer to your customers in your value ladder? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-create-a-value-ladder-within-our-sales-funnels/

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Dave Woodward is the CEO of ClickFunnels, a premier sales funnels platform that generates more than $100 million per year (This page contains affiliate links and we may earn a commission if you click on the links and buy). In addition to his CEO duties, Dave is the energetic host of the wildly popular podcast, Funnel Hacker Radio.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the benefits of a sales funnel, and how we can leverage them to increase our conversion rates and monetization.

ClickFunnels

During Dave’s entrepreneurial journey, he experienced frequent ups and downs. He started at an employee benefits company right out of college, took the company from Texas to California, and then sold it. Afterward, he started a few other businesses where he fell flat on his face a few times. He started a marketing agency business, which grew well in the mortgage and real estate industries, but he eventually lost it in the crash in 2008 which led him to finally realize his passion for online businesses.

Dave and his partner, Russell Brusson, started ClickFunnels because they had a need for the services themselves. There was nothing more frustrating than not being able to get their sites up and running, so they wanted to create software that would allow them to do it themselves. After about six months of design and development, they launched the software, which became incredibly successful, having processed over $11 billion (Source: ClickFunnels).

ClickFunnels is the platform we use at Monetization Nation, my Adoption.com business, and with many of my consulting clients. It is software that lets people design and creates sales funnels, landing pages, order forms, and membership sites to help businesses with their sales funnels and customer journeys.

Over 110,000 entrepreneurs actively use ClickFunnels to get their products and messages out to the world while converting visitors to leads and leads to customers (Source: ClickFunnels).

ClickFunnels has helped my business grow and made my job easier. For a limited time, if you sign up for an annual plan you can get two months for free. You can sign up on ClickFunnels.com to join today.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel helps direct a customer to a purchase decision. It often starts with building awareness, providing value, and eventually leads to customer loyalty.

“If you've got anything to sell online or a lead you're trying to generate online, that's what ClickFunnels is for,” Dave said. “A sales funnel takes you through a customer journey, solving one problem after another with a product or service that you provide.”

One of the biggest challenges Dave finds digital businesses run into is cart abandonment. A visitor will land on our website, see a hundred different product options, and start adding products to their cart. When the visitor gets to the checkout and sees the price, instead of making a purchase, they leave their cart.

Dave said, “The whole idea behind a sales funnel is you solve one problem at a time.” Once one problem is solved, we can offer something else to solve additional problems. This will help prevent cart abandonment as customers don’t get overwhelmed by all the different options at once. Instead, they can effectively solve one problem at a time, making one purchase at a time so they don’t have to make such a large spending decision right at the beginning. Once we build their loyalty by providing free to low-cost value, we can eventually lead them to our higher-cost products.

Dave explains we can start by offering one-time offers (OTOs) such as books or events. For example, Russell, Dave’s business partner, has written three different books on the sales funnel. They offer this OTO product and then use an order form bump, an offer for a related product, to earn additional revenue. `

“An order form bump is very similar to if you were walking through checkout in a grocery store, and you pass by all the candy and all the magazines and everything else. It's the impulse buy. That's the idea behind an order form bump,” Dave said.

A sales funnel helps create a step-by-step process for the customer. Instead of having to know everything all at once, we start them with our free value, lead them to our OTOs and order form bumps, and then eventually to our main product or service.

Benefits of the Sales Funnel

As we build effective sales funnels, our business will see multiple benefits.

Dealing with a Customer’s Low Attention Span

The biggest problem a sales funnel solves is the attention deficit of consumers. People can get too distracted on a website, but a sales funnel aims targeted messages to our customers, solving one problem at a time. Consumers have very short attention spans, and if they can’t get an answer to what they’re looking for right away, they will move on.

“What happens is that people go to a website and they just get distracted too fast,” Dave said. “There's a ton of different things, like products, [and they have] no idea where to go. The whole idea behind the sales funnel is to get very targeted ads to drag people to it and then most importantly, once they're there, to solve exactly what they're trying to do.”

Establishing Relationships

Relationships are key. The better the relationship, the longer the customer continues to buy and if we can create a successful sales funnel, we can monitor our customers in each stage of their journey to find better ways to strengthen our relationships with them.

The first exchange with a customer is critical. When they make that first purchase decision, we need to follow up and build that relationship so they will continue to buy from us. “There's a huge difference between a lead list and a customer list,” Dave said. “I will take a customer list any day over a lead list. Because they've already exchanged that relationship, there's monetization. There's an investment in that relationship. And because of that, they're willing to go ahead and take a look at your next offer.”

We can follow up through email, text, Facebook Messenger, desktop notifications, or a voicemail broadcast. The goal with our sales funnel is to help our customers ascend our value ladder. The follow-up sequence helps us continually nurture our customer relationships to help them climb the value ladder.

“The whole idea behind that follow-up sequence is to reach out to [customers] on a frequent basis. Continue to nurture that relationship,” Dave said. “I think the real big thing we look at is this online community right now and the relationship is the most important part. People are very quick [to] bounce from one offer to another, and the key really comes down to how deep that relationship is. The better that relationship is, the more they may continue to buy products and services.”

Optimizing Conversion to Monetize

Sales funnels are a great way to optimize customer conversion to monetize.

A company I follow had a 0.15% conversion rate on their site. Most visitors that came to their site never bought anything, so they implemented an effective conversion funnel, and they increased their conversion rate to about 3%. If we can go from 0.15% to 3%, we’ve converted thousands of dollars more just by optimizing the conversion of the people that are already paying to get to our website.

In ClickFunnels, more than a thousand people have generated more than $1 million in their sales funnels because they have been able to increase customer conversion.

Dave gave the example of a designer. A graphic designer had three kids and realized she needed to be a full-time caretaker. She started looking for a way to be artistic during her free time and found a way to design sugar cookies with an airbrush. While it started as a hobby, friends and family began noticing her designs and started purchasing her cookies. Her kitchen became overcome with her orders, so she decided to create a business to teach people how to airbrush the cookies themselves. She used ClickFunnels to create a sales funnel and ended up having a revenue of over $1 million in just nine months.

Covering Customer Acquisition Costs

A sales funnel is a great tool to use to find ways to cover customer acquisition costs. Any time we are trying to build a business we need to look at the cost to acquire customers.

If we can create a breakeven funnel where the cost to acquire a customer is the same as the average cart value or the amount of money we bring in, then we’re getting free customers. The question is, how do we create a breakeven funnel?

We need to carefully watch our customers at each stage of the buyer’s journey in our sales funnel. With that data, we can look at how much money customers are willing to spend on their first purchase. If we can effectively use free value to direct our leads to make a purchase that covers the cost of our marketing or acquisition costs, we have a money machine. If we can put $1 in and get $3 out, we have created an endless marketing budget. We can also use an order bump form to increase the revenue as well.

“Most software companies will spend anywhere from $100 to $160 [to acquire one] customer,” Dave said. “We have to find a way of acquiring those customers for free. . . . One of the things we've seen is that for every dollar that comes in the front end if they're successful in their follow-up funnels and all their follow up sequences, we typically see anywhere from $15 to $17 on the back end.”

If we create a successful sales funnel that offers value at each step of the buyer's journey and successfully use follow-ups, our sales funnel can make our businesses extremely profitable.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

A sales funnel takes us through a customer’s journey, solving one problem after another with a product or service that we provide.
The biggest problem a sales funnel solves is the attention deficit of consumers. People can get too distracted on a website, but a sales funnel aims targeted messages to our customers, solving one problem at a time, so they don’t feel overwhelmed.
The follow-up sequence in our sales funnel helps us continually nurture our customer relationships to help them climb the value ladder.
Sales funnels are a great way to optimize customer conversion to monetize.
If we can effectively use free value to direct our leads to make a purchase that covers the cost of our marketing or customer acquisition costs, we have a money machine.

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about Dave or connect with him you can:

Connect with him on LinkedIn
Visit his company’s website at ClickFunnels.com, or go to SecretsTrilogy.com.
Join ClickFunnels today to get two months free.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Do you have a sales funnel? What benefits have you seen? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-use-sales-funnels-to-monetize-your-business/

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Would you like some advice from an entrepreneur who built a $2 billion real estate investment firm? As entrepreneurs, it is easy to become consumed in our work and schedules. Sometimes we get so focused on meeting a deadline or reaching a certain goal that we forget to focus on nurturing our important relationships.

In the last episode with Jeff Burningham, we discussed why entrepreneurs should never stop learning. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can maintain healthy business and personal relationships.

Make Time

If we want to maintain our relationships, whether personal or professional, we need to make time for that person. A study published by the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that it takes about 50 hours of time together for two people to move from acquaintances to friends, 90 hours to become more than simple friends, and over 200 hours before we will consider someone a close friend (Source: The University of Kansas).

When we make time for our customers, business partners, friends, and family, we strengthen our relationships. Spending time with someone shows that we care about them and what is going on in their lives.

When I asked Jeff what his biggest home run was in his career, he told me it was finding his partners at Peak Capital.

“It's all about the team; the best teams almost always win,” Jeff said. “I think the longevity of the partnership was the biggest home run in my career because not only has it certainly paid off financially over time but more importantly, it's paid off interpersonally and personally, as we have fun together and grow businesses together.”

Jeff built very strong relationships with his business partners, and because he was able to do this, his company became very successful. However, if Jeff hadn’t put the time into building those relationships, his company could have potentially had a very different outcome.

When I asked Jeff what his biggest failure was, he said it is being too focused on the end prize, and not spending enough time developing relationships.

“I'm very type A, driven by results, driven by outcomes. And that's what my mistake has been. I'm too often driven by outcomes when, really, I think the outcome we really want [to focus on] is our close, intimate relationships,” Jeff said.

Jeff explained that there have been times when he may have neglected his close relationships or he wasn’t as empathetic as he could have been, something which can really hurt relationships. This can be caused when we are too focused on the grand prize such as profit. Instead, we need to remember that without relationships, we wouldn’t get anywhere. We need relationships with our customers if we are going to sell, we need relationships with our partners if we’re going to stay organized and energized, and we need relationships with our friends and family if we’re going to stay positive and happy.

“Sometimes I lose perspective,” Jeff said. “What really matters in the end [is] the relationships that we have.” In order to build these strong relationships that are the backbone of our businesses, we need to take the time to develop them. This can mean prioritizing a coffee date with a partner over finishing a business report or taking the night off to spend it with family, even when we have a list of 100 things to get done by the end of the week.

Be Patient and Understanding

We have to remember to be patient with everyone in our lives. Often stress and pressure can build up until the thing that breaks the camel’s back is a small and insignificant thing someone close to us says. They end up getting the worst of it as we let everything affecting us, come out on them. We need to be patient with the weaknesses of others and be patient during disagreements.

“What I wish we had more of is the wisdom, the patience, [and] the foresight to understand we're all flawed characters,” Jeff said. “We're all extraordinary in some ways. We're all very ordinary in other ways. . . . There's a lot more that binds us together, and that makes us similar in our human experience than what makes us different.”

In our professional relationships, patience is essential. An employee may repeat the same mistake while they’re learning or a partner may take more time to complete their part of a project than we take. If we aren’t patient and lose our temper, it can permanently damage a relationship. Sometimes we may be unable to recover. When we are lacking patience with those we work with, Jeff urges us to remember that we are all flawed. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and if we expect others to be patient with us as we work on our weaknesses, we should be patient with others as they work on theirs.

Our strengths and weaknesses often go hand in hand. It’s like picking up a stick, you have to pick up both sides. The two sides of the stick are a superpower and a weakness. God gives us strengths so we can change the world, but with every strength, there is an associated weakness which gives us humility and the chance to focus on improving and overcoming it. Our weaknesses not only test our patience with others but also our patience with ourselves.

Even if we vote for different people and have opposing political views, we still have a lot more in common than we do in differences. “Let's support each other . . . and endlessly give each other grace and mercy in places where we don't see eye to eye,” Jeff said.

Two people can never agree 100% of the time. We may disagree with our business partner on the best marketing strategy or argue about parenting methods. However, even if we have disagreements, if we can be patient and understanding, there are ways to communicate and work through conflicts without damaging a relationship.

Love One Another

My wife and I have a core philosophy, and that core philosophy is “just love”. As we come into conflict in a relationship or a challenge with an employer or co-worker, 99% of the time when I don't know what to do, the answer to that problem or that challenge is just to “just love” them. Choose kindness. Choose love. Choose compassion. Choose the benefit of the doubt.

Billy Cox, an American bassist, said, “Leadership today is based on relationships built with trust, hope, love, and encouragement.” In order to be a successful leader in our businesses, we need to lead with love. We should treat each employee with respect and value their opinions like we would our own.

If we don’t show love in our relationships, they will likely dwindle and burn out. Despite all the work we have to do in such a little amount of time, relationships should be our top priority. When our employee has an idea, we should listen. When our family eats dinner, we should sit with them whenever possible. When our partner disagrees with us, we should do our best to understand them and love them.

As we spend quality time with those around us and show patience, understanding, and love, we will be able to maintain and grow our professional and personal relationships better even with the workload of an entrepreneur.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeff for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

If we want to maintain and grow our relationships, whether personal or professional, we need to make time for that person.
We need to be patient with the weaknesses of others and be patient during disagreements. A moment of lost patience can have permanently damaging effects on our relationships.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and if we expect others to be patient with us as we work on our weaknesses, we should be patient with others as they work on theirs.
As we come into conflict in a relationship, 99% of the time the answer to that problem or that challenge is just to love them.

Connect with Jeff

If you want to learn more about Jeff or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or Twitter, or visit his company’s website at PeakCapitalPartners.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you maintain your personal and professional relationships as an entrepreneur? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-maintain-healthy-relationships-as-an-entrepreneur/

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One of the most essential parts of our entrepreneurial journey is the ability to continually learn. We should never stop learning. If we stop learning, we stop growing.

Sir Richard Branson, a business magnate, investor, and author, said, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” If we can learn from great books and courses, our mistakes and successes, our mentors, our critics, and our customers, we will have the ability to continually find success. The worst thing we can do as entrepreneurs is to think we know everything and stop learning.

Jeff Burningham is a serial entrepreneur who has founded some very successful businesses in his career and has been on over 10 start-up boards. He is also the founder and chairman of Peak Capital Partners, a $2 billion real estate investment firm, which was named the second fastest-growing company in Utah and one of the 500 fastest privately held companies in the United States by Inc. Magazine.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Jeff’s career and how his passion for learning helped him get to where he is today.

A Passion for Learning

Brian Herbert, an American author, said, “The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.”

We should always be growing and progressing, and the only way we can do this is by learning. From a young age, Jeff developed a passion for learning and created a growth mindset. Each life experience he went through, he found a lesson to learn. However, this is often easier said than done.

Learning is a choice. We should actively search for new opportunities for growth if we want to constantly progress. There are so many different ways and things to learn we could easily miss if we aren’t paying attention. We can learn skills, history, spiritual lessons, or life habits. We can learn by reading books, listening to stories, or watching the examples of mentors. We can even learn from the massive glaciers in Alaska.

Jeff went heli-skiing in Alaska and learned a new skill. While he stood on the massive mountain, watching the northern lights flicker over the horizon, he learned perspective.

We can learn from everything around us if we are looking. Some of the best and hardest ways to learn are through trial and error. Making mistakes is hard and unfortunately, guaranteed. What determines our success is not the intensity of the mistake, but the way we react to it. If we can look at our challenges and failures as opportunities to learn, we will have much more success in our businesses and in our lives.

Here are a few examples of experiences Jeff took as an opportunity for new insights, knowledge, and growth.

Relationships

Over the course of his career, Jeff learned that relationships matter most.

“It's about relationships,” Jeff said. “We often focus on results or things we want to get done and sometimes those are important, but really, at the end of the day, the result we really want are the relationships, and whether that's an MBA program, or a business, or a family, or a community, those relationships are what matter most.”

When Jeff was about 12 or 13 years old, he started a carpet-cleaning business. His parents bought him a carpet cleaner so he could start cleaning the carpets at school, the dentist’s office, and churches. He eventually handed on his business to his little brother, but he said this first step on his entrepreneurial journey taught him some of the greatest lessons.

“We don't get there alone; we almost always need help, whether it's through investors or mentors or partners or employees,” Jeff said. “Without my mom and dad . . . I wouldn't have been able to make it.”

While we may have the skills necessary to start a business by ourselves, we will have a much greater capacity for success when we get the help of others. Jeff learned this lesson from his parents and re-learned it again with his mentors, partners, and investors. When we focus on relationships, whether it be with our customers or partners, success and profit will come naturally.

Exit Transactions

Jeff learned a lot from his first scalable business. He started Mind Wire, a technology company, as an undergrad at BYU, and he won the BYU Business Plan Competition in 2001. He later sold his business to a publicly-traded company, learning a few lessons in the process.

Jeff and his partner had scaled their business up to about 20 employees and created a great team of people. When he sold the company and made that transaction, he learned that watching his small company get absorbed by a bigger company was harder than he thought. He also stayed with the publicly-traded company for about two years until he left to open his own office.

“I learned a lot about transactions [in] that early sale,” Jeff said. “I also learned that it was hard for me to work for someone else. It wasn't motivating to me to follow someone else's vision. I always like to set the vision, set the plan, set the course within my team.”

By selling his company, Jeff learned new ways to negotiate with others, and also learned something about himself. He learned that he doesn’t work great under someone else. He learned he works better when he can implement his own ideas and visions with a team.

Partnerships

After Jeff left the publicly traded company, he teamed up with two of his friends to create Peak Capital Partners. There were times when they weren’t sure if they would make it as they had about two to three years of no revenue. However, as they continued to work hard and pursue their vision, they turned it around. Since then, they have been one of the fastest-growing businesses in Utah for the last 5-10 years and have scaled their business to about 800 employees.

During his time with Peak Capital Partners, Jeff continually looked for new opportunities to learn. He first learned to never give up. It took Jeff two to three years to earn a profit, but because he put in the hard work and effort, he was able to turn our business around and become extremely successful.

We also need to be very intentional about who we choose to partner with. “I've learned the value of good partners,” Jeff said. “Don't ever get a partner that doesn't have your same baseline ethics or morals, and I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about honesty, integrity, work ethic, etc. Find partners that see the same way you do in that regard. Also, get partners . . . that complement your weaknesses. Be self-aware. Know where you're strong, know where you're weaker, and get partners that can complement your weaknesses.”

As we constantly seek new ways to learn and implement what we learn, we will find that our chances of success will increase. Because Jeff was able to learn from his experience and the experience of others, he found strategies that work in a business and others that don’t, and that helped him in his future ventures.

“I really love the early stages [of a business],” Jeff said. “There's a lot of risks. It's really hard, but I find it to be . . . such a rich time of learning. And so I love those first five years. I love the startup.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeff for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We should never stop learning. If we stop learning, we stop growing.
Learning is a choice. We should actively search for new opportunities for growth if we want to constantly progress.
Our businesses should be about relationships. While we may have the skills necessary to start a business by ourselves, we will have a much greater capacity for success when we get the help of others.
It might take two to three years to earn a profit, but if we put in the work and effort, we can turn our business around and become extremely successful.
We should be intentional about who we choose to partner with. Our partners should have similar values as us and should complement our strengths and weaknesses.

Connect with Jeff

If you want to learn more about Jeff or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or Twitter, or visit his company’s website at PeakCapitalPartners.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What are the most important lessons have you learned during your career? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/158-why-entrepreneurs-should-never-stop-learning/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to live a life with no regrets.

If your life flashed before your eyes, would you have any regrets?

In a 2012 sermon, “Of Regrets and Resolutions,” Dieter Uchtdorf, a German aviator, airline executive, and religious leader, explained that a nurse who cares for the terminally ill often asks her patients a simple question as they prepare to leave this life: “Do you have any regrets?”

“Being so close to that final day of mortality often gives clarity to thought and provides insight and perspective,” Uchtdorf said. “So when these people were asked about their regrets, they opened their hearts. They reflected about what they would change if only they could turn back the clock.”

If we could turn back the clock, what would we change? How would we be different? As entrepreneurs, we have to make constant decisions. Sometimes, we may make choices we regret. For example, this week I thought of some team members that I let go of over the years, and a business partnership that didn’t end well, and what I could have done better in those situations.

A Near-Death Experience

Marshall Goldsmith, an American executive leadership coach, and author, shared his near-death experience on his website, MarshallGoldsmith.com. He had been on a flight to Santa Barbara when the plane suddenly took an “enormous” dip.

“We have a minor problem,” Goldsmith recalled the pilot announces. “The landing gear isn’t working. We are going to circle the airport until we run out of fuel so we can land safely with the wheels up.”

Goldsmith explained he was terrified for his life. The moment seemed to last forever, giving him a chance to reflect. He asked himself, “What do I regret?”

“The only answer I could come up with was that I had never adequately thanked the many people who had been good to me in my life. I told myself, ‘If I ever get back down on the ground safely, I will thank these people,’” Goldsmith wrote.

After the plane landed safely, Goldsmith traveled to his hotel and started writing thank-you notes to the people he was grateful for in his life. After he had reflected on his regrets, he immediately took action and made a change. Now, he makes a conscious effort to be grateful for everyone around him, especially in his business.

“That was the moment I became a connoisseur of gratitude, a virtuoso at thanking. I’m always thanking people now in my emails, letters, seminars, and life. The last thing I say on most phone calls is not ‘goodbye’ but ‘thank you,’” Goldsmith wrote.

If we were to have a similar experience, what would we regret? What lesson could we learn? What would we want to do better? What changes would we make? Not only does this lesson apply to our lives, but also to our businesses. Goldsmith was able to reflect on his regrets in his business, and then make a change by constantly being grateful for his customers, clients, and employees.

5 Ways to Overcome Regrets

As entrepreneurs who are humans, we will make a lot of mistakes and wrong choices. It is inevitable. We may lose a client, launch a marketing campaign that fails, or release a product no one likes. However, we don’t have to live in regret. How do we get to the point where, when someone asks us if we have any regrets, we can confidently say no?

Here are five steps we can take to overcome our regrets.

Reflect

Sometimes we may not know what we will regret in the future as we live our present lives. In order to make changes, we first need to recognize what changes we want to make. We can do this by setting aside time to reflect.

Goldsmith didn’t realize he had regrets until he had a near-death experience. He didn’t realize he lacked gratitude for the people he worked with until he was forced to assess his life. Even though a near-death experience can provide meaningful insights about ourselves, we don’t need to have one to determine what changes we should make in our lives now. We simply need to take the time to reflect on what we wish we were doing better.

Margaret J. Wheatley, an American writer, teacher, speaker, and management consultant, said, “Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”

We should reflect on our leadership abilities. Are we kind? Do we appreciate our employees? We should reflect on our business processes. Is there a step we can take out? Are we missing something? When we set aside time to reflect, we can stop bad habits and prevent regrets in the future.

Accept

When we make a wrong choice, we need to accept it. We shouldn’t continue to feel guilty over a mistake we made years ago. We need to accept the fact that everyone makes mistakes. Uchtdorf said a common regret many people have is, “I wish I had let myself be happier.” We shouldn’t let our shortcomings, mistakes, or failures ruin our chance to be happy or successful.

Steve Maraboli, a speaker, best-selling author, and behavioral science academic, said, “We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.”

Once we accept that we will make wrong choices and mistakes in our lives, it will be easier to forgive ourselves and move on, continuing on the path to success.

Apologize

If we have hurt someone else, we need to apologize. In our businesses, this could mean acknowledging poor leadership skills and making a promise to do better for our employees or partners.

As entrepreneurs, we often fall into leadership positions and have to spend most of our time working with others. As we run a business, we need to make sure we aren’t leaving our relationships at the bottom of our priority list. One common thing we need to apologize for in the workplace is neglecting our relationships. If we don’t take the time to really build our relationships and apologize for our past mistakes, our workplace won’t run as efficiently or be as successful.

Uchtdorf explained that a common mistake we make is ignoring the people around us because we are too consumed with our projects. He said, “Isn’t it true that we often get so busy?” Uchtdorf said. “And, sad to say, we even wear our business as a badge of honor, as though being busy, by itself, was an accomplishment or sign of a superior life. Is it? I think of our Lord and Exemplar, Jesus Christ, and His short life among the people of Galilee and Jerusalem. I have tried to imagine Him bustling between meetings or multitasking to get a list of urgent things accomplished. I can’t see it.”

When we focus on all of the tasks we need to accomplish, it can be easy to forget about being a human and working with others. When this happens, we need to take the time to apologize. As we start apologizing for our mistakes, we will build better relationships with our employees, partners, and customers. Once we have apologized we can begin to make amends.

Uchtdorf continued, “I see the compassionate and caring Son of God purposefully living each day. When He interacted with those around Him, they felt important and loved. He knew the infinite value of the people He met. He blessed them, ministered to them. He lifted them up, healed them. He gave them the precious gift of His time.” When we admit mistakes and apologize to those around us for things even as small as being too busy, we will begin to have fewer regrets in our lives.

Learn & Improve

The more we see our mistakes as learning opportunities and chances for improvement, the less regret we will have. After Goldsmith reflected on his regrets, he decided to learn from them and find a way to improve. As we do this in our businesses, our mistakes will no longer be failures, but a sign we are moving forward to reaching our full potential.

A common regret many people have is, “I wish I had lived up to my potential.” During our life on earth, we are meant to grow and learn. If we can do this, we will have less to regret.

“Our Heavenly Father sees our real potential,” Uchtdorf said. “He knows things about us that we do not know ourselves. He prompts us during our lifetime to fulfill the measure of our creation, to live a good life, and to return to His presence.” He continued, “Let us resolve to follow the Savior and work with diligence to become the person we were designed to become. Let us listen to and obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit. As we do so, Heavenly Father will reveal to us things we never knew about ourselves. He will illuminate the path ahead and open our eyes to see our unknown and perhaps unimagined talents.”

As we open our minds and hearts to learn new things and understand what God wants of us, we will become better people. In our businesses, we should constantly have the mindset of growth. We want to learn from our mistakes and regrets so we can improve.

Change

After we have recognized the regrets we have or could have in the future, we need to make changes. We need to take what we have learned and begin to apply it in our lives. We can do this by making resolutions and goals to improve.

Uchtdorf explained, “The more we devote ourselves to the pursuit of holiness and happiness, the less likely we will be on a path to regrets. The more we rely on the Savior’s grace, the more we will feel that we are on the track our Father in Heaven has intended for us.”

As we strive to do better in our businesses, as we reflect, accept, apologize, learn, and make changes, we will begin to live a life free of regret. We will get to the point where we can say “no” when we are asked, “Do you have any regrets?”

“[W]e should not be like the boy who dipped his toe in the water and then claimed he went swimming. As sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, we are capable of so much more. For that, good intentions are not enough. We must do. Even more important, we must become what Heavenly Father wants us to be.”

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Sometimes we may not know what we will regret in the future as we live our present lives. When we set aside time to reflect, we can stop bad habits and prevent future regrets we will have with our businesses.
Everyone makes mistakes. Once we accept that we will make wrong choices, it will be easier to forgive ourselves and move on, continuing on the path to success.
When we focus on all of the tasks we need to accomplish, it can be easy to forget about being a human and working with others. If we realize this is something we are doing, we need to take the time to apologize.
The more we see our mistakes as learning opportunities and chances for improvement, the less regret we will have.
After we have recognized the regrets we have or could have in the future, we need to make a change so we can live a life without regrets.

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Welcome back to another episode with Matt Bailey. In the last episode, we discussed strategies to chase real profits and not just vanity numbers. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss some of the concepts Matt teaches us how to teach new dogs old tricks, including knowing emotional needs, applying the “mom test”, not muddying the water, removing friction, and acquiring the best customers.

The Need Behind the Need

One day, Matt went to take his daughter shopping for shoes. They got to the store and there were 200 different kinds of Converse, which Matt wasn’t expecting. He told his daughter to go look around, meanwhile, he started checking his email, thinking she would just be a few minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, Matt started looking for his daughter. He found her taking pictures of about six different pairs of shoes and sending the pictures to her friends. Suddenly Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs popped into Matt’s brain. He realized she was looking for social validation. The immediate physical need was the shoes, but the need behind it was social validation.

Many times we position our product or our service as, “Hey, this will help you.” But our customers may think, “Help me do what?” We need to think about what emotional satisfaction we're providing.

When Matt had his agency, he didn’t just tell clients that he would get them rankings or increase their sales. Instead, he would ask, “If I improve your sales by 30%, what does that enable you to do?” By asking this, Matt is shifting from selling something like rankings to selling the ability to take a vacation or hire someone new to help with the workload. It becomes a deeper need, and we begin to persuade our customers at an emotional level. Matt said, “Everyone's selling [higher rankings]. What I'm selling you is more time, more money, and what are you going to do with it. That changes everything.”

When Matt was working for a printing software company, they were trying to sell to the New York Times. The decision-maker told him, “The software that you guys have checked all the boxes. Logically, you are the best choice, and you'll hear from me in the next couple of days.”

Matt went home excited, already thinking about how he would spend the commission. A week went by and he didn't hear anything. The whole company was waiting in anticipation. Eventually, Matt gave the decision-maker a call, and he told Matt, “I'm so sorry. I hate to tell you this, but no one ever got fired staying with the legacy provider.” He was afraid of going with Matt’s startup company, so he was going with the safe option, a company that was already established in the industry.

Again, Matt realized that this was about a deeper need. While his startup was good, they were only selling on organizational benefits, but their competitor was selling job security.

We need to know our customers well enough to know the need behind the need. What is it that they really want? What is our product or service going to do for them on an emotional level? This is what we should be focusing on. When we sell to the emotional need, it creates an emotional connection with our customers that our competitors won’t have.

Keyword Research

Many companies do keyword research about their company, their brand name, or their product. The problem with that is people don’t always search with a product in mind; they search with a need. So we should be asking, “What need does our product or service fill,” and “What are the needs that people have?”

Keyword research helps us understand the needs people have and how they describe those needs. What are the trigger words? What are the emotional words? What are the words that signify not only intent but also the intent to purchase to make a decision? Are they comparing products right now? Are they in the early stage where they're using general keywords, or are they mid-stage where they're now defining what type of solution they want?

To research keywords, we need to be asking questions like this in order to see things from the customer’s point of view and better position our products and services so they can find them on their journey.

Once we know the answers to these kinds of questions, it should be guiding our content and the customer’s experience on our website. Doing this can help us build rapport and trust because we’ll be answering the right questions for our audience.

Don’t Muddy the Water

When we’ve got someone lined up to sign or someone who’s ready to buy, it can be hard to stop selling. We want to throw more services or products their way that we think they’ll want. When Matt was working for a software company, they would often work in groups of two salespeople. They had a code phrase to let the other person know when they were doing this: “Stop muddying the water.”

Matt said we need to stop muddying the water digitally. “I equate that to what we do on our websites. When someone's . . . looking for information and they're ready to fill out that lead form, what's the worst thing we could do? Send them a pop-up, ask them for more information, make 20 required fields, [etc.]. We do the same thing on our website when we make it difficult for our audience to engage or take action. We put obstacles, we put friction in their path, which prevents them from doing what they want to do.”

How to Remove Friction: The Mom Test

How do we remove this unwanted friction? Matt suggested what he calls the Mom Test. When he had his agency, he would pay his mom, who wasn’t very tech-savvy, to test their websites.

Matt said, “I want someone who doesn't know what to expect. I want someone who's not familiar, who's not going to try and hammer away at this because that's not reality. I want someone who, when I give them a task . . . is going to be completely honest about what they think, who's going to run into obstacles and not be sure what to do.”

Matt said his mom identified so many friction points, making his clients millions of dollars. She would identify something, they would change it, and then they’d seen a dramatic change in conversion rates. “That's the easiest and most inexpensive way to remove friction on a website,” he said.

Because of this kind of testing, Matt got very good at identifying those friction points. He had a well-known brand come to him because they were having trouble. Their conversion rate was only 0.01%. Matt looked at their checkout page and right away identified five things they needed to change. After working with Matt and his team, the company’s conversion rate went from 0.01% to 3.5%, an increase of 30 times and $30 million a quarter. An important thing to remember with this is the company was already paying for those visitors to come to the site.

We can all find someone in our lives who isn’t particularly tech-savvy to help us with things like this. All we need to do is have them sit down in front of a computer and record them trying to get through the process. Once we fix those things, we should do this, again and again, to eliminate as many of those friction points as possible.

The “Best” Customers

Who are our best customers? Matt said it depends on how we define “best”. A stakeholder and a marketing director might look at it differently. If we’re looking at it from a financial standpoint, our best customers are the ones that spend the most money with us.

Matt said his best customers are the ones who might not spend the most, but they have been with him the longest, refer new business to him, and he loves working with them. “If they were to call and ask me to do anything beyond the scope of our agreement, I would do it because I love them; we have a great relationship,” Matt said.

Typically, customers will follow the 80/20 rule. 20% of our customers are our best customers, and they're responsible for 80% of our business. Matt said, “Find out who your best customers are and define what you mean by “best”, because when you focus on the best, then what you're logically going to do is produce more of that kind of customer.”

When we treat these customers well, it will automatically lead to more business. They will want to tell their friends and associates about us and recommend our services to them.

These customers will also be more likely to work with us in tough spots. During the crash in 2008, this was one of the things that helped Matt’s business survive. When his best customers called, telling him they had to cut somewhere, Matt was able to sit down with them, look at the numbers, and discuss how this would really affect their business. Many hadn’t thought of that and realized they couldn’t afford to lose him.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Matt for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We can identify what our customers need emotionally and communicate how we can help them with that need.
We can research keywords from our customers' point of view, so we can help them find our products or services easier.
We must know when to stop selling and muddying the waters with our potential customers.
We would apply the “mom test” to remove the friction from our business. Friction can be removed on our website by having someone who isn’t involved in the business test it.
We should analyze and identify our best customers. When we find who our best customers are, we can focus on them and it will lead to finding more of those kinds of customers.

Connect with Matt

If you want to learn more about Matt or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or check out SiteLogicMarketing.com to learn more.

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Matt Bailey is a best-selling author. He's written several books such as Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day, Wired to be Wowed, and Teach New Dogs Old Tricks. He's also the host of the Endless Coffee Cup podcast.

Matt is a marketing expert, trainer, and speaker on digital marketing strategy. Matt is a digital marketing instructor for the Direct Marketing Association and an instructor for LinkedIn Learning. His training content and curriculum can also be found at Rutgers University, Duke University, Purdue, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and many other places. ‘

In today’s episode, Matt Bailey will share some of his strategies for chasing real profit and not meaningless vanity numbers. He will share strategies about asking the right questions and listening. We’ll also discuss diversifying our revenue streams, learning from our failures, and the tectonic shift that’s happening with Google and third-party cookies.

Asking the Right Questions

Matt is very passionate about digital and media literacy, or the ability to understand the tools we're using and to understand bias in information. This was something Matt learned during his journey.

Matt started off studying journalism, but he knew that wasn’t what he wanted to do, so he went into real estate. He realized there was a way to promote large commercial properties, websites. Two years later, his websites were getting about 200 leads a month.

He learned coding, SEO, link building, and PR doing all these things for himself. He started learning analytics, which led him to ask why his leads from searches weren’t turning into sales. “That changed my whole perspective about what I was doing, how I was doing it, and following the profit rather than following the big numbers because if I had to just ask what's generating the most leads, I would have answered that question, but it was the wrong question,” Matt said.

Matt was getting more than 80% of his leads through search rankings, but none of them turned into sales. He poured through his data spreadsheets, trying to figure out where his leads were going wrong and where his sales were coming from. He found that his sales were coming from articles he had published on real estate sites where there were links back to his site. People were reading those articles, clicking the links, and registering on his website. Those people accounted for only 4% of his traffic but 80% of his sales.

If Matt hadn’t asked the right questions, he never would have discovered the right group of people to focus on. He would have wasted time and money trying to turn the other 96% of his traffic into sales instead of growing that 4% that already made up 80% of his sales. Questions that drive us to understand our data can help us understand our business and how to make it more profitable.

Ask, Listen, Understand

Matt said some of the best people he has worked with have been able to do this: asking greeting questions and then connecting them to business acumen. Asking the right questions leads to understanding how a business makes money, what the expenses are, what takes away from profitability, what’s the business model, how does it functions, etc.

A key part of this process is listening. I feel like the more listening I do, the smarter I am. Listening is one of the most powerful ways to monetize because we can then position our product to sell, we can understand what the needs are, we can customize and personalize based upon it, and we can address true concerns.

Matt shared a survey he had heard about that was run during COVID-19 about virtual selling and B2B sellers. When interviewed, salespeople were saying, “I have a hard time connecting with customers. They're not as attentive, and it's a more difficult sell because of COVID-19.” However, when they interviewed buyers or people in the lead sales funnel, their response was, “I'm not being listened to. They don't really understand what I need.”

In Matt’s early days of sales, they used to play a game when they went to sales meetings: whoever talked the most lost. “If you talk the most, that means you dominated the meeting, and the customer did not talk and express what they needed. You were trying to sell the whole time and you didn't listen,” Matt said.

We should be listening to what our customers need. We should also be listening to our partners, those on our team, and our employees because they often have great ideas that we may not have thought of.

Diversifying and Creating Multiple Income Streams

Matt also learned the value of making money in different ways. When he was in real estate, other agents started contacting him, asking him to put their properties on his site because it was getting a lot of traffic.

“That taught me very early [that] I can make money through many other ways,” Matt said. “Putting up a website and [having] other people pay you to put their stuff on it, that takes very little work at all. . . . One of those things I learned is that with the internet, with all these things, there are many different ways to develop multiple income streams.”

Are there different ways we could be diversifying our revenue streams? Sometimes we put ourselves in boxes, saying, “This is the way it’s always been done, so that’s the way I have to do it.” But that’s not true. Experimenting and thinking outside that box may lead us to more success.

We can ask our customers what other needs they have or what other products or services they would be interested in. For example, a business that sells food may find out from their customers that they’re interested in recipes they can use to cook their food.

We can also ask ourselves what our competitors have done to expand their revenue streams, and we can look to businesses outside our industry as well to see how they have brought in revenue in different ways, and then apply those lessons to our industry and business.

Learning from Failures

Whenever we fail or make mistakes, it can damage us and our confidence, but Matt likes to look at his past failures as learning experiences.

He was let go three times from three different jobs because of financial cutbacks. It was hard because those organizations were telling him they didn’t need him. “It's funny because I look back on that now as the best thing that ever could have happened,” Matt said.

From that experience, he realized he is more secure now working for himself on something he built and has control over than working for a Fortune 500 company. He said, “It's really a lot of things that you learn from that just really turn you into who you are.”

When we’re looking back at our past mistakes, instead of being ashamed we can ask questions like, “What did I do wrong?” and “What can I do differently next time?” to help us learn from our mistakes.

Tectonic Shift: Google and Third-Party Cookies

When I asked Matt what the biggest tectonic shift he’s seeing is, he said it is the shift Google is making with third-party cookies. Google is eliminating third-party cookies, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because these third-party cookies have been responsible for billions of dollars of ad fraud.

Google is consolidating the total ad revenue being spent online. Matt said, “If you want to reach a certain audience, you've got to go through Google. And the way Google's doing it is they're making themselves the owner of all first-party data of anyone who has a Google account.” It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Matt for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We should be asking great questions that will give us actionable answers to grow our business.
By asking, listening, and understanding our customers we will understand our business better, know what our customers truly need, and be able to make much better, informed decisions.
There are many ways to create diversified revenue streams. Being open to new ideas and thinking outside the box can help us grow our revenue, and give our business more stability.
We should see our failures as opportunities to learn and grow. They are necessary steps along our path to success.

Connect with Matt

If you want to learn more about Matt or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or check out SiteLogicMarketing.com to learn more.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How are you chasing numbers instead of profits, and what can you do differently to more successfully chase profits? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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In the last episode with Kate Toon, we discussed how to build a digital business from scratch by growing and leveraging a community. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss some key principles from Kate’s book Confessions of a Misfit Entrepreneur and several ways we can provide value to our customers.

Finding Our Superpowers

Part of our entrepreneurial journey should include discovering our superpowers. What are we the best at? If we want to provide value to our customers, we need to figure out what we are good at. What value can we offer? As we discover our superpowers, we will begin to resonate with our audience.

“It's really good to identify what your individual superpowers are rather than trying to fit the mold of what society tells you have to be, the superpowers [you must have] to be a great business human,” Kate said.

As we search for our unique superpowers, we can look for help from the people close to us. We may not be the best judge of our own superpowers. Often, the way we perceive ourselves is different from the way others perceive us. Kate suggests we ask our friends and family how they would describe us in two or three words. This can help us discover talents and abilities we may not have realized we had.

When we discover what we are good at, we will also have more knowledge about our weaknesses. “Sometimes our superpowers are also our kryptonite. They work both ways. My honesty is great, you're always going to get a straight answer from me, but sometimes my honesty can be a bit brutal, and people aren't going to like that. But it's who I am, and I have to own it,” Kate said.

In my career, someone taught me that our strengths and weaknesses are like a stick. When we pick up a stick, we pick up both sides. One side of that stick is our superpower, it's our talent, it's the way we are going to change the world and make our greatest contribution. And the other side of the stick is our weakness. For example, we might have a salesperson that's really good at relationships and communicating, but on the other hand, they're just not as a detail orientated and we'd never have them manage the books.

Every superpower has an associated weakness, just like Superman has his kryptonite. We as entrepreneurs may judge ourselves based upon our weaknesses. However, we should focus on our individual strengths and use them to our advantage. We can also find other people to help bring the skills and talents we lack. It takes a village to run a business. Sometimes we just need to find that business partner or employee who can have strengths to make up for our weaknesses.

Navigating the business world is difficult. The only real way we can successfully make it through is by building our confidence. We need to recognize our strengths and use them to add value, while also recognizing our weaknesses to improve them. As we focus on our strengths and get help with our weaknesses, our chances of success and monetization will increase.

The Road Map

Kate doesn’t use a business plan. Instead, she creates micro goals and a rough roadmap of the direction she wants to go.

We don’t need to create an entire business plan to have a successful business, but we do need to have the main goal. We need to determine who we are, what we stand for, what our values are, and how we can use our strengths to help others. Once we have our main goal and direction in mind, we can sketch a rough road map of where we want to be in a year, five years, or 10 years. However, we don’t need to plan out every single step of the way from the beginning.

Following this philosophy, major business plan competitions have switched to business model competitions.

Once we know our goal, we can begin building our website. This should be a very strong foundation for our customers to always go back to when they have a problem or question. Then, our goals can lead to processing, pricing, branding, and eventually marketing. We can also start to bring in people to fill in the gaps of our weaknesses.

We don’t need to have a set-in-stone plan. We need to be flexible, and if we have a strict business plan we are determined to follow, it may cause us to get stuck. Instead of a firm plan, we can create a road map with different possible routes and paths to take. When we are moving towards our main goal, it doesn’t matter how we get there, as long as we do.

10 Ways to Provide Value to Our Customers

In Kate’s book, she discusses her value ladder. The first step is for her customers to join her Facebook community. This is a very low barrier to entry as it requires no commitment or cost while providing the value of building a network and gaining access to content. All customers have to do is provide an email. Some of the content at the base of the ladder includes her podcast, blog posts, events, and content in Clubhouse. The goal of this content is to raise awareness about her business and expand her reach.

At the next step of the ladder, Kate offers additional free value through the customers’ emails. Customers can get access to free online courses, resources, and a workbook. Once her customers are enticed by the free value and continue to climb the value ladder, the value being offered increases with the cost. Kate can attach a price to her content since it is becoming more valuable to her customers.

She begins with a low-cost online course on SEO that is about $87 and eventually leads to a master class for about $1500. These masterclasses can also lead to membership and coaching sessions which generate recurring revenue.

Here at 10 ways, Kate provides value to her customers:

Community
Blog posts
Podcast
Events
Clubhouse
Workbooks
Online courses
Reviews
Coaching
Memberships

At each step of the ladder, Kate provides new value. It starts with little to no cost or commitment and eventually moves to the content of higher value with a higher cost or time commitment such as a monthly subscription. The value ladder works like a funnel, with Kate’s ultimate end goal being to get people to sign up for the membership site so she can generate recurring revenue.

However, with memberships, we have to be careful to avoid overloading and overwhelming our customers with content. “Memberships are about transformation,” Kate said. “They're about results. People want to see that they're moving forward and making changes. And content actually overwhelms people, because they're like, ‘Wow, I'm not getting through all this content, therefore I'm not getting the value from this membership that I should, so I'm going to leave.’”

Instead of including limitless content in her memberships, Kate works with a “less is more” approach. They include a couple of master classes each month on topics groups vote for. Instead of having 100 master classes to look at in one month, customers are introduced to two or three new classes each month. She also provides training each month, reviews, and a one-hour coaching session.

“[A membership program] is not about a lot of content, but it's trying to give people a personal experience as much as possible,” Kate said. “I think a good membership is about education, but it's really about support, community, . . . and coaching.”

One of the main goals with Kate’s value ladder is to get customers to subscribe and provide her with recurring revenue streams. Recurring revenue is a security measure. While Kate makes a good amount of money from her online courses, it’s a one-time purchase. What happens if she launches a course that fails?

“[Recurring revenue] is just about that security. It means I can make more intelligent decisions, I can afford to have a team, [and] I can make promises to my team about their work and how long they're going to be around for,” Kate said. “It means I can sleep at night.”

As we find our superpowers, sketch out a rough roadmap, and create a value ladder for our customers, we will begin to find success in our businesses.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kate for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We should seek to discover our superpowers. If we want to provide value to our customers, we need to figure out what we are really good at.
Every superpower has an associated weakness. Sometimes we may need to find a business partner or employee who has strengths to make up for our weaknesses.
We don’t need to create an entire business plan to have a successful business, but we do need to have the main goal or a business model.
We can create a value ladder with multiple different types of content to give our customers to guide them towards a purchase decision.
Recurring revenue gives our business security.

Connect with Kate

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kate or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at KateToon.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you provide value to your customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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How can we turn our small idea into a successful business with a reliable income? In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to build a digital business from scratch through an online community.

Kate Toon is an award-winning businesswoman and SEO strategist who has helped more than 10,000 businesses demystify digital marketing, grapple with the Google beast, and grow their success. She was named the Business Woman of the Year at the National My Business Awards, and she is also the author of Confessions of a Misfit Entrepreneur and the host of the Kate Toon Podcast and the Hot Copy Podcast. While Kate’s digital business is very successful now, she had to start from scratch and build her way to success. In her journey, one of the first things she did was build an online community.

Build a Community

One of the first steps we should take when starting a digital business is to build a community.

“My whole business has been built on creating what some people would call a tribe. I like to think of it as a Viking Horde—a big horde of people . . . who are there for you and who support you through your business journey. They'll be the first to listen to your podcast and the first to buy your products,” Kate said. “Community is really the foundation of everything I do.”

Before we start a podcast, create an online course, or launch a SaaS product, we should begin to build a following and community. That way, when we release a new product or service, we will already have a group of people who are willing to use it. We can begin by selecting a social platform to post frequent content on. From there, we can slowly build our brand and community on our own platform, such as our own email newsletter, before we offer any products or services.

Kate began her career in advertising and eventually moved to digital marketing. When she got pregnant, she realized her current job wouldn’t be a good fit for her new lifestyle, so she gave up her job and started her own business in SEO. Near the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey, she spoke at an event in Australia: ProBlogger. They had 10-minute slots for audience members to get up and speak, so Kate gathered her courage, got up on stage, and spoke about SEO to about 600 people.

When she got back home, she went online to a Facebook group for the ProBlogger community. She left a message saying that if anyone wanted to learn more about SEO, they could come and join the personal group she had created. That short, 10-minute speech became one of her greatest home runs because it gave her an opportunity to build her community. Her group now has 10,000 people in it.

“From that group, I started building all the courses and resources that I now have and the podcasts and everything. It came from that one little speaking opportunity that I was brave enough to do,” Kate said.

Once we have a following, we can launch all of our products and services into that group, and then we will have an instant audience which can lead to instant sales.

Build Engagement

As we build our communities, we need to remember to constantly engage with our audience.

Kate said her best monetization secret is to not waste any money on paid ads. She doesn’t spend any money on Facebook or Google ads. Instead, every marketing campaign she launches is through content marketing and organic SEO.

“It's really about that top of funnel awareness, so having the podcasts and being very present on all social media,” Kate explained. “Be present and really work on engagement. . . . No comment gets left behind, that's actually part of my company mantra.”

Instead of spending money on ads our customers likely won’t trust, we can engage with them directly in our communities. We should take the time to engage with everyone that comments on our posts. As we build those customer relationships, we help direct them through our marketing funnel and lead them to a purchase decision without ever having to launch paid advertisements. As we respond to our customers, they will be much more likely to comment again.

One of the most important parts of building a business is building relationships. If we aren’t engaging with the community we have created, we aren’t getting to know our customers. And if we don’t have good relationships with our customers, we aren’t going to have a successful business.

In Kate’s business, she personally responds to each comment her followers or group members make. She doesn’t have social media managers reply to comments for her because she wants her customers to feel like they have a personal relationship with her and her brand. She wants them to feel valued and cared for.

“We all want to feel seen and heard and listened to. We want to feel valued and if you can give your customers that feeling, genuinely, then I think that's a beautiful thing and way better than spending money on Facebook ads,” Kate said.

Be Unique

In our businesses, we need to focus on being unique and personal. We should strive to develop our own personal brand and create our own voice and personality.

It can be hard to avoid comparing ourselves to our competition as we build our own digital business from scratch. Yet, we should remember what Theodore Roosevelt said: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” If we constantly compare ourselves to competitors who are more successful than us, we’re going to feel like a failure. We shouldn’t compare our beginnings to someone else’s years of progress, and we shouldn’t obsess over trying to be exactly like them.

The biggest failure Kate made in her journey was obsessing over her competition and comparing herself to them too much. When she did this, she felt inferior to them and it brought her a lot of self-doubts.

“You really have to rely on your own skills. Not everybody's going to like you and that's okay. There's always going to be competition, and everyone is always going to have choices, and you just have to focus on why they're going to choose you, not worry about why they're choosing other people,” Kate said.

Instead of focusing on our competition, we should focus on ourselves. We need to determine how we can offer a unique value to our audience that other competitors won’t have. Instead of trying to be like everyone else, we should focus on being ourselves. We should be personal and unique.

Be Authentic

In our communities, we need to remember to be authentic.

One of the biggest tectonic shifts Kate sees happening today is the increasing popularity of audio. “We are really craving community and connection in a way that we never have and that's partial because [of] this collective trauma we've all been through in 2020,” Kate said. “I think the future [is] trying to make smaller communities. I think we need that right now in the world.”

She continued to explain that audio, such as podcasts or Clubhouse, is a great way to build community. Clubhouse is an audio-only communication platform. A host can open up a room and invite others to participate and have an audio-only discussion.

In order to take full advantage of the opportunity Clubhouse provides, we need to take control. “You can't be a passenger, you have to drive your journey on Clubhouse so you can't sit in other people's room hoping they're going to bring you on stage and you might get two seconds talking to Grant Cardone. You need to be your own Grant Cardone,” Kate explained. “You need to set up your own rooms, bring across your personality, your knowledge, and speak to your people. Don't try to find lighthouses, be a lighthouse and have people come to you.”

In audio platforms, it’s hard to hide. The real you will come out and hopefully, that will be a good thing. Personality and authenticity help us connect with others as we relate to them. People are tired of having to look and be a certain way. When we listen to a podcast or engage in a discussion on Clubhouse, we don’t have to care about looks, we only get to focus on ideas and conversation. It gives us a chance to talk and listen to real, authentic people, without being distracted by the worldly visual status cues we look for.

“I have image fatigue—the Instagram perfection fatigue of just having to look a certain way, be a certain way, and being judged on your sex or your color. I think Clubhouse is the great leveler,” Kate said. “I can't see you. I have to take you not on face value, but on voice value. . . . I think it's a more intimate relationship and it feels more honest than some of the other channels like YouTube and Instagram. It feels less produced and more raw and more honest.”

By removing the visual aspect of our content, we may be a little less pretentious and more authentic. We don’t want to create a performance whenever we interact with our audience and community. We want to be real and authentic. When we are, our audience will really start to connect with us. As we build our communities, we want to remember to engage with them, provide unique value, and stay authentic. As we do this, our small startup will start to gain traction on the path to success.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kate for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

One of the first steps we should take when starting a digital business is to build a community.
Once we have a following, we can launch our products and services into that instant audience, which can lead to instant sales.
Instead of spending money on ads our customers likely won’t trust, we can reach them through SEO and content marketing and then engage with them directly in our communities.
In our businesses, we need to focus on being unique and personal. We should strive to develop our own personal brand and personality instead of trying to be like our competitors.
We want to be real and authentic. When we are, our audience is much more likely to connect with us.

Connect with Kate

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kate or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at KateToon.com.

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation. In our last episode with Kelly Roach, we discussed strategies to successfully run live product launches, Kelly’s entrepreneurial journey, and the power of collaboration. In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing nine principles for success from Kelly’s book Unstoppable.

It’s Never Too Late

Before we dive into these principles, Kelly talked about another topic in her book that really resonated with me: it’s never too late to start to dream big and achieve amazing success. Kelly shares several examples of people who didn’t achieve success until a little later in their lives.

Julia Child was 39 before she published her first cookbook. After working in advertising and media, her TV debut came at the age of 51. Ray Kroc bought McDonald's in 1954 at the age of 52. Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 before she published the first of the Little House books. Colonel Sanders franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 62 and sold it for $2 million 12 years later. The first true Walmart opened when Sam Walton was 44. Henry Ford didn't launch the Ford Motor Company until he was 40.

We often think if we aren’t successful by a certain age then we never will be. For most of us, our greatest success is going to come in our 40s and 50s. When we are that age, we’re actually in a better position to find success because we’re more mature and we have more life experience.

“Wherever you are, do not let your life be wasted. It's never too late. It's not about how old or young you are, it's about the amount of tenacity, determination, and perseverance that you have.” - Kelly Roach

Stop Resenting the 1% and Join Them

Kelly has seen many people who have a negative attitude toward people who are wealthy, yet in the next breath, they’re saying they wish they were that wealthy. If we have a goal to become wealthy we can’t resent people who have achieved that goal. Kelly said, “You're not going to achieve something that you resent, you're going to repel that. You're telling the universe ‘I don't want that. I don't like that.’”

While some of the 1% had previous advantages in their lives, many of them are self-made. They worked hard to get to where they are today. Instead of resenting them, we can learn from them. They have given us an example as they’ve carved their paths to success, and if we learn from their experiences we may find success too.

Cultivate the Entrepreneurial Spirit

Most of us have had 18 years of programming telling us that failure is bad. In our culture, it is very important to get good grades or do well in athletics or music, or other extracurricular activities. This can set us up for success in many ways, but it can also make us afraid of failure.

When Kelly was first starting as an entrepreneur, she was so afraid of failure. She was used to being in the corporate world where if you make a mistake, you can get fired. In entrepreneurship, however, we have to make mistakes in order to learn how to execute. Mistakes and risks are part of the job, and it can be hard to shift our mindset to realize that mistakes are okay.

“If you only play it safe and you stay in the box of what you already know how to do, you're not going anywhere,” Kelly said.

Act Like a CEO if You Want to Earn Like a CEO

Everybody wants success. Everybody wants a big house, expensive vacations, and their dream car. People who have those things live their lives in a specific way. They have discipline and perseverance, they’ve made sacrifices, they make investments in themselves, and they hold themselves to a certain standard all because they see themselves as a CEO.

Kelly has seen many people who think, “Once I’m successful, I’ll do the work.” They’re trying to put the cart before the horse. We can’t start working hard after we get the promotion. We have to work hard to get the promotion in the first place. We can’t say, “I’ll build a team once I hit six figures,” because we’re not going to get there without a team. And we can’t wait to take risks until we see the payoffs.

Entrepreneurship requires us to dive in and give it everything we’ve got. It’s not something we can just dip our toes in and find success. Success is much more likely when we start acting like a CEO, putting in the hard work, and making the hard decisions.

Act like a Leader

Along with acting like CEOs, we also need to act as leaders. Kelly said. “You have to see yourself as a leader. You have to conduct yourself as a leader. You have to be a leader in all things: word and deed. If you want to go far and go high in life—and it doesn't matter what that is; that could be at home with your children, in your relationship with your spouse, in your community, in your church, in your business and your career—you have to conduct yourself at that level if you want the rewards of life that come at that level.”

We are always at the podium as entrepreneurs. Everything we say and do is on display. So we must be ready to act as leaders at all times.

Develop Business Mastery

Growing a business has a lot of moving pieces: sales, marketing, infrastructure, systems, team building, leadership, HR, legal, etc. There are a lot of moving pieces to build a company, but often entrepreneurship is simplified down to acquiring clients.

Someone can secure the huge investor and still lose everything, going right back to where they started. Someone can get the big win on the front end with clients, but they don't have the backend systems to support it so they lose them all.

“Business mastery,” Kelly said, “is really about investing in committing to learning the components of building and running a successful business and creating mastery of your own skillset in being the leader. . . . Really think about the energy and effort that you're putting into developing your own skills as a CEO and as a business owner and [make] sure that the way you're investing in mastering these different fundamentals of business aligns with how high and how far you want to go. Your business can't grow beyond your growth.”

Invest in Ourselves

Let’s face it, none of us know it all. None of us have achieved what we’re trying to achieve before. But there are people who have achieved our goals before or have experience in the things we’re trying to do.

In order to reach our goals, we need to be investing in ourselves. “Get the mentorship, the information, education, support, the resources that you need in order to achieve the outcomes that you want.,” Kelly said. “Your best investment is always going to be in your worth because you touch on everything else that you come in contact with.”

We should be investing in ourselves every day, even if we only have time for something small like listening to an informational podcast. We can't fill up the gas tank in our car once a year. It's something we've constantly got to keep up.

Don’t Avoid Sales

Many entrepreneurs and small business owners almost have this phobia of sales. They don't want to spend time on it, they don't have a sales system, strategy, or salesperson in their company or on their team.

The problem with this is that everything in life from landing clients to getting kids to do their chores is sales. Everything is sales; everything involves a negotiation. “This is something that the vast majority of people really avoid. They have this negative perception, but it's really helping someone to do what's in their own best interest by showing them what's in it for them,” Kelly said. One of the most important skills that an entrepreneur can learn is how to be a great salesperson because everything is sales.

Be Disciplined

We often look at successful people and say, “Wow. They’re so talented.” Talent does play a role in success, but it isn’t the most important thing. What is the most important thing? Discipline.

Discipline is available to anyone. We choose to be persistent. We choose to be disciplined enough to work through challenges, to do what we don't feel like doing because it's the right thing to do, and to be a good leader even when we're exhausted and don't want to get back on the phone with someone one more time for the day.

“Discipline is the price that you pay to achieve greatness in every area of life, and almost always the answer to why you don't have what you want in your life is discipline,” Kelly said.

When I went to college, I received the largest private scholarship the university offered, but I was nowhere near the smartest kid there. What I had in my favor is I could outwork anybody. A lot of the time the biggest scholarships, best grades and GPAs, and the best business opportunities don't go to the smartest person, but they go to the person who's willing to discipline themselves and outwork everybody.

Focus on Something Bigger

If our goal is just to pay the bills, we’re only going to get so far. Paying the bills, making money, and buying a house are all great goals but they are only going to bring us so much fulfillment. Focusing on something bigger than ourselves is the thing that is going to propel us to achieve our goals and dreams and bring fulfillment, joy, and a spark to our lives.

It will also help us during hard times. We’ll be able to put things in perspective, deal with challenges, and work through hardships. Kelly said, “When I'm having a really big challenge when I'm struggling, I really try to put things in perspective and remember the why and remember that picture because I know that will help me recharge and refocus and get my mindset back on track to keep moving forward.”

Life is really about something bigger than us. The whole purpose and meaning are about doing good and making the world a better place. That’s where we’ll find true fulfillment.

Thinking about the big picture can be easier than thinking about the small. When we think small, not only do we think small in our solutions, but it’s also hard to get people excited and motivated. It takes just as much effort to do things small. Kelly said, “When you're solving small problems, you box yourself into small solutions. When you are solving the 10x problem, you're opening up your whole world, and you're paving a path for yourself to succeed at that next level.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kelly for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

It’s never too late to find success. Success doesn’t have to happen at a certain age.
If we resent what we want to become, we will never become it.
Don’t be afraid of failure. As an entrepreneur, it is part of the job.
We have to put in the hard work if we want success.
We must see and conduct ourselves as leaders.
We should be striving to learn about every aspect of our business, not just getting clients.
We should invest in ourselves daily to help our business grow with us.
Everything involves sales. We shouldn’t try to avoid it.
Discipline will get us to where we want to be in life.
Focusing on something bigger will give us fulfillment and allow us to think of big solutions.

Connect with Kelly

If you want to learn more about Kelly or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at UnstoppableEntrepreneur.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How are you investing in yourself to get where you want to be? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/152-9-principles-for-unstoppable-success/

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Kelly Roach is an expert at successfully launching new products. She is the creator of the Live Launch Method and the best-selling author of the book Unstoppable. Kelly has been featured in some of the world's leading publications including Inc. and Forbes. She also hosts the podcast The Unstoppable Entrepreneur Show.

Kelly is a business strategist who transforms overworked entrepreneurs into seven-figure CEOs by teaching them how to leverage timeless business principles employed by billion-dollar corporations. Kelly's current multimillion-dollar company, The Unstoppable Entrepreneur, is the fastest-growing coaching program on the market.

The Live Launch

Kelly had tried it all when it came to launches. She’d done courses, webinars, email sequences, and funnels, but none of them ever resonated with her. After multiple failed launches she decided to try something different.

They scrapped the automation, landing pages, email sequences—everything. Kelly realized most launch strategies were created before there was live streaming. They were created when emails were all the rage, but nowadays texting and live streaming is very popular.

The live launch centers around live streaming. They are focused on cultivating human connection. “[The live launch is] really focused on making deposits in the reciprocity bank, so that when you extend an invitation to someone to join your paid opportunity, they feel like they have received so much from you, and they actually have experienced more value from you for free than the last thing that they paid for,” Kelly said.

The framework consists of nine days, streaming at the same time every day. The first four days are focused on four pillars. The four pillars are centered on our methodology. When preparing for the launch we identify what our core methodology is that we want to be known for. What is our brand? What is the specific element of our space or industry? What is our certain way of doing things that no one else does? The live launch is about formalizing and crystallizing that methodology, and then breaking it into four pillars we believe are the most core essentials to someone having success.

On the fourth day, we pivot into the invitation, and then days five through nine are focused on diving deep and exploring people’s experiences from working with us. Over these five days, we're implementing the usual buying triggers that are part of the sales psychology that leads people to make an investment, but the difference is it's life and focused on the reciprocity mindset. As people go through this, the actions we teach them are giving them momentum and generating results for free.

By the time we extend the invitation, the first law of motion comes into play: an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. The people are so excited about the breakthroughs and results they’ve gotten for free that when we ask if they’d like to extend the journey, they can’t help but say yes.

Kelly called this the simplest method on the planet for making millions online because it's so dumbed down. Many people struggle with a lot of the other launch mechanisms because there is so much complexity with the technology and moving pieces.

Kelly has seen this method work for many people, even a land flipping business. There was one woman whose business was only making about $1,000 a month. After working with Kelly for a year doing live launches, she made enough cash to buy the house of her dreams which she had spent years saving for.

Kelly’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Kelly’s entrepreneurial journey started when she was in college. She was working three, sometimes four, jobs to put herself through her education without debt. One of her jobs was as a cocktail waitress at a bar. She noticed there was a big difference between nights when she hustled and put everything into serving more drinks and nights when she let herself relax and didn’t care how hard she was working. On the nights she worked hard, she could make $250-350 in tips versus about $50 in tips when she didn’t.

“I really learned that the amount of work that you put into something and having a strategy around how you do it really pays off. . . . You decide the value of your time. You decide what you're going to extract from any opportunity in life,” Kelly said. When we work hard, we can get so much more value out of our time.

After college, Kelly joined a Fortune 500 firm because she wanted the opportunity to be in a large company where she could learn business, gain upward mobility, demonstrate her work ethic and contributions, grow her income, and take advantage of opportunities.

“I was the first one in and I was the last one out every single day,” she said. “What I learned was contribution in, value out. It doesn't necessarily come down to time. We have this perception sometimes that things could take a really long time. I ended up managing people my parents' age who've been in the industry for 20-25 years as a 23-year-old kid, and it was because I was doing the work. I was showing up; I was commanding that respect because of the contribution I was making.”

Sometimes we think we have to do our time before we go after things like this, but if we do the work and earn the respect, there’s no reason why we can’t accomplish our goals. Sometimes the only thing holding us back is our mindset. If we can overcome that mindset, we can get to where we want to be.

Kelly did her time in the corporate world and learned so much, but she got to the point where she thought, “I want to own my own life. I want to be in charge of my destiny. I want to have a family. I want to be charting my own course.”

She decided she wanted to start her own business helping small business owners and changing their lives. She started her business on the side while still continuing her corporate job to have more financial security and show herself that she could make as much money in her business as in her executive job.

For several years, Kelly worked on the side during lunch breaks or in the evenings. Eventually, she was able to focus solely on the business, and now she does that along with partnering on three other businesses.

The Power of Collaboration

Kelly said the greatest home run of her career was having a great mentor. She said he taught her everything she knows about business. “I knew I had the tenacity, and I had the perseverance, and I had the work ethic, but he had the knowledge,” she said.

The best piece of advice he gave her was when she was in sales. Kelly was selling and loving it. She was doing her own thing, flying at the speed of light, and making a lot of money. Kelly’s mentor wanted her to go into management, but she didn’t want to because of all the success she was having. But he told her, “It does not matter in life or in business how much you can do alone, it doesn't matter if you're the best salesperson in the world, it is never going to scratch the surface of what you can do when you learn to get results through others.”

We can accomplish so much more when we work with others. There is so much power in collaboration. This is why it is important to have teams and support systems. They can help us achieve things that were never possible by ourselves.

Kelly said one of the biggest mistakes in her career was competing with all of her peers. “I would go back to the younger Kelly and say, ‘Be bold [and] don't feel like you're in competition with others. Someone's success doesn't mean that you can’t achieve that level.’”

When we compete with others, it can either intimidate us, causing us to play small, or it can drive us to only think about the competition, causing us to ruin those relationships.

Now, almost everything Kelly does is a collaboration with someone else. “You move from this mindset of thinking [about] your competition to a mindset of having collaborative partners, and it's much more fun that way.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kelly for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The Live Launch focuses on cultivating human connection. Doing it live allows us to interact with our audience and make personal connections.
Live launches should focus on our core methodology, the things we specialize in that no one else does.
Utilizing the first law of motion is a great way to run launches because people will naturally want to take the next step.
We can decide the value of our time and how much we’re going to get from our experiences.
We can accomplish so much more when we stop focusing on competition and start focusing on collaboration.

Connect with Kelly

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kelly or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at UnstoppableEntrepreneur.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What’s your best product launch strategy? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-run-successful-live-product-launches/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, an Independence Day episode of Monetization Nation. Today is the 4th of July, which is America’s independence day, and a day when we celebrate freedom. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss five essential rights and freedoms we need as entrepreneurs.

Freedom to Choose

One of the greatest gifts we have been given is the gift to choose for ourselves. God gave us the gift and freedom of agency.

As entrepreneurs, it is essential we have the ability to make our own choices and pursue our own paths. An entrepreneur starts with an idea and organizes a business through financial risk and hard work. Creating our own business wouldn’t be possible if we weren’t given the right to agency.

Dieter Uchtdorf, a religious leader, said, “You have agency, and you are free to choose. But there is actually no free agency. Agency has its price. You have to pay for the consequences of your choices.”

With the ability to make our own choices comes responsibility for our actions. We will receive the consequences, whether good or bad, that come from our choices. However, when we do make mistakes we can remember that Jesus Christ has given us freedom from sin if we repent and turn to Him.

Freedom from Sin

Jesus Christ sacrificed his life for the spiritual freedom of mankind. He gave His life on the cross so we could overcome death, and he suffered in Gethsemane so we could overcome sin and live again.

In the Bible, it says, “But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (KJV Romans 8:22-23)

As humans, and especially as entrepreneurs, we are bound to make mistakes. We may mistreat our employees, make a business decision that compromises our ethics, or let stress damage our family relationships. However, no mistake or sin is too great to be forgiven. Jesus Christ gave us the freedom to be forgiven of our mistakes.

Though God gave us the right to agency and worship, government and leaders have taken these freedoms away from men throughout history for control and power. In 1776, the United States of America took action to protect these rights.

The Declaration of Independence

After years of war and sacrifice, the United States broke free from its allegiance to the British Crown and became independent. On July 4, 1776, the United States formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, giving Americans rights and freedoms for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The declaration was America’s first formal statement of independence and the right to choose their own government. American colonists and British soldiers began conflict in 1775—the Americans fighting for freedom and the British fighting to retain control. The Revolutionary War grew and in mid-June of 1776, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston, wrote the Declaration of Independence Congress adopted (Source: History.com).

The second sentence of the declaration reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (Source: archives.gov)

July 4th has since been declared a national holiday in America, known as Independence Day. Families and friends get together to celebrate our rights and freedoms as Americans. As entrepreneurs, these freedoms are essential as they give us the right to create our own businesses, pursue our dreams, and create the life we choose.

Freedom of Life

The Declaration of Independence protects our freedom to choose the life we want. We can choose to pursue business ventures and take risks or we can choose a career working for someone else. One of the biggest benefits of entrepreneurship is that it allows us to take control of our lives and take advantage of our freedom of life. We can choose to declare independence for ourselves in our careers and gain financial freedom.

Instead of working a 9 to 5 job under someone else, we seize the opportunity to choose our own hours and choose our own work. When we become entrepreneurs and create a successful business, we gain some amazing freedoms in our lives.

When Steve Jobs was 21, he and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer from a garage. They both had a vision of a life they wanted to create for themselves and to do this, required some risk and hard work.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition,” Jobs said.

With the freedom of entrepreneurship comes hard work. If we want to be successful as an entrepreneur, especially at the beginning we may have to work even harder than we would in a regular job as an employee. We need to be willing to put in the time and resources to successfully execute our vision if we want to succeed. They are willing to invest and work hard now for their freedom down the road.

In order to gain freedom of life, we often need to sacrifice time and resources. While Steve Jobs had to put in hours of work at the start, those hours of hard work led him to live a life he chose, not a life someone else chose for him.

Freedom of Liberty

The right to liberty allows us to be free from oppressive restrictions imposed on our way of life. It also requires us to be aware of the rights of others, and not oppose them.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” Liberty requires us to take responsibility and use the freedoms we have been given under the rule of law. We can’t use our freedoms to oppress someone else’s freedoms.

As entrepreneurs, we not only have the opportunity to make our own lives better, but we can also shape the lives of others by respecting their freedoms.

In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, wrote, “If people have the freedom to do what they want—whether that's taking a chance on a new idea or building their community—the inherent creativity and goodness in people will help different parts of society flourish. But the rule of law, strong economies, and community health are all related. When we impose unfair systems, it is easy to get in the way and push everything out of balance.”

He explained that we should strive to “give people the dignity and confidence to be entrepreneurial rather than making them feel helpless and dependent.”

For example, Defy Ventures focuses on helping people with criminal histories become successful entrepreneurs. The founder, Catherine Hoke, came up with an entrepreneurship training program to help others (Source: Forbes). As entrepreneurs, part of our responsibility with our freedom is to help others. And, as we gain financial freedom for ourselves we will probably have the ability and desire to then help others gain their freedom.

Freedom to be Happy

The Declaration of Independence protects our right to pursue happiness and our dreams. As we take control of our lives and use our freedom responsibly, we also need to remember that we have the freedom to be happy. If we are choosing a life in which we frequently feel upset, oppressed, angry, or sad, we have the freedom to change that.

Guillaume Apollinaire, a French poet, and writer said, “Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

As entrepreneurs, it can be easy to get lost in the end goal. We get so focused on the tasks and projects we need to do that we forget to enjoy the process. If we aren’t happy, we have lost the true spirit of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship isn’t only about creating a life of freedom, but also a life we love that brings us and people around us joy. That’s what we’re trying to create.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

God gave us the gift and freedom of agency. We have the ability to make choices for ourselves, and we are accountable for our actions.
Jesus Christ already paid the price so we can overcome death and sin. He gave us freedom from our mistakes, freedom to be forgiven of our sins.
For Americans, the Declaration of Independence protects our freedom to choose the course of our life. And, citizens of many other countries have the same protections for their freedom. Entrepreneurship allows us to take control of our lives and take full advantage of our freedom to live the life we choose.
With the freedom of entrepreneurship comes hard work. We need to be willing to put in the time and resources to execute our vision if we want to succeed.
The right to liberty allows us to be free from oppressive restrictions imposed on our way of life.
As entrepreneurs, we not only have the opportunity to make our own lives better, but we can also shape the lives of others by respecting their freedoms. As we achieve freedom ourselves, we will naturally want to help others achieve that same freedom.
The Declaration of Independence (or possibly a similar document in your other country) protects our right to pursue happiness and our dreams.

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Whether we like it or not, the government laws and regulations can massively affect the way we operate or cannot operate our businesses. Sometimes we need to advocate to make sure these laws and regulations are affecting us and, our customers, and our industries in positive ways. As we advocate, or do anything in life, conflicts of interest may arise.

In today's episode, we’re going to discuss what Marion Mass is doing to improve the health care system through advocacy, how we as entrepreneurs can be better advocates within our industries, and how we can remove our conflicts of interest to improve our credibility.

Dr. Marion Mass is a mother, pediatrician, community volunteer, writer, and advocate for high-quality, sustainable health care in the U.S. that will attract bright, hardworking minds in the future. She trained at Duke’s School of Medicine and the Northwestern Children’s Memorial Hospital. She now practices in the Philadelphia suburbs. She co-founded the nonpartisan grassroots Practicing Physicians of America and serves as part of the leadership of the Free 2 Care coalition. She speaks, writes, and advocates for improving health care access and lowering its costs.

Why Marion Advocates

Marion is passionate about health care. She loved her journey through medical school and residency and loves taking care of patients. While looking at the landscape of medicine, she realized people aren’t choosing to be doctors in the future.

She sees a lot of physicians going through what she calls Drexit: doctor exit. Doctors are frustrated with all the boxes they have to check through mandates, authorizations, insurance, etc. “There's so much that we have to do,” Marion said. “Physicians either get burned out or they get morally injured.”

Doctors are leaving. Many are retiring early. The profession has one of the highest rates of suicide in the U.S. The health care system is broken and unsustainable. “If we don't fix it,” Marion says, “America will be very unhealthy and sorry in the future when they show up to deliver their baby or have their appendix taken out and there's not a quality physician there that's well-trained to take care of them.”

Health care isn’t just a problem in the U.S. I lived in Brazil for a couple of years, where they have a socialized medicine system that doesn't work. People often joke that those are the hospitals where you go to die. But they have a secondary health care system not provided by the government. It’s surprisingly inexpensive and the doctors don’t have to jump through all the same hoops, so they can focus on providing health care.

Marion shared a story about her friend who is from Ukraine, where they also have a socialized system. Her mother needed a hysterectomy there. She went to the government-run hospital and found out they had no soap, hand sanitizer, or toilet paper. She had to bring her own. For an inexpensive fee, Marion’s friend moved her mother to a hospital that accepted cash, where she got good care and wasn’t afraid of getting an infection.

Health care has consumed costs all across the board. Marion said the public sectors like school districts are paying more and employers are paying more. Overall, it’s way more expensive than it needs to be. Marion realized all these things and came to the conclusion that she needed to do something about it.

Advocacy Efforts: Anyone Can Advocate

Marion started looking for groups to join and ways to advocate. On her first trip to Washington D.C., she was nervous. She went to a congressperson’s office for a meeting, thinking, “These guys are going to be so well-versed. They're going to know everything I'm talking about, everything I've learned over the past couple of years.” Her hands started to sweat and she was worried she’d stumble over her words.

By the time the conversation was over, she thought, “Oh, I should have been doing this a long time ago.” Marion said, “I'm in a robe. I'm a recovering soccer mom with an MD. I'm a real person. I will have conversations with lawmakers while I'm in my bathrobe, sweeping my kitchen. . . . But if I can do this, anyone can.”

Sometimes we think we can’t do something until we learn more about it or until we reach a certain point in our career. Marion didn’t wait. She cared about the issues and wanted to do something to help, so she did.

She started writing, speaking, doing podcasts, hosting and attending events, serving on the editorial board of a county newspaper, and talking to lawmakers. To those who are considering getting involved, she said, “Finding your voice with speaking and writing to people that can change policy . . . is so important. We trained to do this. We're the ones that close the door and hear people's intimate stories. And it breaks my heart when people can't get what they need. I can't tolerate it anymore.”

Marion told me about a doctor who recently published a piece in 14 Pennsylvanian newspapers. She went to medical school in Pakistan and Marion said she’s got a great voice. Marion encouraged her to speak up. Her piece was published and she’s been on a podcast or two.

Anyone can do this. The internet has made it easy for anyone with a phone to make a difference. Our background, age, or experience doesn’t matter. If we have an issue we care about, something that affects our lives or the lives of those around us, we can make an effort to change it. If we want to change something, we have the power to make change happen.

Entrepreneurs and Advocacy

Health care advocacy itself should be very important to us as entrepreneurs and CEOs because not only is it one of our biggest costs, but also because it is an essential part of taking great care of our people and our families. But health care isn’t the only legislative issue we deal with in our organizations. Sometimes those legislative issues can cause a lot of problems in our businesses.

For example, over the past 10 years, there have been some adoption laws, rules, or regulations passed or implemented that have caused fewer children to be able to find loving, permanent families. Working with Adoption.com, I've had to get a lot more involved in advocacy within my niche of adoption over the last decade. I’ve worked with senators, congressmen, government organizations, and associations to try to get bad laws and regulatory implementation changed and prevent more bad laws from being created.

For example, this morning I did a little work to help encourage an Idaho senator to support some adoption legislation. As another example, when there were regulatory implementation issues causing a decline in international adoption years ago, I was able to go to DC to speak with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Glenn Beck, an adoptive father, had me on his show to discuss the solutions to the issue. It has been amazing over the years to see the people passionate about adoption and children come together to try to impact that change.

Shiza Shahid is an example of an entrepreneur striving to make a difference. This Stanford University graduate co-founded the Malala Fund with Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. Shahid led the organization as founding CEO, focusing on creating access to high-quality education for all children around the world. She also founded The Collective, a community of leading entrepreneurs that come together to build collaborative change (Source: CAA.com).

We often fall into the trap that “somebody should do something” about an issue. However, often, we are one of the somebodies who need to help solve the problem. You can probably make a lot more of a difference than you think when you work together with many others who share your passion.

Removing Conflicts of Interest

Many people who lobby and advocate in D.C. have conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest take away from a person’s credibility, hurting what they’re trying to accomplish. That person’s opponent can use conflicts of interest to attack them and destroy their credibility.

In 2010, the U.S. passed the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. Marion described how this database allows any citizen to look up any physician in the country and see how much money they are taking from pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Marion detailed how important it is to have this information. If I go to a doctor and they prescribe me medication X and I look them up on the database and find out that they’re taking thousands of dollars from the pharmaceutical company that manufactures medication X, I’m going to be suspicious; it’s going to make me question whether I actually need that medication or not.

These aren’t the only conflicts of interest. Marion believes that taking speaking or writing fees may do the same thing. Marion said, “As soon as you get paid by someone—a university, a hospital, an insurance company—as soon as you open up your mouth to take a speaking fee, it may make you suspect the same way that a doctor would be suspect by taking fees from pharma.” We can choose to take that money, but it may erode our credibility depending on who is paying for our speaking and writing.

Marion has done something to remove these conflicts of interest. She doesn’t take speaking or writing fees. “I think the fact that I don't take speaking fees, and I know others like me that don't, I think that means something.” Refusing to take these fees gives Marion credibility.

Conflicts of interest can be a big part of reducing credibility. As customers realize we have a conflict of interest—even if we are honest and ethical—their trust declines. We need to remove our conflicts of interest wherever we can to improve our credibility.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Marion for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Anyone can advocate. We don’t need any special qualifications; we just need to care about issues and have a desire to make a difference.
When we advocate, we should work together with many other people who share our passion for the issue.
There are many issues that affect the businesses that may require us to advocate for our industry, our customers, and our businesses.
If we remove our conflicts of interest and communicate that effectively, we will improve our credibility.

Connect with Marion

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Marion or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit Practicing Physicians of America.

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Influencer marketing has grown exponentially within the last few years and is expected to reach a market size of $13.8 billion by 2021. In 2019, the number of influencer agencies and platforms grew to 1390, which is about three times more than the year before (Source: InfluencerMarketingHub).

In the last episode, we discussed how we can become digital influencers and build our online presence. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can collaborate with influencers and take advantage of the opportunity they present to our businesses.

Benefits of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing allows us to leverage other people’s social media accounts, something businesses are just starting to take advantage of. If we really want to increase our visibility on social media, we need to get people talking about us, and influencer marketing does just that. Instead of bragging about our own products, we can partner with influencers with a strong following who will talk about our products for us.

Neal shared five benefits of influencer marketing.

Builds Trust

“It comes down to two core facts. People trust people more than ads and social media was created for people, not business,” Neal said.

Social media is a powerful tool as it allows for virtual word-of-mouth communication between customers. Instead of relying on what we say about our own products or services, customers can talk with friends and other customers.

“Facebook ads [are] extremely powerful, but you're not going to get word of mouth from it. You may not even build trust from it because it's an ad and people distrust ads more and more,” Neal explained. “The whole idea about influencer marketing is tapping into people that are passionate about your company, about what you do, and having them basically incite word-of-mouth marketing for you.”

Customers build trust with the influencers they follow. Instead of taking the time to build our customers’ trust, we can use the trust they have already established with influencers. If a customer trusts a certain influencer, they will trust the positive things they say about our brand. When influencers on social media recommend products or services, it’s similar to a recommendation from a trusted friend.

Influencers have become the difference between a connection with a person vs a logo. While a personal brand can help with this as well, it isn’t quite the same. An influencer isn’t trying to sell us something. They are only trying to provide value and customers are more likely to trust them because of it.

Increases Credibility

When we collaborate with influencers we gain credibility. As I mentioned above, influencers help our brand build trust. The more trustworthy influencers talk about our brand, the more credible we become.

“[Influencer marketing] gives you credibility for the fact that you're working together with this person and they're talking about you,” Neal said. “If this person is talking about you, then immediately you become a trustworthy brand. [Customers] may not buy from you, they may not follow you, but at least you're getting in their ear from a trusted entity. I think that's one of the biggest benefits.”

Expands Our Reach

There are only so many people that know our business and an influencer will help expose our business to a new community. The chances of any influencer having the exact same followers our brand has are impossibly slim. In fact, most of the people following the influencer we collaborate with may be completely new consumers who have never even heard of our brand. By teaming up with that influencer, we get access to the feed of everyone who follows them.

Creates Content

Most influencers are influencers for a reason. They create great content. When we collaborate with them, we get access to their talents and skills.

When Neal did his first influencer marketing campaign for a client, he reached out to bloggers who posted about motherhood. Often, those mothers’ photography about the client's product was better than anything they were doing. A lot of influencer marketers create great content, even better than what we could create on our own. We can collaborate with them with the goal of using their abilities and talent in creating blogs, photography, or videos for our products and services.

Provides a Focus Group

We can work with influencers and view them as a focus group to learn how we can improve our products and services.

Neal got a job offer earlier in his career to become a brand manager at Procter and Gamble at their Asia Pacific headquarters in Japan. At that time, they spent a lot of their budget on focus groups. They brought in housewives to talk about their product and give feedback before sending it out into the market. It made Neal think that social media is one big focus group and a team of influencers helps control it. Instead of paying for a focus group, we can look at the one we already have on social media.

“You now have this really awesome focus group that's going to teach you a lot, not just in terms of how to do better at social and digital marketing, but also what people are talking about, what people say about your competitors, [and] what people are saying about your products. I think that has incredible business value for companies,” Neal said.

With influencer marketing, we can start with word-of-mouth to gain exposure, leverage their content, and then learn from them as a focus group to see where we should go next with our business.

How to Collaborate With Influencers

In order to find the right influencers to collaborate with, Neal suggested we start by searching for keywords and using hashtags. What keywords do we use for our business? We can search these on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other channels. Keywords can lead us to influencers who are talking about things that attract our target audience. Which influencers resonate the most with our ideal customer? Those are the influencers we want to collaborate with.

As we search for keywords and do our research, we should be intentional about what platforms we are searching on. If our business doesn’t use YouTube, why would we search for influencers on YouTube? If we mainly use Instagram, we should focus on Instagram influencers. That way, when they talk about our product, they can lead our customers to our social accounts while also raising awareness.

As we create a list of podcasters, bloggers, and other influencers to choose from, we can also look at the followers we already have. We can start filtering through our followers, people who already know, like, and trust us. These influencers will be more likely to connect with us as we know they already have a strong opinion of our brand. Neal suggests this is even better than trying to start from scratch by searching keywords.

“I would absolutely start with the people that already know, like, and trust you,” Neal said. “When you start with people that don’t know, like, and trust you, that's when it gets transactional. That's when you get a lot of rejection. That's when you get jaded. . . . When you work with people who already know, like, and trust you, that is your best insurance.”

Once we’ve determined which influencers we want to work with and have made an agreement with them, Neal suggested two ways we can work with them.

Give the Gift of a Free Product

When we connect with an influencer, Neal recommends we give a free product or free service. We need to understand that the goal of working with an influencer is not to monetize them; it is to spread the word about our business. We should give them free products so they become a customer and can share positive reviews to bring in other potential customers.

“Why wouldn't you want them to become a lifetime customer? You're not looking to monetize them. You're thinking, if they become a user for a lifetime and they're always talking about you, every month they're gonna introduce new users to you. So why are you trying to go dirt cheap?” Neal said.

One way many businesses work with influencers is by sending them a free package they can open on their social media accounts, in an Instagram story for example. The influencer will then talk about the products or services and share their positive ratings. We could send packages every month or offer lifetime value to continually strengthen the customer relationship with our influencers so they will want to share more about our products.

If we want lifetime reciprocity from the influencer, we should provide continual value. We shouldn’t try to give the least we can give. We should give them sustained value so they give us sustained value in return. “Influencer marketing is not a campaign, it's a commitment,” Neal said. We should make our offer really special so the influencer wants to work with us.

Provide a New Experience

We can provide our influencers with exclusive experiences. We can host an event and bring them out to it. It comes at a cost, but it can create a year's worth of content. The influencer will also feel bonded to us and feel like a part of our community. The stronger relationship they have with us, the more genuine their comments on our products and services will be.

The goal of influencer marketing is to invest in people instead of investing in ads. As we do this, we will see benefits such as increased credibility and trust with our audience, an increase in leads, a bigger reach, a stronger online presence, and more high-quality content.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Neal for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Influencer marketing allows us to leverage other people’s social media accounts. Instead of bragging about our own products, we can partner with influencers who will talk about our products for us.
Influencer marketing builds trust, increases credibility, and expands our reach.
Most influencers are influencers for a reason. They create great content. When we collaborate with them, we get access to their talents and skills.
Social media is one big focus group and a team of influencers helps control it. We can work with influencers and view them as a focus group to learn how we can improve our products and services.
In order to find the right influencers to collaborate with, we can start by searching for keywords and looking at the followers we already have.
The goal of working with an influencer is not to monetize them; it is to spread the word about our business.
Influencer marketing is not a campaign, it's a commitment.
We can give influencers free products or services or provide them with a new experience to build our relationship with them.

Connect with Neal

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Neal or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit his website at NealSchaffer.com. You can also find his podcast online and his books on his website.

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Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Have you used influencer marketing? If so, what benefits have you seen? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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In the United States, adults use digital media for an average of 7 hours and 50 minutes each day (Source: eMarketer). This includes an average of 145 minutes on social media every day (Source: Statista) plus additional time spent on the web, CTV, digital video, and digital audio. The consumer is spending more and more of their time living in a digital world, and if we want our businesses to succeed, we should market in that same digital world.

Neal is the author of four sales and marketing books including Maximize Your Social and The Age of Influence, a groundbreaking book redefining digital influence. He's also the host of the podcast, Maximize Your Social Influence.

Neal Schaffer is a leading social media strategist who helps innovative businesses digitally transform their sales and marketing strategies. He's the founder of the digital marketing consultancy PDCA Social and is a fractional CMO for several companies. He also teaches digital marketing at Rutgers Business School and the Irish Management Institute.

In today’s episode, Neal shared how we can become digital influencers and build our online presence.

Becoming an Influencer

I asked Neal to share the biggest business tectonic shift he sees in today’s marketplace and he told me it is the growth of the digital world. Over the past decade, businesses have started waking up and seeing that consumers live in a digital world. They shop online, they consume content online, they communicate online, and they go online for entertainment and solutions to their problems. If we want to succeed, we need to be digitally engaging.

“People are still searching on Google, people are still reading emails, and people are spending a ton of time on social media. You have to nail those three areas,” Neal explained. “They're equally important for different stages of the funnel; they all have the unique roles they play, but [being digital] should be the 100% focus of your marketing today.”

Neal said if we’re not creating a digital presence for our businesses, we’re going to be invisible to our consumers. We can begin by building our own platforms such as a website or social media account. By expanding our reach, building an audience, and providing unique value to customers, and establishing trust we begin to become influencers in our specific niche.

Neal shared four tips we need to consider as we become digital influencers.

Create Content

To be an influencer, we need to create content. “How are influencers influential today? They have a platform, and they're creating content,” Neal said. “You have got to create a platform. You have got to create content. If you can't do that, you want to tap into other people who can.”

During Neal’s entrepreneurial journey, he began tuning into the challenges and issues other people had. He listened to and stayed in direct contact with his customers. While he was paying attention to the people around him, he found there were a lot of issues about marketing technology. He specifically noticed a lot of questions about social media marketing and influencer marketing.

From the problems his customers had, Neal found a way to be a solution. He wanted to give a unique perspective on marketing, so he wrote a book on it and became known for influencer marketing. Not only did he create a book, but he also built a website, created blog content, and started a podcast. If we want to create influence online, it comes down to having a platform and creating content. Most powerful influencers post at least once a day and this often includes posts on multiple platforms. If we want to build influence, we should start creating consistent, frequent, and valuable content at least once a week, but daily would be much better.

Be Passionate

If we want to become an influencer, we need to build an audience of people who are willing to listen to us. To do this, we should start by connecting with our customers' passions, what I call passion marketing. Instead of solely focusing on our own passions, we can find ways our passions overlap with our customers’. As we do this, we begin to establish and build strong relationships with our audience.

“If you want to tap into people with a certain passion, you need to show it yourself,” Neal said. “That's what social media is great for. I think if you do that and share your passion, you will attract these people with that similar passion, who won't mind spending money with you.”

As we share our passions with the digital world, we will eventually find our tribe. People will connect with us through our passions and be more willing to spend money on our product or service if it is something they love.

“When you’re really passionate about something, you will invest the money in it,” Neal said. For example, Neal shared that he has a passion for music and so he is willing to spend money on building his CD collection. If we can connect with our customer’s passions, we will have a much higher chance of monetizing our businesses.

Stay in Direct Contact With Our Customers

We want to be in direct contact with our customers. It’s the only way we will know enough about their problems to effectively solve them.

The biggest mistake Neal made was caused by a lack of connection. While he was working with a company, they lost one of their biggest clients. “We did not know what was going on in the decision-making process and technical evaluations, but our partner was saying, ‘Oh, you're a shoo-in,’” Neal said. “[But] then we didn't get the deal.”

He continued, “You can never assume anything in business. A lot of people internally assume because they're working through a partner, [they already have] direct sales. And to this day, although I see the benefit of working through distributors, you’ve got to understand what's going on with the client with your own ears.”

We should understand what is going on with our clients and customers at all times. We have to pay attention to what is going on and how their needs and wants are changing. If we aren’t in direct contact with our customers, we may have a miscommunication and end up losing them.

“Even if you work through distributors resellers, you have got to keep your finger on the pulse directly because everybody else in between is just out; they have their own business objectives,” Neal said. “You need to check in and really keep your finger on the pulse of that end customer if you ultimately want to be successful.”

Use Failure as an Opportunity for Growth

Despite his failures, Neal was able to push past them and find room for improvement. “With every mistake is an opportunity to improve,” Neal said. “If you're an entrepreneur, you're going to make mistakes. You just don't want to make the same mistake twice.”

As we develop our digital influence, it is essential to remember it will take time and failure to get to the point we want to. We have to accept failure as a lesson and make changes accordingly.

When people hit a roadblock or brick wall, they often get frustrated and want to give up. While it’s natural to feel discouraged, we can shift the way we look at challenges so they become less of a roadblock, and more of a hurdle we can jump over. It is about a mindset and attitude shift. If we can look at a mistake as an opportunity to pivot, it will bring so much more success.

We will deal with rejection. Every successful entrepreneur has experienced or will experience rejection. We should view rejection as a sign we need to do something differently to improve. We can take every bad customer review as feedback and a way for growth. As we learn from the feedback, we can build something that will resonate with our customers so we can start to get testimonials and reviews. Positive testimonials and reviews are key to building our influence, but it may take some bad reviews and changes first.

We should remember to keep our vision and final goal in mind. There will always be times of danger, however, if we are serving our community and keep our end goal in mind, we will have the mentality to push the small mistakes aside and not let them get in our way of fulfilling our mission.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Neal for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The consumer is spending more and more of their time living in a digital world. If we want our businesses to succeed, we should do the same.
If we want to build digital influence, we need to create content. We should start creating consistent, frequent, and valuable content at least once a week.
As we connect to our customers’ passions, they will be more willing to spend money on our products or services.
We want to be in direct contact with our customers. It’s the only way we will know enough about their problems to effectively solve them.
If we can look at a mistake as an opportunity to pivot and grow, it will bring so much more success.

Connect with Neal

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How have you built digital influence? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/147-how-to-become-a-digital-influencer/

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Welcome back to another episode with Paul Chambers. In the last episode, we discussed how to take care of our customers using recurring revenue models. Today, we’re going to discuss the pros and cons of several different recurring revenue models, along with tips and tricks for each model.

Subscription Boxes

Today there are thousands of different subscription boxes we can subscribe to, such as Ipsy and Birchbox for beauty products, Naturebox and Urthbox for super yummy natural snacks, Bulubox for workout products, the Beard Club, and the Candy Club. There are a lot of opportunities with subscription boxes. People love to watch unboxings on YouTube or Instagram. They’re great for holidays and events. There are boxes for travel, for kids, for lifestyle, or for your horse or dog that you get on a monthly basis. Paul said, “If there's a niche out there, there's an opportunity to build a subscription box.”

There can be many pros to subscription boxes. One of these is the recurring revenue it provides every month, which can take a lot of stress off an entrepreneur's shoulders. It also limits unnecessary expenses because we only have to order enough products to fulfill our subscriptions. Our customers can also have a lot of fun with the discovery and delight side of subscription boxes by introducing people to new products and working with a lot of different brands to put new items in the box. When Paul was working on the Gentleman’s box, they worked with Manscaped and Dollar Shave Club.

A con of subscription boxes is they tend to have a faster turnover. After six or seven months, people can get what Paul calls box burnout and stop subscribing.

The Right Software

Picking the right software to run a subscription box business can be tricky. It’s important to know what we’re trying to accomplish. Cratejoy can be a one software option because it is fast and easy to build a subscription box. They also have a marketplace, so they already have an audience for us to sell to. However, it can have its challenges with products and flexibility.

Shopify is another platform that allows us to sell subscriptions through their widget where we can add on plugins and easily build on top of that. But it doesn’t have an audience like Cratejoy, so we’d have to go market on mysubscriptionaddiction.com or other places like that.

There are OrderGroove and Zuora that take it to the next level. OrderGroove is making big waves; they have some cool AI features and they are getting tightly integrated with Shopify. Zuora is an enterprise software company that is good for larger companies like Nike.

When Paul launched the Gentleman’s Box, Cratejoy didn’t exist yet, so they used WooCommerce which is a little more flexible, but they had to play with it a bit to get their subscription box management the way they wanted it.

Discovery and Delight

Subscription boxes tend to go two ways: discovery and delight or replenishable. Discovery and delight boxes send new products that customers can find joy in. They aren’t necessarily products that need to be replaced on a regular basis.

Paul said these kinds of boxes tend to work well on a quarterly basis rather than a monthly one. On a monthly basis, people often unsubscribe after about six or seven months, but they’ll stay longer on a quarterly basis.

Replenishable

A replenishable service or product is something people continue to need. It’s a great subscription model because customers must buy these every month or so anyway, so making it a subscription box that shows up right at their door makes it very easy for them. These are products like razors, which Dollar Shave Club does, or toothbrushes, which Quip does. However, this type of subscription isn’t limited to boxes. SaaS products often work great in this category because customers need access to that service every month.

Early on in the days of Gentleman’s Box, Paul and the founding team were thinking about raising capital, so they met with some investors. One of those people was Jack Abraham, a successful entrepreneur, and investor. He told them, “I love what you're doing. This is so cool, but it needs some sort of replenishable product inside.”

The team told him to thank you but they were happy with what they had. Abraham went on to co-found Hims, which is now one of the leading hair growth subscriptions, doing exactly what Gentleman’s Box should have been doing, Paul said.

If we are doing a subscription box and there’s an opportunity to put a replenishable product in it, we should take it because it will increase the longevity of our customers.

SaaS

The pros of SaaS are longevity and opportunity. “If you can build a good solution that people love and need, they're . . . less likely to leave you at some point in time. They'll stay on as long as they're using that solution,” Paul said. SaaS gives us that audience and the opportunity to build and expand our audience.

SaaS also has lots of opportunities. Paul said, “There [are] tens of thousands of SaaS companies out there, but tons of opportunity still to create solutions that people are looking for.”

We can look at a company like Canva, which is very popular and successful. They could have looked at Adobe’s subscription for Photoshop and thought, there’s no way we could compete with them. But they didn’t give up and tried to find a way to make it easier. “My philosophy is to leave no stone unturned. Look at what your biggest pain points are and challenges in your day and if something doesn’t already exist for that, then that's a great opportunity to build,” Paul said.

The challenge with SaaS is we must frequently evolve it. We can’t just create the software, put it out in the world, and sit back as the money starts rolling in. Paul had this problem with Quotegine. They did just that and thought they were done, but then people started getting bugs, breaking the system, and requesting new features and integrations. Paul and his team hadn’t anticipated that.

“You can't have that mentality of building a SaaS solution that you're not going to need to continue to invest in,” Paul said. Having a technical co-founder, especially in the beginning, can help because paying developers can be expensive.

Membership Models

The key to membership is consistently providing value. Paul described how the Subscription Trade Association is constantly putting out new content, and they’re constantly deciding what they’re going to give away for free. “We err on the side of giving more away than we probably even should, because . . . we want to grow the community,” Paul said. “We want to help people as much as possible, and if they find this helpful, then they'll engage and subscribe and become members.”

Being a member and being a subscriber can overlap. For example, Paul and I are both members of Amazon Prime, but we also subscribe to Amazon Prime. “A good membership,” Paul said, “is something you'll pay for on a monthly basis and never question that charge or not even know when that charges your credit card.”

Paul and I couldn’t remember when Amazon charges us or even how much the membership is now. This is a great example of customers never questioning the value of that membership.

Amazon isn’t perfect, however. Personally, I don’t feel like part of a community when I say I’m a member of Amazon Prime. I pay for it—and I will continue to pay for it—but I get a service from it, not a community. Amazon is missing the opportunity to build that community. For example, with their streaming service, they could create a way to watch TV and movies with other members online as Disney+ and Netflix have done.

Community is a crucial part of membership. Without it, our audience may just feel like subscribers. We should be doing everything we can to foster our membership communities.

Access/Streaming

The next recurring revenue stream is what I call the access model, but it could also be referred to as streaming. This model is where customers pay to access something. Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu fit into this, but it can also include something like Adobe Stock Images where customers pay to have access to millions of images.

A concern that small businesses have with this model is they’re too small to create something like Adobe’s image library. They don’t have the resources or the finances to build out that library.

The access model is a two-sided marketplace: there are creators putting content out there and people accessing content from the creators. It would be hard for a small business to create all that content themselves. If I want to start a stock photography site, instead of going out and taking thousands of pictures myself, I could let my audience provide pictures. It may still be a challenge to find photographers, provide them with value, and get them to feed my library, but it is easier than trying to do it all myself.

On the streaming side of access, we may think all the big companies (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu or Disney+, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Paramount Plus, etc.) have it covered, but Paul believes there’s still a lot of opportunities out there. If the top 10 YouTube creators right now started their own streaming service, people would download that app immediately, and they would have a good chance at competing with the big companies.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Paul for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

There are tons of opportunities with subscription boxes. Consider creating a box with a replenishable product to increase the longevity of customers.
The SaaS model is a great way to have lifetime (or at least very long-term) customers. However, we need to ensure we are constantly providing value by evolving and upgrading the software.
To think of a SaaS solution, find the pain points in your industry and see if there is existing software that could help fix that. Is there a way you could add a tectonic shift to an existing SaaS product, as Google Docs did by adding remote collaboration to a market that Microsoft Word used to dominate?
The membership model should be about providing value and creating a community where your target audience can feel they belong.
When building an access library, we can use our audience to help us provide content as long as we are also providing them value.

Connect with Paul

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Paul or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit subta.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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What recurring revenue streams have you tried and what pros and cons have you seen from them? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Recurring revenue is a great model to have because it can provide us with stability, but how do we make sure we continue to provide value to our recurring customers and not just treat them like commodities? In today’s episode, Paul Chambers and I discuss the ins and outs of recurring revenue and customer service, as well as Paul’s entrepreneurial journey.

Paul Chambers is an expert in subscription-based business models. For more than 20 years, he has built, scaled, and sold multiple subscription-focused businesses. He partnered to create and sell a successful subscription box company, Gentleman's Box. He also operates the Subscription Summit and the Subscription Trade Association (SUBTA), which has the largest conferences and is the largest association in the space.

The Importance of Customer Care

Successfully starting and running the Subscription Summit has been one of Paul’s greatest home runs. That first summit they held was a rollercoaster of emotion as they planned and had speakers back out, forcing them to find new ones. “Even though it was a lot of friends and family, it set the stage for where we've been able to take it and where we've been able to help that community, and it's the start of something really big in a movement that's really big out there,” Paul said.

With the accomplishment, Paul still has two big items on his bucket list. First, he wants to have Elon Musk, who has talked about Tesla becoming a subscription service, join him on stage at a summit. Second, Paul would like to reach companies like Comcast and Xfinity that struggle with customer care. “It's no surprise that I think this is . . . one of the worst subscription companies out there in terms of how they handle their customers, how they deal with their customers, [and] how they don't even treat their customers like customers. They treat them just like commodities.”

Companies like this know we need their services, so they continue to raise prices. With SUBTA, Paul believes there is an opportunity to reach whoever’s in charge of customer care and help them realize their customer service needs to be better.

“That's our opportunity to make an impact,” Paul said. “And at the end of the day, if we can help Comcast fix that, then we can impact millions of lives. . . . That's what's super important in this space [of] recurring revenue. It's not [just] one transaction, it's ongoing, and you have an opportunity to make a big impact in people's lives.”

How do we make sure we’re making the right impact with our customers? Here are Paul’s tips for treating customers well in recurring revenue models.

Increasing Longevity and Building Relationships

About 10 years ago, Paul was working on a company called Quotegine, which was an online proposal software. The company used a recurring revenue model. Paul said, “[Recurring revenue is] so nice because you can count on it, you can build your model around it, you can understand your acquisition costs, and it's not a one-off transaction. . . . For me, it's a comfort level . . . because I can count on it.”

Paul built another piece of software called Unity that helps teachers’ unions collect dues from the teachers online instead of having to hand collect checks or charge credit cards. “Finding an opportunity where something is a very manual process,” Paul said, “and putting a piece of software behind it, and then collecting the subscription revenue behind it as well is oftentimes a very fun way to look at a traditional business model.”

These kinds of recurring revenue models have so many benefits like reliability, sustainability, and longevity, but they can also help us plan for the future and give us higher valuations when we are ready to sell. Paul encourages us to increase that longevity by doing things like making it easy for customers to pause or cancel subscriptions because they’ll likely come back. As we understand the customer lifecycle, we can keep giving them value and tailoring our products to them. We can use recurring revenue to build a better relationship with our customers instead of just focusing on the transaction.

The Company’s Mindset

When I asked Paul if he considers the SaaS recurring revenue stream to be the best recurring model, he said it was a tough call. “While I just finished saying SaaS tends to see a little bit higher valuations, I think there's a big movement in the DTC (direct to consumer) space and other types of subscription that can yield just as much value. Any subscription is a great one because there's recurring revenue behind it. It's, oftentimes, the mindset of the company that will dictate that success or failure.”

If our goal is just to get subscribers without nurturing them, caring for them, or giving value to them, we won’t be as successful as we could be and we could fail. “The truly successful subscription is one where the company embraces [a nurturing] model and continues to find ways to enhance it,” Paul said.

MeUndies is a great example of a company that does this. They don’t look at their customers as subscribers, they look at them as members. They must be constantly asking, “How can we continue to do more for them? How can we continue to offer more value to our members as part of this?”

Subscribers vs Members

What is the difference between subscribers and members? A subscriber is someone who pays us on a monthly basis, and a member is someone who belongs to something. There is a difference between how we provide them value. We might give members exclusive access to events, special promos or deals, special pricing on additional purchases, etc. We continue to provide them value beyond the product they are subscribing to.

Paul’s Journey

Paul started his first business when he was 16 years old. He borrowed $10,000 from his grandfather to build an internet service provider. He bought a bunch of equipment, but he had no idea what he was doing and it failed. He needed to pay back his grandfather, so he started building websites using the equipment he’d bought. He started a website hosting business as well and that was his first true subscription company.

He loved the website hosting business because it was hard for people to leave. They knew they had to pay their bills every month and if they didn't we’d have to shut their website down and nobody ever wanted that, so it gave him a more secure income. Paul worked in that business for 10-15 years until the FBI told him he had some bad guys inside his servers.

After that, Paul decided to leave hosting, but he still had his business building websites, and he still has that agency today. About six years ago, two of Paul’s close friends approached him with the idea for the Gentleman’s Box, a monthly subscription that sends ties, socks, and pocket squares to make every man a true gentleman. Paul loved the idea. He said he would help them out in exchange for an equity stake in the company. He became a partner and they built the company until they exited last year to focus on their summit.

As they were working on the Gentleman’s Box, Paul and his partners tried to find a conference where they could meet other subscription box owners, experts, and entrepreneurs. They searched for one but couldn’t find any, so they decided to create their own.

They learned it was hard to run a conference, but they pushed through and had the first one in 2016 with about 200 people. They persevered and in 2019 they had over 1,000 attendees. Their focus now is to help create the biggest, most supportive community around the direct-to-consumer subscription industry by making the barrier to entry very low and providing tons of value.

Build a Community First

Paul has realized the importance of reflecting on mistakes, learning from them, and moving on. “I'm never one to say, dwell on the past, go back and say, ‘Gosh, I wish I had done this differently.’ It's always good to reflect. What I always say to the team is, ‘It's okay to make mistakes, as long as we don't make the same ones over and over again. Let's learn from our lessons and let's move on.’”

When they first launched SUBTA, they made some mistakes. Paul said at their first event they should have given everybody a free membership for a year, which would have immediately grown their community. Instead, they tried selling it for about $40 a month. “We weren't exactly focused on the solution, more on what the end was. [We] didn't put the building pieces, the billing components, in place.”

When we focus on our customers first and on building that community, we can show them we’re going to treat them well and it will grow loyalty and credibility.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Paul for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Recurring revenue can usually provide stability and sustainability for our businesses.
Instead of just focusing on the transaction, recurring revenue allows us to continually provide value to our customers and tailor our products to them.
As we continue to provide value, we can continually develop relationships with our customers.
Which recurring model we choose doesn’t matter so much as our mindset about it. If we have a nurturing mindset, it greatly increases our chances of success.
Treating our customers like members can help us constantly provide them more value.
Like Paul, we can build supportive communities in our niche by always providing value and focusing on that community first.

Connect with Paul

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Paul or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit subta.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How have you used recurring revenue models to provide great value to your customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Alan Hald is an inspiring and successful futurist. He co-founded and served as chairman and president of Micro Age, which he helped grow into a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 company. He has an MBA from Harvard, with an emphasis in entrepreneurship, and he is the founder and manager of American Law Firm Funding.

More than two decades ago, Alan was one of my advisors when I was a 25-year-old CEO of a publicly-traded SaaS company. In today’s episode, we are going to discuss Alan’s entrepreneurial journey and how he found success through identifying business tectonic shifts.

Alan’s Entrepreneurial Journey

When Alan was newly married, he could not get a job for six months, so he and a friend followed their passion for future studies and started the Phoenix Chapter of The World Future Society in 1973. “The idea of passion is a strong motivator and extremely important to being effective and successful in business,” Alan said. “The key thing to me is to identify something you do have passion for.”

While Alan had a passion for futurism, he realized he also had to look for patterns in the marketplace if he wanted to prepare for his future as an entrepreneur and earn a living.

“You really have to look at underlying patterns that might give you a hint as to how the world is changing and how new opportunities because of that might be created. In other words, you must change the way you look at the world by identifying patterns and then project those patterns into the future,” Alan said.

In the early seventies, Alan watched the market and identified several patterns relating to social behaviors and technology creating unique emergent needs and capabilities which, as they converged in the near future, foresaw a business tectonic shift. The first pattern he noticed was the coming of age of baby boomers. This generational shift meant more people that were growth-oriented individuals were entering the workplace. Baby boomers wanted to work with others in society and were very involved in communication. That led Alan to notice the second shift of microelectronics. He did not quite know what it meant yet, but he knew microelectronics was changing everything.

Alan saw the emergence of new, personalized communications capabilities enabling many-to-many communications which later became social media and near-instantaneous access to all information which he called the playground of information; today it is called Wikipedia. The enabling pattern catching his attention was the microtechnology revolution and the 1975 introduction of the personal microcomputer kit. It was a eureka moment, the dawning of the computer revolution and the information age, the birth of a new market, a tectonic shift that would transform the economy and society unlike any other.

Alan made a commitment to engage with those shifts and started a computer store with a business partner in 1976, the first computer store in Arizona called the Byte Shop, which became Micro Age. It grew 10 fold over the next three years, stumbled in the 1980-81 recession, recovered by 1983, and nearly doubled in size each year for nine years breaking $1 billion in 1992, which ultimately became a $6 billion company with 6,000 employees when Alan left the company in 1999.

As entrepreneurs, we can follow a similar path as Alan. We can identify our passions and motivators, look for emerging patterns, and apply our current knowledge and skills to a new industry or opportunity.

Find Motivators

Many times, we may hesitate to act on our ideas because we feel we have no resources, but really, we are lacking motivation and passion.

“[Entrepreneurship] is not a resource-constrained activity. It's a motivation constrained opportunity,” Alan said. “You may feel you can see an opportunity you know you can engage in, but if you don't have the motivation to actually take action, it's [just] an idea, and 20 years from now you will regret having never done it.”

What propels us to act on our ideas? Alan explained that passion is one of the greatest motivators. If we are passionate about our businesses and enjoy working every day, we will be more likely to pursue an idea and take advantage of an opportunity. Instead of pursuing something we hate, we should strive for opportunities we are passionate about.

We do not need a lot of resources to make an idea successful. For example, Steve Jobs started Apple by building the first computer in his bedroom and garage. “[Success] doesn't require a lot of resources. It requires a lot of motivation, and the ability to address failure and view it as an opportunity to succeed,” Alan said.

For Alan, his motivation was his passion for involvement in dramatic business shifts and his desire to make a change in society. For others, their motivation could be providing for a family, a desire to innovate, to help others; Whatever the case, we need to find something that motivates us to act. Without action, our ideas will only remain ideas.

Identify Emerging Patterns and Shifts

We should reexamine the world and see if we can find emerging trends and patterns around us that could create new tectonic shift opportunities, large or small, provided the endeavor can be self-sustaining as the market develops.

Alan created a billion-dollar company because he was able to identify and leverage patterns and tectonic shifts in the marketplace. He noticed the coming of age of baby boomers, a generational shift, and the trend towards microelectronics. Based on these two shifts, Alan took his background in business and started a computer store that eventually became a $6 billion company.

I did something very similar with Adoption.com. I had some background with adoption, and then the Internet came out. I saw a tectonic shift that could help my business community if I put the two things together. I found a way to take the internet and leverage it to help the adoption community. When we are looking for tectonic shifts, we can take something that is transforming a different industry, and find a way to leverage that same shift to transform our industry.

The first step to identifying tectonic shifts is to consistently look for them. How do we change our mindsets so we can recognize them? The patterns are there, but it's all about how we perceive the changes. The trick is to step out of our box and look at things differently.

One of the key ways to find these tectonic shifts is to look at failures, problems, or challenges, and then flip them on their head and find the opportunity that exists in those challenges by finding and creating a solution. We do not need to find a shift that is earth-shattering and world-changing, but it needs to cause large transformations.

We can ask ourselves, “Is there a need that isn’t being met?” This could be a current need or an anticipated need. It should impact a group of people, or even better, an entire industry. Once we recognize the needs, we need to do the research to understand them and find a solution we can offer.

Apply Current Skills to New Projects

After we identify the shifts happening in the marketplace, we must act.

“Once you see [patterns] you're going to have to evaluate them in some way, but don't be discouraged if you think you don't have the skills or the experience or the understanding,” Alan said. “What you know now can be completely applied to something new in the future, if you only spend some time to understand how that works. Once you understand how something works, all kinds of traditional skills, experience, understanding, and knowledge can be reapplied to emerging future activities.”

Even though Alan knew nothing about computers or electronic kits, he used his passion and vision to drive him forward to act and pursue an idea he was not 100% sure about. Instead of sitting on his idea, he started to figure out how he could use his current knowledge to help him.

“I really knew nothing about computers. I knew nothing about building computers, but I was excited about it, so I was open to learning,” Alan said. “I didn't really have to create new skills. I had the skills ready; I just had to reapply it to how things were changing.”

Alan took the knowledge and skills he developed in growing a business and applied it to a new emerging industry to help propel him towards success.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Alan for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Sometimes we may hesitate to act on our ideas because we feel we are lacking resources, but really we are probably lacking motivation and passion.
Passion is one of the greatest motivators. If we are passionate about our businesses we will be more likely to pursue an idea and take advantage of an opportunity.
We should look for underlying patterns and business tectonic shifts in the world and other industries that might give us a hint as to how the world is changing.
One of the key ways to find these tectonic shifts is to look at the biggest failures, problems, and challenges, and then create a better solution.
We can take our current knowledge and skills and apply them to a new emerging industry to help propel us towards success.

Connect with Alan

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Alan or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you identify business tectonic shifts and patterns? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-identify-business-tectonic-shifts/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss ways we can embrace adversity and have the attitude of, “Come what may.”

Come What May

In 2008, Joseph Wirthlin, an American businessman, and the religious leader gave a sermon titled, “Come What May, and Love It.” In his sermon, he shared a simple, yet powerful message he learned from his mother.

When Wirthlin was a young boy, he loved to play sports. After a tough loss during a football game, he came home feeling discouraged. His mother listened to his story and said, “Joseph, come what may, and love it.”

When we experience hardships and disappointments we have to learn how to pick ourselves back up and move on. While we can’t control what trials we encounter, we can control how to react to them.

“[E]very life has peaks and shadows and times when it seems that the birds don’t sing and bells don’t ring,” Wirthlin said. “Yet in spite of discouragement and adversity, those who are happiest seem to have a way of learning from difficult times, becoming stronger, wiser, and happier as a result.”

As entrepreneurs, we need to learn how to continue on after failures and adversity. There will be times when we lose an investment, a partner betrays us, or a client falls through. Yet despite these setbacks, we can find ways to smile and move forward.

How to Embrace Adversity

As we experience adversity in our businesses, we can find ways to embrace it.

Learn to Laugh

Wirthlin said the first thing we can do is learn to laugh. He asked, “Have you ever seen an angry driver who, when someone else makes a mistake, reacts as though that person has insulted his honor, his family, his dog, and his ancestors all the way back to Adam?” Instead of cursing at the world, we need to learn to laugh at these small hardships.

Laughter can help reduce stress hormones, release tension in our muscles, increase endorphins to boost happiness levels and reset the brain to be more positive (Source: University of St. Augustine). As we laugh in our companies and stressful careers, we will actually improve our state of mind and enter into a better mindset to continue on despite adversity.

“The next time you’re tempted to groan, you might try to laugh instead,” Wirthlink said. “It will extend your life and make the lives of all those around you more enjoyable.”

Having a sense of humor is a trait many great entrepreneurs have. For example, Elon Musk has a sense of humor about failure. When SpaceX finally reached one of their goals, they posted a blooper reel showcasing all the mistakes they made along the way, including failed engine sensors and a collapsed landing leg (Source: Entrepreneur). They even posted a video titled, “How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster.”

When we have a sense of humor and learn to laugh, we will be encouraged to try again even after the most devastating failures.

Keep the Big Picture in Mind

Whenever we experience adversity, we should keep the big picture in mind. We may be stuck in a rut on the road to a much greater destination. Wirthlin calls this seeking for the eternal.

“You may feel singled out when adversity enters your life,” Wirthlin said. “You shake your head and wonder, ‘Why me?’ But the dial on the wheel of sorrow eventually points to each of us. At one time or another, everyone must experience sorrow. No one is exempt.”

We need to understand that no one on earth has lived or will live a life without any pain, disappointment, or struggle. If we can remember this, it won’t feel like the end of the world when we hit a roadblock. Instead, it will feel like another hurdle we can jump over to continue on our journey.

“Learning to endure times of disappointment, suffering, and sorrow is part of our on-the-job training,” Wirthlin said. “These experiences, while often difficult to bear at the time, are precisely the kinds of experiences that stretch our understanding, build our character, and increase our compassion for others.”

As we keep the bigger picture in mind, we will recognize that adversity is only temporary.

Trust in the Lord

Having faith and trust in the Lord will help us learn to accept and embrace adversity. We can know that the Lord would never give us a trial He knew we couldn’t handle. Each hardship in our lives has been given to us for a reason.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (KJV) says, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

As we trust in God, he will help direct our paths and bless us.

Kenton Lee is the founder and inventor of the “shoe that grows.” He created a shoe that expands five sizes so that it can grow with an impoverished child for over five years. He has helped send more than 100,000 pairs of shoes to children in over 90 countries. However, this success didn’t come until after six years of adversity.

“[W]hatever God was calling me to, I really felt like I could do it, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight,” Lee said. He continued, “People often ask me, ‘Why didn’t you quit? Didn’t you get so discouraged during those six years trying to work on this idea?’ We had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of rejection and failure during those six years. As people asked me that, I kind of said I never got discouraged really because my expectation wasn’t that this was going to happen overnight.” (Source: Technology of Work)

Lee kept the bigger picture in mind over the six years and continued forward with trust in God. He believed that God would help direct him down the path he needed to take. Sometimes we just have to do the best we can and then leave the rest in God’s hands.

Look Back at Our Accomplishments

A great way to overcome adversity and keep a positive mindset is looking back at and express gratitude for our previous accomplishments. It may feel like we go through failure after failure when starting a new business, but if we look back at where we started we may be surprised to see how far we’ve come.

Arthur Godfry, an American radio and television broadcaster and entrepreneur, was able to do this in his career. He said, “Looking back on my achievements, it is fair to say that I am extremely proud of what I have done and accomplished so far.”

Godfrey went through much adversity in his life. Early in his career, he suffered severe injuries in a car accident. While he was in the hospital, he listened to the radio hour after hour, and when he was released, he got into radio and eventually got his own morning show on CBS radio (Source: New York Times). Godfrey didn’t let his adversity stop him from progressing. He continued moving forward, looking back on his previous accomplishments, and being grateful for where he was.

Refuse to Give Up

We shouldn’t give up just because we experience adversity.

Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motor Co., Ltd, said, “Success is 99% failure.” At 15 years old, Honda left high school to work in an auto repair shop. He eventually opened his own branch and while working at the shop, he created automotive parts for Toyota, but they were rejected (Source: Quality Logo Products). However, he didn’t let this rejection stop him.

When gas became scarce after World War II, he created a small 2-stroke motor that would need little gas to operate. Now, Honda is worth about $52 billion (Source: Macro Trends).

As we go through adversity, we should find an opportunity for growth.

“I do believe that the way we react to adversity can be a major factor in how happy and successful we can be in life,” Wirthlin said. “If we approach adversities wisely, our hardest times can be times of greatest growth, which in turn can lead toward times of greatest happiness.”

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Let adversity come and choose to embrace it.
We should learn to laugh. Laughter can reduce stress hormones, release tension, boost happiness levels, and reset the brain to be more positive.
Whenever we experience adversity, we should keep the big picture in mind. We may be stuck in a rut on the road to a much greater destination.
As we trust in God, he will help direct our paths and bless us.
A great way to overcome adversity and keep a positive mindset is looking back at our previous accomplishments.
As we go through adversity, we should find an opportunity for growth.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

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In the last episode with Evan Stewart, we discussed how to build a successful business by focusing on quality before we focus on monetization. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can build better relationships with ourselves, our customers, and our partners.

Relationship with Ourselves

To turn our business goals into a reality, we need to build a strong relationship with ourselves. Evan shared five areas that complete a whole person: personal, financial, spiritual, relational, and professional. As we focus our time, resources, and energy on improving ourselves in these five areas, we will begin to get into the right headspace for success.

Personal: How do we feel about ourselves when the door closes and we’re alone? Our personal headspace and attitude about ourselves have a huge impact on the success of our businesses. If we aren’t confident and competent in who we are, our customers and employees won’t believe our value either.

Financial: Inc. completed a study in 2016 that found people are willing to take as much as a 32% pay cut to be happier in their workplace (Source: Inc). “I believe that what you earn and how you earn it is just as important. You want to earn a million dollars, great, but how you get that money is just as important as the money that you actually receive,” Evan said. We need to focus on financial security while balancing our personal happiness. Where do we find fulfillment? How can we balance fulfillment with our financial needs?

Spiritual: We need to know what we believe in, what our morals are, and what we value. As we understand this, we should align our business values with our personal values. Otherwise, we can experience internal conflict that can have a large negative impact on our business.

Relational: The relationships we build with those around us are key to the success of our businesses. We need the support of others in our lives for encouragement, strength, and motivation. “Relationships are some of the most important things that you can focus on at any stage of the business because the people close to you will be the reason you succeed,” Evan said.

Professional: In our businesses, we should maintain a professional attitude with our business associates. We should also be professional in the way we set goals and use our resources to maximize profit in our businesses. “Your workplace needs to inspire, fascinate, and motivate,” Evan said. As we do this, our life should significantly improve because of the time and work we put in.

Evan said, “Clarity doesn't come unless you look at those five areas and know how you're dividing your time.” He continued, “At a high level, I believe that these five areas, in particular, provide a fundamental framework for you to look at how you're spending your time. I recommend touching them on a weekly basis and saying, ‘Okay, I need to make sure that I'm spending time, that I'm investing energy and resources, in these five areas every single week to make sure that my life stays in a good flow of balance.’”

Relationships with Our Customers

We need to focus on building relationships with our customers so they feel valued and appreciated. With Obsessed Academy, Evan focuses on helping his clients establish those customer relationships so they can find success in their businesses.

A fundamental principle Evan believes and teaches is, “a transaction is a byproduct of a vested relationship and not the goal of a relationship.” Instead of focusing on a transaction, we should focus on connecting with our customers. As we build referral-rich relationships, our company will have greater success in scaling and becoming profitable.

Our sales and goals are achieved by having a conversation without a motive. One of the mistakes professionals often make is focusing on their motives and forgetting to have a conversation.

If we want to create a repeat customer, we need to focus on the relationship and the conversation. The relationship will not be built on transactional goals. “When you can just have a conversation, at some point a solution will arise, and at some point, there's an opportunity to dive deep into what you really need. And we can position our products or services as the solution. Then there's an opportunity to do business there,” Evan said.

Relationships with Our Partners

We need to be cautious with the relationships we choose to build in our partnerships. Evan’s biggest setback stemmed from bad partnerships.

“I thought that I needed help. I thought I needed a partnership. It really stemmed from an insecurity, actually,” Evan said. “I wasn't confident so I got into these business partnerships with people where I would work very, very hard, and there would be disparagement in labor and results versus my partner who didn't share the same moral or work ethic.”

Sometimes we may enter into a partnership because we lack a good relationship with ourselves and feel the need to rely on someone else. This can cause major problems in the future. While partnerships can be beneficial, Evan encourages us to be very careful about the partnerships we choose to enter. If a partnership fails, we not only lose past opportunities we could have had if we weren’t in the partnership, we also lose time as it could take us one to two years to get back on our feet and adjust our businesses.

“You have to be very hyper-aware and audit the relationships that you're working with. Just because somebody is excited to work with you doesn't mean that you're the right person. Sometimes you're looking for help when in reality you need time,” Evan said.

I had made a similar mistake earlier in my career. I didn't believe in myself enough, and I thought I needed to hire people or bring on people to do things for me which resulted in a waste of energy and potential lost opportunities. We’ve got to realize as entrepreneurs that we have the capabilities to figure things out. We have to have faith in ourselves.

While we can get help, it doesn’t mean we can’t do everything on our own. We shouldn’t have to give up equity in our business or hire someone to give them control of something that we are very capable of doing ourselves.

“If you're looking at a partnership, [know] 50/50 partnerships never existed. They just don't exist,” Evan said. “There's always someone that's putting out more effort over here and driving more results. There's always a disparagement.”

If we choose to enter into a partnership, we need to remember that in reality, there is no such thing as a perfect partnership. Someone will always be giving a bit more than someone else. If we come to a disagreement, our entire business plan could fall apart. No two people are ever going to agree 100% of the time. Someone has to be able to step up and make that decision. Otherwise, the company is stuck in a state of paralysis.

“You've got to have a leader. Every army has to have someone leading the charge forward,” Evan said. If we're looking at a partner, Evan recommends:

Do everything you can to not give up equity in your company.
If you have to give away equity, do it in a way where you can still retain control.
Have an exit strategy in mind and on paper in case things don’t go as well as we hoped.

Instead of trying to split our business evenly, we need to have one person take charge. The split could be 60/40 or 80/20. Whatever the case, someone needs to own enough of the company to be CEO so when we have differing opinions on decisions, that person can make the final call. We should keep decision-making authority.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Evan for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

As we focus our time, resources, and energy on improving the personal, financial, professional, relational, and spiritual aspects of our lives, we will begin to get into the right headspace for success.
A transaction is a byproduct of a vested relationship and not the goal of a relationship.
If we enter into a partnership, we should remember to do everything we can to avoid giving up equity in our company, stay in control, and have an exit strategy prepared in case things don’t go as we hoped.

Connect with Evan

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Evan or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit his website at evanstewart.co. You can also listen to his Obsessed Podcast for more insights from him.

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Most of the time we have to lose money before we can make a profit in our businesses.

Evan Stewart is the founder and chief evangelist for the Obsessed Academy and helps others build a life they can be obsessed with through private events, his Obsessed Conference, and his Obsessed Podcast. He has become a world-renowned life and business strategist who builds success by first losing money.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can build a successful business by focusing on quality before we focus on monetization.

Evan’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Evan came from a family of entrepreneurs. When he was growing up, instead of wondering what type of job he would pursue a living, he thought about what service he could provide to others.

In college, he jumped into real estate, had the opportunity to scale his business, and became the top 1% of realtors in Texas. His real estate company became his first step in learning and growing on his entrepreneurial journey. With so much success, he discovered a new passion: a passion to help others achieve that same success he did. He began to meet great people, build relationships, and eventually started Obsessed Academy where he helps consult entrepreneurs in building a successful business.

“The core of everything I do comes down to this ideology that individuals deserve to be inspired, fascinated, and motivated by where they live, where they work, who they live and work with, and how they live and work,” Evan said. “We can all be the best version of ourselves. . . . People have so much potential in them to do incredible things to impact the world and make money around what they're doing.”

From the examples of his parents, Evan learned that entrepreneurship is all about relationships and service. His parents helped teach him to recognize a healthy relationship with great communication and systems in place so that issues in one area don’t affect another area. Evan’s relationship with his parents helped him identify healthy relationships not just in his marriage but also with employees, partners, and customers.

One of the greatest lessons he has learned throughout his journey is to focus on people. We shouldn’t be focused on money but on the relationships, we can build and the people we can serve.

Don’t Focus on Monetization

Evan’s best monetization strategy is to not focus on monetization.

“Don't focus on monetization,” Evan said. “I'm not saying don't be profitable. I'm not saying don't focus on sales or money, but I'm speaking specifically to those that are looking at building as much profit as possible in the early stages. [Instead] focus on quality first, and monetization second, and after your product becomes the market standard, switch.”

Instead of only focusing on making a profit, we should focus on providing as much value as we can to our target audience and customers so we can build relationships and build our credibility. This strategy will help us achieve the greatest lifetime value out of our customers.

If we try to be profitable right off the bat, we likely won’t. Starting a business often requires risks and investments. We may have to spend three years building our business without any profit, but if we are focusing on quality, we will eventually see a great return on investment in the long run.

Evan’s Obsessed Conference is not a profitable event. Yet. He mapped out a 10-year plan for his event to lose money in the beginning while they focus on the quality of the experience and relationships. They currently have an 85% audience retention rate because they are providing so much value to their customers with little cost. He does this with the long-term game in mind. Because he is building strong relationships with his customers now, later, when thousands of people attend his event, they will be more willing to spend money on an event they already know provides value.

We can make a profit by losing money in the short term first. If we're in the business of positively impacting lives, we will be much more likely to monetize in the long run. “The best data [to look at] are . . . the businesses that have grown significantly because of your relationships together,” Evan said.

Are we here for the short run or the long run? While some businesses can find success in the short-term run, most businesses find more success by making long-term goals. If we are aiming to be successful in the long run, Evan encourages us to ask ourselves, “How can we minimize profit right now to focus all our needs on the quality of our services and relationships with our customers?”

Most companies make a goal to earn as much money as possible right off the bat, even before they have validity, history, credibility, following, and a customer base. Instead, we want to focus on building credibility, relationships, and quality first, before we focus on making a profit. When we do this, we are much more likely to see exponential growth down the road.

If we look at some of the biggest and fastest-growing companies of our business careers, the Googles and the Amazons, we will find they followed a similar model: quality first, profit second. Google didn’t focus on monetizing for years, they built reach. Amazon did the same thing. They operated for years without making a profit. They focused on reinvesting back into their company to provide the highest quality and greatest value service they could. As a result, Google and Amazon are both in positions where they have tremendous value and influence.

“Look in the mirror and [ask], ‘Am I doing this for me and overcompensating for an insecurity, or am I doing this because this is a mission distribution method for achieving some type of greater mission?’ That's the question we need to be asking ourselves,” Evan said.

Charge What We’re Worth

After we have focused on building the quality of our products or services and establishing relationships with our customers, we need to determine what to charge. How do we set the price of our products?

Evan wrote an article, “How to Charge What You’re Worth Without Seeming Like a Jerk.” In it, he wrote, “There are two simple answers to this question: one, ensure you are up to date on industry standards and norms in your market. . . . Take some time to do your research so you’re aware of where you stand. Two, gather data every single time you win or lose a sale. . . . ‘Your market worth is what a buyer is willing to pay is common knowledge among sales professionals. Ensure you’re collecting this data.”

When we are determining our prices, we need to look at what our competitors are offering while also paying attention to the value our customers perceive our products or services to be worth. Evan recommended that when we choose our prices, we should really be competing for better quality over the lowest price. If we try to have the lowest price, we will almost always be beaten.

“If you compete on price, you're going to constantly be shopped out to the lowest bidder. If you compete on quality, then you'll never have to justify your price,” Evan said.

When we charge our customers based on high-quality services and products, we will be able to charge more since we are providing better value. It is worth it to reinvest in better customer service, get more team members, and pay for higher quality team members so we can provide better service to our customers. It's an ascending spiral. As we increase our value, our customers will be willing to spend more on our products, even over a cheaper price.

“If you believe that quality is important, then charge what you're worth, and then prove that you're worth what you've changed through the experience with the customer,” Evan said. “You have to prove why you're charging that or the market is going to reject you.”

While making a profit is essential for business success, we should still focus on the customer’s needs. How can we build relationships? How can we provide value? When we prioritize quality and value over profit, monetization will come naturally.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Evan for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Instead of making profit our number one priority, in the beginning, we should focus on providing value to our target audience first. We want to focus on building credibility, relationships, and quality first before we focus on monetization.
When we are determining the prices of our products and services, we should look at what our competitors are charging while also paying attention to the value our customers perceive our products or services to be worth.
As we increase our value, consumers will be willing to spend more on our products, even over a competitor with a cheaper price.
When we prioritize quality and value over profit, monetization will most likely come naturally.

Connect with Evan

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

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Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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How do you provide high value and great service to your customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/141-how-to-make-a-profit-by-losing-money/

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Welcome back to another episode with Ali Schwanke. In the last episode, we talked about taking the path of the most resistance along with Ali’s entrepreneurial journey, B2B vs B2C content marketing, and quick wins. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss why content marketing is so powerful and Ali’s tips for successful content marketing.

Why is content marketing so powerful?

Content marketing equips customers with the power to make what they feel is their own buying decision. Ali gave an example through real estate and buying a car. She said, “I was never a home buyer in the days when you didn't have access to the MLS listings. I was never a home buyer where I had to go to the office and have someone sit down and put house offerings in front of me. I've always been in the age where I go online, and I look at the neighborhood that I want, and the realtor to me just feels like a person that I have to go through to get to the house.”

“Content marketing is the same way. Every industry now feels like that. I can go buy a car, but how much do I know what I'm doing when I buy that car? That's where content comes in. So if I feel like you've educated me to the point where I feel like I know enough that . . . I'm not being tricked or duped in the sales process, then I'm [going to] have a good buying experience, and that's what content facilitates.”

Top Content Marketing Strategies

Here are some of Ali’s top content marketing strategies.

Focus on Thought Leadership or Search-Driven Blogging

Ali was working with a company that was doing strategic planning. They were writing articles that were very interesting to their audience, but they weren't getting much traffic from a search engine perspective. Ali said, “The tip that I often tell people is there are two different types of blogging. Most companies don't know that they're actually doing one or the other, and they don't really know what camp they're in and why.”

Ali explained that a search-driven or SEO-driven headline for a blog might say, “5 Ways to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile.” To find this blog post, someone might type in “how do I optimize my LinkedIn profile” and that blog would come up as an answer.

In contrast, Ali said the thought leadership version of that title might be “5 Ways You Bombed Your Last Interview Because Your LinkedIn Profile Sucks.” She explained, “No one's gonna search for why your LinkedIn profile sucks, but they might stumble upon that on social or if that's in an email newsletter.” When they do, they’re going to ask, “Did I really bomb that interview because my LinkedIn profile is so awful?” and then read the article.

“When it comes to deploying written content you have to understand which camp you're in because each one of those has different strategies.” Ali told the company she was working with that “the only way they're going to get more traffic with sexy thought leadership-driven content is to find other audiences to leverage.”

Be Consistent

To get into the baseball Hall of Fame, a player’s average needs to be about .300, which is three out of 10 bats. If you think about it, that’s not very high. But it is the consistency of showing up to play the game that matters.

“I think a lot of times,” Ali said, “companies or marketing directors will look for the home run type of content, saying, ‘The last few blogs that we wrote didn't go over really well,’ but some of the success of what you're going to see is simply by showing up every single week.”

In addition, she said, “When you stop publishing content, people start asking questions. And when people ask questions and you're not there to answer the questions, they make up their own stories.”

Focus on the Customer

In order for us to have content success, we need to use the words our customers use and write about the things they face—not the things we want to talk about. “There's this Venn diagram of . . . the things the customer cares about and . . . the things that your product or service can solve for them.”

“Where those two meet together is where your content should be, because if it's not if you write just about what they're having problems with, you'll get a lot of traffic and not a lot of conversions. If you just write about what your product is you [won’t get] a lot of traffic.”

“Those two together are the hard part because sometimes the CEO or the product team will say we should write about this, and the marketing team has to be able to say, this is where we stay if you want content marketing to actually pay off.”

Promote, Promote, Promote

Ali said, “It is equally important to promote as it is to create.” She explained, “If you were going to err on the side of consistency and you can't keep up with every week, I would much rather see you publish a one really great piece of content a month and promote the heck out of it. That means your one piece of content might be a really great guide, a really good blog post, or [a] really good video, and it's reshared on social, it’s put over on Medium, it's shared over on Buzzsumo, it's put out as an infographic, etc. You've repurposed it and reshared it so that you have all of this kind of groundswell. It's not just like a new thing every week.”

Customize Our Webchat

Webchat can be complicated. “If you have a software company or a solution that has more of a self-guided journey [for the customer] to [make a] purchase, there is a need for a chat to be part of that. But I see too many companies that have a one-size-fits-all chat solution like, ‘hey, here I am, chat with me,’ whereas chats are really supposed to be the place where you think ahead of the questions that someone would have relative to the information that they're viewing.”

For example, if someone’s on a software company’s pricing page, the chat might say, “Do you have any questions about pricing?” Ali said, “Those [customized chats] are typically things you need to develop from looking at your analytics, looking at what people are asking you, [and] using that data side to really inform the creative. But chat is powerful. . . . You don't need to throw it on every page of your website.”

Have a Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy

A customer-centric marketing strategy assumes that we're going to find out what's most important in the customer’s mind. Sometimes we assume we know a lot about our audience. For example, we might ask customers, “how did you hear about us?” They might respond with “a friend told me” or something like that.

But what if we asked, “what was happening in your life at the time that you found our solution?” They might say they just moved or got married or the license expired for the software they were using before. With this kind of question, we can understand what's happening in our customers’ lives and find out how to help them better.

Repurpose Content

Ali had a client who sells services to dealerships do some original research. “One of our clients had done a research report, which is a powerful strategy, but it's one that's definitely a lot more uphill than it is downhill.”

“They surveyed everybody there in the dealership . . . and came out with some findings and actually created this . . . [about] 30-page report. Out of it, they produced infographics, produced videos, [and] were able to link it to case studies.”

Ali said, “What that created is this evergreen opportunity to get mentions and guest publications and raise the level of their thought leadership. It's been continually producing leads for them since we created it. So I think back to that idea of [how] one powerful piece of content has paid dividends, [and] all of their blog content then is being derived from this one piece. So it's really powerful when you do it the right way.”

Use Content as a Relationship Builder

Ali has another client who is producing a podcast as a way to build relationships in their industry. She compared it to real estate, saying, “If you're a real estate agent, and you know that title companies, lawyers, attorneys, estate planners, [etc.] they all work with people who may need new house options for buying and selling.”

“So in a sense,” she continued, “what they're doing is creating a podcast for those folks to build a relationship. So they're using the podcast as a relationship-building tool to then drive them into the funnel to learn more about what their company does. So I think content can also be a really good relationship builder, as well as a content engine.”

Be Creative to Make B2B Video Marketing More Interesting

We might be thinking how do we make B2B video marketing less boring? Well, Ali gave us some examples and ideas.

She described a company that did a video explaining the concept of video marketing. “They were comparing it to baking a cake,” she said. “And it was so well done, and so I think it sticks with me to this day because it was using an analogy that everyone is familiar with.”

We can lean on popular concepts or pop culture and have fun with our videos. We can also study things from other industries like documentaries or shows and movies that seem like they would be boring and see how they made them exciting.

Bridge the Creative and Analytical

Ali described two groups in marketing. The first might say, “I'm just gonna pitch really crazy ideas and see if the client likes them.” And the second might say, “I use data to make decisions, and there is little room for creativity. I have to do what the data tells me.”

“I firmly believe there's an intersection between the two of those,” Ali said. She gave an example of going after the search “how to monetize my business.”

“Let's say that it's dominated already by companies that have really good content. So, you could either attack it from a, ‘I'm going to make much better content than them,’ and better is going to mean an emphasis on better questions, [going] further in-depth, [having] visuals, [etc.]. Or [saying], ‘What are the other ways I could attack this from a data perspective? It looks like they're not ranking over on YouTube, or they don't have any content on social [media] about this.’ So using that analytical mind to find the gaps that you can dig into. And then the creative pieces: ‘How do I not only answer that question but I also entertain them?’”

“Look at what's happening outside your industry. Don't look for examples in your industry. Go see what's happening. . . . I'm sure there's a lot that you can learn from looking at what's happening in manufacturing and how they do it on Nickelodeon that you could pull into your creative process to really bridge that gap.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ali for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Content marketing allows customers to be informed about their purchase decisions.
Choose to focus on thought leadership or search-driven blogging, so we can know how to promote our content.
Be consistent. Sometimes showing up to play the game is the most important thing with content.
In our content, we should focus on what the customer cares about and how our product or service can help them with that.
Regardless of how much content we’re putting out, we need to make sure we promote, promote, promote.
Our web chat should be tailored to the specific pages it’s on; it doesn’t need to be on every page of our website.
To understand what's happening in our customers’ lives and find out how to help them better, we should have a customer-centric marketing strategy.
We can make good use of our content by repurposing it.
We can use our content to build relationships with our audience.
B2B video marketing can be fun and creative when we draw on popular concepts, pop culture, and more.
Use both data and creativity to inform our content marketing decisions.

Connect with Ali

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ali or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or Twitter. You can also check out Hubspot Hacks on YouTube or visit her website, SimpleStat.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you used any of these content marketing strategies? If so, how did it go? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/140-10-content-marketing-strategies-to-up-our-content-game/

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“Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” - Robert Frost

Sometimes in our business, we might be tempted to take the well-traveled road, the road everyone else is taking. We may not want to put in the effort that taking the harder path requires. In today’s episode, Ali Schwanke and I will discuss how doing video may be harder but worth it. We’ll also discuss Ali’s entrepreneurial journey, content marketing, and quick wins.

Ali Schwanke is the CEO and founder of Simple Strat, a boutique agency that simplifies content marketing for B2B technology companies worldwide. She has more than 15 years of marketing experience ranging from an in-house marketing agency to sales and entrepreneurship. She brings a practical and data-driven perspective to the practice of content marketing. She's also the co-host of the popular YouTube series HubSpot Hacks.

The Path of Most Resistance

When I asked Ali what the greatest home run of her career is she said the most recent one is the YouTube series Hubspot Hacks. This series has generated over 3 million impressions on YouTube. The channel has almost 9,000 subscribers, and it has generated over 500 different top-of-funnel leads. Hubspot Hacks has also made well over six figures in revenue. “The reason that it's a home run is,” she explained, “it's one of those projects that came out of an inclination from a customer experience.”

Ali explained how Hubspot is a marketing technology platform that was originally created to help people automate their marketing activity, but it’s grown into more than that now. “It's so big now that people don't really know what to do,” Ali said. “They end up looking for how to do these very tiny things.”

“HubSpot has a lot of different knowledge center articles: ‘here's how to set up your users,’ ‘here's how to use video,’ [etc.]. But people were saying, ‘Show me, show me, I still don't get it.’ [We knew] that people were using platforms like TikTok and . . . Instagram videos were really hot, and so people just wanted to see it.”

“We recorded some screencast videos,” Ali said. “It was literally: I record my screen. My face is on the lower left-hand side, I'm wearing a t-shirt, and we're just walking through this screen share. We did it for a couple of things like ‘how do I do a workflow,’ ‘how do I do a landing page,’ and discovered that those got thousands and thousands of hits. People started asking us additional questions, and we thought, ‘Whoa, what's going on here? Why isn't this content anywhere else?’”

“So we decided to spin that off into a separate series and use that as a lead generator for our agency. We did that, and about six months into it, re-optimized based on what we knew about YouTube SEO at that time. It just took off, and then the pandemic happened and it really took off.”

“Even if there's a type of content right now from your competition that already exists, people learn in different forms. Video is still one of the hottest places to get some traction because it's hard [to do]. [But first] you have to be okay with being on video. Yes, you look like that, and yes, you sound like that, so stop freaking out about it. Secondly, you can't edit a video the way you edit a blog . . . because you have to be a lot more thoughtful when you record it. That scares a lot of people away.”

Hubspot Hacks has been so successful because they gave value away for free to their target audience, and as a result of giving it away for free, they gained credibility and reach. Revenue came as a natural result of that, but it all came from providing value first.

Another reason they’ve been successful is because of the bigger barrier for entry. Video is harder for competitors, so there's not as much competition there. Sometimes, as water looks for the downhill path and follows the path of least resistance, businesses look for the path of least resistance too.

Often, we should be heading in the opposite direction of the water because most of our competitors are going down the path of least resistance; they're going to do the easiest thing. If we want to differentiate ourselves, set ourselves apart, and provide something unique, one of the easiest ways to do that is to take the harder path. Video is harder to do; not as many people are doing it, but it presents a great opportunity to position ourselves in the number two search engine in the world, YouTube.

“People forget that YouTube is a place,” Ali said. “It is home to a lot of people who [create] content: Red Bull videos, skateboard videos, cooking videos. But there's an equal amount of people that are looking for business-to-business how-tos. I know I've used YouTube when it comes to ‘how do I do something in Evernote?’ ‘How do I set up something in QuickBooks?’ I've ended up on YouTube, and most of the time people don't think about the journey someone takes after they've watched the video. That journey is how inbound marketing actually works. So putting some thought into the journey is important upfront.”

Ali’s Journey

Ali's entrepreneurial journey actually started in photography. She explained, “I wanted to rid the world of stock photography, knowing that the same four to five people seem like they work everywhere, because they're in the cooking ads, they're in the home ads, they're in the B2B ads. That was several years ago, and at that time, not a lot of companies wanted to pay me.”

“So, I ended up building a business around weddings, babies, so on and so forth. But I still, at the end of the day, really wanted to use this authentic visual perspective to help drive better business marketing decisions.”

As her career progressed, Ali got lots of questions such as how to build a website, which she learned how to do. “Over the course of my career, I learned a lot about marketing from working for both myself and other people.”

She continued, “Where I ended up now is in a world where everybody wants the answer to something before they talk to a salesperson, and that is the role of content. That's ultimately what I do today, and I love it. I find myself just being consumed by media, by podcasting, by videos, by written content and how it leads someone to make a purchase that they feel good about and solve the problem in their career.”

Content Marketing for B2B vs B2C

Ali’s company used to have a mixture of customers in B2B and B2C. They eventually decided to focus solely on B2B. “As you look at both marketing disciplines, B2C tends to have a very low price point, [and] a lot of one to one decision making.”

“For example, if I go and buy a pair of shoes, that involves me with a lot of different options, [but] at the end of the day it's my decision. It's usually not a committee. There's usually not the need to read about how the shoe functions when I run [or] read about all the different ways that it's made. You just buy a shoe because you want it, it looks nice, and you thought about it.”

In contrast, B2B is much more complex. “[It] tends to have committees of people that make decisions together. There tend to be larger budgets. There tends to be a lot of complexity involved in the sale. Sometimes [it takes] 12, 18, 24 months. [There’s a] need to continually nurture someone along that buying journey.”

“We found,” Ali explained, “that was so different that we decided to make that shift and focus solely on B2B, which then lends itself to content that attracts them to the website [and] gets them to learn what their problem is.”

They’ll find the solution to their problem, a solution they didn’t even know existed. “It's almost like it's their idea that they want to buy that thing, and then they feel like they had a hand in that buying experience.”

Focus on the Quick Wins First

Ali explained that when we’re starting out, we often don’t realize what we can sell. “People will pay money for things that we might otherwise take for granted. You can make money teaching anybody anything. Even if it's easy for you, it might not be as easy for them.”

We can start with the things we know how to do well. We don’t have to build our business on something complicated that we don’t even understand yet. “People sometimes think ‘I'm gonna make $5 million,’ [but] you don't make $5 million before you make $5. So, what is the first easiest thing that you already know that you can package and systematize and then turn around to the market?”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ali for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Giving away something of value for free can be a great lead generator.
Many of our competitors are taking an easier path. We can get ahead by taking the harder path that most people aren’t doing.
B2B can often lend itself better to content marketing because its purchase decisions are often more complex.
When we’re starting out, we can focus on the first easiest thing that we already know.

Connect with Ali

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ali or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or Twitter, check out Hubspot Hacks on YouTube, or visit her website SimpleStat.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How have you found success in taking a harder path? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-taking-the-path-of-more-resistance-led-to-more-than-6-figures-in-revenue/

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Monica Bijoux is the founder and CEO of Decide To Move. She's also a licensed psychotherapist and business strategist. She's an international best-selling author of books such as Teach Your Expertise. She speaks at events around the world and hosts the Decide To Move podcast. She uses her decades of experience to help high achievers, aspiring entrepreneurs, and veterans to have financial freedom and live a life of purpose.

In today’s episode, Monica and I are going to walk through the details of her membership site, courses, and coaching. We’ll also discuss her passion, journey to entrepreneurship, and more.

Monica’s Membership Site, Courses, and Coaching

Monica’s membership site is called Decide To Move Academy. Every month they release a new course, product, service, or training. Members have access to their own private Facebook group. Monica does one coaching session with the members as well.

“It's really just about being a value. . . . I'm just one that I like a lot of times to over-deliver because I know what it's like to have people under deliver.”

Monica has about 50 members in her community. “I try to keep them kind of small so I can give them a lot more support, compared to me being so big that [I can’t keep up]. I still work in the service, and so I want to make sure that I'm not overwhelming myself.”

Monica also has a lot of different courses. Her courses are taught outside the membership portal, but clients can upgrade to include group coaching in the course.

“Because I'm a therapist, I'm able to really help people with their mindset. I'm also certified as a hypnotherapist, so there are [things] like meditation, and going from a deeper level than just surface-level stuff. I also do visualizations. So, I have different modalities that people can go in, based on what's comfortable for them. We also do stuff around confidence levels . . . from a social standpoint. So, I have courses that address those issues and concerns as well.”

To power her online courses, Monica uses LearnDash, which she highly recommends. “It's so easy to use, and they're constantly updating their . . . plugins, and their plugins are free. . . . It's easy for me to even update it. Sometimes I don't even wait for my VA. I just do it myself because I'm a techie person too. . . . It allows you to just click a button to determine what assets people have whether it's a course or . . . membership. So, it's great. I absolutely love it.”

Her coaching offers two packages: one for six months or one for a year. “We both know for a fact that a person doing one-on-one coaching for a month is not going to get what they need,” she said. “The leverage is not going to be the same.”

With her one-on-one coaching, her clients have access to the whole membership and are also able to select one of her big-ticket courses. If they want to start their own podcast, they have access to the podcast course. If they want to start their own online program, they have that course in there as well. Monica will be adding media publication training to her coaching next year. She also plans to add a SaaS product in the future.

Monica’s Passion: Life

Monica is passionate about life. She said, “Just based on my own experiences, I came from a life filled with abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, homelessness, teen [motherhood], etc. I've had people that know who I am now [say] ‘What? You actually went through all that?’ and I'm like ‘Yeah, that's what makes me who I am because I know what a rough start looks like.’”

“I spend a lot of time making sure people understand that your past doesn't have to be your future. It doesn't have to be what defines you. You make that decision yourself,” she said. “[So] I'm truly passionate about life and helping people grow.”

Monica’s Journey

Monica had never thought about being an entrepreneur. She had a difficult childhood, moving around about 20 times before she was 18 years old. “I just knew that I had a passion and a heart to help other people, [but] I didn't know what that looked like.” She thought maybe she could be a counselor or a therapist.

Monica started dispatching for 911, working in the emergency department. She saw people come in and have different stories. “People would just gravitate to me without realizing why and so I ended up going to school, getting my degree as a therapist.”

She found out about business coaching and learned it was another way to help people. “I went to school, got certified as a master level coach, and I started my own business. I loved it because I was like, ‘Wow, I can actually help people and also work for myself at the same time.’”

Monica had to put her business on hold when the Lord told her she needed to go into the military. “I literally had an argument with the Lord . . . [but] I finally said okay, let me just do what I'm supposed to do.”

“I was working with a lot of military active duty as well as their families,” Monica explained. “I was finding that I would help them get to a certain point because my specialty is trauma in the military, so I was helping them get to the point where they're ready to live their lives, they're transitioning out of the military, [and] I would take off my therapy hat and put on my business coaching hat. Once I left South Korea and came back to the States, I was like, ‘I'm going to start my coaching business again.’ That way I can help people from both ends, from the mental health side of the house, but also the business side of the house.”

Don’t Put All the Eggs in One Basket

When I asked Monica what her best monetization strategy is, she said, “I actually have several different avenues. I don't put all my eggs in one basket, and I believe in laying the foundation and building on top of it.”

She said she has a podcast course, online courses, and a membership site. She’s also on social media, but she doesn’t do Facebook ads or Facebook lives because it’s not her thing. She also works with newspapers and magazines, and she’s on lots of summits, getting asked to speak at a lot of different events. She also said, “Networking and collaborating [are] huge things for me, making sure that I'm around like-minded and like-hearted people, and then the money will come.”

“I provide value, and people automatically start messaging me and asking me [if] they can set up a consultation call. They ultimately end up becoming either a client or signing up for one of my programs. I'm not a salesy person; I'm just willing to be authentic, and I think that really helps people feel comfortable.”

Clubhouse

Monica talked with me about one tectonic shift that is a big one: social media. The latest social media statistics in 2021 show that the average person spends two hours and 25 minutes per day on social media (Source: Oberlo.com). As with other tectonic shifts, we can leverage the time people spend on social media.

Monica and I talked specifically about Clubhouse, which is an invitation-only social media app where users can communicate in voice chat rooms that accommodate groups of up to 5,000 people. The audio-only app hosts live discussions with opportunities for users to participate through speaking and listening (Source: Wikipedia.org).

Monica co-moderates several chat rooms in Clubhouse, and she is seeing how it is shifting how people do business. “You have high influence entrepreneurs that are seven-, eight-, nine-figure, even some 10-figure entrepreneurs that are on Clubhouse. They actually provide strategies and . . . value to people who follow them. They learn different things about them. They're providing free coaching. People are [direct messaging] them and connecting with them, signing up for their products and services.”

“Since I've been on Clubhouse,” Monica said, “I've gotten six high-end clients just from me having a room, and talking, and providing value. . . . In fact, before this podcast interview, I had somebody message me and ask me if I would be interested in being their coach. So they signed up for a consultation call for [the next day].”

“So, that's the kind of thing that I'm seeing happen in the business world: that people want to actually . . . know, like, and trust you, not just through email, but also just hearing you. That's what's great about Clubhouse; people can actually hear what you do. . . . I see Facebook ads kind of fading away. . . . On Clubhouse they actually get to hear you talk and hear your value based on the questions that they ask you, so people are already coming in with the mindset that they want to work with you.”

Helping Someone Sleep

Monica also shared a simple but meaningful story from her career. She had one of her high achiever clients reach out to her. This client wasn’t very sure what she wanted to do, and she was under a lot of stress. She hadn’t slept in over 38 hours because she was in her head and feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

She got on a coaching session with Monica and told her about her frustration. “I'm smart,” she said. “I've owned a business before, and I know that I'm supposed to be a coach. This is my purpose. I just don't know what to do.”

By the time she got off the phone with Monica, she was feeling much better. She had a clear direction and a step-by-step strategy. She posted on Facebook that when she got off the phone with Monica, she was able to sleep like a baby.

“So, that was, to me, one of my favorite things that happened when she tagged me on Facebook,” Monica said. “It was just something as simple as . . . helping someone be able to sleep.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Monica for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

In our membership sites, courses, and coaching, we should be providing continual value. We can also overdeliver as Monica does.
Our past doesn’t have to define us. We can decide that for ourselves.
We should diversify our monetization strategy and not put all our eggs in one basket.
Apps like Clubhouse are causing tectonic shifts in how we do business. People want to hear from us through these kinds of apps.

Connect with Monica

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Monica or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit her website at decidetomove.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Do you have a membership site or course? If so, what strategies do you use to monetize them? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/membership-sites-courses-and-coaching/

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Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular. 37% of the US population (104 million) listen to podcasts at least every month (Source: PodcastHosting.org). That’s millions of people we can reach every month. In today’s episode, Jeff Mendelson and I will discuss the benefits of running a podcast, along with tips for working with virtual assistants and communicating value in pricing.

Jeff Mendelson is the host of the One Big Tip podcast. He runs a full-service digital marketing agency where he works with developing comprehensive digital marketing campaigns for startups to establish businesses. He focuses on lead generation and ROI-based initiatives.

Jeff is based in Miami, Florida but works worldwide. He helps entrepreneurs conceptualize, develop, and then execute all-encompassing digital marketing strategies, sales funnels, paid campaigns, and getting the right people and disciplines in place. With over 15 years of continuous digital marketing experience in all formats, Jeff has a wealth of information on what works and what doesn't in the digital marketing space.

How Jeff’s Podcast Changed His Life

Jeff started his podcast in December 2019, taking the advice of Steve Larson to publish every day for a year and then see the change. “That's what I've been doing, and it's just been taking me in all kinds of great directions, [and I’ve had] all kinds of new revelations. I guess the biggest thing is that I'm just mad I didn't do this like five or 10 years ago, but I was just like, ‘Why do I need a podcast?’ . . . Now I'm all about it, and I'm ready to kill it and really help other people to do it as well.”

Benefits of a Podcast

Jeff explained that having a podcast is a great way to network. “There is no better networking tool, COVID-19 or not COVID-19,” Jeff said. With the many communication tools we have—Zoom, Microsoft teams, WhatsApp—the world is so small, and having a podcast is one way to find and connect with people all over the world using those communication tools.

Jeff said he was interviewed by a British guy located in Doha, Qatar, and they had a great interview. “I never would have met these people without [my podcast],” Jeff said.

A podcast can be a great way for people to thrive in a situation they can control. “I'm an introvert already,” Jeff explained. “I'm a wallflower at conventions. . . . but once I get in front of [the camera] . . . [I] can talk about this all day.”

Jeff also said podcasting is a great way to establish and control the conversation. It becomes a no-pressure invitation to speak with really interesting people we might not have spoken with otherwise. If we see someone at a shopping mall and try to talk to them, they might just ignore us, but most of the time people are a lot more willing to have a conversation with us if it is in a setting like a podcast.

When we invite someone to our show, we provide them with value. They get positive exposure to our audience with good reciprocity.

We can also have fun conversations. Jeff used the example of his video background, which has a lightsaber and some Star Wars figures on a shelf. He doesn’t mention it, but people often bring it up and they get to talk about Star Wars for a few minutes. “It's just a great connection tool,” Jeff said. We need to find ways to build connections with our guests and listeners. Personally, I wear shirts for some of my favorite movies and shows, some of my favorite sports teams, and some companies I have worked for in the past to help build connections.

Podcasts can also help you make higher connections. “Being a guest and also hosting people, you have a direct connection to the top. You interview the CEO of the company. You bypass all the gatekeepers, you bypass all the VPs, or directors, or whoever it is. You talk to the source of the information, and now you're connected with that person who knows you on a first-name basis. And that for me is mind-blowing.”

Tips for Effectively Working with a Virtual Assistant

A virtual assistant (VA) is an independent contractor who provides administrative services to clients while operating outside of the client's office. They typically operate from a home office but can access necessary files and documents remotely (Source: Investopedia).

I've been working with a team in India for more than 20 years and I love it. It's nice to be able to leave for the day and they work on it during the night. We usually overlap for an hour or two in the morning, and it's very effective. I love the work ethic, and I find that I can keep people on the team longer. These are just some of the benefits of having those remote teams.

Jeff has also worked with VAs for most of his career. “It's a little bit of a mindset shift,” Jeff said. “[But] it's really quite simple. I don't care whether you're across the street or halfway around the world, you are remote to me.” He views everyone as remote because, at the end of the day, they are all a four-inch square on a screen, and that's all he has to connect with them.

“When you lose that ability to have coffee with somebody . . . you need to be super clear. Overcommunicate. You just need to make sure that whatever it is going on in your head, whatever your wants and desires [are], . . . you have to be able to communicate it, and that does not matter whether you're working with someone in Argentina, in Ukraine, in India, the Philippines—doesn't matter. You have to be able to communicate.”

Once we figure out how to communicate with our VAs, the next step is to train them and give them work that is interesting to them and they can succeed in.

Jeff said the last thing we need to keep in mind with VAs is the time zone difference and how it affects our work. “These people are not going to be working the same 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern Time that you are. Someone in India, they're 10 hours ahead of me. So I have to make sure that I get in all of my requests before I shut down for the evening, and my requests . . . need to be clear enough that they can work independently because they are going to be doing this when it's two [or] three in the morning my time.”

To help us with our communication, we can use tools like Loom or ScreenFlow. We also need to make sure that we have standard operating procedures and that we train our VAs on them well.

Communicating Value in Pricing

Jeff said the biggest mistake he has made several times throughout his career is with pricing. “When you price something out,” Jeff said, “what you're trying to do is deliver a product that delivers more value to the person you're selling to [than] the amount of money they're going to pay you.”

In other words, what we’re giving them is worth more than what they’re paying. For example, if we build them one sale funnel that's guaranteed to make them a million dollars, we can’t accept $500 for it. That funnel is going to categorically change their life. If we underprice it to that point, they will think that it has no value or it won’t work.

“I've made that mistake maybe five or six times where I realized that I undervalued something, and, of course, part of that comes with experience,” Jeff said. “On the flip side of that, when you overcharge someone [it] can have the exact same effect.” If we overcharge someone, they’ll just say, “You're too expensive,” and find someone else. In these cases, it really teaches us to hone in on what we are worth and how much we can charge for a particular product. It also teaches us how to sell the value of our products and services well.

Part of pricing does come with experience, but we can also do our research. We can look at what our competitors are charging and see, based on our experience and value, what we should charge in relation to that. One of the most important things, though, is communicating our value. We need to make sure our customers know how much our products or services are worth.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeff for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We can reach millions of people with podcasts.
Podcast guests are a great way to network.
Podcasts are also a great way to have conversations with people that we may not have been able to otherwise. We can interview and get to know CEOs instead of VPs or directors.
When working with VAs, we need to overcommunicate, especially when there’s a big-time, difference.
We can use tools to help us communicate effectively, as well as having standard operating procedures in place.
Underpricing can make our product or service seem like it has no value. Overpricing can scare away potential customers. We should try to find a happy medium.
With our pricing, we need to make sure we are accurately communicating our value.

Connect with Jeff

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jeff or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit his website jeffmendelson.com or his podcast’s website onebigtip.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How could a podcast help your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/137-benefits-of-running-a-podcast/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss three business lessons we can learn from the parable of the 10 virgins and five ways to recognize and eliminate threats.

The Parable of the 10 Virgins

In Matthew 25:1-13, Jesus Christ shares the parable of the 10 virgins.

In the story, 10 virgins prepare to meet the bridegroom before the wedding. During this time, it was custom for the bridegroom to come to the bride’s house at night, typically at dusk. He would get his bride from her house and bring her back to his house where he had prepared a place for her. Once the groom’s approach was announced, the 10 bridesmaids went out with lamps to light their way (Source: Bible.org).

The young women would follow the groom with their lamps and if they were with the crowd, they could slip into the party. If they weren’t, the doors would close and they would be turned away because they didn’t have an invitation (Source: Bible.org).

In Matthew 25, the 10 virgins prepared for the bridegroom by lighting their lamps at dusk. However, the bridegroom “tarried” and didn’t come until midnight. When the young women were called to meet him, some realized their lamps had already burned out. In verses 2-4, it says, “And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.”

As they prepared to meet the bridegroom, “the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.” (KJV Matthew 25:8-9)

While the five foolish went to buy more oil, the bridegroom came and the five wise virgins went with him to the wedding.

After the five foolish women bought their oil, they rushed to the house, but the door had already closed. They cried, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” But he answered, “Verily I say unto you, I know you not.” (KJV Matthew 25:11-12)

The Importance of Preparation

Because the five young virgins did not bring extra oil with their lamps, they missed the wedding. They did not come prepared for the unexpected delay of the groom.

As entrepreneurs, we need to strive to be prepared for unexpected trials and challenges that may happen. We should also strive to prepare for changes and business tectonic shifts that may happen in the market. Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

But how can we do this? How can we continually add oil to our lamps? While we may not be able to see what will happen in the future, it is possible to plan and prepare for many of the unexpected challenges.

Be Flexible

One way we can prepare for unexpected trials is simply by recognizing they will happen. We have to be open to change and willing to adjust if necessary.

Brian Tracey, a motivational speaker, and self-development author, said, “Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it.”

If one strategy fails, we need to be willing to try something new. Strong business leaders should develop a flexible mindset in order to adapt to the changes in their customers or the marketplace. When we are flexible about processes, we won’t fear change so much. We will have the ability to evaluate our challenges and find a way to work around or through them.

With COVID-19, we have seen hundreds of changes. The only businesses that stayed open were ones that were flexible. According to Fortune, 100,000 businesses that temporarily closed due to COVID-19 were out of business within seven months.

Not only did small businesses close, but many iconic retailers filed for bankruptcy. Chuck E. Cheese had a 600-plus restaurant chain and was hit extremely hard by the pandemic. They didn’t find a way to adapt and so their company’s revenue plummeted by 90%. In June 2020, they filed for bankruptcy (Source: AARP). While they were able to recover, they took a huge hit.

On the other hand, there were businesses that kept their revenue streams despite the pandemic. Belva Anakwenze kept her small business, Abacus Financial Business Management, open with four employees. When offices closed, they created their own space with kitchen tables, bedroom nightstands, and back porches. They continued to have client meetings in the driveway so they could socially distance themselves (Source: Los Angeles Times).

In my small town, there was a restaurant named Gator Jacks that had to stop their dine-in services during COVID-19. However, grocery stores were allowed to stay open, and the grocery stores were facing shortages. Furthermore, Gator Jacks had bulk food suppliers who had food because so many restaurants were closed down. So, Gator Jacks purchased bulk food from their suppliers and turned their restaurant into a popular bulk food warehouse for a time. I was so impressed by their creativity and flexibility to find a new way to monetize the resources they had and weather the storm that put so many other restaurants out of business.

If we can adapt to change and pivot quickly and intelligently, we will be more likely to survive and succeed.

Prepare for Worst-Case Scenarios

One way to prepare for future challenges is to think of worst-case scenarios. Once we have identified the most likely scenarios that could go wrong, we can come up with a plan to use if one of those things happens. Doing this can actually help us feel more confident in our business plans. We will know that if something does go wrong, we will likely be one step ahead of the game and know how to handle the situation. That can provide peace of mind now and stability when crises happen.

I’m sure we have all heard of the saying, hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Thinking of worst-case scenarios helps us prepare for what can go wrong. For example, what would happen if COVID-19 forced us to close our office space? How would we function remotely? Or what would happen if we lose our most important client? How would we make up for that lost income stream?

Randy Pauseh, an American educator and professor of computer science and design, said, “One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose.”

However, with preparing for worst-case scenarios, there is a word of caution. We shouldn’t let worst-case scenarios build fear or prevent us from taking risks. Instead, preparing for worst-case scenarios should build confidence in knowing we have a backup plan.

“[I]f ye are prepared ye shall not fear.” — Doctrine and Covenants 38:30

Evaluate Our Current Situation With a SWOT Analysis

A great way to prepare for future challenges is to evaluate our current situation. What are our weakest points? What areas can we improve on? As we find areas that are vulnerable, we can make changes to fix them before they become an issue later on. A common saying is, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” While this phrase may be overused, it is very applicable in our businesses.

We should assess each aspect of our business regularly. Does each department have a working system that can easily adapt to change? As we look for solutions to potential problems early on, we can avoid larger issues in the future.

Many businesses that do this call it a SWOT analysis. This refers to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Source: Chron). In this analysis, we can identify what is working and what isn’t, as well as identify factors that may affect our company’s short-term and long-term performance. What opportunities can we take advantage of now? What potential threats may hurt us?

As a business, we should constantly seek to improve. If we become stagnant and complacent, our likelihood of being hit with an unexpected challenge will double.

5 Ways to Recognize and Eliminate Potential Threats

Here are five strategies we can use to recognize and eliminate potential threats.

Analyze and Research Past Threats

We can analyze threats that have already happened in our geographic area and industry. By identifying threats that have impacted others similar to us, we are identifying the threats that are likely to happen to us.

For example, there may be certain laws and regulations according to our geographic location that could impact our business. When I first started Adoption.com, I wanted to create an adoption agency for children in Brazil. However, due to some strict Brazilian adoption laws, we weren’t able to make it work. Thankfully, I was able to pivot and learn from this experience, but if I hadn’t, it could have been the end of my business. This goes to show just how important it is to do our research. We should research and analyze past threats that have happened to others, so we can prevent it from happening to us.

Travelers Cos. and Heart Research Associates surveyed over 1000 business owners and determined their top threats: financial issues, laws and regulations, economic uncertainty, attracting and retaining talent, legal liability, cyber and technology risks/breaches, increasing employee benefit costs, and medical cost inflation (Source: Treasury & Risk). By researching the current and past threats of our competitors or other businesses in general, we can determine what risks are most likely to happen to us and prepare for them. We can also analyze how businesses reacted to these threats to learn what worked and what didn’t.

Bring in Experts

We can prepare for potential threats by bringing in additional experts, such as security experts, to help us to audit and mitigate risks we didn’t know existed. Not only can they help us identify risks we weren’t aware of, but they can also help us target potential risks we are very aware of.

In today’s digital world, one of the most common threats is cybercrimes. According to experts, cybercrime has gone up 600% due to COVID-19. Over 18 million websites are infected with malware at a given time each week and it is estimated that cybercriminals will steal about 33 billion records in 2023 (Source: PurpleSec.us). We could consider hiring a cybersecurity expert to help us prepare for potential risks we know are likely to impact us at some point in our career.

Create a Safety-Net of Funds

A great way to prepare for threats is by having a savings account. We most likely won’t be able to prevent every threat out there, but we can reduce our recovery time by having the proper funds saved. Each month we should set aside some funds for a rainy day, to weather an unforeseen storm. I recommend trying to save enough to successfully run your business without any income for three months.

One of the biggest threats we see is the ever-changing customer. Our customers’ changing needs, wants, and values could reduce our sales and income. If we have a savings account, we won’t have to worry about going out of business because we don’t see any income for a month. Having a safety net of funds gives us more time to get back on our feet and adapt to the current situation.

Regularly Identify Tectonic Shifts

We should regularly identify tectonic shifts in the business world and industry to figure out how we can implement them before our competitors. This requires us to constantly evaluate the current marketplace to watch for changes and trends. Another way we can find tectonic shifts is by analyzing competitors who are already leveraging tectonic shifts.

As we discussed above, COVID-19 caused a massive shift in the business landscape. Many businesses failed and had to close their doors permanently. By adapting to this shift early on, businesses had a much higher chance of success.

Create an Emergency Plan

To prepare for potential threats we can develop an emergency plan. We can get together with our teams and develop multiple ways to communicate quickly with the entire company in case of an emergency. This way, we will have a faster reaction time and eliminate the threat before it becomes detrimental.

Just as we prepare for natural disasters with evacuation plans and fire escape routes, we should have a business disaster plan. For example, this can include a data-recovery plan. If our hard drive became corrupt, what would we do? We should prepare with back-up storage or generators to protect our company’s data.

Just as the five wise virgins prepared with extra oil, we can prepare for unpredictable trials by developing a flexible mindset, addressing and preparing for worst-case scenarios, and evaluating our current situation to solve current weaknesses, improve strengths, and find new opportunities.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

It is wise to be prepared for unexpected trials and challenges.
One way we can prepare for unexpected trials is by recognizing they will happen. We have to be open to change and willing to adjust if necessary.
By thinking of worst-case scenarios, we can come up with a backup plan to use if the worst thing does happen.
We should assess each aspect of our business regularly and address current weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats.
As we solve current problems, we should get feedback and continually seek to improve.
We can analyze threats that have happened before in our geographic area and industry. By identifying threats that have impacted others similar to us, we are identifying the most likely threats that will happen to us.
We can prepare for potential threats by bringing in additional experts, such as security experts.
We most likely won’t be able to prevent every threat out there, but we can reduce our recovery time by having the proper funds saved.
We should regularly identify tectonic shifts in the business world and industry to figure out how we can implement them before our competitors.
Just as we prepare for natural disasters with evacuation plans and fire escape routes, we should have a business disaster plan.

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Nearly 90% of marketers use email marketing to send out content and 81% of small businesses rely on email marketing for customer acquisitions, with the average open rate for a welcome email at 82% (Source: Oberlo.com).

In today’s episode, we’re going to continue our conversation with Ryan Phelan about email marketing and discuss how to begin an email marketing campaign in four steps.

Set a Goal

Before we begin designing a newsletter or email marketing strategy, we need to determine our goal. Every email we send should have a strong purpose and offer value to our customers. Do we want our customers to go to our website, download our ebook, or make a purchase? Depending on our answer, our emails will look very different.

Ryan said that most of the time, people make the mistake of setting a goal as abstract as “to make a revenue.” Instead of setting a broad, immeasurable goal, we should set S.M.A.R.T goals. SMART goals stand for Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. By setting SMART goals it will be easier for us to determine if our campaign is successful. For example, a good goal could be to increase our website traffic by 50% in one month. At the end of the month, we can evaluate our campaign to determine if we are meeting our goal, or if we should try to develop a new strategy.

As we make our goals, we need to remember to keep the customer in mind. How will our email bring value to our customers? If we can’t answer that question, it is very unlikely that our campaign will be successful. What value do we want to provide? Another great goal could be to direct 50% of our leads to our ebook where we teach them how to market effectively.

Build an Email List

Before we can start an email marketing campaign we need to have someone to send it to. We need to build an email list.

Growing our email list takes time and requires patience. We should never try to take the easy route and buy a list. Instead, Ryan recommends we use our email marketing budget to advertise our email program. For example, we can advertise our newsletter to the people that attend our demo or work with our SEO and pay-per-click teams to sell our newsletter.

A lot of people think they can just buy a list and instantly achieve big results but it almost never works because users in that list didn’t give us permission to contact them. Even if they are our target audience, they didn't choose to be on our list so we end up being an annoyance. If we're going to do email marketing, we can only do it when we have permission to do it.

In order to direct our customers to subscribe to our email list, Ryan recommends doing three things.

Put the Subscribe Button at the Top of our Website

The first key thing to do is put the email subscription button at the top of our website. This can be in the header or navigation bar, it just has to be up there so people can easily opt-in. From the tests Ryan has done repeatedly throughout his career, they had a 50% increase in acquisition rates when the subscription button was at the top versus the bottom.

Some websites even have a pop-up that appears on their website after a viewer has been on the page for a certain amount of time. This pop-up often asks for a customer's name and email in return for promised value.

Show Customers What the Newsletter Will Look Like

The second thing we can do is have a button that says “sign up for our email” which directs our customers to a landing page that shows them what the email looks like. We should tell them how many times we’re going to email them and why.

Marketers assume their customers want to sign up for our newsletters just because they like our brand and that's not true. Just as we have to sell our customers our products and services, we have to sell them in our newsletter. We should explain why the newsletter will be of value to them and what they can expect to receive from us each week or month.

Ask More Questions at the Beginning

The third thing we should do is ask our potential customers more questions after they sign up for our email. It’s called progressive profiling. At this point, our subscribers are willing to tell us about themselves. After we ask them questions, we can develop automation to echo their answers back and build relevance.

These questions will help us understand our customers' wants and needs. As we understand our customers better, we will be more capable of providing value and keeping them on our email list. Just because someone signs up for our email once, doesn’t mean they will stay subscribed forever.

Ryan said the average consumer list is about 65% inactive. Marketers look at this number and think they need to reactivate all of those people but it would be a waste of time and money. Instead, we need to focus on the 35% that are using their email. But how do we find out who that 35% are? We ask questions. These are the ones we can market to effectively and design a strategy that works. We can look at what they are interested in and what tone of voice they want to hear. If we have asked our customers questions in the past, we will be better suited to know how to improve our email and who to target our messages to.

Be Deliberate in Email Content and Design

After we have set our goals and built an email list, we can begin to design our newsletters. If we want our customers to click on our emails, we have to provide value and be deliberate with our content. We shouldn’t send out a newsletter or email just because someone said it's a great way to acquire customers. We also need to be very conscious of design. Where something is placed on a page can have a huge impact on our success rates. We need to keep our goals in mind as we format our newsletters.

Ryan gave two strategies for email design.

Include the Site Navigation in Our Promotional Emails

We should put our site navigation, or at least an abbreviated version of it, at the top and bottom of our promotional emails. If we look at where people click in an email, the majority of clicks will come from that toolbar at the top of the toolbar at the bottom. The email may not have what people are looking for so they will want to visit the website to find it. Email is a great lead generation medium that sends qualified traffic to our website.

Monetize Transactional Messages

Our email doesn’t have to be designed as a newsletter to increase our sales or website traffic. We can also send out transactional emails.

Ryan believes that anything digital can make money. Most marketers on the B2C side have transactional messages such as order and shipping confirmations. Many companies don't look at those transactional emails as money-making opportunities, but Ryan said that if we monetize transactional emails, we can use 20% of these messages as cross-sell or upsell promotional messages. For example, when we send a purchase confirmation to our customers, we can attach links to other relevant products they may like. We can also direct them back to our website to continue shopping.

With every digital outreach, we have to be thinking, “What's the opportunity here?” As we design our emails with these goals in mind, we will find we are more successful in meeting our goals. For example, a newsletter is most likely better for increasing traffic to our blog whereas transactional emails can be better at encouraging our customers to make a second purchase.

Solve a Problem and Run Tests

After we have sent out our emails, we should monitor our engagement. This step is often the most important. It helps us learn what we are doing right and what we need to improve. Do we have a high click-through rate? Are our customers following the links to our blog? Are they downloading our ebook?

The most effective email marketers are the ones that sit down and find where they have a problem and then determine how they’re going to solve it. Between the problem and the solution, they come up with a written testing plan. Marketers should keep the strategy piece in front of them and ask, “What am I going to do every week to get to my point?”

Ryan said testing is deeper than just testing subject lines. It's about learning what statistical significance means. It's about knowing how to read the results and put together a plan. A lot of marketers don't do that. Instead, they just test for a day and if it doesn’t work, they don’t try again.

Ryan said that most of the time when he looked at those “failed” campaigns to see why they didn’t work, it was because marketers missed one thing or another like sending it to the wrong people, using the wrong CTA, or sending it at an inconvenient time like on a Saturday at 4 a.m. Testing is not about testing once. It’s about testing and validating until we can repeatedly get the same result.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ryan for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Email is a great lead generation medium that sends qualified traffic to our website.
Before we begin designing a newsletter or email marketing strategy, we need to determine our goal. Every email we send should have a strong purpose and offer value to our customers.
If we're going to use email marketing, we can only do it when we have permission to put people on our list. We need to build our email list, not buy one.
We can encourage potential customers to subscribe to our email list by placing a subscription bar at the top of our website, showing our customers what value our newsletter will offer, and asking questions to determine our customers’ wants and needs.
We have to be deliberate in our email design and content.
Testing is not about testing once. It’s about testing and validating until we can repeatedly get the same result.

Connect with Ryan

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ryan or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn. You can also visit his company’s website at www.rpeorigin.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

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Email marketing is a powerful tool for B2B and B2C businesses that can help generate more leads and sales. 59% of B2B marketers name email as their top channel for revenue generation and 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention (Source:optinmonster.com).

Ryan Phelan is an email marketing expert who has created and led innovative marketing strategies for high-growth SaaS and Fortune 250 companies for the past two decades. Some of those companies include Canadian Tire, Capital One, Skype, Sprint, and FedEx. His experience in marketing has shaped his approach in creating innovative orchestrations of data technology and customer activations for Adestra, Acxiom, Responsys, and more. Ryan has also been named one of the top 30 digital strategists in the United States and has built a library of leadership through blogs, white papers, and presentations.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss how to use email marketing to generate sales.

The Road to Email Marketing

Ryan worked as a DJ in a nightclub for six years before starting his career in email marketing. As he worked with vendors, agencies, clients, and customers, he found that his years of playing music for a crowd of people taught him lessons he could apply to his marketing career.

As a DJ, Ryan had to entertain 600 people in the club for four and a half hours. He had to constantly be creative and read his audience in order to keep his customers, just as an email marketer needs to with their leads. “Most people don't know this, but there's a science behind [being a DJ]. We had a formula that we actually perfected in a nightclub that worked like a charm,” Ryan said.

4 Key Principles of Email Marketing

From his experience as a DJ, Ryan learned four key principles of email marketing we should use to generate sales.

Know Your Audience

To market effectively, we have to know our audience.

As a DJ, Ryan had to focus on the tempo and genre of a song, but more importantly, he had to pay attention to his audience. He had to determine who his audience was, what type of music they liked, and what mood they were in. By gauging his audience’s preferences, he could successfully choose the right songs that would lead people to the dance floor or the bar.

He would watch his audience to determine their favorite songs so that he would know what songs to play when he wanted to bring people to the dance floor. He also learned what songs people didn’t like so he could drive them to the bar. He used his knowledge of his customers to drive more sales. By knowing his customers, he could keep constant traffic to the bar to generate more income, while also attracting customers to the dance floor to increase their satisfaction.

Our goal in email marketing and e-commerce is to recognize a consumer or cohort of consumers and get them to do what we want by providing them with the right information or product. In email marketing, this is called segmentation.

Ryan believes marketing is all about segmentation. The reason he was able to play the right song set was that he knew who his customers were. He knew who was in his crowd. He could look out and read people very well. “[I knew] who was wanting to date somebody else, who was wanting to hit on somebody else, who was just there to have a good time with their friends, [and] who was really wanting to dance,” Ryan said. It was all about knowing his audience.

The same goes for email marketing. We need to know our audience if we want to have any success in directing them towards our products or services. If we want to do email marketing right, we should look at the audience and recognize the different cohort groups. These are groups of people that are similar in type and characteristic. When we know what group a customer falls into, it is easier to send them a tailored message. Our customers will be more likely to resonate with our message and we will be more likely to make a sale.

Determine the Right Channels

In order for our marketing strategies to be successful, we need to make sure we are sending information on the right channels.

Skype was one of the biggest projects Ryan worked with. Skype had 6 billion leads. Until Zoom, everybody used Skype, especially in Europe and Australia. Skype was how people communicated. Ryan worked with them on reactivating a large number of their audience of billions. It was extensive. They had data science. They looked at propensity and put people in cohort groups. And they developed different touchpoints based upon channel propensity which was the biggest thing out of that project.

Each cohort group had a primary, secondary, and tertiary channel they reacted to. For some core groups, it was mobile push notifications. For others, it was direct mail, television advertising, print, banner, or email. Ryan had to develop a media plan based upon a channel’s propensity for that cohort group and put together extensive media plans on the best way to communicate with each customer. “It was a big success,” Ryan said. It opened his eyes to the power of data and what it can do.

If we want to do email marketing, we need to make sure our customers can actually be reached by email. We have to make sure it is the right channel for communication for our audience.

Use Data

The biggest mistake Ryan made in email marketing was trusting his gut. Even though marketers have asserted for years how important testing is, every once in a while, marketers, including Ryan, go with their gut without looking at the data.

Ryan once had a client with whom he ran a win-back campaign. When customers are inactive and aren’t opening their emails, a win-back campaign tries to reactivate people’s interest. Ryan created a progression of four emails over 30 days, trying to get the customers back with offers or content. Ryan put them in the order that he thought they should go based on his gut instinct and then launched the campaign. While his client doubted if it was the right order, he assured her that it was.

About three weeks later, the client told Ryan she wanted to reshuffle the email series just to test it. She was the marketing site manager and she knew her brand inside out. She tested her strategy and Ryan tested his strategy thinking he would win. Surprisingly enough, the client's test worked better than Ryan's.

Ryan learned that his gut is not always right. Instead of just going off our gut feelings, we should look at what the numbers, science, and data are telling us.

Recognize Changes in the Market

Part of our email marketing strategy should include watching for business tectonic shifts.

Ryan believes COVID-19 has been the biggest tectonic shift currently facing businesses. Because of the pandemic, marketing professionals have had to learn to be more agile. Things can change overnight. In 2020, the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a worldwide pandemic and everything shifted because of it. Marketers found themselves in two camps; they either pivoted quickly with everything they had, or they froze and pulled out of the marketplace.

Being tone-deaf to the changes taking place in the world will only lead us to fail and lose our jobs. The companies that succeeded during the pandemic were the ones that knew their brand voice and knew how to pivot within their brand appropriately. Some retailers had to start curbside pickup to limit store hours. They learned quickly and weren’t afraid to pivot.

Ryan believes surviving 2020 should be put as a badge on our LinkedIn profiles. The greatest badge of honor are those marketers that pivoted fast enough and took advantage of tectonic shifts so they thrived and grew; they didn't just survive.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ryan for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

As email marketers, we need to be creative and read people well.
Our goal in email marketing is to recognize a cohort of consumers and provide them with the right information.
In order for our marketing strategies to be successful, we need to make sure we are sending information on the right channels.
In email marketing, we can't just trust our gut feeling. We always have to test and look at the data.
When everything changes in our world, we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done. We have to pivot to survive in the market.

Connect with Ryan

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ryan or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn. You can also visit his company’s website at www.rpeorigin.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How has email marketing helped you generate more sales? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Michael Solomon is one of the world's leading experts on consumer behavior. He is the author of Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being, which is the most widely used book on the subject in the world. His newest book is The New Chameleons: How to Connect with Consumers who Defy Categorization. He also advises global clients on marketing strategies to make them more consumer-centric.

Michael is a contributor at Forbes, and he's frequently quoted in publications such as New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, USA Today, and Adweek. He is also a professor of marketing at the business school at St. Joseph's University.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the psychology of consumer behavior and the marketing strategies Michael uses to gain customer loyalty.

Chameleons

Michael has a Ph.D. in social psychology and through his observations, he found that consumers are constantly changing.

In grad school, Michael did a lot of research on how physical attractiveness and a person’s look influence what happens to them in their lives. This led him to realize that a big part of our social identity is formed by the services and products we buy. He started looking into the fashion industry and did a lot of work on the psychology of fashion. He found that everyday products fundamentally influence who we are.

Over the years, he had the opportunity to work with many companies on how to understand their customers, and he has written numerous textbooks and a few trade books on understanding consumer behavior. His biggest home run was writing a textbook that is used around the world and has changed the way we teach consumer behavior.

In his most recent book, The New Chameleons: How to Connect with Consumers who Defy Categorization, he compares customers to chameleons. Since consumers’ identities are influenced by the products and services they buy, they are often changing.

“Unlike the old days where things were a lot more static and we just dealt with mass markets [and] really large groups of homogeneous people, today, everybody is much more of an individual,” Michael said. “Just as a chameleon changes its color as it moves into different environments, many of us today are doing something similar with our identities. We try on new identities. We try on new lifestyles.”

Michael explained we often alter our identities when we surf the web or look at someone’s Instagram page. We are influenced by the people we see around us and tend to change our needs or wants very frequently. This means we have to be very careful about categorizing our consumers. Since they are always changing, we should constantly reevaluate our target audience and research what our customers’ needs and wants are.

4 Tectonic Shifts

If customers are constantly changing, how can we effectively build a business strategy to connect with our customers? Michael shared four customer tectonic shifts we should be aware of if we want to build relationships with our customers.

The End of Artificial Dichotomy

When I asked Michael to share one of the biggest tectonic shifts happening today, he told me it is the end of the artificial dichotomy. The artificial dichotomy is when we assign individuals to a category based on an arbitrary criterion.

The old categories we used to describe our customers don’t make much sense anymore since society is changing so rapidly. Before, we could use basic categories such as rich vs poor or male vs female, but those have become too broad.

One of the biggest mistakes we can make as marketers is falling prey to the fallacy that if we assign a name to something, we understand it. We tend to think we can place our customers into categories such as “women in their 20s who live in urban areas,” and then understand all of them.

“Don't assume that you know all your customers and certainly don't assume that just because you've put them all into a certain segment that they're all going to react identically,” Michael said.

Even if we narrow down our customers into a niche group, we still can’t assume we know everything about them. As we said above, consumers are constantly changing and so we should reevaluate our categories quite often. Even with extremely niche categories, we often make the mistake of projecting who we want our customers to be, rather than who they actually are. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is marketing to the customer we want to have rather than the customer we actually have.

The Role of the Customer

Customers are beginning to take over a lot of the roles in our businesses.

Many companies fall into the trap of spending an incredible amount of time and resources on a product to get it to the point where they believe it is perfect. Once it’s “perfect,” they launch it with their fingers crossed, hoping it goes well. However, this method includes a lot of risks. If their customers don’t like their product, they just wasted months of work and have to start all over again.

Instead of doing this, companies are beginning to give customers a role in their product development. Companies will launch a product right away, get feedback from their customers, and then make adjustments based on their comments.

“Customers are taking over a lot of the functions or at least helping with a lot of the functions that used to be only on one side of that fence so to speak. For example, our customers are content creators. Our customers are advertisers. . . . Our customers are becoming product designers,” Michael said.

SiteGround, a popular web host provider, is a great example of a company that prioritizes customer feedback. Their brand has three different channels customers can leave feedback at. They listen to their customers and make adjustments based on their ideas (Source: Myfeelback.com).

Starbucks is a great example of companies using customer content. They promote their brand with #RedCupContest every December. They encourage their customers to submit a photo of their coffees for a chance to win a gift card, and then they use those photos as part of their marketing strategy (Source: Business2Community). Even BMW uses hashtags to share social media posts created by their customers.

“Customers and also our employees, are our two biggest underutilized assets,” Michael said. “Many companies are figuring out that it doesn't make sense to keep the consumer at a distance, but rather you want to embrace that consumer and involve them in the process, and you get some great insights as well. Consumers who are more proactively involved in this process are more engaged with the products and services that allow them in.”

The Horizontal Revolution

Instead of communicating customer to business (vertical), there has been a shift of communicating customer to customer. Michael calls this the horizontal revolution.

In the early days of the internet, a lot of communication was one way. Businesses created ads and websites that told customers how good their products or services were. However, now communication is all about interactivity. How do we have a conversation with our customers? Nearly every website we go on has the option for reviews and comments. We also have social media platforms where customers can interact with each other. We can communicate peer to peer.

“Word of mouth is really what determines whether people are going to buy a product or avoid it, and so we not only have that up and down communication that we had 10 years ago, but we have that horizontal communication which means that so much of our daily lives are spent networking with our peers,” Michael said.

This is one reason why influencer marketing is becoming such a prominent tectonic shift. An influencer’s opinion is considered in a similar way to a friend’s. Since they don’t work for the company, consumers believe their information to be truthful and accurate. It also makes the consumer’s job easier. Instead of filtering through all of the information on the internet themselves, they can listen to what their peers have to say.

Content Marketing

One of Michael’s best monetization strategies is focusing on content marketing.

“The real bonds that people are forming with companies or with individuals are because those people are putting out great content that attracts these people. You're not, so to speak, putting a gun to someone's head just to sign up for your email newsletter, you're creating content that's so good they want to be a part of whatever it is you're doing,” Michael said.

By creating and offering valuable content that resonates with our audience, we don’t necessarily need to sell anything to them right away. If the content is valuable, it will give our customers a path back to us. It also provides credibility for us and nurtures a relationship with them. Content marketing encourages customers to come back to us when they're ready to make a purchase decision.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Michael for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Consumers are constantly changing.
The old categories we used to describe our customers don’t make as much sense anymore since society is changing so rapidly.
Don’t assume that customers within a specific category will behave the same.
Customers are taking over a lot of the functions in our businesses.
Customers trust peer reviews over advertisements or self-promotion.
By providing valuable content to our customers, we pave a path for customers to come back to us when they're ready to make a purchase decision.

Connect with Michael

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Michael or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or his website, michaelsolomon.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you connect with your customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/133-the-psychology-of-consumer-behavior-4-important-consumer-tectonic-shifts/

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Deirdre Breakenridge is an author, entrepreneur, and CEO at Pure Performance Communications. As a 30-year veteran in public relations (PR) marketing and branding, she's worked with senior leaders at Fortune 500 companies.

Deirdre is the author of seven business books, including Answers for Modern Communicators which was recently named one of the 100 best storytelling books of all time by BookAuthority. Deirdre is also the host of the podcast, Women Worldwide, which is in its sixth year and has nearly 2 million downloads.

Today, we’re going to discuss modern public relations and how it works alongside marketing.

Public Relations Then and Now

Bill Gates said, “If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.” PR is a great way to build awareness and credibility while protecting our reputation through the media, social media, and within our communities. Our goal should be to find the positive messages and stories in our organizations and share them with consumers. Since PR is such an effective way to build our businesses, we need to be aware of how the industry is changing.

When Deirdre entered the public relations industry, it looked very different than what it does today. Traditional PR was about writing press releases to hand out to news outlets, who would then share our story. However, this approach of trying to control the messages sent out to consumers doesn’t work as well with modern media. Our stories, whether good or bad, can be spread on social media in seconds.

The Pew Research Center found that 86% of Americans get their news from their smartphones or computers, over radio, television, and print publications. This means consumers don’t have to rely on news outlets to learn about our companies anymore. They have Google. They have Facebook. While 68% of Americans still get news from news websites and apps (traditional PR can still work), nearly just as many look to social media. According to a study, 53% of Americans say they get news from different social media platforms (Source: Pew Research Center). A news outlet may wait for a press release, but social media doesn’t wait around for an email to share a story.

PR professionals need to adjust to the fact that people have a wide variety of media outlets and platforms where they can get their stories. Today, many stories don’t flow out of a company’s communication department. The stories are created inside communities on social media. We don’t have as much control over the stories that get shared as we did before. Instead, people are citizen journalists and the power of the story lies in their hands-on social media. Modern media has become increasingly interconnected with marketing.

5 Ways to Effectively Implement Modern Public Relations

Here are five ways our companies and businesses can effectively use modern public relations.

Monitor Social Media

Often a story about our brand or company will find its way on social media before we know about it. Social media monitoring is essential to see how we're perceived by our audience. We need to watch for the negative comments so we can catch them early on and find a way to amend them, while also watching for the positive comments so we can learn what stories our customers resonate with and continue to share them.

It only takes a few negative comments or missteps for our image to be impacted and our reputation to go down the drain. If we aren’t monitoring our social media channels, we won’t know when a negative story about our brand is circulating the web, and we won’t be able to take action to fix it. With modern PR, it’s our responsibility to monitor everything affecting our brand.

There are different tools and platforms we can use to monitor how our brand is perceived on social media. Deirdre recommends the free plan of Hootsuite. It can help us see who's talking about our brand on social channels and what the conversation points are about.

Deirdre also recommends using Notified by Intrado, another platform that lets us monitor digital conversations. Notified can help us craft our stories and reach out to journalists through the platform, monitor and measure how well we’re doing, and see how much engagement our brand has.

Talkwalker is another social listening tool Deirdre finds useful. Talkwalker has an AI-powered analysis that provides real-time insights into what's happening on all social channels and online media.

Be Active on Social Media

We shouldn’t just monitor social media. We should be actively engaged on all platforms to share positive stories about our brand. We have to realize that many stories develop away from the media. Even major media outlets keep an eye on social media for new stories. If we aren’t putting positive stories and messages about our brand out onto the world wide web, who will? One of our main goals should be to enhance our online presence.

As we become active on social media, this is where we begin to see a huge overlap in PR and marketing. With marketing, we want to create content to market our brand and with PR we want to create content to build our reputation. With both, we want to build relationships with our customers. The majority of our customers are likely active on social media platforms. We can engage with them through our content to build those relationships.

Build Relationships

We should develop good relationships with media outlets and influencers.

When it comes to getting our stories out in the media, it helps to have good contacts. When we’ve developed good relationships with producers, editors, or journalists at media outlets such as CNN, New York Times, or other local news sources, it is easier to reach them and get our story out. Even if a story is released on social media first, we can bring in experts who can comment on the stories. We can foster relationships by getting to know editors or journalists really well.

Once we know and understand the agenda of a journalist or outlet, it's a lot easier to creatively pitch a story to promote our expertise. It’s important to remember that, when we want to be in the news or want to be covered, it's not just about our agenda. It's about their agenda as well. We have to think about what the media wants to share and why they want to share it.

Sometimes media outlets may release a negative story about our company. This is another great reason why we should be developing relationships. If a company releases a story that will reflect badly on our brand, we can get in contact with them sooner to make amends if we already have a relationship with them. I have found that recently, a lot of what PR practitioners do is repair reputations. They need to know when to make comments on stories and when to leave them alone.

Not only should our PR practitioners focus on building relationships with the media, but they should also start building relationships with influencers. According to a Global Communications Report, 60% of PR executives believe influencer marketing is becoming a vital part of PR (Source: MediaKix). We can use our PR department to help reach out to influencers to share our brand messages.

Since public relations is about credibility, public opinion, and shifting opinions, it is great to align with other influencers who have credible brands. Whoever we align with will be a brand representative.

Work with the Marketing Team

PR and marketing often overlap. Teamwork between these two critical components of our business can be the difference between success and failure.

Search engine optimization used to be separate from PR, but this has changed. PR is all about storytelling and content. In fact, “80% of PR professionals and marketers believe the future is digital storytelling.” (Source: mediakix.com) We have to understand how we are tagging our content and what descriptions we are using. We also need to be on the same page with marketing. Who is using our content? How are they optimizing? How do we optimize together? When a campaign is rolling out through marketing, the best thing the marketing department can do is have the public relations team on board and ready to gauge public perception over a campaign. We shouldn't have to guess what's going on.

We don’t want to have “silo working” within our organizations. Silo working happens when different departments don’t communicate with other individuals they work with. This can create a huge problem as it leads to misunderstandings and confusion, reducing efficiency.

Deirdre said we can help break down work silos by helping our PR and marketing teams understand what each other's jobs are. Deirdre said that she once had a training session with PR and marketing and found that each department didn't know what each other's day looked like. To fix this, it helps to have a buddy system where we share what we do or walk a day in someone else’s shoes. This can open our eyes to what others are doing, why they’re doing it, and how we can help each other.

We should have closer internal communication. Collaboration and innovation have to start with the entire team.

Be Conscious of What We Say and Do

Above all else, if we want to have a good brand reputation, we have to actually be good. We need to make sure we are staying positive, staying true to our brand, and providing value to our customers. A news outlet can’t write a bad story about us if there isn’t one. They also can’t write a good story about us if there aren’t any.

Deirdre believes that modern PR is a responsibility. What we do and say is part of this responsibility. It’s essential to know what goes on around our brand. It’s as if we’re in a fishbowl. Everything we do is seen by everyone else, emphasizing the need to be open and transparent. Our stories must show ethics and good judgment. In the current saturated media landscape, we want to be the experts who bring helpful information.

A PR executive can help our company say and do the right things. They help us interact with the media and can provide advice on touchy subjects. For example, in 2020, the Black Lives Matter Movement became so powerful and important, that many businesses decided to come out and release a statement supporting it. With such controversial and deeply emotional topics, our brand needs to be careful about what we say and don’t say. A PR specialist can help us with that.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Deirdre for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

PR has changed. Many stories no longer flow out of a company’s communication department. The stories are created inside communities on social media.
Social media monitoring is essential to see how we're perceived.
We should be actively engaged on social media to share positive stories about our brand.
We should develop good relationships with media outlets and influencers. It’s better to have 10 really good relationships with media professionals than to have a list of 100 connections that barely know us.
PR and marketing leaders should collaborate and lead the way for their teams to collaborate.

Connect with Deirdre

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Deirdre or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn. You can also visit her website at www.deirdrebreakenridge.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What are the most effective PR strategies you’ve used to share your stories and messages? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/132-how-to-effectively-implement-modern-public-relations/

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Welcome back to another episode with Michele Linn. In the first episode, we talked about Michele’s journey to become an expert in original research and how original research can give us credibility. In today’s episode, we’ll dive deeper into doing marketing through original research, discussing the specifics of what original research is and how to do it.

What is original research?

Original research is any type of data that is presented in a way that provides meaningful, new, and unique insights, helping a company build credibility and authority for its brand.

Michele said, “We specifically look at original research as something that you publish out as part of your marketing efforts. It's different [from] market research which a lot of people use because that's typically used to make internal marketing [decisions].” In other words, it is publicly published content to establish our credibility and authority.

Why do people do original research?

When Michele is starting a new original research project with a client, she always asks them, “What does success look like to you guys?” They often respond with, “We want to build our subscriber base,” or “We want to become thought leaders,” or “We want to build our email list.”

“These things are very, very tied together,” Michele said, “but we always try to focus on what's that one core thing you want to do.” When we are deciding to do original research, we need to have a core objective like this that we can design everything to work towards that focus.

Four Stages of Original Research: IDEA

There are four stages of original research: impact, data, exploration, and amplification.

Impact

The impact stage is all about putting together our strategy, understanding why we're doing this, understanding the topic that we want to focus on, and what's actually going to be new and original. It’s about trying to understand and working backward to know how our research is going to help us meet the goals we want to meet.

What Topic to Focus On

How do we know what topic to focus on? Michele said, “Sometimes marketers don't spend enough time trying to figure that out. . . . [For] example, I had a client who came to me in a sales enablement space, and they said, ‘Hey, we want to do research around sales enablement.’ [But] if you type in ‘state of sales enablement,’ you'll see like 678 companies have these state of sales enablement reports out there.”

“So you need to dig in and you really need to understand what already has been done in the space,” Michele continued. “And then you need to go in a different direction because you need a topic that's meaningful to your audience. It needs to align with your brand; it needs to stay something new.”

We need to find our own space and angle that we can do a research project on that no one else has the answers to. If we're trying to establish thought leadership then we have to have a unique topic. Parroting something that someone else has already done is not thought leadership.

Data

The next stage centers around data. It’s putting together our survey, programming it, doing the testing, and getting our responses. This stage also includes data cleaning and analysis once the data is compiled.

Drafting Questions

How do we draft the right questions to get really good, insightful data that tells a compelling story? “I always recommend,” Michele said, “that once [people] have their topic identified, the next thing they [should] do is picture their research table of contents if you will. What are those key categories that you want your research to focus on?”

In a study Michele did on thought leadership, those categories were the characteristics of thought leadership if companies were interested in being thought leaders, and the different things that companies were doing with their own thought leadership efforts.

We need to identify the key things we want to learn and draft questions for each of those categories instead of trying to draft one encompassing survey.

Another point to consider with our questions is how we can create questions that provide insights and stories. “Oftentimes,” Michele explained, “especially if people are new to research, they are . . . asking research questions that effectively take an inventory of their industry, like ‘what do you do here?’ and ‘what do you do with that?’ but you might find that those questions are not all that interesting. Instead, you really need to shift your thinking and say, ‘How can I ask questions that are going to provide insight?’”

Participants

The next step is how we choose our participants, how many we need, and how to get them to respond.

How do we choose participants? “For many people,” Michele said, “the easiest way to field a survey is to use a panel of consumers. These are adults in the US or the UK, or wherever that place may be. You can get these panels; they're relatively easy to access and inexpensive.”

Michele also has clients who are B2B who do surveys of customers to help their B2B audience. “A lot of B2B marketers don't want to go after a consumer audience; they want to survey other B2B people. The easiest way to do that is if you have access to your own list that's engaged, if you have an email list or a community of people who want the insights, who are happy to share the insights, and they also want to learn from those insights. That's the best way to get data, [but] a lot of people don't have that.”

“The best next thing to do is to partner with someone,” Michele explained. “For instance, we did a survey a couple of years in a row where we wanted to learn about the state of original research. . . . We partnered with BuzzSumo . . . because they wanted to understand how marketers were doing research too. We put together all of the survey questions and so forth, and then they sent out the survey to their list, so we had the people to participate. It was a very joint effort, and we both published that research data in a really collaborative way.”

The last way is to use panels of B2B participants. However, Michele said, “B2B panels are tough. They're expensive. There are quality control issues.” We need to make sure that people are who they are supposed to be. For marketers, are they actually a marketer or are they just trying to get that survey incentive from the survey company? “So you really need to put a lot of quality checks in place and know you're going to spend time and money to get the right people if you use a B2B panel.”

How many participants do we need? Michele said that if we’re going after a consumer-based audience, she generally recommends a minimum of 1,000 participants. However, if we’re going after a B2B audience, the sample size is much smaller. Michele recommends at least 300 unless we are doing comparisons such as B2B and B2C. In those instances, we must make sure we have enough participants in each group. Michele also said there are sample size calculators we can use to determine how big our sample size needs to be.

There are a couple of ways we can get people to participate in our survey. We need to give participants some kind of value or incentive to participate. “Oftentimes offering someone a chance to win something be it a gift card, cool earbuds, or some other thing of the moment can work really well. It gets people to take the survey, and it gets people to actually complete the survey, and that's a huge thing.”

Michele also said, “It's useful to make sure the audience knows why they're actually taking their time.” She continued, “One thing I would not recommend is giving each survey participant an actual gift card or some kind of financial incentive if you're going to use your own list. . . . There's a high probability that you're going to get in spam and fraudulent respondents because people want that incentive.”

What do we do with the data?

Once we’ve written the questions, found participants, and gotten the responses, what do we do next? The next thing we want to do is clean the data and then analyze it. Michele said, “Make sure that you don't just take what comes in and say, ‘Look we got all of our responses. Let's go.’ But once you clean the data and you have a good data set, I always analyze it for what are the themes, what are the insights, what are the stories. Really pull those out because you want to make sure that you have key takeaways.”

“You want to make sure that you really try to understand and articulate because your reader has this report. [They should know] how you're going to make their life better. . . . Make that very, very clear to yourself and make that very clear to your readers. This isn't a bunch of data; this is what we've learned that you can apply to yourself.”

Explore

Stage three focuses on exploration. We should take what we’ve learned from the data and put together our launch plan. In this stage, we explore our findings to create meaningful insights, then create a plan for how we are going to present those insights to our audience in a meaningful way.

Presentation

A standard way to present the data is in a static PDF, but we can often find more interesting and engaging ways to present it. “I think that marketers can get a lot of value if they think beyond that,” Michele said. “Andy Crestodina does this really well. He has an annual blogging study, and he gets backlinks to that study every single day. So if your goal is backlinks . . . put together a really comprehensive blog post.”

Michele has also been thinking about presentations that allow the audience to interact with the data such as an interactive dashboard that allows the audience to click through the data, filter it, look at it through a specific lens, etc. “Anything that we can do where people can interact with the data is going to be really useful moving forward. Just a marketer giving the story to someone is useful, but I think people want to see the data and how it changes. I think it feels a lot more credible that way.”

Amplification

This last stage is what we do after our research is published to amplify it. How do we continually grow and get great energy and results from this project we’ve invested in? How do we promote it and get continual backlinks? Do we use our email list, social media, etc.?

How long should this process take?

The whole process can take more than two months. “We have a process that we use with our clients that takes you from strategy until you put surveys out on the field, but it takes three weeks. It can certainly be condensed, but we always know clients have other priorities to work on. So, we'd say on average, you know, allocate two to four weeks to create your strategy, your questions [and] program, [and have] it tested.”

“[Then] your survey needs to be out in the field, so if you're using a panel that can take days to weeks to happen. If you're using your own list, I always allot four weeks as an average bucket of time. So then, you're at two months.”

“And then the last step is putting together those findings. . . . Some people have really fast processes where they can write findings, get it through design, and so forth, and other clients, it takes longer. I think marketers probably have the best idea of what that last stage looks like. It's just going to depend on how quickly your organization works. Long story [short], I would say two-plus months to get it done, but there [are] ways to condense that.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Michele for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We can use original research to build our following or become thought leaders.
The four stages of original research are impact, data, exploration, and amplification.
The topic of our research should be something that no one has done before.
When drafting questions, we can picture what we want our table of contents to look like and create questions around those key categories.
Our questions should provoke interesting insights and stories.
To find participants, we can use our own email list, panels of participants, or we can partner with someone and use their email list.
For a consumer-based audience, we should have at least 1,000 participants. For a B2B audience, we should have at least 300.
Once we have the data we must clean it before we analyze it. Then we can look for key insights and stories.
We should try to find an interactive way to present our data to our audience.

Connect with Michele

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Michele or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelelinn/ or visit her website https://mantisresearch.com/. You can also check out episode 1 of this interview.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you done original research? If so, what process did you use and how did it help you? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/131-how-to-do-original-research/

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Original research is one way to make our content marketing more effective and efficient. In 2018, about half of marketers were using research, and only 3% said their research did not meet expectations (Source: Mantisresearch.com). In today’s episode, we’ll discuss Michele Linn’s journey to becoming an expert in original research and some of the ways original research can help our businesses.

Michelle Linn is the co-founder and head of strategy at Mantis Research, a consultancy focused on helping marketers publish and amplify original research. Before starting Mantis, Michelle was head of the editorial at Content Marketing Institute, where she led the company's strategic editorial direction. Michele has written hundreds of articles. She is regularly cited as a content marketing influencer.

Original Research and Making an Impact

Michele’s passion is original research. She said, “I have been in the content marketing space for many years, and I'm always looking for those things that can really make an impact, that can make an impact right here in 2021, and I'm super excited about original research simply because I think no matter what industry you're in, you can still do something really meaningful, that makes an impact, even though there is a lot of noise out there.”

Michele’s Journey to Original Research

Michele’s journey with content marketing has been long. “I started out in the product marketing space for about 10 years,” she explained. “I left to freelance back in 2008. . . . I used content marketing, even though it wasn’t called that at the time, to build my own business, and . . . that worked to be helpful.”

Michele joined forces with Joe Pulizzi at CMI (Content Marketing Institute). He asked Michele to help him launch the brand he was building. Michele was doing content and teaching others how to do content marketing.

When I asked Michele what the greatest home run of her career has been, she said it was working at CMI. “CMI was my favorite job,” Michele said. She loved being part of the team that was building something meaningful. She also loved hearing people’s feedback and being able to help them.

“There was a lot,” Michele said. “It was just a really special time in my life and a lot of gratification from the people who were just so grateful that CMI did what it did. I loved everything about that tremendously successful organization.”

Eventually, Michele left CMI. She said, “When I left CMI many years later in 2017, I knew I wanted to help content marketers, but I also knew I wanted to help them in a very specific way. So I thought about what is the best way to break through the noise and what is the best way to be mean right here, right now.”

“I really thought about a lot about original research because [they were] the projects that I enjoyed working on most when I was with CMI, and [it] was also those projects [where] we could make the most impact and had the best results [with]. . . . Clare McDermott and [I] launched Mantis Research so that we could do original research as well as educate marketers on how to do it better, so they could all get the benefits from this tactic.”

Michele’s Biggest Monetization Secret: Original Research

When I asked Michele what her biggest monetization strategy is, she immediately responded with original research. “When you do it well—and the caveat is [you must be] doing it well—I think that you are going to have a lot of meaningful data and insights that people want. . . . You can use it as a lead generator to get people into your sales funnel.”

“I've worked with clients who have published research,” Michele continued, “and because they're that industry leader, we've actually [been able to] trace their research to clients [who] come to them. So I think it just works really, really well. It's a great monetization opportunity.”

Social Media Examiner is an example of an organization that does it well. Their page uses original research as their leader, and they produce great content with it.

Providing Data and Saying Something New

Michele recently did a study with Survey Monkey and Orbit Media on thought leadership, specifically how marketers are using thought leadership and how marketers are defining thought leadership. They found that the essential things people are looking for in thought leadership are creating something that's easy to understand, creating something that challenges the way people think, publishing data to validate their position, and saying something new.

Publishing data and saying something new are two things that build credibility and authority. Original research does exactly those two things. With original research we are conducting surveys and studies that haven’t been done before, then publishing that data and putting that new information out there. Original research is a powerful tool for us to use in becoming thought leaders in our industry.

The Most Linked to Content

“Authoritative research and reference content are the two types of content that consistently get links and shares.” - Steve Rayson, BuzzSumo director, and cofounder

Original research is the kind of content that gets linked to most often. Michele said, “I'll go to a brand, I'll look them up on Buzzsumo, [and] I'll search the top link to the content. So often that content is original research. It just works incredibly well because if you are the source of something new, people just naturally want to link to it.”

Original Research Helping Startups

One of Michele’s clients, Andrea Fryear (who I interviewed not too long ago), does an annual original research project called Our State of Agile Marketing. On the topic, Andrea said, “Our State of Agile Marketing has been a virtual goldmine for subscribers, backlinks, and real money in the bank of our clients. In our CRM, I'll see someone who has downloaded the report, and within a couple of days—sometimes even a couple of hours—I'll see that same someone requesting a call to talk about becoming a client. There's a clear correlation between reading the report and being ready to make a purchase.”

This research was one of the first content pieces that they put together. Michele said she watched as “the really small, scrappy startup business [used] research to directly get clients to them. I've had other brands . . . use research for those same purposes. . . . You don't have to be this big brand with a big budget to do research. These little . . . startups can use research to have a really great impact.”

Helping Kids Find Their Paths

Michele is also very passionate about helping kids try to find their own path. “I have two kids at home,” she explained. “I am really passionate about helping kids try to find their own path and be accountable in this world. I think that there's a lot of opportunities for kids to be this vibrant part of society, and I'm trying to help kids help themselves.”

Kids can do great things. I had a boss who felt that our most important role as parents was to help our kids find their passion and then invest in helping them achieve that passion. By doing that, we help them find their place in society. We can help kids change the world through the things they’re good at and passionate about. As parents, that's how we can make a contribution. Plus, as we get involved in supporting them, it helps us build stronger and more connected relationships.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Michele for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Original research is a great way to step up our content marketing game.
We can make an impact with original research.
Original research allows us to provide data and say something new, two things people look for incredible thought leaders.
Original research is often the most linked-to content.
Original research is a great way for startups to get the attention of clients.
Helping kids find their path will help them make an impact in the future and help us have a stronger relationship with them.

Connect with Michele

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you tried original research? If so, how did it go? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the power of gratitude in business.

Feeling Disconnected from God

When I was in high school, there was a time when I felt disconnected from God and was not feeling Him near. At night time, I would read scriptures sitting by the light in our hallway. One night, as I was trying to understand this lack of God’s presence in my life, and what I needed to do, I opened my scriptures randomly, and they fell open to this verse:

“In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (KJV 1 Thessalonians 5:18)

That scripture gave me the answer I was seeking. I knew that I needed to fill my life with more gratitude to find the connection with God and others in my life that I was missing. I tried to heed that counsel and found deeper connections. For example, instead of filling my prayers primarily with requests, I incorporated a lot more specific expressions of gratitude. I even dedicated some prayers to only expressions of gratitude. I have also tried to express a lot more gratitude to the people around me.

Tough Circumstances and Gratitude

A church leader named Dieter Uchtdorf gave a sermon about gratitude. In his sermon, he described the opportunity he’s had to meet with many people whose sorrows seem to reach the very depths of their souls. “In these moments,” he said, “I have listened to my beloved brothers and sisters and grieved with them over their burdens. I have pondered what to say to them, and I have struggled to know how to comfort and support them in their trials.”

“Sooner or later,” Uchtdorf continued, “I believe that all of us experience times when the very fabric of our world tears at the seams, leaving us feeling alone, frustrated, and adrift. It can happen to anyone. No one is immune.”

He goes on to describe how “there is something that would take away the bitterness that may come into our lives. There is one thing we can do to make life sweeter, more joyful, even glorious. We can be grateful!”

“Those who set aside the bottle of bitterness and lift instead the goblet of gratitude can find a purifying drink of healing, peace, and understanding,” he said.

I think the reason this is true is when we want to get rid of negativity in our lives, the best way to do it is to replace it with something positive. It’s like a room filled with darkness we want to go away. The only way to make the darkness leave is to fill the room with something else . . . light. I have found that when I have negative feelings towards someone when I strive to replace those feelings with gratitude, the gratitude can help replace the negative feelings, and I feel more positively towards that person.

Gratitude in Business

It is well-known that gratitude can help us have a better attitude in our personal lives, but how does this apply to us as entrepreneurs?

Gratitude is a critical aspect of our business relationships. “It satisfies the higher psychological need to feel a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves–to feel a sense of meaning at work.” (Source: Forbes)

Recognizing the good and saying it out loud “helps [us] connect with other entrepreneurs and build lasting partnerships. No [one] is an island, and the same goes for business owners too. Correspondingly, success is most easily achieved when we back up each other.” (Source: Enterprise League)

I believe gratitude in the workplace is critical for many reasons. Here are 7 examples:

It helps us build stronger relationships with our co-workers.
Most of us deal with insecurities and fears that we are not good enough. Expressing gratitude is an affirmation that in that thing, they are good enough.
Expressing gratitude gives a positive reference point of the actions and behaviors that work, so people know how to act, and what to do more of.
Showing gratitude can shift the focus from us to others.
Expressing gratitude can show our co-workers that we saw what they did.
Focusing on the great things people have done, instead of the mistakes, is showing grace. When we show grace to others, we will probably receive more grace in return.
Expressions of gratitude can show that we care about the feelings of our co-workers.

Expressing Gratitude

Uchtdorf shared a story of a server and a customer. He said, “There is an old story of a waiter who asked a customer whether he had enjoyed the meal. The guest replied that everything was fine, but it would have been better if they had served more bread. The next day, when the man returned, the waiter doubled the amount of bread, giving him four slices instead of two, but still, the man was not happy. The next day, the waiter doubled the bread again, without success.”

“On the fourth day, the waiter was really determined to make the man happy. And so he took a nine-foot-long loaf of bread, cut it in half, and with a smile, served that to the customer. The waiter could scarcely wait for the man’s reaction.”

“After the meal, the man looked up and said, ‘Good as always. But I see you’re back to giving only two slices of bread.’”

In this story, there is a disconnect between the customer and the server, and this disconnect comes from the customer’s lack of gratitude. Because of this, the server felt unappreciated even though he was doing everything he could to make this customer happy.

This isn’t to say we should stop doing things for customers that don’t seem grateful. We need to make sure that we aren’t the customer in this example. We should be expressing gratitude to our families, partners, employees, clients, vendors, and customers, so they know how much we appreciate them and their efforts.

Ways We Can Show Gratitude

Results of research in the workplace so far link it to more positive emotions, less stress and fewer health complaints, a greater sense that we can achieve our goals, fewer sick days, and higher satisfaction with our jobs and our coworkers (Source: greatergood.berkeley.edu). Here are a few ideas and stories for how we can show gratitude in our business relationships.

“Giving Props”

Steven Benson, founder, and CEO of Badger Maps says his favorite thing about the company’s culture is that they show thanks to employees on a weekly basis. “We have an all-hands meeting once a week, and we finish the meeting by ‘giving props’, which is recognizing people on the team for their accomplishments that week. Anyone on the team can give props to anyone else on the team, which fosters an atmosphere of appreciation and teamwork.” (Source: Medium)

“For example,” Benson explained, “someone who noticed another employee doing a great job with a particularly difficult customer, might ‘give props’ to that person and recognize them in front of the group as having done an amazing job. It’s a great way to be thankful and show appreciation as a group for all the accomplishments of the week, and make sure everyone gets recognized for their contributions.” (Source: Medium)

“This has helped us build a strong team and sense of community. The success of your business depends on your employees, and establishing a positive culture where everyone feels appreciated and enjoys coming to work makes a big difference in increasing employee satisfaction and happiness.” (Source: Medium)

I love how the Gladney Center for Adoption does this and reserves time in nearly every full-company meeting for people to express gratitude through a shout-out for something another team member has done.

Gratitude with Customers

Dr. Justin Wood, a business problem-solving specialist, shared how gratitude saved a restaurant with low chances of survival from closing down. He “was put in charge of a small breakfast team, which was one step away from being shut down. . . . It was a tough game, as the team wasn’t bringing much profit to the restaurant, and people’s jobs were at stake.” (Source: Intelligent Change)

The first thing Wood changed was customer appreciation. “He instructed the team to express gratitude and appreciation to every customer because the key to a profitable restaurant is satisfied and returning customers.” (Source: Intelligent Change)

At the end of the first month “, they doubled the number of receipts from the previous month. By the end of the three-month period, they were setting continual records. It took so little: a ‘thank you for coming,’ a smile, and a regular check-up, and people immediately felt more appreciated as customers.” (Source: Intelligent Change)

Gratitude and Appreciation Retreat

Consultant Stephanie Pollack was brought in to work with the state chapter of a national nonprofit. “The organization was in the middle of a transformation that brought in new leadership, a new culture, new rules—and lots of tension and uncertainty.” Pollack was tasked with teaching appreciation and gratitude during a three-day retreat (Source: greatergood.berkeley.edu).

“She taught a small group of reluctant employees about the benefits of recognizing the good things in their lives and saying thank you.” Something shifted among the employees. “After one person wrote a genuine note of thanks on an ‘appreciation wall,’ soon everyone was participating.” (Source: greatergood.berkeley.edu)

Pollack was surprised by the connection and authenticity that appreciation inspired. Even some of the more closed-off employees had opened up by the end of the retreat. “They walked in with a lot of tension and frustration,” Pollack said. “I’m not saying they walked out with none, but there was a willingness on everyone’s part to move forward together in a different way.” (Source: greatergood.berkeley.edu)

These are just a few of the ways we can implement gratitude into our business, but it could be as simple as a “thank you” at the end of an email or note reminding an employee that we appreciate them. William James, American philosopher and psychologist said, “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.” If appreciation is one of our deepest cravings, then we need to make sure we are showing our appreciation to others.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Those who are grateful can find healing, peace, connection, and understanding.
Gratitude can help us replace negative feelings with positive feelings.
Gratitude is a critical part of the business. It helps us build stronger relationships.
In the workplace, gratitude can foster more positive emotions, less stress and fewer health complaints, a greater sense that we can achieve our goals, fewer sick days, and higher satisfaction with our jobs and our coworkers.
Focusing on the great things people have done, instead of the mistakes, is showing grace.
We can express gratitude by ‘giving props’ to our employees in meetings, telling customers we appreciate them, going on a gratitude retreat, or simply saying thank you in an email or note.
Expressing sincere gratitude to customers may increase revenues.
The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.

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Iron Man’s “Jarvis'' is a science fiction example of artificial intelligence with which many of us are familiar. The idea of artificial intelligence in chatbots has become reality. Many businesses already implement chatbots, artificial intelligence that mimics the conversational abilities of a human.

Jennifer Etchegary, an expert in technology procurement and implementation, helps companies find and implement the right technologies in the most effective ways possible. Some of her specialties include virtual reality, augmented reality, and chatbots, along with a variety of other technologies.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how businesses can effectively use chatbots and what benefits they can expect to see as it is done right.

Chatbots

In today’s market, we are seeing a shift towards everything digital. Jennifer said, “If you’re not digitally transforming, you’re losing.”

New technologies are being developed at a higher rate than ever before. Chatbots are one of those technologies businesses are starting to use a lot.

A chatbot is a conversational experience that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing to mimic a conversation between real people. Essentially, it is a robot that can have a conversation.

Surprisingly, the first chatbot was developed even before the personal computer. Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist, and professor at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory created the first chatbot in 1966 named Eliza (Source: Daffodil). The personal computer wasn’t developed until 1974 (Source: Britannica).

Eliza was designed to imitate a therapist by asking open-ended questions and follow-ups. She operated by recognizing a keyword or phrase and then produced a pre-programmed response (Source: Analytics India Magazine).

The world didn’t truly see the rise of chatbots until the smartphone era. In 2010, Apple acquired Siri and then revealed her as an integrated part of the iPhone in 2011 (Source: SRI International). After Siri, Amazon created Alexa in 2015 and Google created Google Home in 2016 (Source: Daffodil).

Since then, we have seen an increase in chatbots, even within smaller businesses. Chatbots are found on customer service phone lines, websites, and social media platforms. Chatbots have become increasingly popular as they offer many potential benefits.

5 Benefits of a Chatbot

Here are five potential benefits chatbots can give us in our business.

Saves Time

Chatbots can save time for both the company and the customer. They can maintain a 24/7 response system so the customers can have constant access to communication. With a 24/7 customer service line, customers can solve their problems faster without ever needing to come to a live customer service representative.

Over 50% of customers expect 24/7 availability with businesses (Source: AI Multiple). If we implement a chatbot, it can increase customer engagement and satisfaction to meet their expectation of constant service. And if a chatbot is doing it, we don’t have to spend so much time doing it ourselves.

A chatbox can also significantly reduce customer service response times, depending on how advanced it is programmed to operate. A chatbox can help answer any level 1 questions. This could include how to find something on our website, check the status of an order, or provide our business hours. Then, if a customer comes to us with a level 2 or 3 questions, they can transfer the customer to the direct person they need to communicate with for that question.

By answering the easy questions for us, we won’t have to take as many calls or chats, and we will have more time to help customers with bigger problems. This can help reduce the wait time on our phone lines or online chats. This benefits the customer since a chatbot can help them solve their easy questions without having to wait 30 minutes on hold to reach a customer service representative.

“Initially a chatbot might only save 5% of your customer service time, [but] as it gets smarter and smarter, as you train it, it can get up to about 30% to 40% to 60%,” Jennifer said. “It saves a lot of time.”

With reduced time, not only increases customer satisfaction but also employee satisfaction as they don’t have to constantly answer back-to-back calls.

Reduces Costs

By saving time, chatbots can also help reduce costs. Juniper Research estimated that chatbots could save the banking industry $7.3 billion globally by 2023, up from an estimated $209 million in 2019 (Source: Juniper Research).

Instead of paying a group of employees to answer phone calls or respond to chats, chatbots can do it. While chatbots may not be able to take over the role of the customer service representative completely, they can answer simple questions so we don’t need as many customer service employees. Chatbots can help businesses save up to 30% of their customer support costs by reducing response times and answering 80% of routine questions (Source: IBM).

As chatbots help reduce customer service response times and offer 24/7 availability, they can also increase customer sales. Business leaders have claimed that chatbots increased their sales by an average of 67% (Forbes). Customers often look for the fastest solution possible. If they have to wait 30 minutes on hold or wait until the next morning, we may have already lost their business.

Increases Efficiency

Chatbots can help increase efficiency. One way they can do this is by being programmed to speak many different languages. If someone calls in, but only speaks Spanish, we can have our chatbot instantly programmed to take their call. Our chatbot can be programmed to respond in any language we choose such as Spanish, Chinese, French, or Portuguese.

Chatbots can also get instant access to information. Jennifer had a vice president come to her for help because she was having a really difficult time with her contact center. They were seeing many inefficiencies such as not being able to access information as easily as they would like. Jennifer connected her through another person in her network and they were able to develop a chatbot that helped increase efficiency in access to information by about 40%.

A chatbot can also be custom-built to better respond to our customers’ needs. “[There is] the intelligence advantage there, meaning [chatbots] have a deeper understanding of how people are speaking, and you're able to respond better to their needs,” Jennifer said. As we program chatbots to understand our customers’ needs, we can increase our efficiency.

Is Data-Driven

Chatbots are scalable and data-driven. When a customer asks a question in our online chat, our chatbot can record and store that information. They can take frequently asked questions or common problems and turn them into data we can use to improve the customer experience.

Jennifer explained that one of the biggest business tectonic shifts is the increase of data. “A lot of the data captured, especially in chatbots, is very powerful,” Jennifer said. We should lean towards the increased data we get from chatbots and use it to understand what our customers are telling us. Instead of going off of a gut feeling, we can use actual data to make customer-based decisions. As we do this, our products and services will resonate with customers a lot more.

Beyond answering questions, chatbots can also reach out with surveys to gain customer information and track a customer’s purchasing patterns. With this data, we can find new ways to direct our customers’ responses and guide them in their journey to making a purchase decision.

Increases User Engagement

Chatbots can also increase user engagement. With 24/7 availability, chatbots can always communicate and engage with our customers when needed. A survey found that 83% of online shoppers need support while shopping (Source: Econsultancy). By having a chatbot readily available, we will be able to communicate with our audience more frequently.

Research also found that companies that engaged with their customers on social media increased their customers’ spending by 20% to 40% (Source: Bain & Company). As chatbots increase our user engagement, we can also increase our sales.

Jennifer shared the example of a large beverage company that did a big campaign for one of their soft drinks. They used a chatbot with a Halloween theme and gamified it. When a customer clicked on the chatbot, it took them through a game that eventually ended with a coupon for their drink. This helped the company increase its engagement by about 60%.

Another example Jennifer shared was from a retail company. She helped them create an augmented reality chatbot experience. While a customer shopped for sunglasses through the chatbot, they could “try on'' different sunglasses through an augmented reality layer to see what they looked like on their face. “The user engagement exploded and the buy-ins were just unbelievable,” Jennifer said.

The Dangers of Chatbots

Just because a chatbot may be beneficial for some businesses, this doesn’t mean it will benefit every business. If we want to install a chatbox, there has to be a great use for it. We should ask ourselves, “How will this improve my customer’s experience?”

Jennifer said that one of the biggest mistakes she made in her career was overcomplicating things, which was a waste of time and money. There is a power in simplicity and sometimes a chatbot may take away from that. We should only use a chatbot if we believe it will help the customer.

Chatbots have the danger of taking away the personalized touch. With chatbots, we need to be very careful with the fine line between efficiency and human connection. There is a certain extent to which technology can help. Past that point, it makes the experience more frustrating. Chatbots are an effective way to help with level 1 customer service questions. However, if customers have a more complex issue, they should be able to reach a real person. If a chatbot can’t provide the right help, it begins to feel more like an obstacle standing in the way between the customer and the customer service representative.

When I asked Jennifer for her best advice about retaining human touch while implementing a chatbot, she said we should:

Get multiple opinions and feedback on our chatbot.
Make sure the chatbot has the right personality and brand voice.
Focus on conversational design. We need to make sure the conversation is natural.

If we decide a chatbot is right for our business, we can take the next steps to create one that fits our brand’s personality. We should only choose to use a chatbot after significant research and time to determine if it is the right solution for our business.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jennifer for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Chatbots can help save a company and customers lots of time. They can maintain a 24/7 response system so the customers can have constant access to communication.
Chatbots can help reduce customer service costs and increase customer sales.
Chatbots can help increase efficiency.
Chatbots are scalable and data-driven. They can take frequently asked questions or common problems and turn them into data we can use to improve the customer experience.
Chatbots can increase user engagement.
If we want to install a chatbot, there should be a great use case for it
Chatbots have the danger of overcomplicating things and reducing personalized connection.

Connect with Jennifer

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jennifer or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or her company’s website chatc.ai.

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Welcome back to another episode with Jason McDonald. In the first episode, we talked about the benefits of publishing a book on Amazon. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss five secrets of personal branding.

Personal Brands vs Business Brands

A personal brand is built around our name and personality whereas a business brand is built on a new, independent identity, separate from ourselves.

Becoming personalized in our brands and businesses is becoming more and more crucial to success. A study found that 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand that provides a personalized experience (Source: Forbes). As we develop a personal brand, we increasingly resonate with our audience.

“I think personal branding is the most underrated skill that people have today,” Jason said. “Everyone needs a personal brand.” He continued, “People do business with people, not with brands per se, and so personal branding is a recognition of the strength of that.”

Elon Musk is one of the best examples of a personal brand. If we asked a group of people who the CEO of Tesla is, the large majority could tell us it’s Elon Musk. But if we asked that same group of people who the CEO of Ford is, the large majority wouldn’t know. The same applies to Toyota and Honda. Very few people could name their CEOs. This is what personal branding is—putting a face to our businesses.

Tesla doesn’t have a public relations person who controls the company’s Twitter account. Elon Musk Twitter account is the primary Twitter account. He’s the one talking to people and connecting with them. That movement is highly appealing to people.

5 Secrets to Personal Branding

As we create and develop our personal brand, we strengthen our relationships with our customers and have higher success rates. As a consultant in personal branding, Jason gave five secrets to help us build our personal brands.

Become a Helpful Expert

After we determine our personal brand and find what makes us unique, we need to become a helpful expert in that area.

We should figure out what we want to be helpful in and then do it. The first step to building a personal brand is all about providing value and giving back to our customers and inviting people to follow and trust us. Once we’ve determined how we can be helpful, then we need to become an expert in that area of expertise.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, anyone can become an expert in nearly any field as long as they devote 10,000 hours to studying and practicing the subject or skill (Source: VeryWellMind.com). To become an expert, we simply need to take the time and resources to learn and grow in that one specific thing. We can take what little knowledge we have and start to build our personal brand, building our expertise on the internet even before we actually feel like an expert.

“We live in this era of personal brands,” Jason said. “It’s your brand on the internet. Where you position yourself generally is what I call a helpful expert in a certain topic.”

If we go back to the example of Elon Musk, we see that he takes his personal brand and makes himself the expert on it. He’s very good at getting his name in the media and connecting his name with being an entrepreneur.

We can’t just assume everyone will figure out what our personal brand is on their own. We need to make what we stand for, what values we have, and our personality obvious on our website, social media channels, and other platforms. As we do this, our audience will slowly come to believe we are an expert in our field. As we become an expert and share our knowledge, we gain credibility.

In a way, we make ourselves an expert by projecting our personal brand consistently and constantly. Musk did just that. He shows and tells the media that he is a great entrepreneur until they believe him. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Learn the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Jason said he is an expert at making something out of nothing. “How do you know that I'm an expert on SEO? You go to Amazon and you see my book or you Google ‘SEO expert San Francisco’ and you find me. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he explained.

After we’ve dedicated ourselves to becoming an expert in our niche area, we have to show it to the world. We need to take action ourselves. We need to develop our online presence and show our audience why they should believe we are an expert. If our personal brand includes social media marketing, we should write a book on it, be active on every social media channel, write a blog, and more. Then, when someone searches for our topic, our name will show up. Eventually, we will become the leading expert in that topic according to our consumers.

“What are the signals that people look for that establish you as an expert in [your] area? You've got to create those signals,” Jason said.

What is going to validate the truth of what we say? For many people, this signal can be something as simple as how many followers we have on our social media channels. Jason describes this as an illusion of being successful since it is grounded in something that doesn’t necessarily reveal our expertise. Having a million followers doesn’t prove we know what we’re talking about, but it does show our audience that we offer value that one million people are willing to trust.

One platform Jason uses to fulfill the self-fulfilling prophecy is LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, he has over 500 connections. He also creates videos and posts about SEO, telling the world he is an expert. With enough content and enough followers, people will eventually start to believe it.

“People are going to go to my LinkedIn, and they're going to see I have over 500 connections, and I have a lot of videos, and I have a lot of content. I create the illusion on LinkedIn that I'm really successful,” Jason said. Eventually, with time, the illusion fades until we actually do become successful and an expert.

Find a Movement

Personal branding is often about finding a movement or tectonic shift and taking advantage of it. Success isn’t just based on building a great personal brand; it is also about watching the marketplace and our customers.

Going back to Elon Musk, his company isn’t just about Tesla or SpaceX. It's also about the electric car movement, green energy, and space exploration movement. Musk became the face of electric cars and space exploration, appealing to a specific market that already existed. Musk didn’t create the desire for green energy, he tapped into the movement already there and substantially increased that movement through his influence. He resonated with the culture and things already happening.

Jason once read that marketing doesn’t create demand, it moves the demand forward.

Jason writes books to help build his credibility and establish his expertise. He has found that the books that succeed are the ones that resonate with an already-existing audience. We should think about what demand is already out there that we can directly target.

Become a Detective

If we aren’t sure how to build our personal brand on certain platforms, we simply need to do the research. We need to become detectives.

One of the newest social media platforms is TikTok. TikTok launched in 2016 and has exploded in popularity with 689 million active monthly users worldwide (Source: DataReportal, 2021). With so many active users, this platform has the potential to give our company access to millions of people.

Many businesses may wonder how they can take advantage of TikTok to help build their personal brand. A great way to discover how we can use new platforms such as TikTok is by looking at what our competitors are doing. Researching our competitors is a great way to determine how we can effectively share our personal brand.

“One of the things I try to teach people in my class is [to] learn to be a good detective or to go look at other brands and see what they're doing. Take a brand and [do a] simple Google search,” Jason said.

Be Aware of the Permanent Record

The internet never forgets. As we develop our personal brand, we need to be aware of everything we put onto the internet. One silly tweet from 10 years ago can still damage our personal brand today.

“The internet is like an elephant, it never forgets. If I could give one [piece of] advice to people, [it is] before you tweet before you create that TikTok before you create that Instagram post, think about the downstream implications that this could have for your whole life. . . . We clearly live in an era in which you're leaving this massive digital footprint, and it can really come back and get you,” Jason said.

Before we post anything online, we need to consider the future implications of that post, especially as we build our personal brand. Not only should we avoid posting negative things, but we should also seek to post positive, impactful things. Just as something bad can come back to bite us, good things can also leave a lasting impact, and come back to benefit us in the future.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jason for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Building a personal brand is becoming crucial to success. People connect with people.
We need to become helpful experts in our specific field.
We should create signals that tell our audience we are an expert.
Personal branding is often about finding a movement or tectonic shift and taking advantage of it.
Before we post anything online, think about the effects it could have on our personal brand now and in the future.

Connect with Jason

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jason or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or his website, jasonmcdonald.org. You can also find his books on Amazon.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
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Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

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Jason McDonald is an author, teacher, and consultant focused on personal branding, SEO, social media marketing, and Google ads. He has an undergraduate degree from Harvard, a master’s and a Ph.D. from Berkeley, and he teaches at Stanford. He also has many bestselling books on digital marketing topics available on Amazon.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss why we should create digital products and publish a book on Amazon.

Jason’s Journey

Jason studied at Berkeley for six years while working towards his Ph.D. For two of those years, he lived in Europe and wrote his dissertation on economic policy in Eastern Europe. Once he graduated, he began working with a computer reseller start-up to grow international sales, becoming familiar with the internet for the first time.

His first experience with the internet inspired him to start an email newsletter for design engineers which got him into SEO. About 10 years later, he discovered he was good at teaching. He had a friend who encouraged him to teach a class, and that’s when Jason began teaching SEO in San Francisco. He enjoyed it so much he eventually started teaching for Stanford and also began publishing.

Building a Skill Set

The ability to publish books on Amazon has been a huge blessing in Jason’s career.

While Jason was teaching a class at Stanford, he thought it would be a good idea to try writing a book on SEO. He already had the knowledge and just needed to learn the skills to get it published. He put in the time and research and learned how to publish a book on Amazon and get it set up on Kindle and CreateSpace. He published his book on Amazon which started to generate around $30,000 a year in royalty revenue and established his name in his industry.

“There are people who think you're born with a certain skill, like ‘I'm born and I'm able to do the math.’ I really think that’s a terrible attitude. A better attitude is, ‘I want to have this skill, and I'm going to learn how to do this skill. I'm going to invest in the skill and get good at this skill.’ I didn't know that much about how to publish a book on Amazon at the time, but I really dug into it. . . . I created that skill set by just saying, ‘I'm going to do this,’” Jason said.

Jason didn’t have the skill set to publish a book, so he developed it. If we want to be an expert at something, we have to put in the work. It’s not a matter of being born with or without a certain skill, it’s a matter of drive and determination.

“You have to decide you want the skill set,” Jason said. “That's how you want to think about your skills in life. . . . It really hurts people when they think, ‘Gosh, I could never do that.’ That's self-defeating.”

Are we willing to pay the price? Are we willing to put in the time and resources it takes to develop a new skill? We have the ability to pick what we want to be an expert in, we just have to pay the price. It’s often said that if we put in 10,000 hours into something, we can become one of the world's leading experts in it.

One of the best skill sets we can learn is creating a digital product. While we may not have the skills naturally to create a digital product, we can put in the time and effort to learn how and develop those skills.

There is an old saying that goes, “It doesn’t matter how much milk you spill as long as you don’t lose your cow.” As entrepreneurs, there will often be “spillage” and wasteful decisions as we start trying to learn something new. However, our mistakes don’t matter as much if we keep trying. What we see as failure may not have a huge impact on the bigger picture or an impact on our revenue.

Publishing a Book on Amazon

When I asked Jason what his best monetization secret is, he said it is to create a digital product. For him, that digital product was his books.

“If you have a special kind of knowledge or if you're an expert in ‘x’ . . . you should write a book,” Jason said. “ If you can create a digital product, which is what books are these days, you can create a passive income stream around that product.”

Books not only provide a passive income stream, but they also build our credibility. Writing a book shows our customers our knowledge. As we really become an expert in our specific field, we can write a book to establish our name. However, we need to make sure we write a book with a purpose. We shouldn’t publish a digital book just to show off our knowledge; we need to write a book that will provide value to our audience.

For example, college students will look for books on financial aid, budgeting, easy home-cooked meals, relationship advice, and more. We need to write a book that answers a question for someone or solves a problem for them. A new parent may purchase a dozen books on baby names and how to raise a kid. If we can answer a question or solve a problem, a book can really be a great source of revenue. Jason was able to do this with the topic of SEO. He wrote a book on what he was an expert on, answered questions and solved problems for his audience, and then made around $30,000 a year off the royalty revenues of his book.

It is very common for people to turn to a book when they are trying to solve a problem. According to the Pew Research Center, the average American reads about 12 books a year. If we can make our book the #1 in its category, we have a good chance of success.

“One of the things I've learned in business is you want to fish where the fish are,” Jason said. “Certain markets, like the book market, have a defined player (Amazon) where all the action is. And Amazon has made it very easy for people to publish and find books.”

Amazon has a system that allows anyone to self-publish a book relatively easily. All we have to do is write it. Once we do, publishing takes less than five minutes and our book appears on Kindle stores worldwide within 48 hours (Source: Amazon). Amazon also allows us to earn up to 70% in royalty sales to customers and stay in control of our prices. Instead of going through a publisher, we can do it on our own from our homes.

Amazon is a great platform to take advantage of for book publishing. “Amazon dominates the book market. It's where people go for books,” Jason said. “Think about areas where there is a defined marketplace that you can then insert yourself.”

The Association of American Publishers filed a statement in 2019 with the Federal Trade Commission, saying, “A year ago, The New York Times reported that Amazon controlled 50 percent of all book distribution, but for some industry suppliers, the actual figure may be much higher, with Amazon accounting for more than 70 or 80 percent of sales.” (Source: Publishing Perspectives).

We can leverage Amazon to potentially reach millions of people and get our book out there. There are currently 150 million Amazon Prime subscribers, a 50 percent increase from 100 million in April 2018 (Source: VentureBeat) and even more people use Amazon without Prime.

Just because millions of people are on Amazon, that doesn’t mean we have millions of people looking at our book. In 2020, there were 48.5 million books on Amazon (Source: JustPublishingAdvice). Becoming an expert in our field and answering a problem our customers are trying to solve gives us a competitive edge in this vast book market on Amazon.

Another digital product that builds our credibility and can create recurring revenue is online courses. Online courses are a great way to provide value to our customers. We can share our knowledge and teach them how to do something they need help with. However, the disadvantage with online courses is that there isn’t one platform that dominates that platform as Amazon does with books. Jason believes that publishing a digital book on Amazon is one of the best digital products we can use to our advantage.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jason for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We have to decide what skill set we want and then put in the time and effort to become an expert in it.
One of the best skill sets we can learn as entrepreneurs are how to create digital products.
Books provide a passive income stream and build our credibility.
Amazon is a great platform to take advantage of because it dominates the book market and makes publishing relatively easy.
We should become an expert in our field and answer a question or solve a problem for our customers.
If we can make our book the #1 in its category, we have a high chance of success.

Connect with Jason

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jason or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or his website, jasonmcdonald.org. You can also find his books on Amazon.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you published a book on Amazon? If so, what advice can you share? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/126-why-entrepreneurs-should-publish-a-book-on-amazon/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Sam Mallikarjunan. In the previous episode, we discussed how to market ourselves and how to get a job with our dream company. Sam shared a creative strategy he used to get a recruiter from his dream company to contact him within 3 hours and 26 minutes.

Sam is the co-author of the book, Inbound Commerce: How to Sell Better Than Amazon, which is ironically the number one bestseller in its category on Amazon. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss inbound commerce and the buyer’s journey.

Inbound Commerce

In Sam’s book, he explores e-commerce applications of inbound marketing and emphasizes the importance of using content and engagement to create likable marketing.

Inbound marketing is a business system that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences targeted to them (Source: HubSpot). Inbound marketing attracts customers while outbound marketing interrupts them through methods such as sales calls or ads on social media.

“What if instead of being as obnoxious as possible, marketers actually tried to create experiences that people wanted to have? Instead of interrupting people, could you create something that drew them to you instead of cold calling? For example, could you create content that educated them?” Sam said.

Sam first discovered HubSpot because he was drawn to their educational content. A great way to get customers is through the methods of inbound commerce. We should be creating value our customers will naturally want instead of imposing products or services on them they aren’t really interested in. Our content, services, and products should bring our customers to us, not the other way around.

“If you just cold call people, you're not going to be nearly as effective as if you’re really good at educating them and creating that inbound experience to bring them to you,” Sam said.

Sam saw a survey in which marketers were rated as less trustworthy than car salesmen, politicians, and lobbyists. This is the exact opposite of what we want to see. Customers should feel they can trust us. Inbound marketing forces us to create products or services our customers will actually value. This will build trust and strengthen customer relations.

Jeff Bezos, founder, and CEO of Amazon said,

"One thing I learned within the first couple of years of starting a company is that inventing and pioneering involve a willingness to be misunderstood for long periods of time. One of the early examples of this is customer reviews. Someone wrote to me and said, 'You don't understand your business. You make money when you sell things. Why do you allow these negative customer reviews?' And when I read that letter, I thought, we don't make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions."

This is a core goal of inbound marketing. We need to create an experience that our customers like and that provides them value. We need to create an experience that builds trust. The goal needs to be about helping our customers make a decision on their stages of the buyer’s journey, and then continue to drive their repurchase cycle.

The Buyer’s Journey

When I asked Sam to share one of his monetization strategies, he said it is to understand the marketing funnel and the buyer's journey.

We have to solve problems for each of the different stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, and the decision stage. We can’t only focus on building awareness and staying dialed in on website traffic and leads. We also can’t only focus on the final purchase decision. We need to have the entire buyer’s journey in mind if we want to optimize conversions and gain lifetime customers. One of the biggest mistakes Sam sees is people getting too focused on only one part of the marketing funnel.

To really understand what our customers’ needs are at each stage of their journey, we need to do research. We have to take the time to look at the data and combine that with analysis to get an accurate understanding of who our customers are.

The first stage of the marketing funnel or the buyer’s journey is awareness. Building awareness should be focused on inbound marketing, not outbound. To raise awareness, we shouldn’t be cold calling or constantly using targeted ads necessarily. We want our customers to come to us because they are interested in what we have to offer. We should be doing research and getting good at providing valuable education for our consumers. Throughout the consideration stage and decision stage, we should educate our customers—it should be a continuous cycle of education.

“Once [customers] buy from you, it means they have purchased one thing from you, but they are back in the awareness and research [stage of] a buyer’s journey for whatever they're going to buy next,” Sam said.

If we want to gain customer retention, we need to remember that a one-time buyer is not a customer. They should go back to the first stage of the buyer’s journey, and we need to treat them as if they are a first-time buyer again. We need to educate them all over again.

Sam explained that if we make the incentive for our products about price, Amazon is going to “kick our butt.” But, if we make it about a continuous cycle of education and awareness, we’ll win customer lifetime value.

A Challenger’s Mindset

Part of focusing on the buyer’s journey includes having a challenger’s mindset. If we don’t adapt to tectonic shifts, we’re not going to make it, and so it is essential we constantly challenge our methods and systems to make sure we are doing things in the best way possible. Sam advises we challenge our core principles frequently.

“I can be a $100 billion company today, but it is not guaranteed that I'm a company at all five years from now,” Sam said. “Create that challenger mindset inside your own organization. . . . [Ask yourself,] is there anything I don't know about my customer that somebody could create value for them in a way that I wasn't expecting and kill [my] company really, really fast?”

We need to make sure we are always providing value for our customers because if someone else solves a problem for our customers that we didn’t know about, we’ll have lost a portion of our audience.

We need to make sure we are researching every part of the buyer’s journey all the time. We need to be looking at the data, analyzing it, pulling insights out of it, and then making a change where necessary. If we can adapt to the changes in our market and the changes in our customers’ needs, we’ll be much more likely to survive in the business world.

Millennials make up about 30% of the American population and they are the most diverse generational cohort in US history (Source: Deloitte Insights). Not only are they diverse, but they have constant, changing needs. They are constantly looking for new, fast, and easy ways to solve their problems, and if someone solves their needs before we do, we’ll lose their loyalty. One-third of adults aged 23-38 are quick to drop a brand that doesn’t meet expectations (Source: Brightpearl). We need to make sure we are quick to meet their changing needs.

If we have a challenger’s mindset, we will be more likely to solve a potential problem, before an actual problem arises. This will help our businesses stay ahead of the game and increase our customer lifetime value.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Sam for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Instead of interrupting our customers through methods such as sales calls or ads on social media, we should attract them by creating valuable content and experiences targeted to them.
We need to have the entire buyer’s journey in mind if we want to gain a lifetime customer.
Our buyer’s journey should be a continuous cycle of providing education and value.
A one-time buyer is not a customer. They go back to the first stage of the buyer’s journey after they have made a single purchase.
We need to have a challenger’s mindset. If we don’t adapt to tectonic shifts, we’re not going to make it. It is essential we frequently challenge our business methods and systems.

Connect with Sam

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Sam or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or visit his website, www.onescreen.ai.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Do you use inbound marketing? If so, what is your best inbound marketing strategy? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/125-understanding-inbound-commerce-and-the-buyers-journey/

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Sam Mallikarjunan is the co-author of the book, Inbound Commerce: How to Sell Better Than Amazon, which is ironically the number one bestseller in its category on Amazon. Sam is the CEO and founder of OneScreen.ai, an Internet of Things (IOT) enabled ad marketplace for the physical world. He is also the former Chief Revenue Officer of Flock.com and the former head of growth at HubSpot Labs. Sam taught advanced digital marketing innovation management and strategic economics at Harvard University. He is also the faculty chair for the digital marketing department at the University of South Florida.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Sam’s journey, how we can market ourselves, and how to get a job with our dream company. Sam shares his story of how he got a recruiter from his dream company to contact him within 3 hours and 26 minutes.

Sam’s Journey

While Sam worked as a talk radio host, his team asked if he could build their website and find a way to make money off it. He didn’t know much about websites so he started Googling things and came across HubSpot. As Sam downloaded and read through HubSpot’s educational content, he decided he wanted to work for them.

“I built a website called HireMeHubSpot.com, and I got the free credits you get when you sign up for Google, LinkedIn, [and] Facebook ads, and I ran ads targeting people who worked at HubSpot to sign up for the free webinar about why they should hire me. Ironically, it's the best campaign I ever ran. Three hours and 26 minutes later, I got a call from the recruiter,” Sam said.

At HubSpot, Sam helped the company build a software that lets e-commerce companies, such as themselves, beat Amazon.

Sam worked at HubSpot for eight years before leaving to work for Flock. Then, in March 2020, he started his own business building a digital marketplace to connect people who own ad inventory with the brands that value them the most.

Marketing Ourselves

Sam’s biggest home run happened because he was able to market himself to HubSpot. Once he decided he wanted to work for their company, he created a free webinar where he marketed his talents and abilities. He did this so well that HubSpot reached out to him less than four hours later, and he got a job working for them. How can we market ourselves like this?

In today’s marketplace, it is becoming more and more important to market ourselves. When someone buys our product or service, they are also buying us. Consumers want to feel connected to whoever they are buying from and so we need to learn how to not only market our business, but also ourselves.

When we market ourselves and provide value to our customers, we become the asset. A customer will be more likely to buy from us if they like who we are and what we stand for, if we give them good value, and if they trust us.

3 Ways to Market Ourselves

Here are three ways we can market ourselves.

Know Our Target Audience

Sam researched HubSpot and read their educational content before he created the website, HireMeHubSpot.com and started marketing himself. Before we can start to market ourselves, we need to know who our target audience is. This means we should do research before we start.

Nate Elliot said, “If you want to create messages that resonate with your audience, you need to know what they care about.” When it comes to our customers, we need to understand their needs, values, hobbies, and wants. Who are we trying to sell ourselves to? Are we trying to market ourselves to a customer or a business partner? We should ask, “How can I serve my audience?” The only way we can know this is if we know them.

Once we know who our target audience is, we can determine what value we can offer. Gary Vaynerchuk said, “The best marketing strategy ever: CARE.” The more we care about our audience and understand what they need, the more likely they are to convert to our brand.

It may seem backwards, but it is true. When we focus on our customers instead of ourselves, we can actually market ourselves better. The conversation shouldn’t be about how amazing we are, but how we can help our customers in a way that will amaze them.

Show Personality and Stand Out

When we market ourselves, we need to make sure we show our personality. What makes us different from everyone else? What makes us unique? What can we offer that no one else has? We need to have a unique selling point.

Emma Stone said, “What sets you apart can sometimes feel like a burden and it’s not. And a lot of the time, it’s what makes you great.” We shouldn’t be afraid of being different. Our interests and passions show that we’re human. We’re not just trying to sell a product to our customers, we’re also trying to build a relationship. Remember, businesses are shifting to becoming more and more personalized.

According to recent reports, 71% of customers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal and 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides a personal experience (Source: Forbes). When we show more of our personality and become more personalized with our customers, our chances of success increase substantially.

Sam uses his passions to help market himself and his business. He said, “I am really passionate about how we [can] create a world in which small businesses are a viable economic model 20, 30, 100 years from now, given the fact that everything currently is favoring larger and larger companies [with] more and more consolidation.” Since his passion reflects the goal of his new business, OneScreen.ai, he can share it with his audience to show his personality and stand out. It will also help him build trust and credibility with his audience members.

Coco Chanel, a French fashion designer and businesswoman, said, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”

Build Trust and Credibility

Credibility marketing is one of the biggest tectonic shifts I’ve seen today. Customers simply don’t trust advertisements the way they used to. We have to market ourselves in ways that show we are trustworthy and credible.

One way to build trust is to admit when we don’t know something or when we are wrong. If a customer asks us a question we simply don’t know the answer to, that’s okay. Instead of pretending to be perfect and all-knowing, it’s actually beneficial to accept that we don’t know everything. We are more likely to trust someone who admits when they are wrong compared to someone who pretends to know it all. Admitting we are wrong actually helps us gain trust. People admire others who are willing to acknowledge their mistakes and take responsibility for their actions.

Another great way to build trust and credibility is by being reliant. If we say we’re going to do something, we better do it. If we tell a customer we have great customer service and will listen to their feedback, we better do that. If our website promises a response to a question, we better respond. If we don’t fulfill the promises that we give, our customers aren’t going to know what they can trust us with. People will begin to doubt if we are committed to any of our promises.

Finally, another great way to build trust is to communicate with our customers and simply listen to them. Listening shows that we respect and care about what our customers say.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Sam for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

When someone buys our product or service, they are also buying us. We need to become a personal brand and learn how to market ourselves.
Customers are more likely to make a purchase when a brand provides a personal experience.
Before we can start to market ourselves, we need to know who our target audience is.
If we want to share messages that resonate with our audience, we need to know what they care about.
We need to show our personality. What makes us different from everyone else? We need to provide a unique selling point.
We can build trust with our audience by being reliant and admitting when we are wrong or don’t know something.

Connect with Sam

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Sam or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or visit his website, www.onescreen.ai.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you market yourself? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Sam’s Journey

At HubSpot, Sam helped the company build a software that lets e-commerce companies, such as themselves, beat Amazon.

Marketing Ourselves

3 Ways to Market Ourselves

Here are three ways we can market ourselves.

Know Our Target Audience

Show Personality and Stand Out

Coco Chanel, a French fashion designer and businesswoman, said, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”

Build Trust and Credibility

Finally, another great way to build trust is to communicate with our customers and simply listen to them. Listening shows that we respect and care about what our customers say.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Sam for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

When someone buys our product or service, they are also buying us. We need to become a personal brand and learn how to market ourselves.
Customers are more likely to make a purchase when a brand provides a personal experience.
Before we can start to market ourselves, we need to know who our target audience is.
If we want to share messages that resonate with our audience, we need to know what they care about.
We need to show our personality. What makes us different from everyone else? We need to provide a unique selling point.
We can build trust with our audience by being reliant and admitting when we are wrong or don’t know something.

Connect with Sam

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Sam or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or visit his website, www.onescreen.ai.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you market yourself? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/124-how-to-get-a-job-with-your-dream-company/

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Dave Rose and his team build custom revenue engines for companies around the world. He is the author of Overcoming the 15 Categories of Rejection. Rejection is a common occurrence that we all encounter in our lives. In this episode, we’ll talk with Dave about rejection and how we can overcome it.

The Journey to Writing His Book

Dave was asked to speak to an audience about rejection. Dave thought, “No problem.” He jumped online, looking for the categories of rejection, and couldn’t find anything. So he went to the library. The librarian searched on her computer and couldn’t find anything. She asked another employee for help and they all started searching through the drawers that still used the Dewey Decimal System. They couldn’t find anything.

Dave happened to be advised at the University of North Texas. He asked some of the professors there, but none of them knew anything either. “Nobody [had] ever categorized rejection,” he explained. “It just hadn't happened. There are lots of books around persuasion, and great books about overcoming being told no and rejection, [or] being more powerful with these kinds of skills, but no one had ever categorized [it].”

Dave continued, “Fast forward 10 years of studying in 22 countries to be able to say I'd categorized rejection and named the categories and helped people overcome [them]. I had no idea that was going to be how the book came about. But that's what's happened and it's changing people's lives.”

Categories of Rejection

In our interview, Dave shared some of the categories of rejection from his book.

Mind Blocks

Dave said this category was hard to identify. Most people understand a monetary block; they understand that they can’t buy a $50 million house without that much money. But people miss mind blocks as a source of rejection. Dave explained that this mind block “stops people from even trying.”

He gave the example of asking me to borrow my car when he knew I’d say no. When people know what the answer will be, or think they know, they won’t even ask.

“There [are] mind blocks in the audience's mind,” Dave continued. “This has been the most powerful [thing] where we help CEOs and companies change mind blocks [of their audience].”

Decision Makers

The next category is decision-makers. “Most people aren't even talking to the right [person],” Dave explained. “They're walking away rejected, they're trying to get somewhere in life and their trajectory is dampened. And they weren't even dealing with the right decision-makers. That was something that was overlooked for a while as an actual category of rejections. . . . It's like you're asking mom to borrow the car on Friday night but you know it's dad's decision, or you're asking dad and it's mom's decision.”

Likeability

Likeability is the third category of rejection. Before the book came out, Dave was speaking about it and taking questions. A woman said to him, “Love is a category. Did you get that?” Dave said, “Well actually . . . love is not a category.” She said, “If you don't say love is a category, then you've never figured it out.” Dave said, “Well, we figured that the third category of objection is likeability.” He asked her “Have you ever loved someone?” She responded, “Well, yes.” He asked, “Have you hated that person?” She said, “Yes.” Dave told her, “You [see] how that's on a scale. So we call it likeability on a scale. [You can go from] maybe in the neutral middle, to love, [to] hate, however you want to look at it, but likability is a category of rejection that encompasses love.”

Goal Shot or Close

Another important category is the goal shot or the close. This is “asking for what you want,” Dave said. “Most people think they're rejected, but they never really try to get what they want.” They might say, “I didn't become a doctor (or a lawyer, accountant, dentist, etc.) because I didn’t have the money for school.”

Dave continued, “So there's a combination of money [and a] combination of a mental block. There might have been a combination of not asking for what you wanted. You can analyze a situation and find multiple categories of rejection impacting a situation. When you study it, you can start to remove those categories of rejection and get a lot more in life, and it just works for sales, for leaders, for a relationship, [etc.].”

How These Categories Can Benefit Entrepreneurs

In our sales efforts, one of these categories might be an obstacle to overcome in order to motivate someone to buy our product. There are also other ways these categories can benefit us. “Sometimes [the benefits are] not so obvious . . . report, culture, morale, employee relations, using it for how people interact and work together. Oftentimes they're hitting up against one another.”

Sometimes in companies, we have one team for one aspect and another time for a different one. We might think that one of the teams does this specific thing and someone from that team can’t go into the other team. “That's a communication and rejection issue,” Dave said.

“Helping people understand how to communicate and how to get what they need from one another and overcome the rejections with one another and the teams . . . is very transmogrifying for a business. You find that it starts to impact the short term, the morale, and then you're gonna impact culture, and you can get a consistent, repeatable process in there.” - Dave Rose

Being Proud of Our Passions

One day, Dave was talking to a rock star speaker who’d heard Dave speak. This person said to Dave, “When I'm asked on a plane what I do, it's sexy. I just tell them “I help companies build rock stars,” [and] I love that. I just thought it's hot, but what you do isn't sexy. You build revenue engines and the customer experience.”

When Dave heard this, it hurt. He said, “For a couple [of] weeks, it hurt, and then I realized . . . but we sell millions of dollars worth of stuff every year. I mean it works. . . . My passion is building revenue engines, and that's not really sexy. And if [I] just say that . . . it's kind of confusing to people in a way. [But] I don't care anymore. My passion is to build revenue engines. . . . I don't make any apologies for that anymore.”

Dave is doing the thing his target audience wants the most: he’s helping CEOs make more money. Someone else’s passion may look more exciting or sound more interesting, but as Dave has learned, we don’t have to feel bad about what we are passionate about.

Jumping on Tectonic Shifts and Breakthroughs

Here are a few examples of people or companies who had great breakthroughs or jumped on big tectonic shifts early to leverage them.

Elon Musk

When I asked Dave who he thinks the best digital monetizer is, he said Elon Musk. Dave compared Musk to Donald Trump, saying, “Donald Trump has a potential of notoriety and big ideas and an audience. And you take Elon, and he does it right. He does it right, and I'm not subscribing to any political side [or] ideology one way or another, I'm just saying there's a little bit of a similarity to me in terms of the platforms they have and what they can do, and comparing them, Elon takes this to another level from the digital side, and [he’s] a master.”

Elon Musk is a great example of someone who has jumped onto tectonic shifts early and leveraged them. There’s a great story about Elon Musk I told in a previous episode that is very relevant here. When the internet was very young, he went to one of the CEOs of one of the top yellow page companies, and he tried to sell them on a deal. Musk wanted to put the yellow pages online, and the CEO of that company took his huge, thick yellow pages, and threw it at Musk and said, “Do you think you're ever going to replace this with the internet?”

This is one of many situations where Elon Musk was rejected by someone who could not see his vision for leveraging tectonic shifts. But Elon went on to create something even bigger and more successful than the Yellow Pages.

Netflix

There’s a legend that a similar thing happened with Netflix and Blockbuster. Netflix apparently asked to meet with the CEO of Blockbuster, and the Blockbuster CEO said, “What’s a Netflix?” Obviously, they never made a deal, but it’s the same question as with the yellow pages: What would have happened if they had made a deal? Blockbuster could have so easily been the digital streaming platform. They had all the resources. They had connections. It would have been so easy for them to do it, and they didn't take advantage of that tectonic shift. It destroyed and put that company out of business.

It’s easy in hindsight to look back and see who ended up on top. However, it's not just what those big companies are doing wrong, but it's the opportunity that it presents for people like us. A lot of times people like us think there isn't a way for us to compete with those well-established, well-funded, and huge brands, the behemoths that are out there. We give up and are rejected before we even try. But all we have to do is find that tectonic shift, that disruption, that almost by definition the big companies are not going to quickly and effectively adapt to. We need to jump on that and build our business around that. That's our best strategy to leapfrog well-funded and established businesses.

Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

Dave and I also discussed how breakthroughs can come from anyone. Dave said, “You need to set your company up to believe that it can come from anyone. Sounds like some sort of Fantasyland [to] make that happen, but you can do that with the right system. That's what leaders need to work on, creating a system that anybody here can make something amazing happen.”

The idea for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos came from Richard Montañez who was working as a janitor for the company. A broken machine produced a batch of plain Cheetos, and he took them home. He put chili powder on them and tested them out on his family. When they liked them, he pitched the idea to a CEO over the phone and two weeks later presented it to the executive suite. Montañez ended up becoming an executive inside the corporation (Source: newsweek.com).

That CEO was wise enough to not reject a great idea or its messenger because someone with a lower position came up with the idea.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Sometimes our journeys will take us in unexpected directions, as with Dave’s book. As he did, we can turn the unexpected into something great.
Mind blocks happen when people don’t even try to ask for what they want.
We must make sure we are asking the right decision-makers.
Likeability is a scale that encompasses love.
There can be a combination of categories of rejection impacting a story. This is why it is important to identify each of them so we can overcome each of them.
When we’re facing competition from large, well-established companies, we can often leverage tectonic shifts more quickly than they can, and that may present an opportunity to leapfrog the competition.
We should set up our companies so that anybody can make something amazing happen.

Connect with Dave

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Dave or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmrose/, you can learn about his book at https://15cor.com/ and you can learn about his consulting services at https://www.clevelglobal.com/.

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss four ways to make better decisions.

Choices

Henry Eyring gave a sermon in which he discusses the choices we are faced with in life. He said, “Such choices are not always easy to see clearly. You make choices every day and almost every hour that keep you walking in the light or moving away toward darkness. Some of the most important choices are about what you set your heart upon.”

“There are so many things you may consider desirable,” Eyring continued, “For instance, all of us want, to some degree, the approval of other people. All of us feel a need for friends. All of us are searching for some evidence that we are persons of worth. We make choices based on those desires. Some might lead us away from the light God offers us as a guide. Some may brighten that light by which we can find our way.”

We have been given a guide for how we can make choices. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (KJV James 1:17)

Deciding To Sell

For Kim Walsh Phillips, founder of Powerful Professionals, it was hard to decide whether or not to sell her business. “For years I had an inkling that I was meant to do more,” Phillips said. “Some might call it the universe's energy pulling me in a different direction. I call it God's whisper that I was meant to do more and serve more.”

She knew she could do the work, but she didn’t want to let go of the revenue.”When I finally got the courage to let go of my marketing agency and pursue my true passion for teaching and coaching, I got three offers for my firm within 30 days. Not only was I able to exit with a nice payday, but the staff I didn't take to my new company were all retained by my buyer.” Since selling, Phillips' revenue has tripled Source: Forbes).

4 Ways to Make Better Business Decisions

Good choices are from above. We can use our morals and values to help us with our decision-making. However, these aren’t the only tools we’ve been given. As entrepreneurs, we have to make decisions that will impact our business every day.

“Every action in a business has some type of consequence. When making a decision, consider wisely what will produce the best results, not only for the short term but for the long term, as well. It can often take just as much effort to produce a negative result as it does to produce a positive result. Direct your energies, therefore, into those areas that have the potential to produce the most positive business results.” (Source: forbes.com)

Here are a few ways we can make better choices in our business.

Take It One Step at a Time

It can be overwhelming, especially at the start of a business, when we are forced to make decisions. We shouldn’t try to make all the decisions at once.

Being overwhelmed can paralyze us and stop us from making important decisions. “When you have too much on your mind, it becomes difficult to think clearly or to make good decisions. . . . Taking small bites is a good strategy for any decision that seems to overwhelm you. If you are faced with 12 choices, narrow it down to 3. If you want to buy 10 investment properties, decide to buy your first one. If you want to save $100,000, decide to save $10,000. Chunking decisions into smaller, bite-sized pieces allows you to process them and move forward.” (Source: coachcarson.com)

When things are overwhelming, taking a break can do a lot of good. “When things get hectic stop what you're doing and take a 10-minute break. Take a few deep breaths and try to do something that will make you feel more relaxed such as taking a 10-minute walk, listening to the radio, or doing some stretching exercises to help de-stress. You will feel better and gain a fresh perspective on your current situation, whether it is dealing with your employees, giving a presentation, or improving your company’s marketing plan.” (Source: entrepreneur.com)

Breaking decisions down into one piece and taking breaks will help us be able to think clearly about our decisions, and therefore, make better decisions. I find that focusing on one decision at a time when I’m overwhelmed helps me to process the options much more effectively. The decision-making is much easier for me this way. Thomas Monson, another church leader, said, "Life by the yard is hard; by the inch, it's a cinch."

Consult Others

Sometimes as entrepreneurs, we may feel like all the decisions rest on our shoulders. While we often have to make the final decision on some things, we can leverage the people around us who we trust for support and guidance. Our partners, employees, family, and friends can often help us with our decisions, even if all they do is listen to us talk through our options.

I love exploring my options with trusted sources. Often, when I go through this exercise, the right decision appears much more clearly and the decision is much easier to make.

Chad Carson, entrepreneur and real estate investor said, “I have a rule in my real estate business never to make a large acquisition without at least letting 2-3 people I trust evaluate it with me. No matter how much I know, I am sure to have blind spots. Wise counsel from others gives me confidence and avoids large problems.”

Carson gave a list of all the people he consults: his business partner, wife, CPA, father (also an experienced investor), mentor, lenders, contractor, real estate agent, and attorney. “You may have different people on your list depending upon your business or situation,” he said. “But the important thing is to actually have the list, and then call upon them when you’re facing an important decision.” (Source: coachcarson.com)

Learn the Facts

In order to make any decision, we need to know as much information as possible, not only about our options, but also about ourselves, our company, and what’s best for us.

“There is no darkness but ignorance.” - William Shakespeare

We must gather all the relevant facts and information we can that impact our business. “This is important because you do not want to miss critical information that could make a difference in how you run your business. Also, by being part of the information-gathering process, you can eliminate biases or opinions others may have.” (Source: entrepreneur.com)

We should understand how our competition is doing business and know how satisfied our customers are and find ways to improve. We can talk to our employees, clients, or customers “to get the necessary information regarding certain business operations. It is also important to read all of [our] important business reports and keep abreast on the media coverage of [our] business.” (Source: entrepreneur.com)

Through the internet, we also have mountains of information at our fingertips. The answer to most questions is just a few clicks and some research away. If there is something we don’t know about an aspect of our business, we can easily search for answers online.

“Of course, this does not replace real expertise born by experience. [We] won’t be able to install [a] tile floor immediately just because [we] read a checklist. But more information does allow [us] to ask better questions. More information makes the right and wrong decisions become more obvious. And more information removes some of the natural fear that comes from ignorance of any topic.” (Source: coachcarson.com)

Have a Goal

Without having a clear goal for our business, we will wander aimlessly in different directions and our decision-making will be a lot harder and less effective. “If you’re an entrepreneur or micro business, you don’t NEED a strategy, but having one will get you where you want to go faster. . . . Strategy is like a map. You don’t need a map to go somewhere new, the map will help you get there faster and on the best route (i.e. saving you time and money). The decisions you make on where you invest your time and money will be dictated by the vision for your business and your desired future.” (Source: smestrategy.net)

A goal, vision, or strategy will give us direction and unification. If everyone in our business knows what our goal is, we can all work toward that together. For example, one of Monetization Nation’s main goals right now is to publish one episode every day for a year. We’ve emphasized this to all of our team members, so everyone knows how important it is to make sure our episodes are ready to be published when the time comes. We’ve had some close calls. For example, one episode was published less than 10 minutes before midnight, but we hit the goal. Without a goal, there is no way we would have published every day so far. Everyone knows exactly what they need to do to help us reach that goal. Because of this, we haven’t missed a day so far, and we hope to continue that streak.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Our values can help guide us to make good decisions.
Break decisions and steps down into smaller pieces to avoid being overwhelmed and simplify the decision-making.
Take breaks when necessary. They can help us think more clearly and give our minds time to process the options.
Ask others for their thoughts and talk out our options with them.
We should learn as much as we can about the situation and our options.
Having a goal will help us make decisions that bring us closer to that goal.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

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Subscribe to the free Monetization Nation eMagazine.
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Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Ben Roberts. In the previous episode, we discussed how to create a successful business through consistent publishing.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss how we can use buzzwords to build our personal brand.

Have you ever heard of buzzword marketing? I hadn’t until this interview, but it makes a lot of sense, and now I’m working to implement it through my business. Ben Roberts is a highly experienced digital marketer. He wrote a book titled Marketing Buzzword to Marketing Authority, and in this episode, he will teach us how we can increase our authority with buzzword marketing.

Today, buzzwords are everywhere. No matter how many people try to hate buzzwords, they still use them in their everyday language. Oftentimes, “people use buzzwords not to convey factual meaning, but to show they belong to a social group … Buzzwords are code words to show you're an inside member." (Source: WSJ)

How Buzzwords Differ from Jargon

Jargon and buzzwords may seem similar, but there is a distinct difference. Jargon is very industry-specific. It’s very technical and ingrained in industry-specific language. On the other hand, buzzwords are terms and phrases that help describe something else. Terms like social media marketing and content marketing were big buzzwords. Now, they’ve become part of the vernacular. It’s now common to talk about things like artificial intelligence, chatbots, and cryptocurrency which are also buzzwords.

Businesses that Used Buzzwords Effectively

Many companies have used buzzwords effectively to their advantage.

HubSpot and Inbound Marketing

HubSpot has succeeded in effectively using and leveraging the buzzword “inbound marketing.” Until HubSpot started using it, most people had never heard of inbound marketing, but now, HubSpot has now built a business around inbound marketing.

Ben believes buzzwords are powerful because they’re memorable. People will remember and associate us with that term when they hear or see it. This is how we build personal brands.

Coining our Buzzwords vs. Leveraging Existing Ones

At Monetization Nation, we focus on some buzzwords, such as tectonic shifts, passion marketing, and credibility marketing. Credibility marketing is a newer buzzword that has become more popular recently which means it's not a saturated buzzword. Where there's less competition, we have more opportunities to grow our personal brand around the buzzword.

One of the elements Ben explores in his book is how to choose between coining our own buzzword and leveraging one that already exists.

Coining our Buzzword

Deciding on coining our own buzzword or using an existing one depends on many factors. It depends on how much time and energy we have. Coining our buzzword is like creating a product. We have to be able to promote the product and make people aware of it. If we create a new product or buzzword that no one's ever heard of before, we have to market it and convince people why it's different from anything else.

That being said, coining our buzzword has potential rewards if we do it right. With coining, we may be able to secure the buzzword domain name, file the trademark, and get some proprietary protections that we can't do if lots of people are already using it. It becomes our term, our word, and our phrase that we can leverage as the buzzword popularity grows.

Using Existing Buzzwords

If we choose to use an existing buzzword, it means there are already people searching around it. They already know a bit about our subject matter. We get to stand out through our brand. That's the differentiator. There’s less risk because there’s existing awareness.

Leveraging Buzzwords to Build our Personal Brand

Ben believes that the key to using buzzwords to build our personal brand is to choose the right platform—one that we’re passionate about and can explain clearly, concisely, and share our knowledge on. Ben said, “It's got to be a platform that you enjoy.” He explains how many people are jumping on Clubhouse. As a platform, it may be perfect for one person and it may be completely wrong for another because they don't necessarily enjoy that audio discussion experience. Other people may consider TikTok, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

It doesn't matter which platform we use as long as we enjoy it and it’s where our potential target market is. After we choose the right platform, we need to reach out and be consistent over a long period of time.

The Future of Buzzwords

Ben believes buzzwords are here to stay. People will keep saying we should get rid of them but we can't. The world is ever-changing and new technologies keep surfacing. For example, people will talk about Clubhouse and form new buzzwords about audio marketing that will stay with us for a while. New buzzwords are always being created. Some will stay around for a long time and become part of the vernacular just like the example Ben gave earlier of social media marketing and content marketing. They are now part of everyday marketing lingo. Using buzzwords allows us to create a business or personal brand that differentiates ourselves from others in the same niche.

Becoming the Authority our Industry Needs

In his book, Ben talks about becoming a teacher about buzzwords in our space and the buzzword authority our industry needs. He believes we need to educate people about our buzzword especially if it's upcoming or hasn't existed before. If we don't educate people, they won’t know what to do with this word that we’ve suddenly started using.

The more we teach people and the more wisdom and ideas we share with them, the more they see us as an authority within that subject. This can take a long time but it will establish our credibility in our market. It shows people that we know what we’re talking about and positions us as an expert in our field.

Finding the Right Buzzword

To find the right buzzword, Ben advises us to look at our business and ask, “What is it that we do? How do we help people?” We should find and use a codeword or phrase that we use in our everyday speech, content that we put on our website, or even just within our business. Then we can start looking at this word or phrase that we can build our business around - one that we want to become known for and be seen as authorities in. This is actually from where Ben got the title of his book, From Marketing Buzzword to Marketing Authority. We want people to be able to sing and echo back to us this word or phrase we use regularly. We want to be the first person they think of when they hear this term.

Using Buzzwords to Leverage our Marketing Efforts

The key point of a buzzword is to be able to use it to leverage our marketing efforts. It doesn’t help if we’re just using it a couple of times on our website. This won’t teach people and it won’t build our credibility and authority. We have to tie our buzzword into all the multiple marketing assets that we have such as podcasts, blogs, email newsletters, or any social content we’re creating, and ask, “How do we weave this word into all of those?” We need to make sure our buzzword is related to everything we do because it’ll help build up that knowledge with other people.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ben for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Buzzwords are powerful because they’re memorable.
Where there's less competition, we have a better chance to grow our personal brand.
When we use an existing buzzword, we're filling an existing demand that exists. We don't have to start from scratch.
To leverage our personal brand using buzzwords, we need to be consistent over a single platform with high-quality content over time.
We have to tie our buzzword into all our marketing assets that we have such as podcasts, blogs, email newsletters, or any social content we produce.

Connect with Ben

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ben or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn. You can also visit his website at ben-m-roberts.com or listen to his podcast at marketingbuzzword.com.

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Ben Roberts is the director of Optipus, a company with one goal: to do SEO the right way. He helps build trust and credibility for his clients by looking at the marketing they own and create, such as their websites and blogs. He then blends it with earned marketing such as reviews, media mentions, and guest posts.

Ben spent nearly 10 years leading marketing teams at a SaaS startup, a top 100 UK insurance broker, and a large specialized outdoor e-commerce company. Ben spends much of his time building his personal brand which includes conference speaking, consultancy offerings, and media mentions. In 2018, he launched his book, Marketing Buzzword to Marketing Authority, where he uses all of those experiences to help other people build their businesses and careers.

Building a Platform on Land He Owned

Ben wanted to start his career before he finished university. While studying marketing, he started getting his feet wet by growing a business and learning how businesses actually worked instead of just hearing about it in a classroom. He started learning about real-world social media and SEO. In 2016, Ben went to the Social Media Marketing World conference where he was exposed to podcasts and he decided to give it a try.

When Ben was at that conference, he noticed many buzzwords he didn’t recognize. He decided he should launch a podcast to break down common marketing buzzwords for his audience. Three years later, Ben had created nearly 100 episodes while working full time. The podcast became the basis for his book, Marketing Buzzword to Marketing Authority.

Before Ben started his business, he spent years building his platform and constructing it on land he owned. He built his own podcast, his own email list, and his own brand. Even when the world fell apart during the global pandemic, he was able to launch a business successfully, all because he had built it on land he owned—his own email list.

Ben wishes he had started building his email list from the very beginning. It would have been a bigger and better list by now. He also believes that one of the hardest things to do when we’re starting a business is to stay consistent. One of his biggest lessons he’s learned during his journey is that less is more. When we have so much on our plate, we become inconsistent with our efforts in building our business. Once we lose our consistency, it’s harder to get important things done and to get back on track.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to potential podcast guests

We can’t be afraid of reaching out to people. Ben believes one of the reasons his podcast is successful is because he had the confidence to speak to as many people as possible. We might think that it’s hard to find people who’d want to come on our podcast but people are willing and love it when we ask them to share their stories and insights.

When we reach out to people the right way, no one is too far out of reach. Before we reach out to potential interviewees, we need to learn about them and what they've already done. Ben finds this a good way of showing that we care. We should reach out to them personally if we want this person to come on our show as opposed to sending a generic email that doesn’t show we know who they are or care about what they do.

Building an Effective Email List

Ben also shared his top two secrets for building an effective email list.

Give people a reason to join an email list

We have to give our customers a reason to join our email list. It helps to give people incentives and reminders about the benefits of being on our email list. If we just have a box asking them to sign up to our email list, people will not do it. By giving them an incentive, we motivate them to join our email list. This can be a discount or exclusive access to part of a group. Either way, there has to be a hook somewhere as opposed to just asking them to join our email list. If people don't know who we are, they're not going to subscribe. We need to give them a reason to subscribe to our list.

Be consistent and helpful

Over the years, Ben has learned how important it is to be consistent and helpful. We need to make sure there is value in every single email we send. When we send something, it helps to ask ourselves a fundamental question, “Would I want to receive this?” If the answer is no, then why are we sending this to someone else?

Everyone gets so many emails. Since we want to be customer-centric, it’s good to put ourselves in the customer's shoes. We want to be building rapport with the people that have joined our email list. We want to send them something that connects with them, so when they receive our emails they know it’s going to include something they want to receive. We should always ask ourselves, “Is it helpful? Does it provide enough value?”

Benefits of Writing a Book

Many people are scared about writing a book. It's a major project that can take 18 months to two years to complete. It's not an easy undertaking yet it can have many rewards.

Ben considers publishing a book based on his podcast one of his biggest successes. Over the years, his podcast has built an audience that the book was able to leverage to start his monetization journey. Ben is now able to speak on international stages across different countries.

For Ben, much of what he does revolves around SEO and personal branding. Even though the podcast was doing good, he wanted to do something that would be long-lasting and improve his credibility. A book would be something he could send to clients and leverage for increased media outreach. It would allow him to put together all the things he had learned from the podcast along with his knowledge and experience.

Writing a book has opened up many doors for Ben. He has received offers to speak at different conferences around the world, online and offline. He was able to connect with different people that he never thought he could connect with. His email list also grew exponentially because of the book. It's the crux of owned marketing. His email list is something that he owns, has full control of, and builds his trust, credibility, and further extends the reach of his business and personal brand.

Voice Marketing

Ben believes voice marketing is having a much bigger impact than people realize. It’s predicted that 15.8 billion people will be using digital assistants by 2023 (Source: Statista). Currently, approximately half of the world’s population - 3.5 billion - uses voice-activated search and assistants across the globe (Source: review42.com). The shift is particularly noticeable in Gen Z where the stats show that 38% of them are willing to purchase via voice-activated ordering (Source: review42.com).

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ben for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

It’s better to start building our email list as early as possible.
When we reach out to people the right way, no one is too far out of reach.
To build an effective email list, we need to be consistent and provide value to our audience. We also need to give people a reason to join our list.
One of the benefits of writing a book is that it is long-lasting and will improve our credibility.
Voice search is one of the major shifts impacting businesses today.

Connect with Ben

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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How has consistent publishing helped grow your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Dave Knox. In the previous episode, we discussed Dave’s entrepreneurial journey and how he turned his passions into a career.

In today's episode, we’ll discuss three ways to evaluate new business ideas and share a few stories from Dave’s book, Predicting the Turn: The High Stakes Game of Business Between Startups and Blue Chips.

The Story Behind Predicting the Turn

Dave used to spend his workdays with big companies while he spent his nights and weekends working with startups. While corporations often looked at lean startups admiring their agility and startups looked at big companies admiring their influence and resources, at the end of the day, they were two sides of the same coin.

In Predicting the Turn, Dave talks about the high-stakes game of both disruptive startups and innovative big companies with the goal to teach his readers how to foresee the changing shifts in their industry.

Dave wants us to realize that no one's going to know with certainty what's going to happen next. But we can start preparing ourselves by mapping out different scenarios of how things can go and comparing the probability of one thing over another. This can help us be prepared and put ourselves in the driver's seat.

Avoid Having a Kodak Lost Moment

During most of the 20th century, Kodak reigned in the photographic film industry. It was so dominant that its "Kodak moment" tagline entered the common lexicon to describe a personal event that deserved to be recorded for future generations (Source: Wikipedia). However, In 2012 and as a result of bankruptcy filing and restructuring, Kodak was forced to sell off a half-billion-dollar portfolio of patents covering digital photography and online photo applications to technology titans like Apple and Google (Source: WSJ).

Dave interprets a “Kodak moment” as being in control of where the industry and our business could go but losing this control because we’re not willing to give up what we have right now. This is what Kodak did with the rise of digital photography. In 1975, Steve Sasson invented the self-contained digital camera while working at Kodak. But when he presented it to the leadership team there, they dismissed it. One of the biggest reasons for that was because Kodak made a lot of money off the paper and printing of photographs. They forgot that they were in the business of sharing moments and not just physical photos. That was the essence of a Kodak moment. It was about capturing moments and sharing them. This is what we've all experienced with digital cameras. There are more photos taken today than there ever were when we were using physical photos. If Kodak had realized that, they would have been in a vastly different position than where they are today. They had that moment, but they just missed it in terms of where they could go and what would come out of it.

Look at New Opportunities Separately

The shift toward e-commerce is fueled in part by people’s need to save time. The overall convenience of e-commerce is probably why the number of global digital buyers is estimated to reach 2.14 billion in 2021 (Source: Oberlo.com). However, Dave believes that e-commerce is the best buying tool that has ever been created only if you know exactly what you're looking for. Then it’s just a matter of finding where it's sold, whether it’s on Amazon, eBay, or some other place.

Dave believes that where e-commerce has fallen flat is in being a shopping tool. Shopping is an inherent human behavior. We love to explore, see and learn. That's why some people can get lost in a mall or grocery store for multiple hours. It’s to fill this need for discovery, by walking the aisles in the store and finding that thing we didn’t expect to find.

What NatureBox and other subscription-based e-commerce brands did was that they made it easy for people to buy while fulfilling their need to explore. Buyers would receive their box at home and it would be filled with things they didn't even know they wanted but were curated and brought home to them. This is the same thing BarkBox did for pets and Birchbox did with beauty products.

Dave believes that this is what the big companies got wrong. When they looked at a new business opportunity, they would ask whether or not it was a good business idea. They were thinking of it purely as a retail play. They would look at BarkBox and ask if BarkBox can beat PetSmart or look at Birchbox and wonder if it can beat Sephora. Dave thinks this was shortsighted because they didn’t realize it was actually part of their brand-building. It would create much more opportunity for them if they had embraced it instead of analyzing whether it was good or bad business. It was the model of subscription boxes that created room for companies like DoorDash.

So often when big businesses look at a new emerging opportunity, it’s too small that it can't compete with their existing revenue streams. What they should do instead is step back and not compare. They should look at it as a separate business unit that doesn't even have to compete with existing units. It's “how do we seize this new opportunity?” Because if they don't, the emerging business is going to seize them and leapfrog them in many ways.

Understand That People Come First

Dave has lost a lot of money in many of the businesses he invested in. When he thinks about it, he finds one thing in common with all of these ventures. Almost every time it was that he was betting on the idea instead of betting on the person. It was looking at that idea and seeing the potential. And in those cases, Dave overlooked the question of, “Was this the right entrepreneur to be able to do that?”

On the flip side, the businesses where Dave has been most successful were because of the tenacity of the entrepreneur. He could see that this person had something special. And oftentimes the thing they ended up building wasn't necessarily the thing he invested in. But the person didn't change and they were the ones driving and making it work. At the end of the day, business, even when it’s about dollars and cents, it's ultimately a people’s game. We’re betting on the people, whether they’re the people we hire, the vendors we work with, the partners we have, or the entrepreneurs we invest in.

Leveraging Existing Technologies

Dave believes the biggest business tectonic shift today is the rise of entrepreneurship. Historically, entrepreneurship has always had barriers such as the cost of starting a business. What's amazing today is the tools that have emerged that allow us to start a business in a space that we never could have done before.

Today, we can create a Shopify, Etsy, or eBay store in a matter of hours. Only 10 years ago, to create an e-commerce site that could allow a third party to buy from us, get something shipped, and accept payment, it would take tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars and much more time.

Now we have all these tools attainable for many people that make it easier to start as entrepreneurs. That’s why, over the last decade, a lot of new consumer brands have emerged because the barrier to entry is getting lower. Things like the ability to work with a contract manager, manufacturer to make a product, and the way to do fulfillment using third-party logistics have gotten much easier and less expensive than what they used to be.

The advice I would give for a new entrepreneur who can’t leverage the existing technologies and has some developer telling them they have to build from scratch, is they need to get a second opinion. If we have to build our business from scratch, we might reconsider our business model and find something where we can leverage existing technologies.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

In business, we’ll never know with certainty what's going to happen next. But we can start preparing ourselves and map out different ways and scenarios of how things can go.
Big companies should look at emerging business opportunities as separate business units that don't have to compete with existing businesses.
Instead of building from scratch, always try to leverage existing technologies to build our business. It generally saves time and money.
When we’re looking to invest in a new business, it’s important to not just focus on the idea, but also on the people who are going to execute that idea.

Connect with Dave

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Dave or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit his website at PredictingTheTurn.com or his company’s website at NaturesWillowBalm.com. You can also find his book on Amazon.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Share Your Story

What’s the biggest turn or tectonic shift you’ve seen in your career? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/119-how-to-predict-the-turn-so-we-can-leverage-tectonic-shifts/

Predicting the Turn: The High Stakes Game of Business Between Startups and Blue Chips

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Dave Knox is a leading consultant, speaker, author, and coach in the areas of innovation, marketing, and digital transformation. As Chief Marketing Officer at Rockfish, Dave helped the company become one of the fastest-growing agencies in the country, going from $8 million in revenue in 2010 to more than $70 million in revenue in 2016. At the same time, Dave co-founded The Brandery, one of the top 10 startup accelerators in the US.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Dave’s entrepreneurial journey and how he was able to use his experience to give back to his community.

Dave’s Entrepreneurial Journey

From a young age, Dave had a passion for entrepreneurship. He knew taking a minimum wage job wouldn’t get him to where he wanted to go so, at the age of 15, he decided to become certified as a FIFA referee and took charge of advertising for his high school yearbook. During the first summer, he made $4,500 - $5,000 in commissions from selling the yearbook ads, just enough to buy his first car.

In 1999, Miami University in Ohio had one of the earliest undergraduate entrepreneurship programs so Dave took the opportunity and went there to study marketing and business. During his entrepreneurship program, he worked for a record label. That summer, Dave worked with brand management and marketing, continually increasing his passion for entrepreneurship. However, his mentor told him that while it was great to have passion, we also need to have capability, credibility, and differentiation. What is going to make us stand out?

Even though Dave had the passion, he didn’t have the experience or expertise. Over the course of the next few years, he pursued jobs that would help him build his credentials. He worked at P&G as an assistant brand manager for Secret deodorant and at 26 and became the marketing leader of $900 million worth of business. He ended up spending most of his twenties doing that and in the process, he’d grown as a marketer, business leader, and entrepreneur.

Dave lived by the mantra, “Your twenties are for learning and your thirties are for doing.” Shortly after he turned 30, he decided it was time to start doing. He took the leap to join Rockfish, a marketing and advertising agency, as marketing lead, and by the time he left, he’d helped the company become one of the fastest-growing agencies in the country, going from $8 million of revenue in 2010 to more than $70 million in 2016.

At the same time, Dave, along with co-founders, launched The Brandery. During the day he worked for a high growth-company on one side while he moonlighted to help launch a startup accelerator to help other entrepreneurs.

Turning Our Passion into a Career

Just because we have a passion, doesn’t mean we have the ability to turn it into a career. When Dave first started on his entrepreneurial journey, he had the passion but was lacking other essential skills. His mentor told him that while passion is important, we also need to have the capability, credibility, and something that makes us unique. If we can meet all four of these elements, we have the potential to become successful entrepreneurs and do what we love.

Increase Capability

“Don’t chase after success, chase after capability. If you are capable of anything, then success will be chasing you.” - Unknown

The first thing we need to do once we have a passion we want to pursue is increasing our capability. We need to learn and build our skills. We need to become qualified.

When Dave discovered his passion for entrepreneurship, he pursued knowledge. The first step he took was enrolling in Miami University’s entrepreneurship program. He had the desire and drive to learn more and become better. Since then, he has been on a continual journey of growth.

We have to remember that capability does not come easily. Dave’s mantra was, “Your twenties are for learning and your thirties are for doing.” He spent 10 years of his career simply learning and developing his skills. If we can have that same type of commitment and dedication to our passions, our chances of success will increase. Napoleon Hill, an American self-help author, said, “There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it.” We cannot use our passion as a crutch for laziness. We have to put in the time and work it takes to increase our capability.

Build Credibility

“Credibility is a leader’s currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it he or she is bankrupt.” - John C. Maxwell

Once we have become capable in whatever we are pursuing, we should start building credibility. Credibility has become essential in today’s digital marketplace. With the internet and new technology, so many people have the tools to build a business. Anyone can become a social media influencer, anyone can write a book, and anyone can build a website. What makes us credible if anyone can become anything? How do we build our trust with our customers?

We can build our credibility by becoming thought leaders and showing the world we are an expert in our industry. We do this by continually producing content and getting our thoughts out there. We can write blogs, attend conferences, write books, host webinars, etc. We can build credibility by networking with the right people and getting our name associated with other experts and big companies. There are a million ways we can build our credibility, but it all comes down to trust. How can we foster trust with our customers? This will take time, but when our customers trust us, we become more credible and more likely to achieve our goals.

Differentiate Ourselves

“If you want to be around in 10 years, you’ve got to do something to differentiate yourself from the pack.” - Chris Evans

Finally, we have to make ourselves unique. Like I mentioned above, the market is saturated with the stuff. There are hundreds of brands selling the same thing, and thousands more selling something better. We need to differentiate ourselves and become unique if we want to stand out. We can start by asking ourselves, “What value do I offer that no one else does? In what ways am I different from the big brands already out there?”

Part of our personal branding should be tied to what makes us unique. We can take this as a selling point and use it to market ourselves. If we are just like everyone else, no one will notice us. If we are odd and unique, they will stop and stare.

Leaving a Legacy through Entrepreneurship

Dave took his passion and turned it into a career by learning, increasing his skill sets, building trust, and making himself stand out. Once he did this, he had a chance to really make a difference.

When I asked Dave to share his greatest home run at The Brandery, he said he defined the entire journey as the home run. Dave explained how The Brandery was sometimes a misunderstood adventure.

When Dave launched The Brandery with his co-founders, it was one of the first 30 startup accelerators at the time. All accelerators had a similar model: to give some cash and receive maybe 5 - 6% equity.

However, one of the ways The Brandery was different was that it was a nonprofit. For every company it invested in, for which it got that 6% equity in exchange, none of it went to any of the founders. Instead, it went to a nonprofit called Main Street Ventures. Dave believed that their goal and vision for The Brandery was to support entrepreneurs in pursuing their passions. This way, that 6% equity could have a much greater impact for good.

What The Brandery succeeded to do was to fund an endowment that would forever support entrepreneurs. Over those years, they had about 100 companies go through The Brandery. Some of them were very successful which was a double benefit. Dave and his co-founders were doing this because they wanted to support businesses and create jobs in Cincinnati. When those businesses become successful, they’d have good financial outcomes that would be recycled back to Main Street Ventures.

“Today,” Dave said, “Main street Ventures is sitting on an endowment, [so] that we can continue to support entrepreneurs. We're not doing it necessarily through the model of an accelerator any more. And that was intentional because we knew ... models change and evolve. But ... we were able to use those funds, for instance, that when we saw all the restaurants struggling so bad, during COVID-19 ... we were able to be part of a group that gave pretty large grants to restaurants across the Cincinnati area that were funded, started by entrepreneurs, to keep going and to buy gift cards and support, and do different things like that. We're able to do grants to new emerging companies that aren't ready to go raise money, but they've got something and they just need that little help to get them to the next phase.”

Dave believes the best part of the overall journey of The Brandery was seeing the vision that they had in 2010 come true in 2020 as they had those successes that built upon themselves over the years.

I love how Dave took one of his top passions, entrepreneurship, and created a way that he could give back and help others within that passion as well.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We should be passionate about what we do and where we want to go, but we also need capability, credibility, and differentiation.
As aspiring and ancient entrepreneurs, we need to increase our capability constantly. We need to learn and build our skills and become qualified.
When our customers trust us, we become more credible and more likely to achieve our goals.
Part of our personal branding should be tied to what makes us unique. We can take this as a selling point and use it to market ourselves. If we are just like everyone else, no one will notice us. If we are odd and unique, they will stop and stare.
An important part of entrepreneurship is giving back to our community once we find success.

Connect with Dave

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Dave or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn. You can also visit his website at PredictingTheTurn.com or his company’s website, NaturesWillowBalm.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Share Your Story

How have you made your passions part of your career? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/118-how-to-turn-your-passions-into-a-career/

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Trust has become so crucial in today’s market. It is heavily tied to credibility. If someone doesn’t trust us, they won’t find us credible, and they often won’t choose our product or services over another, more credible product or service. In Chris Brogan’s book, Trust Agents, he explains that we need to become trust agents within our businesses if we want to find success.

In the last episode, we discussed how Chris was able to ride the waves of tectonic shifts to leverage success. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the six characteristics of trust agents Chris wrote about in his Trust Agents book.

Make Our Own Game

We need to pick a category that we are the best at and stick with it. It’s all about positioning ourselves with a specific target audience.

“You can't be the best Gary Vaynerchuk because there already is one,” Chris said. “You shouldn't try to be the next best Gary Vaynerchuk either. So instead, you pick some new category where you are absolutely the best.”

Part of building a successful business is finding what makes us unique. We have to find that niche audience we can serve and provide value to. As we build our group, we will build more trust within our target audience.

Studies have shown that we are more likely to trust others who are members of our own social group compared to outsiders. While this may seem obvious, the same applies to groups in general. We are also more likely to trust people in a randomly assigned small group compared to a random person outside of the group (Source: Harvard Business review).

As we choose our own category, build a niche group, and make our own game, our customers will be more likely to trust us.

One of Us

People are more willing to trust someone they are similar to (Source: Harvard Business Review).

We should always be looking for the connection between ourselves and the customer. We need to pay attention to what makes us similar.

When I asked Chris to share his best monetization strategy, he said the more personalized we can be with our customers, the better.

Other than communicating directly with our customers, we can also use data to become more personalized in the best way possible. Our goal should be to make our customer’s life easier, and we can do this by understanding their wants and needs.

“In a world where everything is so broken apart, he who has the best data that drives to a very personalized approach of what a human does is going to do a lot better than everybody else,” Chris said.

The Archimedes Effect

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” - Archimedes

It’s all about leverage. “Basically, you figure out where you can make some kind of change, and if I can push on that, I can change the world,” Chris said. “What you’re looking for is, ‘Can I do something once that’s so impactful that I don’t have to do it multitudes of times?’”

If we can recognize tectonic shifts as they are happening and leverage them to our favor, we can often leapfrog competitors and drive growth and monetization.

Networking

Networking is one of the most underrated parts of the business.

Chris explained that the only reason networking is underrated is that it’s done so poorly. People go to an event just to hand out their business cards to anyone they see. We shouldn't try and connect with everyone in the room. We should only be linking with potential customers—those who would find value in our service or products. If we are more selective with who we go out of our way to offer our product to, people will be more likely to trust us, compared to someone who is out there offering their product to everyone they see. They will trust that we have value we can offer them personally.

“If I don't connect [to] you on LinkedIn, it's probably because I don't have anything I think I need to sell you,” Chris said.

Human Artist

We need to focus on building human relationships.

“A human artist is the art of human interaction. . . How we act with other people matters so much more professionally than we ever give it credit for. There is a monetary difference to what you do or don't do in those situations,” Chris said.

Chris had heard an expression called a moment of truth. A moment of truth is any time a guest comes in contact with any aspect of our world and receives an impression. We need to make sure that in each moment of truth, we are leaving a good impression on our customers. After each interaction with us, they should feel like we value them, even more than their purchase.

As we work with people that have more money and success, it's interesting how money becomes less of a priority to them, and time becomes the primary decision-making factor. We need to make sure our customers know that we value their time, just as much as they do.

“We always treat money as if it's finite, and we treat time as if it's infinite. It’s the other way around,” Chris explained. “If you manage and master time a little bit better if you treat people as if their time is important if you treat people as if they're important, money comes to you so much faster than that other methodology where you think money is the goal.”

How we interact with our customers will leave a lasting impression. Many people say their best memories of Chris are that he made them feel good and prioritized. We need to do the same.

Build an Army

We can get a lot further along if we can get more people to become a part of the process and give them the tools they need to do their part. We can’t successfully build a business on our own. We need others.

Not only can we benefit from the knowledge, ideas, and skills of others, but people will also trust us more if they see we have loyal friends. As we connect with more and more people, we will gain their trust faster.

“People tend to trust who their friends trust, and that extends to brands. Living in an uncertain world with a persistent barrage of conflicting messages, consumers find it necessary to rely on reviews from friends and other connections.” (Source: Consumer Affairs)

As we build our army, we will build the trust of our audience.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Chris for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We must become trust agents for our potential customers.
We can build trust by making “our own game”, focusing on a niche where we can be the best in the world.
People are more willing to trust others who are similar to them. We should make our customers feel like we are like them.
We can leverage tectonic shifts to leapfrog competitors.
Networking can be an essential part of successful business growth. We should focus on networking to those to whom we think we can offer value.
We need to become “human artists” and focus on building relationships as our masterpieces.
We need to build an army of people to help us be far more successful than we can be on our own. We can’t do it all ourselves.

Connect with Chris

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Chris, connect with him on his LinkedIn, or his website, chrisbrogan.com. You can also find his books on Amazon and watch his video podcast on YouTube.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you build trust with your customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/117-6-strategies-to-become-a-trust-agent/

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Today, I am joined by digital marketing icon Chris Brogan. Chris is a New York Times best-selling author of nine books, including Trust Agents. He's also the host of The Backpack Show and CEO of Owner Media Group, which sells online training and skill upgrades in the form of webinars and courses.

Chris has spoken for or consulted with companies such as Disney, Google, GM, Sony, Coke, and Microsoft. He's part of Tony Robbins’ internet Money Master series, and StatSocial ranked Chris as the number three power influencer. Forbes listed Chris as one of the Must Follow Marketing Minds, and his website is one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how Chris has leveraged the waves of tectonic shifts to achieve success.

Learning to Ride the Wave

Chris Brogan wasn't born a successful entrepreneur. He worked at a telecom company and when he saw opportunities, he seized them. He rode the wave of those opportunities to become who he is today.

During the time Chris worked at a telecom company, he constantly read about the business world, learning about unique ideas that weren’t really being applied. This created the desire to start his own business so he could implement the great ideas he was reading about.

He eventually launched his own blog, but nobody really cared. It took him years just to get his first 100 readers. A few years later, he started his own podcast, but again, nobody really cared. So, he decided to start an event with a friend.

On the second day of the event, he met Jeff Pulver, a millionaire, who had just run a conference on video on the internet. Jeff offered to take Chris out and suggested they run a conference together. After that, he immediately started working with major brands with Jeff, and jumped into another company about a year later since, at that time, they were just a bit too early for the video trend.

Chris eventually started running part of a consultancy where he worked with things like digital and new social media platforms such as Twitter and rode the wave from there. In time, people started asking questions about how the new media applied to their business, and that’s how Chris started working with big companies such as Google and Microsoft.

“It was all the same kinds of questions like, ‘What do we do with this stuff? Is Twitter worth it?’” Chris said. “I was able to show [them] where there might be a little bit of magic.”

In 2009, Chris started the first company that he ran 100% himself. Since then, he has run five or six different iterations of a corporation.

Part of being a successful entrepreneur is about timing and riding those waves of opportunity. When Chris started his own blog and podcast, it wasn’t immediately successful because the timing wasn’t right. The blog and podcast tectonic shifts hadn’t happened yet. Now, blogs and podcasts are extremely important and essential, but it wasn’t the same way 20 years ago.

“I was early on a bunch of those waves,” Chris said. “[But beyond] being early to the pile, what I've been so willing to do over and over and over again is fail, be wrong, look stupid. And I get there faster because of it.”

Chris’s blog failed. His podcast failed. He left his work with Jeff on internet video after a year because the wave wasn’t quite there yet. But every time, he didn’t let failure stop him. He got back up and looked for the next opportunity, and jumped back into opportunities when the time was right.

“I got to everything faster than a lot of other people just by being willing to fail in front of everybody and be willing to try new ways. I think that's what separates me from all the people who came up in my spaces. They were still trying really hard to preserve their reputation. And I built my reputation around falling right down a hole in front of you, and just showing you what comes next,” Chris explained.

He made his career by riding the waves to shore as tectonic shifts happened. Below are three current tectonic shifts Chris has successfully adapted to.

Being Human

Being human and more personalized in our businesses is crucial to success. This is especially important now as the pandemic has increased the need for human connection.

“The minute someone feels like you're not there to help them when they're having a rough time, that's a problem. So make your support system a lot more human and connectable. Second off, as you're selling anything, beyond just features and benefits, make it easy to reach a person. Make it easy to be able to ask those questions you might have,” Chris explained.

When I asked Chris about one thing he is passionate about, he said it is helping companies no matter what size. We have to ask ourselves, “How can we be more human even at a distance? How do we bring a bit more humanity into what we do?”

Our businesses need to be about connecting with people. Companies have such a great opportunity to reach out and be human, but we blow it so many times because we’re too focused on making a profit. The minute someone feels like we aren’t there to help them, they are going to leave. To be successful, we really need to make our support a lot more human.

Influencer Marketing

One of the biggest tectonic shifts that the business world is dealing with today is credibility marketing. It used to be 20 years ago that businesses would buy a whole bunch of advertising, and then use that reach to tell the world how awesome they were. And it often worked. To a great extent it worked. But today, if businesses do that, it doesn't work so well. People don't trust what businesses say about themselves anymore. This means businesses have to find much more credible ways to communicate with their potential customers.

This is why credibility marketing has become such an important tectonic shift today. Businesses are shifting more and more to credibility marketing in many different ways, such as through influencer marketing, reviews marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, and client testimonial videos.

When implementing influencer marketing, the first thing we need to do is find the right influencer to work with.

As I mentioned earlier, StatSocial ranked Chris as the number three power influencer. But this doesn’t mean he’s the right influencer for everybody. Chris shared a story in which a company asked him to promote a paper shredder. So, he made a video for them. He didn’t have any paper in his house, so he shredded the manual and said, “I don’t know what else I should show you because it just ate the manual.” The humor was good for him, but the company never sent him another paper shredder. And why? Because Chris wasn’t the right, credible person to promote their product.

Just because someone has a massive following, doesn’t mean they’re the right person to talk about our product. We need to find someone whose following is largely our target audience. We also need to find an influencer who likes and uses our product, and who is credible to talk about the product.

“If you're going to look for influencers, it will be so much better if we do it the other way around. Who's talking lovingly about my product?” Chris said.

As we search for the right influencer for us, we can search for people who already use our product. That way they will be much more credible to our audience.

A good example of this is when Chris reached out to Johnsonville Sausage. During the summer, he had started to talk about their sausage in his videos just because he loved it so much. He ended up reaching out to the company and doing a sponsored video for them. This video actually mattered since he was able to influence his audience.

The Age of Distraction

We live in an age of distraction. There are thousands of different good things constantly competing for the time and attention of our potential customers. Our phones get notifications throughout the day from so many different people. We get so many text messages, email notifications, app reminders, updates, etc. we could live in our little notification bar on our phones.

“If the notification screen is the battlefield, and if all of a sudden every single website is like, ‘Please can we send you notifications?’ . . . how is a lowly old email going to get into somebody?” Chris said. These are the questions we have to be asking ourselves and trying to answer.

We need to pay attention to the market and where our specific audience is going. “In a world where we're not willing to sit still for an ad, you've got to put some really interesting information in front of us, for us to sit still enough to want to consume it,” Chris said.

It is a competition for every second of our consumer’s attention. We need to make sure we are creative and cut directly to the chase. We need to show consumers how we can help them achieve the things that matter most to them.

“Instead of attention and distraction being the big challenge, it's more, “Can I find the person that I hope to serve in some way?’ And that's what we do. That's the goal. If you're going to try to be influential in some way, that's how you're going to learn,” Chris said.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Chris for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We need to ride the “waves” of tectonic shifts.
We need to be more human and personalized in our businesses.
People don't trust what businesses say about themselves anymore. This means we have to find much more credible sources, such as influencers, to promote our products.
Just because someone has a massive following, doesn’t mean they’re the right person to talk about our product. We need to find an influencer whose following is our target audience.
We live in an age of distraction. We have to constantly fight for the time of our customers. In order to capture their attention, we need to show them what value we offer as fast as possible.

Connect with Chris

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What tectonic shifts have you adapted to? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/116-how-to-ride-the-waves-of-tectonic-shifts/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the parable of the talents and four investment lessons we can learn from it.

The Parable of the Talents

In Matthew 25:14-30, Jesus Christ shared a parable with his disciples. In the story, a man was traveling to a faraway country, so he called his servants before he left and gave them talents, which was a form of money at the time. To the first one, he gave five talents. To the second, he gave two talents, and finally, to the third man, he gave one talent. Then the man went on his way.

The first servant with five talents went and traded his talents so he gained five more, doubling his initial capital. The second servant traded until he gained two talents, also doubling his initial capital. Finally, the third servant went and buried his talent into the earth so he wouldn’t lose it.

After a long time, the servants' master returned. When he did, the first servant brought his five extra talents with him and the second servant brought his two extra talents. The Lord responded to them both by saying, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (KJV Matthew 25:20)

Then, the third servant came and told his master that he was afraid and so he hid his talent in the earth and didn’t do anything good with it. When his master learned this, he said, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.” (KJV Matthew 25:26-27) The master then took the servant’s one talent and gave it to his first servant with 10 talents.

From this parable, we can learn two lessons: one about money and the other about our talents and gifts from God. We can apply both lessons to our businesses.

A talent in the time of Christ was a unit of money. In the parable, the servants who invested and traded their talents both doubled the amount they had originally. The one who hoarded his money gained nothing. As entrepreneurs, we can learn the principle of investment. God wants us to be smart about our money management and learn how to invest.

We can also interpret the parable as if the master was giving his servants talents in the way we define the word today. God gives each individual unique gifts and talents and he expects us to use them to do good. As entrepreneurs, we can use our skills and abilities to bless the lives of others. As we share our talents, we will be blessed with more.

Investments

In the parable, the servants who invested their money doubled what they had originally been given while the one who hid his money or rather “deposited it into a safe deposit box” gained nothing. As entrepreneurs, we can learn that God rewards those who take what they have to accomplish good things. This even includes gaining more wealth.

In our ventures, one way we can increase our monetary value is by taking a capital risk. In the parable, the master’s investment strategy is similar to many business owners today.

There are four principles of good investing we can apply from the parable of the talents.

Invest in a Company We Know and Like

We should only invest in a company we know and like.

The Institute of Faith, Work, and Economics explained that in the parable, the master demonstrates trust in his servants. He must have been familiar with his servants' track records and trusted them accordingly. He selected three servants and weighed them according to their abilities, so he gave 62.5% of his money to the lead manager, 25% to the second, and 12.5% to the third (Source: Institute of Faith, Work, and Economics). We need to make sure we are making smart investments.

Being smart about our investment requires us to do research. We should never invest in a company we know nothing about. Peter Lynch, an American investor and philanthropist said, “An important key to investing is to remember stocks are not lottery tickets.” I think this is a powerful statement. Investing is not about luck. It is not about throwing our money into a company and hoping for the best. Investing requires research.

Benjamin Graham is one of the most famous investors. He is universally recognized as the father of two fundamental investment disciplines—security analysis and value investing. Whenever he invested in a company, he searched for those with strong balance sheets, those with little debt, above-average profit margins, and large cash flow (Source: Investopedia).

Just as the master in the parable and Benjamin Graham, we need to become familiar with the track records of the companies we invest in. If we do this, we minimize the risk we need to take to invest.

Diversify Our Investments

We should diversify our investments. The master in the parable did not invest all of his money in one servant, he split it up between the three servants.

Successful entrepreneurs should take time and consideration into choosing how to invest their money. And they should invest their money in different places. One example of a great investor is Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and internet personality with a net worth of about $160 million. Vaynerchuk was an early investor in Twitter, Tumblr, Uber, and Snap, and his VaynerRSE investment portfolio currently lists about 80 companies (Source: CNBC).

When CNBC asked him what his secret was, he explained we need to not only know and like the company we invest in, but we also should invest in multiple companies. He said, “You may pick the wrong company, and this is why you want to diversify.” (Source: CNBC)

Take Risks

The parable of the talents also recognizes that making an investment requires some risk. The third servant who buried his one talent because he was afraid of losing it gained nothing. Without any risk, there will be no return.

Benjamin Graham said, “Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.” We have to understand that we can’t be successful investors without the courage to take a leap and trust in a company enough to invest in them. However, with that, there are ways to reduce risk. This includes doing our research, knowing the company, and diversifying our investments as I said above. Risk comes from not knowing what we are doing, but if we do the right research, we can minimize our risk and feel confident in our investment decisions.

Be Patient

At the end of the day, good investing comes down to being patient. We won’t make a lot of money short-term. Investing is all about long-term success.

In the parable, it says the master who gave his talents was traveling to a “far country.” It also says he returned “after a long time.” We shouldn’t expect to gain an immediate return on investment (ROI). We need to wait and know that investing requires patience.

However, this doesn’t just mean investing in a company and then leaving it there for years without checking on it. We need to make sure we review our investments after certain periods of time. Just as the master in the parable came back to see how his servants were doing, we should check in on our investments to make sure we are making the most of them.

“Investment is an asset or an item that is purchased with the hope that it will generate income or appreciate in the future.” (Source: Investment Brothers)

Use Our Talents

The second lesson we can take from the parable of the talents is to take the gifts God has given us and use them for good. God has given each of us our own unique talents we can use to serve others. Once we discover what our gifts are, we can use them to help our customers and team members.

While God may not give everyone equal gifts, He doesn’t compare us to others. He compares us to ourselves. In the parable, the master rewarded both the first and second servants equally. While the first servant made more money or developed more talents than the second servant, they both did the same with what they were given. They each doubled what they had, and both were made rulers over many things and entered into the joy of the Lord.

In Matthew 25:15 it says, “And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several abilities. . .” The master gave talents according to each servant’s ability. He never expected the servant with one talent to come back with more than the servant who had been given five. God knows our different abilities. He knows our strengths and weaknesses. We will be rewarded according to what we do with what we have, not according to how we do compare to others.

However, if we hide our talents, and don’t share them with others, God will take them away. In Matthew, it says, “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him, that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

Milton Hershey is a great example of using our unique talents to serve others. Hershey was an American chocolatier and businessman. He pioneered the manufacture of caramel with fresh milk. He also developed a unique recipe for chocolate with his apprenticeships and started a caramel company that sold for $1 million in 1900 (Source: Business Collective). He then moved on to found the chocolate company Hershey, a company that now has a net worth of about $35 billion (Source: MacroTrends). With each of the abilities God gives us, we can use it to find success in our businesses. As we share our talents with others, we will be blessed. God expects us to work hard at improving what we have been given. On our entrepreneurial journey, we need to work hard and use our God-given gifts wisely. As we do this and help others to the best of our ability, God will bless us.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We learn that we should only invest in a company we know and like.
We should diversify our investments.
Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.
At the end of the day, good investing comes down to being patient and setting our expectations for long-term success.
God has given each of us our own unique talents we can use to serve others. As we use our talents to help others, we will be rewarded with additional gifts.
If we hide our talents away, God will take them away from us.
God knows our different abilities. He knows our strengths and weaknesses. We will be rewarded according to what we do with what we have been given, not according to how we compare to others.

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Over three years, Jason Barbato introduced, developed, and scaled a growth hacking program that generated more than $40 million of annual recurring revenue. This program became strategic and standard for more than 60 product teams. It's been recognized by the growth industry experts as best in class and enterprise level.

Today, we're going to focus on how to use growth hacking to monetize a business.

Growth Hacking

Growth hacking encompasses strategies focused on driving growth while spending as little time and money as possible. Sean Ellis, founder, and CEO of GrowthHackers, developed the term “growth hacking” in 2010 to describe a sustainable growth approach (Source: GrowthHackers). It is a creative strategy to increase website traffic, generate leads, and optimize the marketing process.

While Jason was working as an SEO consultant for EarthLink, he attracted IBM’s attention with his digital marketing program. IBM called about a growth hacking role, which was the first time Jason had heard that term. Since Jason was so data-driven and focused on running tests, by their definition, he was a growth hacker, and they invited him to jump into a small team.

On the team, he focused on how he could influence the buyer’s journey and create loyal customers. He’d analyze the data, run tests, and review what worked and what didn’t.

Jason’s groundbreaking moment with IBM was developing a growth hacking strategy that became extremely profitable. He started working with an IBM SaaS product, and after producing some tests, they discovered only 1% of visitors were subscribing/purchasing digitally. So, Jason and his team asked themselves, “What can we do to get the customers to buy/subscribe on their own?”

He noticed that in the customer’s digital journey, the pricing page only had buttons to access a free trial or subscribe for free. He thought, “When people are here to look at pricing, they might want to buy right now. We should remove some of these ‘try’ buttons and replace them with ‘buy’ buttons.” After moving around some of the calls to action, they increased engagement by 8% and generated $6 million from the simple experiment.

The product team loved the growth hack and started applying it everywhere. They ended up creating two versions of the product and made it available in 140 countries. His hack became a global standard.

Now, he's been a marketing growth consultant for more than seven years and a growth mentor and coach for two years. He currently serves as the vice president of growth at Orange Pegs, a US-based growth, and inbound marketing agency.

“It's very foundational,” Jason said. “We looked at a data point, hypothesized about certain things, . . . and started to test against that. And again, it wasn't multivariate. It had sort of a cascade effect, where if you do one thing on one page, it prompts something new on another page. Now, this is just moving elements around the page. . . . I like its simplicity.”

Growth hacking has become a very significant tectonic shift in the market, but what it comes to is measuring data and testing. We need to have a data-driven mindset.

“Use the data to take action and run tests, and let those tests guide the moves that you make to improve and delight your customer base, and also grow and grow your business,” Jason said.

Jason explained that to effectively use growth hacking to monetize a business, it all comes down to curiosity. Curiosity leads to experimentation, which leads to monetization.

Curiosity

Jason’s top monetization secret is to be curious. In order to monetize from growth hacking, it all comes down to the foundational element of curiosity.

“You have to have that curiosity,” he said. “Having curiosity, caring about your business, caring about the growth of your business, or your product, with a level of curiosity can be a moneymaker for you. Because if you are complacent, and things are sitting static, and you're just happy with the status quo . . . you may be missing out on millions because you're not creating and hypothesizing. You're not measuring.”

If we are complacent, we could be missing out on a lot of opportunities for exponential growth. Change is constant, so we need to constantly adapt. If we aren’t curious and looking for new ways of growth, we may miss out on increased profit.

Studies have shown that curiosity leads to greater learning, engagement, and performance at work (Source: Human Resource Development Quarterly). As we are curious, we will naturally find better ways to run our businesses.

“You have to put yourself in the mindset to say, ‘What if? What if this happened? What if I tried that?’” Jason said. “It could change everything. Your business could completely shift and pivot away from something you thought was good to something that's really great.”

Curiosity leads to testing which leads to monetization. We have to ponder everything and once we do that, the tests will happen naturally.

Experiments

Once we are curious, we will be naturally motivated to look at data to perform tests and experiments. Growth hacking is all about taking the data we have collected, measuring it, and then running experiments to try and increase growth and profit.

We have to have a data-driven mindset. The majority of the time, we have access to the data and information that will guide us to success. We simply need to act on it. Growth hacking is taking the information, pulling insights out, and then experimenting on it. If our experiment fails, we know what not to do. If our experiment succeeds in creating growth, we know what changes we need to make.

Estimates have shown that businesses collected more customer information in 2010 than all prior years combined (Source: Harvard Business Review). Everything is focused on customer data and it is within our reach. On average, businesses receive data and metrics from 28 different sources (Deloitte Digital). We live in a data-driven world. The amount of data created by consumers doubles every two years (MIT Technology Review) and 92.3% of businesses maintain databases to host information on customers and prospects (GDMA). We need to make sure we use all the new data to our advantage.

Success will depend on how we use customer data and information to find new ways to grow our business.

Monetization

Once we’ve run tests on our data, we need to look at the results and determine what new insights we have to work with. Most experiments will tell us what not to do, or what to do more of. Jason increased the profit of the IBM SaaS product simply because he applied the insights he learned from his experiments. All he did was change a couple of CTAs on the company’s website.

We need to follow a similar process. As we use growth hacking effectively, we can monetize our businesses. It starts with curiosity, leads to experiments, and results in monetization.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jason for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Growth hacking is any strategy focused on driving growth while spending as little time and money as possible.
Growth hacking is a significant tectonic shift, but what it comes down to is testing and analyzing data. We need to have a data-driven mindset.
Curiosity leads to experimentation, which leads to monetization.
Curiosity leads to greater learning, engagement, and performance at work.
We live in a data-driven world. The amount of data created by consumers doubles every two years (MIT Technology Review). We need to make sure we use all the new data to our advantage.
Success may depend on how well we use customer data and information in ethical ways to find new ways to grow our business.

Connect with Jason

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jason or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or on growthmentor.com.

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Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Has growth hacking helped your business to grow? If so, what growth hacking strategies have worked best for your company? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Kayleigh Christina. In the last episode, we discussed how to turn a first-time buyer into a repeat customer. In this episode, Kayleigh will share with us three ways we can better enjoy the entrepreneurial journey in a goal-oriented world and how we can work better with our business partners.

3 Ways to Enjoy the Journey

Reflect Consistently

As an entrepreneur, we have the highest highs and the lowest lows. It can be hard to remember to celebrate our successes when we’re so focused on what we have to do next.

“I'm definitely someone who can just be so focused on the next goal or the next accolade and then once I hit it, I don't even stop and celebrate it. I just keep going like, ‘Alright, what's the next one?’ . . . And, as an entrepreneur, that can be very unhealthy to do,” Kayleigh said.

We need to make sure we recognize the goals we accomplish and celebrate them no matter how small. Since it can be so easy to overlook what we get done in the day, it’s great to reflect on our days and remember what we’ve done.

“To be a healthy entrepreneur and have a good mindset and have a positive mindset, you have to stop and reflect on things,” Kayleigh said. “I do that in my journaling, every single day. . . . Some days, it's easier said than done. Sometimes, if it's been a really rough day, you have to dig to find the positive experience. But it's so important to stay in that state of mind.”

As we focus on the good more consistently, it will become easier, and soon we will start to notice the positive elements in our day without trying. As we stay positive, the lows won’t feel so crushing.

Celebrate the Setbacks

We need to celebrate the setbacks. It can be easy to celebrate the good things that happen, but in order to stay positive and really develop a positive mindset, we also need to celebrate our mistakes.

“The growth happens when things go wrong. You can pivot. You can figure it out. So celebrate those setbacks,” Kayleigh said.

Mistakes are inevitable, especially when launching a new startup. We shouldn’t let those setbacks get in the way. Every mistake, every failure, is an opportunity for growth and learning.

One time Kayleigh was in a crunch. She was about to run out of stock on Amazon, and her product bottles arrived at her house in the wrong colored labels. She panicked because she didn’t have enough time to order new product bottles with the right labels.

She shared this story on her Instagram because she has always tried to be very real and open with her customers. After she did that, a flood of customers began messaging her saying that they actually liked the new label. Because she stayed authentic and real, Kayleigh resonated with her audience. And the only way she was able to do that is by refusing to let the negative experience take over her mindset.

Having a negative mindset can actually create chronic stress, which upsets the body’s hormone balance, diminishes chemicals required for happiness, and damages the immune system (Source: University of Minnesota). When we get stressed, our ability to work effectively and efficiently goes down.

Being positive has the opposite effect. Researchers have found that a positive mindset has health benefits such as lower levels of distress, lower rates of depression, better coping skills during hardships and times of stress, better psychological and physical well-being, and more (Source: Mayo Clinic).

As we choose to celebrate our mistakes rather than be consumed by them, we will actually increase our chances of success.

Write Down the Positive Moments

One of the ways we can overcome our setbacks is by remembering the positive moments.

“I keep a positivity folder in my phone,” Kayleigh explained. “Every time I get a really positive email, text message, or review of Clear Stem that just completely blows my mind, blows me away, I'll screenshot it and save it to an album. . . . If I'm having a rough day and I'm feeling like I'm struggling to find the positive in the day, I'll just scroll through and read a couple of those, and you'd be really surprised [by] how it shifts your mindset.”

This is similar to the concept of when a room is dark, the only way to get rid of darkness is to fill it with something else—we have to turn on a light to replace the darkness. If we're in a spot where we feel a bit of negativity in our life, we can choose to combat that by filling our life with a little bit of positivity.

By keeping ourselves in a really good mental state, we're going to do better for ourselves, as well as our teams.

“Staying in a positive mindset doesn't mean you're never viewing things as a negative. It's just taking those negatives and shifting them on how you can be better. How can you improve?” Kayleigh said. “And I think that helps you carry yourself better, lead your team better, and communicate with your consumer better.”

Working Better with a Business Partner

Just as a positive mindset will help us grow personally, it will also help us grow in our teams.

Kayleigh and Danielle run Clear Stem Skincare in a partnership. While they both operate differently, they have found that staying positive, and having the same goals helps them work together effectively.

Kayleigh gave six strategies for how to partner up and crush it.

Be emotionally intelligent and kind.

When we work in teams or in a partnership, it is essential that we communicate with each other. Kayleigh and Danielle both have days when their energy is lower than others. To make sure the other person doesn’t feel like it is because of them, they make sure to communicate and tell each other when they feel off.

By communicating and being emotionally intelligent, we avoid misunderstandings that could blow up out of proportion. But above all else, we need to remember to be kind. In partnerships, disagreements are guaranteed. No two people are the exact same. However, even when we don’t agree, we still need to be respectful and kind.

Follow the 80/20 rule.

“We've had a lot of communication around who's making decisions on what because some decisions need to be made together, but the other ones [follow the] 80/20 rule,” Kayleigh explained. “We each know our expertise, and so each has the autonomy to make decisions within those spaces.”

We need to understand that each partner will have their own roles and talents in the business. We won’t be able to agree with each other 100% of the time on everything we do. And we shouldn’t have to. We need to find our roles and have the autonomy to make choices as long as one person is 80% in.

“Clear communication is always best and that's what propels the business forward,” Kayleigh said. “What can really hold a business [back] is not agreeing on something. At some point, you’ve got to let your ego go and just understand [your] partner has more expertise in this.”

Reconnect to your passions.

This strategy goes back to step one in having a positive mindset. We should reflect on why we started our company in the first place. We can remember the passion we had when we first started a partnership and remember what our main driving force is.

“I think sometimes people can get so caught up in business [that they] lose sight of [their passions]. It's good every once in a while just to come back to it and remind yourself why you started in the first place,” Kayleigh said.

For Kayleigh and Danielle, that passion is helping people feel confident in their own skin. Their goal is to educate their customers so that they can have control over their health. As they reflect back on their first passions, they will have more motivation to go forward together to achieve their goals.

Remember the consumer matters most.

In our businesses, meeting our customers’ needs should be our number one priority. Everything should go back to the question, what’s in it for them? A lot of businesses forget this and focus on themselves. They talk about why their products are so great or why they’re so amazing. However, this isn’t going to work. Instead, we need to focus on how our products will help our customers, and how we can serve them better.

“We should clearly communicate to the customer what's in it for them,” Kayleigh said.

Celebrate the big moments together.

This strategy is key when developing a positive mindset. We need to take moments to celebrate with our partner. When we take time to see how far we’ve come together, our motivation to keep going will increase.

“Celebrating those big moments right then and there, in the present, really helps keep you healthy, keep you excited, and keep you motivated and positive,” Kayleigh said.

Remember our baseline.

As we said in the beginning, the life of an entrepreneur is filled with highs and lows. Things rarely stay constant. We need to make sure we don’t get too caught up in the success that we overlook how we can improve, while also making sure we don’t get caught in the failure and overlook our achievements.

While we can dream big, we need to make sure we still execute the small day-to-day things that need to be done. We need to remember our baseline.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kayleigh for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We need to make sure we recognize the goals we accomplish and celebrate them, even the small ones. We can reflect on what we’ve done each day.
We should celebrate the setbacks. Every mistake, every failure, is an opportunity for growth and learning.
Researchers have found that a positive mindset lowers stress and increases our health. As we develop a positive mindset, we will actually increase our chances of success.
If we're in a spot where we feel a bit of negativity in our life, we can choose to combat that by filling our life with a little bit of positivity.
Just as a positive mindset is essential to personal growth, it is also essential to growth in a partnership or team.
In our teams, we need to be respectful, emotionally intelligent, and kind.
Each partner will have their own roles and talents in the business. We won’t be able to agree with each other 100% of the time on everything we do and we shouldn’t have to.
We can take a moment to remember why we started our business in the first place to reconnect with our passions.
The customer should be our first priority.
We need to celebrate the big moments together, while also remembering our baseline.

Connect with Kayleigh

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kayleigh, listen to part one of this episode or connect with her on Instagram or her website, clearstemskincare.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you add more joy to your entrepreneurial journey? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/113-how-to-enjoy-the-entrepreneurial-journey-and-work-better-with-business-partners/

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In today's episode, I am joined by Kayleigh Christina. Kayleigh is a holistic nutritionist and the co-founder of Clear Stem Skincare, a non-toxic skincare line that targets acne, anti-aging, and scar reversing utilizing premium ingredients.

She's a published author and co-host of the Balancing Your Hustle podcast, which interviews thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and wellness experts, diving into their individual stories and journeys. In this episode, Kayleigh will share her entrepreneurship journey and how she builds relationships with her customers to turn a one-time customer into a repeat customer.

Kayleigh’s Journey: Solving a Problem

Kayleigh and her business partner, Danielle, created Clear Stem Skincare in response to a problem.

About five years ago, Kayleigh broke out in bright red, inflamed, painful, cystic acne. Every doctor and dermatologist she went to couldn’t find the root cause of her acne and told her the only options were Accutane, antibiotics, or birth control. However, she refused to take any of those options because she wanted to get to the root of the problem.

As a last resort, she found the San Diego Acne Clinic, where she met Danielle. Together, they were able to find the core cause of her acne which included 11 different triggers such as products in her conditioner, supplements, and makeup she was using. Once they found the root of the problem, they were able to clear Kayleigh’s skin without any scar damage.

After this, the two of them felt they were onto something. They began to create amazing products that would help with acne and anti-aging at the same time. The issue was that there were no skincare lines that effectively dealt with adult acne. The anti-aging products often caused acne, and the harsh acne products often increased skin aging. Together, they were able to solve that problem and created Clear Stem Skincare to help with both acne and anti-aging at the same time.

“If you have dealt with [acne], or a family member or a friend, you know what I'm talking about. It changes the way you carry yourself, your confidence. It hits you pretty hard,” Kayleigh said. “My favorite part of the success of it all is the impact that we make with people. Danielle and I both got into this line because we wanted to help people clear their skin and feel confident and in control of their own skin. And the part I attached success to is the testimonials.”

The reason Kayleigh and Danielle created their business was to help people with their problems: acne and anti-aging. They discovered a problem, found a solution, and then built their business around that.

Since day one, their business has been profitable, and they have seen continuous exponential growth. Not only is this because they found a niche audience they could help solve a problem for, but also because they were able to constantly learn from their mistakes and adapt, as well as stay focused on their customer relationships.

Pivots and Tectonic Shifts

One of the most important things we need to do as entrepreneurs is to learn from our mistakes and make pivots when we need to. Every time we make a mistake or encounter a failure, we should take it as an opportunity to learn and change from it.

When I asked Kayleigh what her biggest mistake was, she told me that she doesn’t like to call them mistakes. “Every time I've made a decision and it hasn't panned out correctly, we just pivot from it. Okay, what do we do now?” she said.

One of the “mistakes” she made early on was not doing enough research. They used to self-fill every bottle of skin care product and print every label themselves. And when they first got a warehouse to ship out their products for them, they just went with a recommendation. However, this caused them to get looped into a contract that cost them way too much money.

They didn’t do enough of their own research to know for themselves exactly what they were getting into. Since then, Kayleigh has learned from her mistakes and now they ask the right questions, get references, ask for reviews, and do the research.

Part of being an entrepreneur is learning from our mistakes and making pivots when we run into something that doesn’t quite work for us. We also need to be able to pivot and adjust to tectonic shifts.

Kayleigh said that one of the biggest tectonic shifts we have to learn to adapt to is COVID-19. With that, the customer is also becoming more educated and isn’t trusting marketers as much anymore. “Companies need to speak to the consumer more instead of about themselves,” Kayleigh said.

Customer Relations

As I mentioned before, Kayleigh’s business was profitable within their first month. So many entrepreneurs aren’t able to pull that off, but it can happen when someone implements a strong business strategy. When I asked Kayleigh to share some of her monetization secrets, she gave me two, both focusing on the importance of the customer.

One of the only ways to have repeat customers is by owning their information, staying in contact with them, and making sure they are happy with our products. If we can get them to leave a review, this will not only bring in more first-time buyers, but also remind them why they love our product and encourage them to return.

Email Marketing

We need to own our customers’ information. When we get their email or phone numbers, this gives us control of the conversation. We can stay connected. Repeat customers rely on this, and it’s one way to really increase our revenue.

“You can do all the Facebook, Instagram, [and] Google ads that you want, but you don't own any of that information. But when you have people's emails and phone numbers, you can control the conversations. . . . You can educate them about your product. You can give them updates. It is so important to be connected with your consumer because repeat purchases and building a family [or] a community with your brand is how you increase revenue and become successful,” Kayleigh said.

If a customer just makes a purchase, once they leave the store we’ve essentially lost them forever. We have no control in whether they come back and make a repeat purchase. However, if we get their email we suddenly have a way to contact them and send out more information about our products to encourage them to come back.

Kayleigh and Danielle have considered selling their products through retail stores so many times, but they eventually determined it’s not for them because they won’t have any connection with their consumers if they do this. They made the decision to keep the consumer with them so they can get their information and give information directly. They want to maintain stronger relationships with the customers and be in direct contact with them.

They’ve completely stayed away from the retailers and do everything themselves. They focus on providing the education and bringing the consumer to them because they can serve them better and maintain stronger relationships with them by providing that education and support directly.

Reviews

Reviews are everything. This is what gives our product credibility. As we mentioned before, customers are less trusting of marketers and businesses. They are starting to put more research into our products and services before they buy them. Most times they want to see good reviews before they make a final decision.

The best way to monetize what we are doing is to first have a good product and then have good reviews to back it up.

When Kayleigh first launched Clear Stem Skincare, they were selling their products online through Amazon and Shopify. “We always knew that reviews were important from day one,” she said. “And we use that same tactic for our website as well, because people are going to research your product, and they're going to think about buying it. They're going to go to the reviews and see what other people are saying, and that's how they're going to make their decision.”

In order to get our customers to give us reviews, we need to really connect with them. The more of a relationship we have with our buyers, the more likely they will want to leave a good review to show their appreciation.

According to research done by DataBox, “customer proof” is the most important factor when evaluating two software products. This applies to other products as well. As customers become more focused on self-guided research, they rely heavily on reviews—customer proof.

DataBox asked more than 100 marketers to share their best tips for getting reviews, and some of them included simply asking for a review, engaging with current reviews, and offering an incentive. This is another example of where email marketing comes in. When we have our customer information, we can email them requests to leave a review as soon as they use our product.

Kayleigh will send out an email two weeks after a customer purchases their project. The email encourages them to write a review and provides an incentive such as a discount for their next purchase. This not only helps with credibility, but encourages the buyer to become a repeat customer.

When customers reflect on their satisfaction with our product, they will also remember all the benefits of what we offer and be more likely to return and buy again.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kayleigh for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We need to discover a problem, find a solution, and then build our business around that. If we do that, we will be more successful.
We need to learn from our mistakes and make pivots when necessary. Every time we make a mistake or encounter a failure, we should take it as an opportunity to learn and change from it.
Companies need to speak to the consumer and get reviews, instead of marketing about themselves.
We need to own our customers’ information. When we get their email or phone numbers, this gives us control of the conversation.
To maintain stronger relationships with our customers, we should be in direct contact with them. Email marketing is essential in turning a first-time buyer into a repeat customer.
As customers become more focused on self-guided research, they rely heavily on reviews—customer proof.
Reviews are key in giving us credibility.
When our customers write reviews for us, they reflect on their product satisfaction and will be more likely to remember us and return in the future.

Connect with Kayleigh

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kayleigh, listen to part two of this episode or connect with her on Instagram or her website, clearstemskincare.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you encourage customers to return to your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/112-how-to-turn-a-one-time-customer-into-a-repeat-customer/

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Kate Erickson is the engine of Entrepreneurs on Fire, an award-winning podcast where John Lee Dumas interviews inspiring entrepreneurs. Kate is also the co-author of the podcast journal, Ideas to Launch in 50 Days. Her goal is to help entrepreneurs achieve financial and lifestyle freedom.

Today we’re going to discuss the systems and processes of running a podcast and digital business.

The Beginning

From the beginning, Kate was very passionate about her time. To her, time equaled freedom. While she worked a day job, she applied for time-off for a vacation, but it was denied. And that was a big issue for her. That moment helped her gain a new perspective. She wanted to be in control of her time which meant making a change in her life, and so she quit her day job to help John Lee Dumas, with his podcast, Entrepreneurs on Fire.

Starting a digital business isn’t easy. In 2019, the failure rate of startups was about 90%. 21.5% of startups failed in the first year. Of those who make it to their second year, 30% failed. Of those who made it to the fifth year, 50% failed, and finally, 70% of startups that made it to their 10th year failed (Source: Investopedia). John Lee Dumas and Kate Erickson didn’t just stumble upon success, they worked hard for it. Now, John is a multi-million dollar podcaster with 100 million listens.

In episode 81 of the Monetization Nation show, John explained how his podcast started with the goal for him to become a person of value. Albert Einstein said, “Do not try to become a person of success but try to become a person of value.” We need to make sure we are starting a business with the intent to create value for others, not just to be successful. That’s the beginning—find a way to add value to your audience’s lives.

The Content

Once we’ve determined a purpose that will add value to our digital business, we need to start creating content. For a podcast, this doesn’t just mean recording, editing, and publishing a podcast episode. It also means writing blog content and creating social media content on every platform.

According to a study done by DemandMetric, content marketing costs about 62% less than traditional marketing tactics, and it generates about three times as many leads (Source: AssetDigitalCom). Content has become an essential part of businesses, even if we’re not a content-based company. For example, a law firm can still create blog posts or an ebook to attract customers.

Since running a podcast relies so heavily on content, it may be a good idea to establish a team to help with everything. Creating content is a process. Whether it’s a blog, podcast, or video, most content undergoes these seven steps:

Generate Ideas
Research
Content Creation
Editing and Review
Prepared for Publishing (includes captions, feature photos, keywords, etc.)
Scheduled for Publishing
Promotion

And this same process happens all over again when we repurpose the content.

Entrepreneurs on Fire has a team of five. Each team member helps with a different part of the content creation process. For example, John does all of the recording and editing of the podcast, their team member in Pakistan helps with uploading, and another helps with scheduling, descriptions, and repurposing show notes. Kate manages the blog content and then another team member helps with anything community-related. Having a team to help with the content process makes a digital business run a lot more smoothly compared to doing it all ourselves.

Currently, Kate and John’s main source of content is their podcast and blog. All the content on their other channels is repurposed. Anything that’s on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or email is repurposed from a podcast episode or blog post.

John and Kate post a podcast episode every day with new content, but they don’t have time to create new content for every other platform they are on. It’s impractical. This is where repurposing comes in. Repurposing content is a great way to save time and resources while still providing value to our audience. For example, Kate can take the main idea discussed in their podcast and create a 30-second video clip for Instagram. Or she could take their blog, and create an infographic on the same topic.

Repurposing content not only saves time, but generates more reach, increases online presence, improves SEO, and strengthens our messaging.

The Tools

Once we’ve produced the content for our digital business, we need to get it published. Here are a few of the digital tools John and Kate use to manage their podcast, Entrepreneurs on Fire.

WordPress

Kate schedules all their blog posts two weeks in advance for publishing on WordPress, a system their website is built through. WordPress is a free website builder and content management system that includes features such as plugin architecture and page templates. It is the most popular website builder with 41% of the web built on WordPress (Source: WordPress).

Hootsuite

Kate schedules all their social media content through Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows you to schedule and post content on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube all from one place. It also allows you to track and analyze trends, monitor and engage across all social channels, and manage security to reduce digital risk. It currently has 18 million customers (Source: Hootsuite).

Libsyn

John and Kate schedule all of their podcasts 30 days in advance on Libsyn. Libsyn is an official podcast host for many popular podcasts. It allows you to publish your podcast from anywhere to platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Pandora, and more (Source: Libsyn).

Repurpose.io

John and Kate manage all of their YouTube posts through Repurpose.io. This software helps you to automatically get podcast content onto different social media platforms. It allows you to take a single video or audio file and repurpose it on other platforms by publishing it directly to YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter (Source: Repurpose.io).

Google Sheets and Google Docs

John and Kate use Google Sheets and Google Docs to help with the overall system of things. They can create tables that schedule podcast episodes and track what stages content is in. It is easy to share with every team member as they can work on documents at the same time.

Asana

John and Kate use Asana for project management. Asana is software designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their workflow. It helps teams create visual maps of projects so they can spot complications easier and track the progress of their goals. Teams have reported they are 45% more efficient using Asana (Source: Asana).

Lessons Learned

Starting a digital business takes a lot of work, but once we have established processes and systems in place, it can be a lot easier to manage.

“Don't get overwhelmed at the thought of trying to create systems around everything at the same time,” Kate said. “[Find the] most regular content that you create, or [what] has the highest ROI for the business, and take that one thing, and have your full focus be to create a system around how that content is created, scheduled, published, and shared. Once you have done it with that one thing, then find what that next thing is.”

There are many different systems set up within a business, but we don’t have to try and set it all up at the same time. We first need to focus on creating a system for the most important thing. For example, at Monetization Nation, our most important content is our podcast. Once we set up a system for creating and publishing our podcast content, we move to create a system for our other content such as our blog, video, and social media posts.

“Dive deep into every single step that happens [in your systems] and then you can start to find efficiencies,” Kate said. “That is really helpful.”

At the end of the day, we need to remember that we are responsible for everything that happens within our systems. When something fails within our business process, we need to accept it, learn from it, and move on.

One of the biggest mistakes Kate made happened while changing a business process. When she and John moved to Puerto Rico, they had to change their credit card processing and bank management. While they were switching, their bank merchant failed to let them know they didn’t take American Express.

While Kate was going over their expenses, she found a big disparity in what was actually being deposited into her account, and it was because the American Express payments weren’t coming through. This was a very hard mistake to make, but Kate took responsibility for it.

“The biggest lesson I learned from that [experience] is you have to take full responsibility for everything that happens in your business. We can hope and pray and rely on consultants, companies, services, and software to do certain stuff for us, but we can't rely on them to be responsible for how our business is running. [My experience] has really taught me to have a closer look at what's going on, on a day-to-day, month-to-month basis in our business,” Kate said.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Kate for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

When starting a digital business, first find a way to add value to your audience’s lives.
Content creation has become an essential part of businesses. We should develop systems to help with the process of creating and publishing content.
Repurposing content saves time and resources, generates more reach, increases online presence, improves SEO, and strengthens our messaging.
Digital tools are a great way to help with publishing and management and do a lot more with fewer resources.
At the end of the day, we need to remember that we are responsible for everything that happens within our systems.

Connect with Kate

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Kate or connect with her, you can find her on her LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about Entrepreneurs on Fire, you can visit their website, eofire.com. You can also subscribe to her podcast, Kate’s Take.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What systems and processes have helped your business run smoothly and grow faster? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/111-the-systems-and-processes-of-running-a-podcast-and-digital-business/

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Travis Chappell is a podcasting consultant, professional connector, author, and international speaker. He is the creator and host of Build Your Network with 1.5 million downloads and almost 600 episodes. Travis has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, and NASDAQ, and he has appeared as a guest on more than 50 shows, such as Entrepreneurs on Fire with John Lee Dumas.

In today’s episode, Travis shares his journey of becoming a successful podcaster and entrepreneur.

Transitions

Travis grew up in a strict religious household. From kindergarten to high school graduation to college graduation, he spent nearly every day on the same church campus, including church on Sundays, and door-to-door sales for the church on Saturdays. Within that community, he felt pushed into full-time ministry and decided to go to college with a double major in Biblical studies and church ministries.

It wasn’t until his senior year in college when he questioned his life’s path. “I was getting ready to graduate and go out and finally do this thing that I've been prepping for since I was like 12 years old, and I started to realize that I didn't want to do it,” Travis said.

He and his wife moved from Southern California to Fresno to get away from the bubble he grew up in, and after deciding not to do ministry, he transitioned to door-to-door sales. He made good money, but it wasn’t something he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

“For the first time in my life, I was just kind of forced to jump into personal development and figure out what that new path was going to be. That's when I started listening to podcasts for the first time,” Travis said. “And then I started my show a few years ago and have been rocking and rolling ever since.”

After deciding sales wasn't the path for him, Travis started a podcast where he speaks with successful entrepreneurs. That podcast now has 1.5 million downloads and almost 600 episodes. It took a lot of hard work, a few life transitions, and a lot of persistence, but he eventually made it to where he wanted to be.

“In the absence of clarity, ‘Take Action’ has always been the mantra. It’s like, ‘Okay, I don't know what I'm going to do, but doing nothing isn't going to get me there so I may as well try something,’ and you just fail your way into figuring out what the next step is going to be,” Travis said.

Based on his own journey, Travis wanted to help make transitions easier for others, so he created Guestio, a software designed to give access to the inaccessible. Travis’s podcast is focused on guest interviews with successful entrepreneurs. That’s what helped him take off. But, it wasn’t easy. Sometimes it can take months just to get in contact with the person you want to connect with. Sometimes it took years. The platform he created helps people get guests on their shows. Instead of chasing someone for months, we can get in contact with them right away in order for people to get better interviews and increase their credibility.

“Running a software company is not easy; it's difficult. It's a long treacherous road at some points but somebody else has figured it out. A lot of people have navigated that road successfully. All I got to do is to get the map from them, and then retrace those steps and add my own little spin on it,” Travis said.

Monetizing Relationships

90% of startups fail (Source: Forbes). Starting a business is not an easy thing we can do on our own. In order to fall into that 10% of successful startups, we should be building relationships and looking at the examples of those around us. Learning from the examples of our mentors will help us monetize our businesses faster.

“Get around to the people who are doing it at the highest level, and learn what [you] don't know, and then implement those things,” Travis said.

We don’t have to pioneer the road alone. Chances are, someone has already done what we’re trying to do and succeeded. When we hit a roadblock or when we're trying something new, it can save us so much time to just go to someone for advice. They can help us avoid the mistakes they made, and give us advice that will help us be so much more successful than if we tried to do it on our own.

“90 people will fail. 10 will succeed,” Travis said “You have the ability to control which part of that group you end up in. If I want to end up in the group that's successful and beat the odds . . . then I know that I have to outdo what most people are willing to do.”

We need to be willing to do more than everyone else. Unfortunately, one thing a lot of people don’t do is ask for help. We need to set our pride aside and be okay with accepting the fact that we can’t build a business on our own.

“Too many things out there are going to try to prevent you from being successful. If you're not proactively trying to put yourself in positions around people who can help you achieve that success then it's going to be much, much more difficult,” Travis said.

If we want to start a small business, we will need to put in the work and take risks. And if we’re taking risks, why not get help from someone who has done it before? Why not take advantage of the resources around us? We should constantly try to form relationships that can help us navigate the road we are walking on. “You get the results based on the work that you put in, so you better put in more work than everybody else so you can get better results than everybody else,” Travis said.

We can also monetize our relationships. For example, in a podcast, people will pay to be on someone’s show for promotional reasons. People will also pay others to come onto their show for the same reasons. On Travis’s app, Guestio, we can go and pay $300 to interview someone on their show. That person monetizes simply for having a relationship with us.

Monetizing Knowledge

A great way to monetize a business is to sell knowledge. We don’t need to be an expert to sell knowledge, we simply need to know more than the person we are selling to.

In terms of monetizing a podcast, Travis said that the first thing we want to do is use our knowledge to help our clients, and then find a way to monetize our guest list through the products and services we offer.

“The core of it is, do you have an offer, and do you have an audience for that offer? That's really what it comes down to, especially if you're in a knowledge business,” Travis said. But even if we aren’t in the knowledge business, we can find ways to use our knowledge with some of the products we are offering. Before we even offer a product or service, we can go one step earlier in the customer journey and provide our customers with informational value that will entice them to take the next step and purchase our product. Providing free knowledge will also help with our credibility.

One of the big tectonic shifts in the market today is independent content creation and virtual, online businesses in general. The power is shifting from big corporations and businesses to the people. Celebrity status is so much easier to accomplish now because we can create a media presence and develop a fan base without even leaving our house. Travis calls this process decentralization—taking away the power from one person and putting it into the hands of multiple people. Instead of a few wealthy powerbrokers, we now have thousands of micro-influencers with power, credibility, and influence.

There are YouTubers and influencers on Instagram that make six figures just from building their own brand online. They do this through content creation and sharing knowledge.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Travis for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Transitions are a part of our journey. We may fail, but if we keep moving forward, we will eventually find where we need to be.
We need to continue to take action, even if we feel uncertain about where we want to go. We won’t get anywhere if we do nothing.
We should find people who are doing what we want to do at the highest level and learn from their example.
We get results based on the work we put in. If we want to be successful, we need to put in more work than everybody else so we can get better results than everybody else.
Selling knowledge is a great starting part in monetizing a business such as a podcast.
One of the biggest shifts in the market is independent content creation.

Connect with Travis

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Travis, connect with him on his LinkedIn, subscribe to his Build Your Network podcast, or visit his website, travischappell.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Who are your mentors? What have you learned from them? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/110-how-to-monetize-a-business-through-relationships-and-knowledge/

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Keith Keller is one of the leading experts on Twitter marketing, especially Twitter video marketing. He has his own podcast series on iTunes called Crack the Twitter Code and now offers one-on-one consulting to clients all over the world via Zoom. In today’s episode, Keith will share three power hacks he has learned about Twitter video marketing.

Keith’s Story

Keith didn’t want to go to work on his 35th birthday. But he did because he had to. It ended up being the worst day of his life, but it made him realize he wanted to get out of there. He needed to get out of there.

Keith didn’t want to go to work on his 40th birthday. He was at a new company, with a new boss, but he didn’t want to be there. But he went because had to. And after that, after those five years, he realized he had to just take the risk.

Keith quit his job without a plan. “It was really scary. We bought a house, we owed money, but I couldn't go to that job anymore,” Keith said. “I thought the only way I'm going to do this is if I just jump.”

After he quit, he booked an appointment with a career counselor, and she told him he would be great at what she did. So, he went back to university and studied to become a career counselor and eventually got a job helping kids with their careers.

Then he did a podcast on it, and while he was doing the podcast, he thought he would send it out to other places. One of those places was Twitter. When he did that, he discovered that Twitter was 10 times more efficient for the same effort than other social media platforms. People started asking him to teach him about “cracking the Twitter code,” and he became the Twitter dude. So, he flipped the switch and started a new company on Twitter.

Since then, Keith has been sharing his knowledge on how to use Twitter effectively, especially in videos.

3 Twitter Video Marketing Power Hacks

Keith gave us his three power hacks to market Twitter videos.

The 2 Minute Video

On Twitter, a video can only be two minutes and 20 seconds long. This time constraint may seem restricting, but it is actually a benefit. Since the video is shorter and quicker to watch, more people are willing to press play.

“By actually creating a video that's two minutes and 20 seconds, you're already distilling the wisdom of a longer video into a much shorter video. So the chances of that getting more views are exponential,” Keith said.

If we film an interview that’s 15 minutes long, we can extract the most important part and put it into a shorter video to make it easier for our consumers and save them time.

With a 10-minute or even a five-minute video, our audience has to commit to sitting down and spending their time watching our video. People become a bit more reluctant to watch a longer video since they aren’t sure if it will be worth their time. However, with a short, two-minute video our audience doesn’t have to commit too much and will be more likely to watch our content.

According to a Microsoft study, the average consumer has an attention span of only eight seconds, compared to 12 seconds in 2000 (Source: Forbes). With such a low attention span, think of how difficult it can be to get someone to watch a two-minute video, let alone a 10-minute video.

For example, Keith had a friend who interviewed him. The actual interview only got 202 views, but the short snippet on Twitter got more than 2000 views. It was the same content, but the extracted, shorter version did better because the audience only had to commit a little bit of time to watch it.

If we can capture the attention of our viewers with our short video, we can feed them to a longer story. If they watch the short clip and find that they enjoyed it, they will be more willing to commit to spending more of their time watching our content. We can provide them with a longer video on other platforms such as YouTube.

“You can make a really lovely story, and put a little bit of theme music or a little bit of a graphic at the front, a little bit of a graphic at the back, and two minutes in total in the middle, and you've got this lovely little sequence. Now, in itself, [the short video] will go well, but more importantly, it will feed people to the longer story,” Keith said.

Repurposing Content

Repurposing content saves time and resources. We can put the same video on every social media channel but alter it to fit the needs of the audience on that channel.

For example, a viewer on YouTube will be more willing to watch a 20-minute video compared to someone on Facebook. A viewer on Facebook will be more willing to watch a five-minute video than someone on Instagram. And on Instagram, a viewer will be more willing to watch a one-minute video than on Tik Tok. Once we understand the needs of the consumers on different channels, we will be able to effectively repurpose content.

We also need to understand the limits of each channel. On Instagram, a video can range from 3 seconds to 60 minutes. A video posted on the feed can be up to 60 seconds, a story video can be up to 15 seconds, and a live video and an IGTV can be up to 60 minutes.

On Facebook, videos must be less than 240 minutes or 10 GB. On YouTube, videos must be less than 12 hours or 128 GB. On LinkedIn, videos can’t be more than 10 minutes or 5 GB. And on Tik Tok, videos can’t be longer than 60 seconds, however, they previously couldn’t be longer than 15 seconds. Often the length restrictions of the social media platforms correlate to the attention span of the users.

Once we have our Twitter video, we can start to look at more sharing options. “You can create a really rich story out of your videos and then put them on LinkedIn, which is an additional market of [about] 719 million users,” Keith said. The more platforms our video is on, the more reach it will have. We can even take our initial Twitter video, and take a quote from it, and turn it into a photograph to post, or we could write a blog post about it.

The last thing we want to do when repurposing content is simply taking the exact same video and posting it on every social media channel. Each channel has a different audience and different formats or requirements, so it is essential to alter the content to fit each channel. Make it a little bit different every time.

The Less Than 60 Second Video

If our video is less than 60 seconds on Twitter, our views will most likely go up. Kieth explained that our number one takeaway from his interview should be to create videos that are under 60 seconds. When a video is less than 60 seconds on Twitter, it loops. Immediately after our consumer finishes our video, it plays again, capturing their attention for just a bit longer. And in this world, every single second count.

“Since I started introducing the 60-second rule, my video views were just going through the roof, because what I'm pondering is the fact that people are busy,” Keith said. “Make [your video] less than 60 seconds and your video views will go up.” By shortening a longer clip into 60 seconds, we are respecting and honoring our viewers’ time.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Keith for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Often the shorter the video, the more people are willing to press play.
The human attention span decreases every year so our videos need to be more and more interesting and captivating.
If we can capture the attention of our viewers with our short video, we can feed them to a longer story.
Repurposing content saves time and resources.
To effectively repurpose content, we need to understand the needs of the consumers on different channels.
The length restrictions of the social media platforms correlate to the attention span of the users.
If our video is less than 60 seconds on Twitter, our views will most likely go up.

Connect with Keith

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Keith, connect with him on his Twitter or website, globalsocialmediacoaching.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you tried creating and sharing videos in less than 60 seconds? If so, what were the results? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/109-3-twitter-video-marketing-power-hacks/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss portions of a sermon by a church leader named Gordon Hinckley about the world’s need for greater kindness, and we’ll discuss how kindness can help us make a difference as entrepreneurs.

The World We Live in and Why We Need Kindness

Hinckley described the kind of world we live in today, saying, “I have wondered why there is so much hatred in the world. We are involved in terrible wars with lives lost and many crippling wounds. Coming closer to home, there is so much jealousy, pride, arrogance, and carping criticism; fathers who rise in anger over small, inconsequential things and make wives weep and children fear.”

He continued, “Let us all recognize that each of us is a son or daughter of our Father in Heaven, who loves all of His children.”

With all the hate, jealousy, pride, arrogance, and criticism in the world, not to mention the wars and violence, we need to be kind. We need to do what we can to push back against all that negativity and show the world that it is still good in people.

“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.” (KJV Galatians 6:10)

Kindness in Business

“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.” - Amelia Earhart

We can drive our businesses forward through acts of kindness. Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of the New York-based company Kind Snacks, does this. He takes the subway to work every morning, and when he sees someone commit an act of kindness, he gives them a #kindawesome card, which is an invitation to enter an online code to receive free Kind bars. He also gives them a second #kindawesome card to give to a selfless stranger (Source: bthechange.com).

The gesture is part of a company-wide cause marketing movement to trigger a chain of random acts of kindness around the world. It has generated more than one million kind acts. This kind of tactic creates loyalty in existing customers and awareness for potential customers (Source: bthechange.com).

Strategies like these are great ways to spread kindness and help our business. They show customers that we care and we are willing to put in effort when it comes to being a good business. Instead of being ruthless and uncaring in our pursuit of profits, we should focus on being good to our customers and community. We can only do this “when there is kindness, respect, and love,” Hinckley said.

Kindness in COVID

When the pandemic hit the world, there were many people and businesses that were impacted negatively. Some businesses had to close, causing people to lose their jobs. Many have been directly impacted by the virus, and we all had to adjust to doing things differently. However, some businesses saw this as an opportunity to do some good.

For example, Wild North Flowers, a company in Toronto, was forced to transition to an online-only model when the pandemic hit. Though the business took a hit financially, Jennifer Fowlow, founder and owner, did what she could to make a difference in the community (Source: shopify.com).

Previously the company had a monthly tradition of a nomination-based flower giveaway. Fowlow turned this into a daily giveaway to workers on the front lines. “With the COVID-19 pandemic turning our worlds upside down,” Fowlow said, “this kind of gratitude is more important than ever.” The company also donated pre-paid flowers that were from canceled events (Source: shopify.com).

Another company, Summersalt, found a different way to make an impact. Summersalt is a brand dedicated to joyful moments like swimming, traveling, sleeping, and lounging. However, its apparel basics were also perfect for those who have had to isolate—something that usually isn’t a joyful moment (Source: shopify.com).

In response to COVID-19, “the brand launched Joy cast, a free SMS-based emotional support hotline that connects those in isolation with members of their team who text back positive diversions—a meditation video, a self-care tip, or puppy GIFs.” (Source: shopify.com)

While the pandemic has been hard in different ways for everyone, we can be a force for good through sharing kindness.

Humanitarian Efforts

In Hinckley’s sermon, he went on to describe numerous humanitarian efforts happening throughout the world. He described “volunteers reaching out to supply food, clothing, and other needed items to those in distress” and “lifting thousands out of the slough of poverty and into the sunlight of knowledge and prosperity.”

J.K. Rowling, who has lost her billionaire status from the millions she has donated, has said, “You have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently.” (Source: Lifehack.org)

“There is no end to the good we can do, to the influence we can have with others,” Hinckley said. “Let us not dwell on the critical or the negative. Let us pray for strength; let us pray for capacity and desire to assist others. Let us radiate the light of the gospel at all times and all places, that the Spirit of the Redeemer may radiate from us,” he continued. “In the words of the Lord to Joshua, brethren, “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God [will be] with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode. To read or watch the full sermon click here.

The world is filled with all kinds of heartaches and heartbreaks. We need more kindness to fight against that.
Kindness grows roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. Likewise, our actions of kindness can spread and multiply.
When we are blessed with more resources than we need, we should give back and help those who need them.

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I once completed a focus group for a company that showed about 70% of their customers did not talk to any other competitor before doing business with them. We found that customers didn’t choose the business with the cheapest price, or the best features or services, they chose the business they connected with first.

In the past, people would compare the pricing and features of many businesses, but now, an increasing number of potential customers just aren't investing time to do that. It's all about the ease of doing business. In order to be successful and gain customers, we need to meet our customers’ needs as quickly as possible.

In the last episode, Eric Keating and I discussed three ways to increase product-led growth and monetization. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how product-led growth can help businesses meet the consumer’s need for instant gratification.

Instant Gratification

The market is shifting towards product-led growth. With more and more businesses offering self-service free product trials, customers expect instant gratification when they look at our services and products. In order to use product-led growth effectively to meet the needs of our customers, we should consider using free trials and freemium experiences.

“There is this massive shift happening; it's been happening for a very long time in the consumer world and much more in B2B,” Eric said. “It’s this expectation that we all have from using Amazon and other consumer products that are completely self-service . . . [It’s] all about instant gratification.”

When a consumer has a need or a problem, they expect an immediate solution when they come to our website or landing page. A lot of this is due to increased amounts of free value

In today’s market, so many companies are offering free trials and freemium experiences. We can book appointments online or sign up for our own monthly subscription for a piece of software. In contrast, we have older companies who require us to request a demo or fill out a form before we can use their software. Then, we have to wait for somebody to get back to us before we can use their service or product. Between the two companies, customers almost always choose the first option—the one that leads to the fastest result.

Eric explained how companies such as IBM, with maybe 100,000 employees and years of experience, are making the shift towards free trials and freemium. “When you see companies at this scale adopting this approach to be going to market and getting the product into the user’s hands, I think that's a sign that this is not just a little trend. This is the expectation moving forward,” Eric said.

A product-led growth model is becoming essential in today’s market as it allows customers to serve themselves, and gain instant gratification for their needs and problems.

Choosing a Service Provider

When customers are choosing a service provider, they often look for the business that will help them meet their needs the fastest.

Let’s say we are looking for a carpet cleaning service. How do we find a local business? Most people would first do a Google search. After the Google search, three local businesses pop up. Which one do we choose? Most people will choose the business near them with the largest number of reviews and a strong average star rating. We call the business and the phone rings, and rings, and rings. No one answers. They ask us to leave a voicemail. But do we?

Most people today aren’t even leaving a message. They call the first person with the best reviews, but if that person doesn't answer, most people are hanging up and calling the next most highly-reviewed company on the list.

Keep in mind that a huge percentage of customers don’t like to make phone calls anymore. If there is a business with an instant chat on their website, a customer is more likely to ask their question in the online chat than call in. Better yet, if a customer can sign up for a free trial themselves, they can hit download and instantly serve themselves without ever needing to talk to someone.

In product-led growth, we need to focus on self-service. We should make it easy for our customers to serve themselves and contact us if necessary.

Low Barrier to Entry

Having a very low barrier to entry, such as a free trial with no credit card required, is essential.

“[If] you have a very compelling call to action and it's easier than filling out a demo request form to start using this product . . . you get people using your product. Thousands of people are starting to use our product every month because we have this low barrier to entry,” Eric said.

In the example above, it is clear how important ease is. A customer will often choose a service that is easy and quick to use over a service that might cost less.

“You're going to get more leads with the free trial,” Eric said. “It's just a lower barrier to entry. There's less friction. When you do that, you're going to start to have exponentially more people using your product, and how they use your product is very important to understand.”

Once we get our customers to sign up for our free trial, our job isn’t done yet. We need to use data and make sure they are getting the best experience we can offer.

Data is essential in determining friction points within our users’ experiences. If we aren’t tracking the user’s flow through our funnel, it will be extremely hard to know where our customers are getting hung up. It will also be difficult to see where users are converting at the highest rates and having long-term success.

“Data is not only going to enable you to answer the long list of questions that I'm sure you'll have as you start down this path, but also open up a ton of opportunities for you to monetize your user base to better serve your customers so that they retain longer and adopt more of your product,” Eric said.

What about the sales team?

In today’s market, the product is replacing a lot of traditional one-on-one sales and marketing communications. However, in product-led growth, companies can still take advantage of a sales team. Even with self-serve products, a sales team can provide additional help in lengthening the customer’s journey with the business.

The main question is, “How do we exceed our customer’s expectations?” While most of our potential customers expect to be able to serve themselves instantly, the sales team can help those that require more information.

“Even though [more than] 90 percent of our eventual customers start with a self-service free trial, we do have a sales team,” Eric said. “They behave a bit more like a hybrid between a salesperson and a support person, or a customer success person . . . They aid our prospects or free trial users in their path to success. . . We're seeing a lot of sales teams adapt to focus more on expansion opportunities versus net new business.”

Instead of focusing on making the initial sale, the sales team can expand and guide the customer into making another purchase.

“As a marketer, as a salesperson, you have to start thinking about products more than you ever have. You need to be invested in the product experience and understand that the product experience is going to play a role in the sales and marketing go-to-market funnel now,” Eric said.

We need to make sure we have a voice in the product experience, especially as customers expect to access our product or service immediately, without needing to go through a sales team or marketer, or without reading a lot of instructions.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Eric for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

With more businesses offering self-service products, customers expect instant gratification when they look at our services and products.
A product-led growth model is becoming essential in today’s market as it allows customers to serve themselves and instantly get a “taste test” to see if your product or service meets their needs.
Free trials and the freemium model are a great way to help meet the customers’ needs for instant gratification.
When customers are choosing a service provider, they often look for a business that will give them the help they need the fastest.
We must eliminate as much friction as possible in our customer journey and create a low barrier of entry.
We need to make sure we have a voice in the product experience.

Connect with Eric

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Eric, listen to part one of this episode or connect with him on LinkedIn or his website, Appcues.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

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Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
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Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How do you meet customers’ needs for instant gratification? Do you provide free trials? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/107-how-to-use-product-led-growth-to-meet-customers-needs-for-instant-gratification/

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In today's episode, I am joined by Eric Keating. Eric is a go-to-market strategist and the vice president of marketing at Appcues. He has worked in the SaaS world his entire career, starting with a company called Sonicbids, and has spent more than 10 years in marketing.

Eric is an expert in the concept of product-led growth, what we have called the free trial or the freemium experience on this show. Today, we're going to dive deep into product-led growth and monetization.

What is Product-Led Growth?

“Product-Led Growth is defined as a go-to-market strategy that relies on using your product as the main vehicle to acquire, activate, and retain customers.” (Source: ProductLed)

Essentially, the name speaks for itself. In product-led growth, we provide a free self-service product for our visitors. In order to turn visitors into active customers, we have to hook them and provide clear value. Often this is done through free trials.

“Product-led growth is this concept that's really gained a lot of steam and awareness over the last one to two years,” Eric said. “It’s the idea that your product is the primary driver of your user experience. Making your product available to try for free in a self-service capacity as often as possible is one of the most effective ways to go-to-market today. . . . Leading with a self-service free product experience is something that has been true at almost every single company I've worked at.”

Below, Eric has shared three ways to increase our product-led monetization growth.

Communicate with Our Customers

Communication is essential to monetize our self-service products.

“In this world in which you need to deliver more self-service, effective product experiences, there's this need to guide and communicate with users inside of your application,” Eric explained. “That's the type of product experience that, when you do this effectively, can really drive adoption of your product and create new monetization opportunities.”

In product-led growth marketing, we are offering a free service. But how do we continue to deliver value to our users, while also turning them into paying customers? The key is communication. We can’t just launch a free trial and hope that will be enough to monetize. We need to guide our users through the experience by raising awareness of the features our product offers. From there we can explain the advanced features and benefits they can receive if they pay for premium access to our product.

Communication is essential in increasing awareness of the benefits and value of our products. Surveys, announcements, and newsletters are a few examples of how we can spread awareness and communicate with our customers. The goal is to keep them engaged, keep them using our product, and ultimately, adopt it fully.

One of Eric’s biggest home runs was while working for Compete, Inc. Compete had thousands of free users every month, but they weren’t converting as many customers as they would like. So, Eric started a project focused on analyzing how their customers were using the product, what features they were using, and what features and benefits they found most valuable.

After doing the research, they created an incentive for the users to upgrade to the premium plan based on what they discovered through the data. He was able to double his company’s monthly revenue over one month because he understood his users’ wants and needs, and then communicated the value they were offering effectively through his promotion.

Focus on the Initial Experience

In order to convert our potential customers into active customers, we need to make sure they have a good initial experience with us and our product.

“One of the most important parts of product-led growth is having a fantastic initial product experience,” Eric said. “I'm talking about the first minute your user starts using your product. The first day, two days, of their experience is so critical, not only to whether or not you're going to ultimately be able to convert them into a customer but also to their long-term retention.”

One of the biggest mistakes Eric sees companies make is flooding a new user with every little detail and feature about their product. When they give a customer a product tour, they think they have to show the new user everything. However, it often has the opposite effect of what they intended. Instead of feeling amazed at the product's features, the new user gets overwhelmed.

“[The new user is] starting to use your product because they have a specific goal or outcome in mind, and your job is to get them to that goal or outcome as quickly as possible, not show them every aspect of your product,” Eric explained. “It is a phased approach. Get them to that moment, and then start exposing them to more. It's this gradual process, and trying to do everything in the first minute can really mess with your activation rates and conversion rates.”

In order to get a new user on board, we really need to focus on solving their problem. A product tour should be about explaining to the customer how we can help them, not about how amazing our product is and why they need it.

Offer Level 10 Passions

How do you stand out? Puppies.

A few years ago, Eric attended an event with tens of thousands of attendees, and hundreds, if not thousands of vendors. As Eric and his team at Zaius planned what they were going to showcase at this event, they asked themselves, “What can we do to stand out?”

“We were still in the early stages,” Eric said. “The objective [was to] make sure that everybody attending this conference heard about Zaius, and that we were a familiar name from now on out.”

They asked themselves, “Well, what does everybody love?” And the answer came—puppies. They reached out to an animal shelter down the street from the event and asked if they could show off some of their dogs. If anyone wanted to take a dog home, they would cover the adoption fees.

“We had the [dogs] there for about an hour and there were crowds. There were lines to come up and see these dogs. Mission accomplished. We had a ton of interest, not only in the dogs but eventually in our product as well,” Eric said. “Ultimately, the objective was to increase our brand visibility, awareness, and recognition, and we did that.”

After three years with Zaius, Eric helped grow their customer count 100x and revenues 35x, raising more than $43 million in venture capital.

So, what’s the point of this story? Think outside of the box and discover your customers’ level 10 passions. When we do that, it will help to differentiate us and better connect with our potential customers.

One of the tectonic shifts that are happening today is for every hour and every dollar that our customers have to invest, they've got a thousand good things to choose from. There's so much distraction. We can’t just be good enough. We have to identify their level 10 passions and connect with them through those (level 10 being a passion that is a driving factor in their life).

Identifying the level 10 passions of our target audience and building our whole business around those passions will make us stand out. When Eric brought in puppies to the event, he leveraged a huge level 10 passion for many of the attendees. There were thousands of vendors at this conference, but he became the priority when he added puppies to their brand.

In order to drive the growth of our products, we need to make sure we are identifying and connecting through our customers’ level 10 passions.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Eric for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Communication is key to monetize our self-service products. We need to guide our users through their product experience by raising awareness of the features and benefits our product offers.
To convert our potential customers into active customers, we need to provide a great initial experience. The first impression really matters.
Our job is to show our customers that we can meet their needs as quickly as possible. We don’t need to show them every aspect of our product.
If we can help our customers achieve their level 10 passions, we will better differentiate ourselves and build stronger connections with customers.

Connect with Eric

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Eric, listen to part two of this episode or connect with him on LinkedIn or his website, Appcues.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Does your business use product-led growth? If so, how has it worked for your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/106-3-ways-to-drive-product-led-growth-and-monetization/

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Welcome back to another episode with Laurie Delk Radecki. In episode one, we discussed how entrepreneurship has helped the widow of a police offer create the life she wants and provide well for the people she loves. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss why we need to focus on our relationships, Laurie’s top five tips for relationship marketing, and more.

Being Present

When I asked Laurie what the greatest mistake or failure she’s made in her career, she said it applies to business and family. “As a mom, you know, you're talking to your children, and a lot of times when you talk to your children you're training them. You say, ‘look into mommy's eyes,’ right because you want to get their attention,” Laurie said.

“I remember a point that I was multitasking, right? I was doing a bunch of different things . . . [doing] my best. One of my children came up to me and started telling me something. And . . . I was listening, but I was also multitasking. I said, ‘mm hmm,’ [but] I was typing, looking at my computer, and this child grabbed my chin and pulled me and said, ‘Mommy, look into my eyes.’

“It was just like, smack, you know . . . it just kind of really hit me.” She thought, “Oh my goodness . . . this is my child. I need to pay attention to this child.”

“The same thing in business—I need to pay attention to whoever's in front of me.” Laurie has noticed in business when she’d be talking to someone and they were doing something else or they were scrolling through their phone. “I just vowed to myself that . . . anytime I'm in front of a person, I would be present with them no matter what.”

“Relationships are important. . . . It doesn't matter how much money you make. If you get to the end of your life and you don't have people that love you, and you don't have people that are around you, then what is it all worth in the first place?”

5 Strategies of Relationship Marketing

Here are Laurie’s top five strategies of relationship marketing.

Text 10 People Everyday

Texting is a fast and simple way to keep in touch with people. “Back in the day, it was one dollar a text . . . but now everybody has texting free on their phone, now almost everybody has a phone. So [here’s] one of the things I do every day: I take 10 people, and I just text them something. And it's never business stuff . . . this is just building relationships, keeping in touch. So it might be, ‘I hope you have a fabulous Friday,’ [or] ‘Hope you have a wonderful Wednesday.’ And that always ends up leading to a little bit more conversation.”

“If you're in business, but you're not just sending your business stuff out all the time, you're actually working to build those relationships, people will reply to you.”

Call at Least 3 People a Day

Laurie does a similar thing with phone calls. “I try to call between three and five people a day. I put it on my schedule . . . just saying, ‘hi,’ hearing someone's voice.” Since COVID has started more and more people are using Zoom or other video conferencing technology to connect with friends, family, and associates, so Laurie tries to use those as well.

Laurie said it can be “like your Starbucks coffee chat, but . . . in your own home. But just talk to each other, keep in touch. And the same thing [with] business stuff—just say hi, see how someone's doing, look into their eyes.”

Give People Reasons to Stay on the Email List

Email lists are another great way to keep in contact with people. “If you're going to have an email list, you need to give people value, give people reasons why they want to stay on your email list.”

Social Media and Time Blocking

In 2020, there were 3.96 billion people in the world actively using social media, an increase of 10.9% from 3.48 billion in 2019. Back in 2015, there were only 2.07 billion users—that’s an overall increase in users of 92.76% in just five years (Source: backlinko.com). There’s a huge audience for us to reach on social media. Laurie said, “There's all the different platforms, and you could be on all of them, but usually nobody does everything good. One thing I also teach and train on is time blocking and doing a little bit of everything, but doing it [well] and being consistent while you're there.”

“I don't have anything pop up on my phone, not even texting. I only check my texts when I'm scheduled to check my texts, or I have extra time in my day or whatever, so that [I’m] not getting distracted from the things that I plan to do. So [I do] the same thing [with] social media.”

Greeting Cards

Greeting cards are another fun way to connect with people. “I send cards of happiness. One of my cliche sayings is ‘I get to send happiness through the mail.’ And that's what I want. I don't want it to be kind of like, ‘okay, you know, I got this card and it was okay,’ right? I want them to get it and go, ‘Whoa, wow, that's awesome.’ I want that to bring out those endorphins and make them feel good. So that's, of course, going to build a relationship with you [and] them because it pulls the heartstrings together, but it also [helps us] keep in touch and [remember] them.”

A lot of people send Christmas cards, but we can also send cards at any time of the year. “I actually went into a store the other day that a friend of mine owns . . . and she had one of my cards on her counter at the store. . . . The front of it says, ‘smile,’ real big, and it has a smiley face, and [it says] ‘It's like yoga for your face.’ And so, I saw that thing somewhere, and I thought, ‘I've got to do something with this.’”

“So I did,” Laurie said. “I sent out a few cards with that on it and just a cutesy little message on the inside. . . . just to make somebody smile when they opened it up. And it obviously made her feel good; she put it in her business right on the counter at the checkout register . . . and she never even said anything to me about getting the card. And I happened to go into the business last week, and when we were checking out, I said, ‘Oh my goodness, you have [my] card right here on your counter,’ and she's like ‘Oh yes, I love that card. I meant to tell you thank you.’ And that made me feel good . . . that she thought enough to even show my card to everybody that comes in her store.”

How do we turn these relationships into revenue?

So how do all these relationship strategies lead to revenue? Laurie said, “When you are building the relationships properly and you do have the good ethics and morals and integrity behind that, business is going to happen no matter what.”

“There [are] some people that your business or your service or your product won't ever be a fit for . . . and that's okay, right, but you can still build a friendship with them and build a relationship with them . . . because they have a circle of people that they know that they can refer you to.”

“If you put your . . . links and your things out about your business in different places, people are going to find you because people, especially nowadays, click around before they do business with you. They research you . . . they look for things, they read about things, and so they can find what you do as long as you have it out there in good places for people to find and [it’s] easily accessible.”

We do have to be careful when we post about our business though. “When I do post [about my business], it’s usually something like a testimonial. So it's not a flat out, ‘Hey, come buy this from me,” or “come get this,” but it's something that just tells people a little bit more about what I do, or what product or service I offer. So, that way it gets them . . . if they're interested . . . to want to reach out to me. And then when they reach out to me, then I can follow through with the process of asking them questions to make sure that I'm offering the best product or service for them.”

Remembering Our Why

Laurie’s last piece of advice was to remember why we started. “I think that's one of the biggest keys to success that I've had,” she said. “You [must] figure out why you want to do what you [do]. . . . I wanted to do things to help support the family. So, remember why you started, because in any business, whether you get very successful or whether you're on the trail to becoming successful, either way, there's going to be hardships. In those hardships you have to remember why you started it in the first place and what you're doing it for to keep that stamina, to keep going, to push through those trials that are going to come, because it doesn't matter what financial bracket you're in, you're going to get some of those trials.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Laurie for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Try to text and call people every day to consistently nurture and grow connections.
We must make sure our email lists are providing value so people want to stay on them.
It’s too much to try to be on every social media platform, but time blocking can help us manage our time.
Greeting cards are a great way to send happiness through the mail and strengthen relationships.
If we foster these kinds of relationships, many of them will naturally lead to business.
Our relationships will be better if we devote our full attention to the people we are with.
If we remember why we started, it will help us get through the hard times.

Connect with Laurie

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Laurie or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriedelk/, check out her website at http://lauriedelk.me/, or you can watch, listen to, or read the first episode with Laurie.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Laurie Delk Radecki has owned BMD Enterprises, a web and graphic design, branding, and marketing company, for more than 26 years. She's a best-selling author of two business books: Keep Those Clients and We All Have Choices. She's featured in two other best-selling books: Power of Human Connection, and Momentum Makers. She's been a speaker and trainer for more than 16 years.

In today’s episode, we’re going to hear the story of Laurie Delk Radecki, the wife of a police officer who passed away, and how she became a highly successful entrepreneur to provide for her family.

Laurie’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Here’s how Laurie got to where she is today.

BMD Enterprises

When Laurie was pregnant with her second child, she needed a job to help support her family. “At that time, my kids’ dad was a police officer, and that type of industry [didn’t provide enough for] a one-income household. So I was praying for something I could do from home to be able to help support our family so my husband didn't have to work 2, 3, [or] 4 jobs.”

It was 1993 and the internet was becoming more prevalent. Laurie and her husband got their first computer. “Back then there were hardly any businesses on the internet . . . but I decided, this is the perfect thing for every business to have a business card on the web, so to speak,” she said.

“So I created my web design company and figured out how to write code and create websites. . . . A lot of my clients didn't have logos even, or didn't know what to do with that, so then I went into graphic design. So, I did those hand in hand and built that company.” Within a few years, she hit six figures and tripled her husband’s income.

Send Out Cards

While Laurie was doing that business, she would send out thank you cards, saying, “Thank you for meeting with me,” or “Thank you for your business,” etc. She’d read a lot of sales training books that said people do business with those they know, like, and trust. However, Laurie says, “People do business with those they know, like, trust, and remember. If they don't remember you when it's time to do that business, then you're not going to get the business.”

Laurie found a way to streamline this process when she found a company called Send Out Cards. She joined the company because they were doing exactly what she was doing. It was a great way to help her balance work and family.

Networking

Not long after joining Send Out Cards, Laurie started networking. She joined a few different networking groups and found things she liked and didn’t like about each of them. She decided to create her own, incorporating all the things she liked about the ones she’d joined.

Laurie was able to build and keep up many business connections. “That's one huge thing that I've been focused on . . . keeping track of people [and] having systems and tools to keep track of everybody and be able to keep in touch.”

Coaching

Laurie met with a real estate agent in her network. He asked her to sit down with him and teach him about what she did in her web and graphics company to get it to six figures. He wanted to apply some of the principles to his real estate company.

When she’d finished teaching him, he told her that he wanted her to teach his group of about 150 agents with a PowerPoint. Laurie was a little baffled. She didn’t know how to use PowerPoint, and she’d just been talking with this agent, not planning out lessons or anything like that. One of her favorite speakers, Jim Rohn, always said, “Say yes and figure it out later.”

So Laurie said yes, went home, and started searching the internet for how to create a PowerPoint, and she figured it out from there. “[It] went really well, and of course some of the agents in there ended up referring me to different mortgage brokers and title agents and different people that they knew in their circle. I had more people calling me to do speaking engagements and corporate sales training and things like that, so [that] led me into researching more about how to teach and train. I found out that there was training out there on how to [train], so [I] took some courses and became certified in those different areas.”

Writing Her First Book

Lots of People started telling Laurie she should write a book. She thought, “I don’t write books.” She loved to read personal development and business books, but she never thought she could write a book. She thought she could never be on the same level as those authors and business people she looked up to.

Laurie took a course, and part of the homework for that course was to write a book. She thought, “Oh my goodness, I can't do this,” but she had to pass the course. “I'm like one of those [people] that is not only kind of competitive with other people, but I'm competitive with myself. So, if I say I'm going to do something, I'm like, ‘I've got to see it to the end.’”

So she wrote the book and learned how to become self-published. When she put it on Amazon, it hit bestseller status in the first couple of hours.

Wonderful Widowed Women

When Laurie’s husband died, she was looking for widow support groups. She found a few, but they weren’t quite what she was looking for. “I wanted something with positivity; I was last to be raised by a mom who is very positive and optimistic minded.” So she created her own nonprofit, Wonderful Widowed Women.

She ended up speaking to different groups on this subject, which led her to write her second book, We All Have Choices, on how we react to things and how we look at things. “When I got the news of his wreck, of course, it was terrible, and [I] cried a lot. But I also knew if I was still here, still breathing, I needed to figure out my purpose and . . . why I'm still here. Plus, I had four kids at home that I had to be an example to, right, because they're going to look up to me and they're going to go through tragedies in life, and they need to know . . . how to respond to those things as well. So I knew I needed to, as we say in Tennessee, pull up your bootstraps and get busy.”

Greatest Home Run: Providing for Family

When I asked Laurie what the greatest home run she’s hit in her career is, she said, “I very quickly grew to six figures, being able to help take care of our family.” That was one of the biggest things she wanted to be able to do. Laurie never missed her kids’ games or events. She was able to host holidays and get-togethers. She was also able to keep up connections with people outside her family by having the flexibility to go to lunch with a friend.

With entrepreneurship, she’s had the flexibility to build strong relationships with her friends and family. Laurie’s family needed monetization, and she had the skills and talents to monetize so that she could take care of what mattered most to her.

“Money is not everything, but it ranks right up there with oxygen.” - Zig Ziglar

Laurie’s Passion: Relationships

Laurie said the biggest passion that she’s had all her life is relationships. “I carry that into business. I think that's one of the huge things that has helped me to succeed in the business world, but even before that in my personal life I've just always been one of those relationships people,” she explained.

Even from the time she was young, she had a focus on having lots of strong relationships with people. “Back when I was in grade school [and] in high school, I was the kid that fit into all the different groups and wanted everybody to just love each other and like each other and get along and be happy.”

She’s done the same thing in her family life. “I always wanted a big family. We had five children . . . and I was the one that always hosted Thanksgiving, Christmas, all the holidays [and] the family get-togethers. [I] always sent out pictures of our family for our Christmas cards. I've done that since I was little . . . and I just keep in touch with everybody,” she said. “Especially as the world progressed into social media and things. I think that's one of the best things in business, but it's also one of the best things to keep in touch with friends and family all around the world.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Laurie for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

People do business with those they know, like, trust, and remember.
Networking and networking groups are great ways to make business connections.
Sometimes we have to say yes and then figure it out.
Entrepreneurship allowed Laurie to provide for her family when they needed it, and it gave her the flexibility to be there for them too.
Technology and social media provide great opportunities to keep in touch with people and build strong relationships.

Connect with Laurie

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Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Andy Goldstrom. In the last episode, we discussed Andy’s entrepreneurial journey and lessons he learned about being a good leader, such as why leaders should always speak last. In this episode, we’re going to discuss four tectonic shifts Andy sees today and three actions leaders need to take to adapt to change, such as tectonic shifts.

4 Tectonic Shifts in the Market

Tectonic shifts are trends and changes in the market. Andy explained four tectonic shifts that are happening right now that we should be aware of.

Demographics

In the United States, there are two key demographics we should focus on.

“There are two rats going through a snake,” Andy explained. “They are the baby boomers, who are either retired or getting closer to retirement, and the millennials, who are going to make up more than a quarter of the workforce within a year or two.”

As baby boomers move into retirement, there is going to be a need for more retirement homes, financial services, health care, etc. As millennials move into the workforce, they are going to want to live in cities and want more convenience and accessibility. We need to know who we are catering to. “If you can point your arrow at either of those things, chances are you'll have some opportunity,” Andy said.

Technology

Technology is an obvious tectonic shift we have all seen.

As more and more technology is created, prices have dropped significantly, while the need for competency has gone up. “The changes in technology have allowed new businesses to pop up because the barriers to entry are lower, but also it's allowing all these businesses to scale,” Andy said.

Technology makes it easier for businesses to connect with a community. From their home, they can reach millions of people from across the world—essentially anyone with a computer. Technology provides fast ways to communicate, deliver information, arrange payments and meetings, and more.

Regulation

With the increase in technology, regulation has become an increasing shift.

“Because the competency [of technology] has gone up and the cost has gone down, the [next] trend is regulation,” Andy said. “With more technology, there's more ability to create fraud or create problems, and you've seen this well with all these scammers . . . So regulation from cybersecurity to monitoring technology is going to change quite a bit.”

Recurring Revenue

Finally, recurring revenue has become very important within businesses. Instead of relying on single payments from a product, subscriptions and recurring revenue give companies consistently and almost guaranteed income every month.

“Subscriptions [are] the revenue amount that you can count on which allows you to invest more in your niche and determine where you're going to make your investments,” Andy explained. “What your company is going to be worth is so much higher when you have recurring revenues.”

Adapting

It is essential for leaders to adapt to these changes and tectonic shifts. McKinsey created a recent study that looked at what the new normal is. In this study, there were five key elements that stood out to Andy.

Uncertainty is the new normal.
The winners are those who can adapt the fastest.
Leaders need to envision new opportunities.
You need to leverage talent.
Companies need to operate more efficiently.

With uncertainty as to the new normal, it is crucial for leaders to know how to adapt. Along with adapting, they must also be able to envision new opportunities as things change. These five takeaways from the study shows just how important it is to know how to accept and adapt to change.

3 Actions Leaders Can Take to Adapt to Change

Andy gave three things a leader needs to do in order to adapt to change.

Develop A Changing Mindset

A strong leader needs to have a changing mindset. “It's [about] changing your mindset of the way you lead,” Andy said. “People are used to leading in the same way [they did] five years ago. It doesn't work the same.”

We must have the mindset that change is inevitable and necessary. Change is often a good thing, not a bad thing. Once we recognize this, it will be easier to accept feedback and make the changes we need in order to grow our businesses.

According to Andy, there are four different biases many leaders have: Quantification bias, adrenaline bias, sophistication bias, and opportunity bias. These biases often get in the way of a changing mindset and must be overcome.

A quantification bias is disregarding good ideas or an opportunity because we can’t reliably calculate the return of investment (Source: Chief Executive). This often gets in the way of success as many great opportunities often require intuition and taking a risk.

An adrenaline bias is a lack of patience. It is thinking we don't have enough time to accomplish everything we need to and defaulting to the method that works the fastest.

Someone in this bias is “drawn to solutions that will have the most immediate impact, even if those solutions don’t address the underlying issues in the organization.” (Source: Chief Executive) Change often takes time. Once we escape the adrenaline bias and realize this, we will be able to make more effective changes in our businesses.

A sophistication bias is favoring the more complicated solution over the simple one. Someone with this bias thinks that better solutions always take more time and investment, but this isn’t always the case.

An opportunity bias is pursuing an opportunity based on instinct or an opinion formed without enough information. Andy explained, “They choose opportunities based upon what somebody tells them—the shiny object or what I call gut instinct or conjecture—as opposed to actual opportunities that really lead to business fitness.” Opportunity isn’t only based on gut instinct; we also need to prepare scientifically.

A changing mindset can’t get caught in these four biases. We need to always have an open mind and be willing to try new ways of doing things. There are limitless paths to success. Once we understand this, we will be much more open to change and new ideas. “A mind shift change can help leaders move forward,” Andy said.

Prepare (Scientifically)

As leaders adapt to change, they must prepare. “You have to prepare scientifically as opposed to based upon your gut instinct,” Andy said. This means we have to do our “homework” and research.

While there is opportunity found in “gut instinct,” it always requires preparation and research. Taking a business risk doesn’t mean leaping off a cliff and hoping for the best. It means researching the best method to get down the cliff and trusting that it works. Taking a risk still requires research, time, and effort.

“The best way to do your ‘homework’ is to talk to your existing customers,” Andy said. “Say, ‘I'm having to adapt my business’ or ‘I want to expand my business and you've been a great client. . . What's your feedback on it?’ That's the best way for new and prospective customers.”

While adapting to changes we can do primary and secondary research. Primary research means conducting our own research while secondary research involves looking at the research of others. Primary research often includes surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Secondary research often includes looking at research papers, academic journals, and other published works.

Once we prepare and do the research, we will be much more ready to adapt to change successfully.

Execute

A good leader needs to be able to execute.

“You have to be able to pull the trigger. You have to know when to move forward when to manage the risk appropriately, how to measure it, and you have to know how to say ‘no’ or how to . . . pull the plug on something that's just not working, rather than continue to fortify it,” Andy said.

A good leader must be decisive as they make the final decision. After recognizing change and undergoing the preparation for change, it eventually comes down to a choice. Is it worth it? Will the change be profitable or will it fail? Adapting to change requires the ability to weigh the pros and cons when making the final decision.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Andy for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

There are at least four tectonic shifts occurring today: demographics, technology, regulation, and recurring revenue.
A good leader needs to be able to adapt to change as we live in a world where uncertainty is the new normal.
In order to adapt to change, a leader must have a changing mindset. We must recognize that change is often a good thing.
Adapting to change requires preparation and research.
Ultimately, adapting to change comes down to a final decision. Will the change be beneficial? A leader must be able to execute the final decision.

Connect with Andy

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Andy, connect with him on his LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about his company, Midcourse Advisors, you can visit his website at midcourseadvisors.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What are the most difficult changes you had to make? Was it a success or failure? Why? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/103-3-actions-leaders-need-to-take-to-adapt-to-change/

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Andy Goldstrom is a business strategist, B2B growth expert, professor of entrepreneurship, and author. Over his career, he has built and sold fast-growing companies, including two that made it on the Inc. 500.

Today, Andy shares his entrepreneurial journey and what he has learned about being a good leader. Specifically, he’s going to teach us why leaders should always speak last.

Andy’s Entrepreneurial Journey

After Andy finished his undergraduate degree in computer science, he started working at GTE, which is now Verizon, but eventually discovered it wasn’t the right for him.

“It just took a lot to make decisions and get things done and add value,” Andy explained. “There was a lot of reorganization going on outside of my span of control or purview at such a young age, and I realized early on that it wasn't the ultimate fit for me.” He eventually learned through experience that he would excel in leadership positions.

Around the time he left GTE, companies were starting to outsource a lot more, especially in real estate. Andy saw a window of opportunity there and became the managing director and partner at USI, where they made a company’s real estate an asset as opposed to a cost center through strategic planning, transaction management, designing the construction, legal review, and database administration, and then sold it to the chief financial officer (CFO).

Eric explained success is a lot about timing with an entrepreneurial venture. “The timing was perfect. We actually were able to get a few customers who had very good interest and wanted to sign up with us before we even launched. So we were able to break even within six months,” he said.

As the company grew they were able to expand with their clients and work for companies such as Delta Airlines and United Technologies. However, once he saw changes in the marketplace as more companies wanted to go global and asked for more facility management, he decided to monetize the company and sold it to Johnson Controls.

“After Johnson Controls bought us, I became the executive in charge of a big region for Johnson Controls, including the facility management business, and I learned a lot . . . The number of people and the amount of revenue grew substantially in terms of what I oversaw and was $50 million worth of business,” Andy said.

Eventually, Andy left the company and searched for another business to help grow. He took over as the founder of a waste recycling company and helped their revenue grow 30% and their profit grows 70% within two years.

Andy helped both USI and the waste management company achieve Inc. 500 status.

Through his extensive journey in leadership and management roles, Andy continues to help businesses grow and adapt their business models as things change over the years.

Becoming a Leader

Through Andy’s entrepreneurial journey, he learned a lot about what it takes to be a successful leader. When I asked him what his biggest home run was, he told me it was inspiring others.

“It was an honor and a pleasant surprise when, more than once, people have said, ‘You're the type of leader I want to work for,’” Andy said. “If you're able to help others achieve their goals, and in turn, help yourself, there's no better achievement than that.”

One key factor that makes Andy such a great leader is understanding that a leader is only as good as their team.

“[I understood] that if I wanted to sell something, I was only as good as the people who were working with me and that I was a servant to them,” Andy said. “I'm not the smoothest talker, but I am very trustworthy and I deliver what I say I'm going to do.”

In order for a business to succeed and effectively monetize, the entire team needs to be working together with the same goal in mind. An effective leader helps his team learn and encourages them to share ideas.

“If you're going to grow it, you have to have the right people who are incentivized and developed in the right way so that they can do the work, so you can grow and scale your company. I always tried to set a good example for that,” he said.

Learning to Talk Last

A good leader should talk last. Let everyone share their point of view first, and then we can share ours. Not only does that allow us to listen before we talk, but it allows us to gather valuable feedback from our team members. It makes the feedback that we give much more effective when we fully listen to everyone’s ideas first.

When I asked Andy what his biggest mistake was, he told me it was speaking too soon in a conference meeting.

There was a time he was leading a senior team in a conference reviewing financials. During the conference, the CFO was presenting, and Andy felt like he knew what the right plan of action was based on the presentation. He ended up cutting off the CFO and didn’t give him the time he deserved for the work he had put into the presentation. This mistake impacted their relationship, and it took time to rebuild their trust.

“You have to be the last person in the room to talk,” Andy said. “You have to let everybody else have their say. That doesn't mean that they're the ultimate decision-maker. But everybody needs to have a contribution because that's what allows a company to build. It was a tough lesson but a good lesson to learn.”

One of the things I like best about speaking last is, if someone comes up with the idea you are going to say before you say it, you can give them credit for it. As a leader, this helps everyone on the team feel like a valuable player. The more comfortable and valuable everyone feels on our team, the more likely it will be that they will share other ideas in the future. A business should be run on collaboration, not a one-man-band.

In Andy’s consulting business, he works with many great people and leaders on the teams he is a part of. They all give great answers because they know the industry, but often they may have their own bias they are worried about sharing. If we can create an environment where everyone’s ideas will come to the forefront, we are doing it right.

“I find that transparency, the ability to understand the goals of the company and how everybody's contributing to it, and giving people [the opportunity] to bubble up ideas, creates innovation,” Andy said.

Once we create innovation and trust in our teams and businesses, we will have the confidence of knowing that when adversity hits, such as COVID-19, we don’t have to carry the weight of it by ourselves. We will have an incredible team to help us continue to operate in the toughest conditions.

Another advantage to speaking last is that everyone will feel heard. Even when someone shares an idea we don’t agree with, at least we have shown them we are willing to hear their ideas. We can also take the opportunity of the disagreement and better explain to them why we are doing things the way we are. It's a lot easier to swallow feedback if you know the person at least listened to what you had to say before they made that contrary decision.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Andy for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Success is a lot about timing and being prepared to seize the opportunity when the time comes.
Leaders need to know how to adapt to changes in the market, just as we are teaching with tectonic shifts.
Good leaders build trust by doing what they say they are going to do.
A leader is only as good as their team.
A leader should talk last. Talking last builds trust, openness gives room for feedback and helps everyone feel heard.

Connect with Andy

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Andy, listen to part two of this episode or connect with him on his LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about his company, Midcourse Advisors, you can visit his website at midcourseadvisors.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What is your strategy for being a successful leader? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/102-leaders-talk-last/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss an inspiring commencement speech Hugh B. Brown gave about coming to understand God’s method for helping us learn, grow and improve. All of us have challenges and trials. We each have times we feel cut down, and we need to remember that God is our gardener. He may cut us down, but he does so with the purpose of making us greater than we are now.

We will also look at five successful people who were fired before becoming rich and famous and how they continued on despite their challenges.

The Currant Bush

In 1968, Hugh B. Brown, an attorney, educator, and church leader, gave a commencement speech at BYU. He encouraged the graduating students to develop a personal relationship with God and to keep close to Him as they moved onto the next stages of their lives. As part of his message, he shared a story of a currant bush.

While Brown was on a farm in Canada, he found a currant bush. The bush had grown over six feet tall and showed no signs of blossoms or fruit, so Brown grabbed his pruning shears and cut the bush down until there was nothing left but a clump of stumps.

As he looked at what was left on the bush, he saw what looked like a tear. He asked, “What’s the matter, currant bush? What are you crying about?” And he thought he heard the bush speak. It seemed to say, “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as large as the fruit tree and the shade tree, and now you have cut me down. And all in the garden will look upon me with contempt and pity. How could you do it? I thought you were the gardener here.”

With that, he responded, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything. But someday, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to think back and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’”

Ten years later, Brown found himself in Europe as a field officer in the Canadian Army during World War I. One day there had been a casualty. The man standing between Brown and the rank of a general had been lost in war. The day after, Brown received a telegram from London from General Turner, requesting he be brought to his office the following morning.

Brown polished his boots and buttons and prepared himself for the meeting, expecting to be appointed an army general. However, when he went to London, the general roughly told him to sit down. He said, “Brown, you are entitled to this promotion, but I cannot make it. You have qualified and passed the regulations, you have had the experience, and you are entitled to it in every way, but I cannot make this appointment.”

With that, he left the room. Brown leaned over the table and looked at his personal history sheet and saw a sentence written at the bottom that had his religious affiliation written with each letter capitalized. They had denied him the position because of his faith.

On his way back to his tent, bitterness rose. He shook his fist at heaven and asked, “How could you do this to me, God? I’ve done everything that I knew how to do to uphold the standards of the Church. I was making such wonderful growth, and now you’ve cut me down. How could you do it?”

Then he heard a voice that sounded like his own. It said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything. And someday, when you are ripened in life, you are going to shout back across the time and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’”

Years later, Brown realized that if he had taken the position of a senior commanding officer, he wouldn’t have experienced many of the blessings he had later on in life. Now, looking back, he is able to say, “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down.”

God is our gardener. He knows what’s best for us and sometimes we need to be cut down in order to grow. We may not understand it at first, but God knows where He needs us to be. We just need to trust Him.

This same principle applies in business. As entrepreneurs with faith, we need to remember that God knows what is best for us. Sometimes our ventures may fail, or we may run into a dead-end where we have to pivot. We need to trust that God is in control and maybe using the failures to help us grow and lead us down a better path.

5 Successful People Who Were Fired

Many successful entrepreneurs were fired before they made their big breakthroughs. God had to “cut them down” so they could find a path that would lead to something better.

Elon Musk

Before Elon Musk became the founder and CEO of SpaceX, became the CEO and product designer of Tesla, and gained a net worth of $166 billion, he was “cut down.”

In 1999, Elon Musk started X.com, an online financial services company. He invested a large amount of money into the company as he took on his venture. However, in 2000, when X.com merged with a competing company to become PayPal, Musk was fired from his role as CEO due to disagreements (Source: Business Insider).

Only a couple of years later, in 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, a space exploration technology company that is now valued at about $74 billion (Source: Forbes). Then, in 2004, Musk joined Tesla and in 2008, he took over as CEO (Source: Interesting Engineering).

If Musk hadn’t been fired from PayPal, there is a chance he would not be leading SpaceX and Tesla. Sometimes it takes failure to be pushed into something greater.

Walt Disney

Before Walt Disney created one of the largest media companies in the world, a company that is now worth more than $120 billion, his editor fired him from the newspaper because he “lacked creativity” (Source: Business Insider).

This forced Disney to experiment with hand-drawn animation and eventually led him to start his first animation business, Laugh-O-Gram. When Laugh-O-Gram went bankrupt, it forced him to move to Hollywood and open his own studio. Then, when his distributor took the rights for his cartoon, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, it forced Disney to use his imagination and he created Mickey Mouse (Source: Walt Disney Archives).

Disney experienced multiple setbacks within his career, however, he didn’t let it stop him from moving forward. Each setback led him to a greater opportunity. We need to remember that sometimes we are stopped on the path we are on because God has something greater in mind for us.

“All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me,” Disney said. “You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he co-founded.

When Jobs was 21, he co-founded the Apple Computer, and by the time he was 23, he became a millionaire, but when he was 30, he was fired from his own company. Jobs and John Sculley had a power struggle, and in 1985, Apple’s board sided with Sculley (Source: ABC News).

However, this setback ended up being one of the best things that could have happened to him. While Jobs was away from Apple, he learned valuable lessons that helped him achieve his future success. In 1996, Apple Computer asked Jobs to come back to the company. Jobs returned as Apple’s CEO and led the company in the creation of great innovations, such as the iPod and iPhone.

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my life," Jobs said.

J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling was fired from her secretary position because she spent too much time daydreaming at work.

Business Insider reported that Rowling secretly wrote stories on her work computer while dreaming up the story of a teenage wizard named Harry Potter. However, this setback actually paved the way for Rowling to start her novel. Her severance check helped support her while she focused on her writing (Source: Bustle). Now, J.K Rowling is worth just over $1 billion and is the author of one of the most successful series ever written.

More than 500 million copies of the Harry Potter books have been sold worldwide, with 180 million sold in the United States alone (Source: MediaRoom). The first Harry Potter movie made $974.71 million (Source: Forbes) and all together, the films made over $7 billion (Source: ShowBiz CheatSheet).

However, it is safe to say that Rowling wouldn’t have been pushed to write the Harry Potter books if she wasn’t fired.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey was fired from reporting the evening news for Baltimore’s WJZ-TV. Her producer told her she was “unfit for television news” since she showed too much emotion (Source: Inc.).

However, this setback led Winfrey to work for a daytime television show, People Are Talking. The show became very popular and eventually led her to create her own show, the Oprah Winfrey Show. Her show has aired nationally for 25 seasons (Source: TVdb), and she’s currently worth about $3 billion (Source: Forbes). Being fired was one of the best things that could have happened to Winfrey.

"Wherever you are in your journey, I hope you, too, will keep encountering challenges. It is a blessing to be able to survive them, to be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other—to be in a position to make the climb up life's mountain, knowing that the summit still lies ahead," Winfrey said.

Trusting in God

As we trust in God and his plan for us, recovering from our setbacks will become much easier. God is our gardener. He may cut us down at points in our lives, but it is because He loves us. While we may be prevented from going down one path, the next path could lead to much greater things.

While Brown gave his speech to a group of graduates, we can apply this same lesson as we move forward onto new stages of our lives. As we come closer to God and understand His love for us, we will have the courage to continue on.

Brown said:

“Now some of you as you go forward is going to meet with disappointment—perhaps many disappointments, some of them crucial. Sometimes you will wonder if God has forgotten you. Sometimes you may even wonder if He lives and where He has gone. But in these times when so many are saying God is dead and when so many are denying His existence, I think I could not leave with you a better message than this: God is aware of you individually. He knows who you are and what you are, and, furthermore, He knows what you are capable of becoming. Be not discouraged, then, if you do not get all the things you want just when you want them. Have the courage to go on and face your life . . .”

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

God is our gardener. He knows what’s best for us and sometimes that means we need to be cut down in order to grow.
Sometimes our ventures may fail, or we may run into a dead-end. Instead of giving up, let’s learn and pivot.
Many successful entrepreneurs were fired before they made their big breakthrough. God may stop us from going down one path because He knows there is another path that will lead to greater success.
As we come closer to God and understand His love for us, we will have the courage to continue on His path for us.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

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Would you like to use your marketing team and resources more effectively? That’s what this episode is all about. Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Andrea Fryrear, one of the leading agile marketing experts, and the author of Mastering Marketing Agility. In the last episode, we discussed three core principles of agile marketing. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss 5 steps to implement agile marketing effectively.

1. Create Execution Teams

Agile marketing is all about collaboration, so to successfully implement it, we need to create execution teams.

“The execution teams are the people in the trenches. They're doing the work; they are responsible for delivering concrete stuff that makes up a marketing campaign. They're making emails, blog posts, landing pages, and social posts,” Andrea said. “They are ideally brought together with an important key purpose [and] reason to work together.”

Each team needs to have a core reason to be in the group together. Often, these groups are determined by the stages in the marketing funnel. For example, one execution team could be focused on demand generation while another could be focused on customer retention. Whatever the case, each team has a specific purpose that drives all of their activity.

All of the team members must learn how to work together efficiently. They should be setting goals together and making sure everyone in the group is on the same page. One way to do this is by constantly measuring their performance. Each team should have KPI measurement systems to help them stay on track with their goals.

“The [teams] work together every single day,” Andrea explained. “They're a unit—a real team that's driving towards these goals, and ideally, they have everything they need to be contained in their executive team to get work done so they're not dependent on a bunch of other groups. They are the people that are staying together and working on these high-level goals.”

Within our teams, we need to distribute different roles. For example, there needs to be a team lead—someone taking all the meeting hits for the team. We have to trust that our team lead will represent our work and bring back what we need to know. It is not a hierarchy, it’s different roles.

However, despite the different roles, it is very important to know what the bigger goals and objectives are, and focus on them.

2. Organize Strategy Groups

“A lot of agile [marketing] takes place at the team level,” Andrea said. “But in marketing, everybody's really interconnected. So whether you move to cross-functional teams or not, the teams rely heavily on one another to complete any kind of complex campaign or initiative.”

A strategy group is made up of the leaders of the execution teams to make sure everyone is on the same page. They meet together up to five times a week to make sure their teams are aligned, consistent and moving in the same direction. The meeting makes sure there are no issues that go unresolved. They can also meet with other people such as stakeholders, people from sales, and clients who bring in a representation for their business to hear what’s going on.

“[A strategy group] is not necessarily a solution or a feedback meeting. It's more of, ‘Are there any issues that everybody needs to be aware of? Are we about to do something that's going to derail everything you guys are working on?’ It's an alignment meeting that really helps a larger size marketing organization use agile better,” Andrea explained.

Agile marketing only works if there is clear communication within and amongst teams. Strategy groups are essential for aligning the different teams, while execution teams are essential for getting the hard work done.

3. Be Committed and Persistent

Within our teams, we need to be committed and persistent.

When I asked Andrea to share the secret to high-performing execution teams, she told me it is to be persistent. “[We need to] give them that space [and] give them that time to come together, and don't break them up after three weeks. That's not a team, in my opinion, that's a working group,” she said.

A study found that people need to work together consistently for six months before they can really build comfort levels and develop norms. Once a team feels comfortable with each other, efficiency, productivity, trust, and confidence go up (Source: ProSky).

“We always try to have teams write a charter or working agreement so we can say this . . . is how we're going to behave as a team. And we all commit to having the courage to call one another out if we're not living up to that. And so, you create this psychological safety—it's okay to speak up. It's okay to have crazy ideas; it's okay to speak your mind in a kind of considerate way,” Andrea said.

In Andrea’s book, Mastering Marketing Agility, she said a perfect agile environment puts emphasis on face-to-face interactions. While COVID-19 has changed things, a perfect environment still relies on the core purpose of what face-to-face interactions do: create connection.

We should set aside times to chat and get to know the other team members. There needs to be communication within our teams. We need to figure out what the connection points are and make sure they are never broken. This is where persistence is key. We have to be persistent in getting to know our team members if we want to find success.

Each team member needs to be 100% committed to their group. There shouldn’t ever be someone who is in multiple execution groups. No man can serve two masters. We need to prioritize people’s time on the most important things. We shouldn’t have people double prioritized—if people are sitting on multiple projects, they end up getting pulled in a million different directions. The whole point of these teams is to prioritize people's time and energy on the most important things, but when they're being double or triple prioritized, it destroys the whole focus.

This is the reason we need to watch out for the perils of pilots. Often when people try to implement a pilot, they grab people with the necessary skill sets and put them into that project. They then have to put 10-30% of their time into a pilot program, instead of focusing on their main goals in their execution team. Agile marketing wasn’t meant to work this way. It will only set us up for failure. We have to be committed.

“If you get the basics right, then [the teams] can become something amazing that you would have never anticipated,” Andrea said.

4. Determine Priorities

It is extremely important to know what the bigger goals and objectives are. Once we know our main goal, we can effectively prioritize.

In Andrea’s book, she explains that we need to have queues. Queues are often known as backlogs; however, Andrea wanted to rename it since backlog is often seen as a place where ideas go to die.

“The queue . . . is a prioritized to-do list for the team. It's not just a brain dump of everything. It's very strictly prioritized for the work that's going to deliver outcomes soonest—the things that are of the highest value and highest impact go to the top,” Andrea said.

The queue helps us focus our energy on the most important things. There needs to be a top priority at all times for us to work on. Priority is never plural. If someone suggests we start working on another project, we look at our queue and decide what is more important and valuable. Having this list makes sure we are getting the most important things done first, and not overwhelming ourselves with too many tasks at a time.

A really good way to help visualize the process of prioritization and workflow is using sticky notes. It is a simple visual process to help our teams get organized. There are also simple digital tools that work in a similar way such as Miro and Mural. They both allow you to play around with different ideas like we could with sticky notes or on a whiteboard. This process of planning makes it easy to move things around. Other effective tools are Trello, Monday.com, and Asana.

5. Make Checkpoints

A team that is successful in meeting its goals, doesn’t simply write a goal down and never come back to it. They consistently come back to their goals and evaluate their progress. In our teams, we need to create checkpoints.

“As you're taking a cross-country road trip, you have to know where you're going. If you don't know that you're trying to get to New York City, and you take off from L.A., driving haphazardly in some sort of direction . . . you're in big trouble because now you've got to redirect and there's a lot of wasted motion there,” Andrea explained. “That's what the annual plan is meant to do. It's meant to say we are trying to get from L.A. to New York. That's our big goal for the year.”

Every year we should be creating an annual plan for our teams. We need to decide what we want to accomplish within the year and determine our main goal. This plan is there to make sure we know where we are going.

We should also have quarterly planning to make sure we are staying on the right track. These “checkups” help keep the team aligned. “[These plans help us] start from this shared vision, which makes sure that we are driving in the same direction and not having to make these swerves that actually delay our arrival of where we want to be,” Andrea said.

In addition to the annual and quarterly plans, we need to have retrospectives. “Be very diligent about your retrospectives. Don't skip them; make sure somebody is running them and facilitating them well, and then act on what you learn,” Andrea said.

We should implement retrospectives about every two weeks. Within these meetings, we need to let everybody talk and share their ideas for improvement, and then do something about it. We have to take action, if we don’t our process will stagnate quickly. After each meeting, we should have at least one action item we can start to work on to make the ideas and improvements a reality.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Andrea for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Agile marketing is all about collaboration within and amongst teams. We should create and organize execution teams and strategy groups.
We need to be persistent in communication with our teams.
We should leverage agile project management software such as Asana or Monday.com.
We have to be committed to our teams and to achieving our main goals and objectives.
We need to determine priorities and have a queue.
We need to make checkpoints to make sure our team stays aligned with our goals.

Connect with Andrea

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Andrea, connect with her on LinkedIn or her websites, Fryrear.com and AgileSherpas.com.

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Today we are joined by Andrea Fryrear. Andrea helps innovative marketing leaders transform their teams into agile marketing powerhouses. She is the author of Mastering Marketing Agility, and the co-founder of AgileSherpas, where she helps business leaders implement marketing agility within their organizations.

In today's episode, Andrea shares three core principles of agile marketing.

Andrea’s Journey to Agile Marketing

“Like many marketing professionals, I did not go to school to be a marketer,” Andrea said. “I sort of fell into it. I have an English degree and took my first job as an editorial assistant for a newspaper syndicate. Then when they needed a website redesign, because I was the most digitally savvy person in the building, I was put in charge of that project.”

With website design comes the need for search engine optimization, which eventually leads to the need for marketing. As content marketing grew in popularity, Andrea’s English degree became very useful.

While she was working on a content team at a software company, she convinced her boss to let them try agile marketing. Her boss agreed and let her complete specific training to fill the new role. She started experimenting with her small marketing team and wrote about the process and her journey. Eventually, people started reaching out to her asking for her advice. Enough people reached out to her that Andrea was able to leave her software company and create AgileSherpas, something she has been working on for more than four years.

The content they create brings in all of their clients. Agility became the way to monetize content marketing.

What is agile marketing?

“Agile marketing is about setting up systems that allow you to deliver value to an audience faster and more consistently,” Andrea said. “It's a much more iterative continuous value stream than more of those old school styles of marketing work.”

It includes working with a team to identify high-value projects on which to focus our collective efforts. The teams often use sprints (short periods on intense work) to complete projects and then measure the impact afterward to continually improve (Source: Work Front).

Instead of planning a campaign for months that costs thousands of dollars and releasing it with the hope, it is a success, the goal is to get content in front of our audience right away and see what they think.

Once the content is distributed to our customers, we can get their feedback and input. If they like it, we can continue to build similar content. If they don’t like it, we can take their feedback and try something different.

Agile marketing focuses on responding to change while following a plan, implementing numerous experiments, collaborating without regard to hierarchy, and using tests and data over opinions (Source: Work Front).

“It’s really all about customer-centricity,” Andrea explained. “It becomes that ongoing point of connection. You de-risk a lot of your activities if you can test and learn in an agile way.”

Andrea gave three core principles of agile marketing: experimentation, radical transparency, and courage.

Experimentation

Agile marketing is strongly focused on experimentation and action. “It's things like a bias towards action—a bias towards experimentation and learning as opposed to ‘Well, we're going to do it this way because that's the way we've always done it,’ and it seems to work pretty well,” Andrea said.

Agile marketing is about trial and error. The goal is to learn from our mistakes, in the beginning, so we can produce successful content faster.

In order for experimentation to work within a team, there needs to be a high degree of trust and empowerment. Within the teams, the leader gives members a goal or objective to focus on and then sets them off on their own. We must be able to trust that every team member will do their best work to accomplish the task they are given.

The reason we do marketing this way is to deliver better value to the customer sooner.

“Agile became a way to communicate,” Andrea said. “It's like a conversation with your customer more often. [You] show them something and get their feedback and then take that into account for the next phase of work.”

We should always be focused on learning and adapting to the feedback we get from our audience. One of the biggest patterns to avoid is simply doing things the same way because “it’s always been done that way.” There will always be opportunities for improvement, and we will miss those opportunities if we don’t look for them.

Because agile marketing is so focused on adaptation and experimentation, it helps teams deal with organizing, managing, and optimizing uncertainty. The teams that are set up with an agile marketing system should be able to handle challenging situations better than others. When COVID-19 hit, Andrea saw that businesses that implemented agile strategies were able to get back on their feet a lot sooner compared to other businesses that hadn’t implemented agile strategies.

Radical Transparency

Radical transparency helps enable trust and accountability within the experimentation process.

“You have boards—visualized workflows that show you what's being done. You should have regular readouts where you say, ‘This is what we tried and this is what worked and what didn't.’ So you're not just letting [your team] go to work blind. You are still having a line of sight, but you trust that they're doing the best work that they can and you let them get on with it,” Andrea explained.

These visual boards help keep the team in line and on track. Having radical transparency creates a system of accountability. In addition, it also gamifies the system. As we complete goals and reach milestones, we get a shot of dopamine. The visual work helps create this feeling of progress.

If someone is struggling on their part and we can see they are stuck, we can ask what we can do to help, and find the problem right away, rather than having them struggle with it alone.

Another big pattern to avoid is withholding information. “You have to be able to create that focus, and unless you have it all out in the open, you can't do it,” Andrea said. “You've got to . . . say it's not about me—it's about the team's success. And if I openly share what I know and remove myself as a bottleneck, we can go faster as a group, and that's actually better for everybody.”

Courage

Implementing agile marketing requires us to be courageous.

“To put all of your work out in the open for everyone to see is a courageous act. For a leader to trust that a team or an individual contributor will do what they were asked to do in a timely and high-quality way is a courageous thing to do,” Andrea said. “To call out your teammates . . . you need to be courageous. They all require different kinds of courage, but being ready to step up and do what needs to be done helps make things go a lot more smoothly.”

We need to be ready to step up to the task at hand. It even takes courage to set our goals, estimate projects, and get our content out there because there is the possibility that we might fail. Courage is essential in all marketing strategies, not just agile marketing.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Andrea for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Agile marketing is designed to get value out to customers consistently and quickly.
Agile marketing is focused on experimentation. The goal is to learn from our mistakes, not fear them.
As we experiment, we can adapt to customer feedback.
Radical transparency is essential when working in a team. It helps everyone stay on the same page and move at a faster pace.
It takes courage to implement agile marketing and put our work out there, especially when there is the possibility of failure.

Connect with Andrea

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Andrea, listen to part two of this episode or connect with her on LinkedIn or her websites, Fryrear.com and AgileSherpas.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you tried agile marketing? If so, how has it worked for you? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/100-5-steps-to-implement-agile-marketing-effectively/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Justin Rondeau. In the first episode, we discussed the tectonic shift of Software as a Service (SaaS) and why businesses are shifting towards it.

In today’s episode, I asked Justin to talk me through his top secrets and strategies we should know when creating a new SaaS product. Here are three tips he shared:

Know the Problem

In order to begin creating a new SaaS product, we first need to determine what problem our product will solve for our audience.

Before developing a new product, Justin always asks, “Why are we doing this? What's the very specific problem we’re trying to solve by developing this product?”

Once we have determined the purpose of our product, and the problem we’re trying to solve, we can move on to the next step.

“Be very intentional about what you're trying to build, what you're trying to solve, and make sure you are certain that you have access to the audience that you're trying to solve those problems for,” Justin said.

Have Access to Our Audience and Get Their Feedback

After we have found a central purpose for our software, we need to make sure we have access to an audience who would actually buy it. We need to build demand before we create a code.

“Do you have any visibility in the space that you're trying to provide value in? Do you own the media and some of that space or are you starting completely from scratch?” Justin asked.

We can begin by offering free value to our customers in order to get a feel for what they want and like. Create a website. Create social media accounts. We should start building our audience even before we launch our software product.

“If I were to do anything over again . . . I wouldn't even start developing the tool yet [until] I started building up a content site or a media site to build an audience of people who would be interested in the tool I'd want to sell in about a year,” Justin said. “Once you have that list of people, you are able to work with them.”

Before we officially launch our product, we should start with a trial. We can do a walk-through with somebody and make sure it is simple and easy to use.

“Right at launch of something, regardless of the price point of the product, what you need to be doing is one-on-one onboarding with people, even if it's dead simple, and walk them through it, because that's going to give you conversations with the customer . . . to see what you missed.”

Once we get feedback from a couple of different people and make the necessary revisions, our product is ready to be initially launched and tested. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be launched. In fact, when we get our software out to customers sooner and get their feedback on how to improve it, that will help us to build much better software than if we were trying to build it in a vacuum without client feedback.

“Get constant feedback. Don't be afraid to get on the phone with people; don't be afraid to do anything. If you're not willing to jump on calls and do demos, you're in the wrong business,” Justin explained.

Keep it Simple

As we are building our product, we need to remember to keep it simple.

There is a power in simplicity. If we are willing to take the time to make our product simple, the adoption curve will go a lot faster. What are the features our audience is actually going to use?

Our product should be understood without a manual. If we have to really explain how to use it to our customers, we’ve failed. This is why implementing a walk-through is so important. It gives our customers a chance to show us what is missing. That is where we’re going to get our main breakthroughs. We need to have an onboarding process in the early stages.

“Keep it simple, stay on point, and avoid scope creep at all costs,” Justin said.

Scope creep means adding additional features to a new product that go beyond the agreed-upon scope (Source: Project Management Institute).

Sometimes we try to build our software with every single feature we can think of, but we don't realize our audience is only going to use about 20% of those features. By adding five times as much as they really need, we add an unnecessary and counter-productive level of complexity.

Disciplining ourselves to really identify the 20% of the features that our clients are actually going to use can help the development, growth, and profitability of our product.

Additional Tips

In addition to the three steps above, Justin gave me some extra tips to take into consideration when building a new SaaS product.

He explained that we need to create a solid hand-off process between development and product. We should create milestones and have a unified definition of what “done” is.

If we do this, the process will run much smoother as we have better communication with our teams.

We also need to be aware of how the market is changing. The SaaS market is becoming much more saturated. Because of this, it may be harder to get customers to subscribe.

“I've been finding a lot that people just don't want another subscription. So one of the things I've been doing is trying to find . . . those nuggets of things that could almost stand alone by themselves,” Justin said.

Instead of offering a single SaaS product, Justin makes sure to provide more value. He created additional products his customers could purchase for a flat fee—without a subscription. This was the first step in his marketing funnel. Once a customer entered the funnel—bought a product, he implemented a follow-up sequence. He offers them more. If they want full access to even more products that would help them, they simply need to buy a subscription.

“We're front-ending simpler pieces of technology, and then back-ending the larger subscription. That's been wildly effective for us, and that's what I've been starting to look at,” Justin explained. “How do we create these more hyper-focused single applications that work within our tech stack that we could then use to upsell later into a subscription? I think that's going to be more of a movement. You're going to see more people start creating one-off payment applications that then funnel into the overarching SaaS company or SaaS product they're looking at.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Justin for sharing your knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We should start building an audience even before we build our product. The most important thing to do to have a successful SaaS product is to have a following of targeted customers who know, like, and trust us before we launch our SaaS product.
Before we begin developing a new SaaS product, we need to know the problem that the product will solve.
We should create a demo or walk-through of our product and get customer feedback before we officially launch it.
We need to keep our product simple and avoid adding additional features that aren’t essential.
As the market is changing, it may be smart to offer hyper-focused, single applications that customers can purchase for a one-time fee. These hyper-focused products can then be used to up-sell later into a subscription.

Connect with Justin

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Justin or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn, email him at justin@scalable.com or find out more about his company at Scalable.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you created a SaaS product? If so, what is your best story and secret about the SaaS development process? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/98-how-to-create-a-new-saas-product/

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Justin Rondeau is the general manager for Scalable Labs and manages several software companies including Recess.io, TruConversion.com, Praxio.com, and powers the technology behind DigitalMarketer.com.

In today's episode, we’ll discuss the tectonic shift of SaaS and why businesses are shifting towards it. Many different companies have adopted SaaS because of the tremendous opportunity it provides to develop recurring revenue streams.

What is SaaS?

Software as a service (SaaS) is a way of delivering software online. Instead of installing and maintaining the software on our own computers, we simply gain access to it via the internet (Source: SalesForce).

SaaS customers usually pay a monthly subscription fee for access to the software (Source: Digital Guardian).

When we purchase software and install it onto our computer, we only own the specific version we purchased. But what happens when that software is updated? In the past, if we wanted the newest version, we would have to pay for it again and reinstall it onto our computer. However, now, when we purchase software as a service, we pay a small monthly fee to have access to the newest version of that software. When the program is updated, we get instant access to the updated version.

Adobe is one of the best examples of SaaS. We pay a small monthly fee for Photoshop (or their other software) and continue to get the updated versions, rather than buying Photoshop 4 and then, when they make a new version, have to repurchase Photoshop 5.

More than two decades ago, I was the CEO of a publicly traded SaaS company. Back then, we had to do everything ourselves from scratch. Everything involved custom coding. Now the world has changed. It's so much easier to create SaaS products than it was two decades ago. It has created a tectonic shift that many businesses are taking advantage of.

Here are some of the reasons businesses are taking advantage of SaaS:

The Benefits

The software is designed to solve a problem.

When Justin starts a new SaaS project, he asks himself, “What's the problem we're trying to solve? How is this software going to solve that problem?” Once he knew the problem, he would start building the software to solve it.

SaaS is designed to help us solve our problems while saving us time and money at the same time.

“The reason why a business would want [SaaS] . . . [is because] they have a need for something that needs to be done. And this tool does it. They don't have to pay massive upfront costs to build it themselves or have large license fees or anything like that. And then . . . they're never really out of date. It's always an evolving product, so they always have the latest edition,” Justin explained.

Time and Money

SaaS can save us time and money.

It is so much easier now than ever before to create SaaS products. Before, in order to create a product, we would need to rely on multiple developers who would code from scratch. Now, we can pull from other frameworks that are already out there. Something that would have taken days now takes minutes.

“Now you'd be able to create your own apps yourself without having to rely on developers,” Justin said. “[It’s] all based off of other frameworks that are out there . . . It would normally take multiple front-end developers to handle because they'd have to code from scratch. Now [we] can pull from libraries of different elements.”

The ability to develop our own software products not only saves time but also money. Instead of paying massive, upfront costs, businesses can build software themselves or pay small recurring fees to have access to constantly updated software.

“It takes minutes now. It's a different world, and that's why I think everyone's moving towards the software side of things because you can generate something fairly easily,” Justin explained.

As software is becoming easier and easier to make, it is starting to cost less.

Justin said, “It may have taken me $2 million to get my first product out the door when I started two decades ago. But nowadays, maybe for $200,000 you can get a great SaaS product out the door.”

In today's remote work environment, my companies, Adoption.com and Monetization Nation, don't even have physical offices for headquarters anymore. Everybody works remotely, and in that type of environment, a software product that is not SaaS or cloud-based makes it really hard to work.

For example, we’ve been using Google Docs and Google Drive for a long time. We migrated many years ago from Microsoft products to Google Drive for that reason. That SaaS product is so much better than a Microsoft document that is sitting on your computer. With SaaS programs like Google Docs and Google Drive, I don’t have to worry about having the recent version. I can also have four different people editing a document at the same time as it is shared on the cloud. This saves me time and money and makes remote, collaborative work so much easier.

Recurring Revenue

Justin referred to recurring revenue as the gold standard for a business, and SaaS makes it easier. However, as the market becomes more saturated, it can be harder to achieve. We need to be more intentional about what we are asking our customers to subscribe to.

“We always talk about getting recurring revenue and subscription revenue is one of the best ways to make sure you're going to stay in business. It is harder to front-end those types of offers though, to try and get people to take you up on a subscription. Especially now that people are more used to this in the SaaS economy,” Justin said.

Subscription is one of the best ways to have recurring revenue. At the beginning of each month we know we will have a certain amount of money deposited into our banks.

There are a million different things we can subscribe to. With so many options, what is going to make us choose one subscription over the other? For example, think of subscriptions to streaming services. There is Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Vudu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Peacock, Paramount Plus, and more. Which should we choose, and why should we choose one over the other?

If we’re going to charge for a recurring revenue stream, we need to make sure we are providing recurring value. How do we keep subscribers with us longer? We have to have a consistent reminder about why they decided to sign up. We need to be delivering great value all the time. This works best when our customers have a recurring problem that needs a constant solution, not something that is a one-time issue.

This is why so many people are willing to pay for a subscription to streaming services. Consumers have a constant need for entertainment, and streaming services provide constant new value. They also don’t necessarily all offer the exact same thing. For example, the only place we are going to find The Lion King or Mulan is on Disney Plus. The only place we are going to find a Netflix Original such as Stranger Things is Netflix. This is why it is so common for people to be subscribed to multiple streaming services.

So, are we providing consistent value? Are we providing value that our consumers can’t get anywhere else?

Think about resume builders. There are many resume builders out there that ask for recurring revenue. However, we really only need to build a resume once when we’re looking for a job. If we have a problem that can be solved in one day, we aren’t going to want to sign up for a subscription. How many of us are subscribed to a resume builder? Probably very few.

“Now there’s even dedicated SaaS services to unsubscribe you from SaaS products,” Justin explained. “It's getting so weird. I think we're running into a climate where recurring revenue is crucial to businesses, but it can't be it. You need to find other ways to bring in cash; it can't just be purely recurring . . . doing it on subscription revenue alone isn’t going to be enough going forward. ”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Justin for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

SaaS has become an important tectonic shift.
SaaS programs are designed to help solve a problem.
We don’t have to pay massive, upfront costs to build the software all from scratch.
SaaS is a great way to provide recurring revenue.
The SaaS market is becoming saturated.
We shouldn’t only rely on recurring revenue and should have diversified revenue streams.
To maintain subscription revenue we need to provide constant and unique value.

Connect with Justin

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Justin or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn, email him at justin@scalable.com, or visit his company website at https://scalable.com. You can also watch, listen, or read episode two of Justin’s interview for more stories and secrets.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you developed or marketed a SaaS product? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/97-why-businesses-are-shifting-towards-software-as-a-service/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Louis Grenier. In the last episode, we talked about finding success through great business processes. In this second episode, Louis shares four essential elements of customer-focused marketing.

Obsess Over Our Market

Obsessing over our audience is essential in marketing. “You first need to have a minimum viable market that you can obsess over,” Louis said.

A minimum viable audience is the smallest possible market we can serve while still sustaining our growing business (Source: Guerric). Marketing is all about finding a specific niche group we can provide value to.

In order to be successful, we need to meet our market's needs. To do this, we should think about everything from their perspective. What problems can we help solve and how? What goals can we help them achieve and how? The best value we can offer is answers to these two questions. We should go out of our way to build a relationship with them and provide this value.

Ask Customers the Right Questions

Once we have a viable market, we need to start asking the right questions. Louis gave some examples of good questions to ask our customers:

What channels are you hanging out on?
What type of people influence you?
What was the reason you picked us over the competition?
What, if anything, has stopped you from learning from us?
Tell me about the very first time you ever thought about using a product like ours. What was the journey?
What are your pet peeves about our industry?

“Once you can paint that picture from existing customers, it gets quite easier to pick the people that you seek to serve and understand where they hang out and the type of channels you need to work on,” Louis explained.

The easiest way to figure out what we need to improve on is by asking questions to our existing customers. We can also take it a step further and ask questions to people who have bought products similar to ours. Louis suggests focusing on open-ended questions and questions about the past rather than the future.

Above all else, our questions need to focus on the customer’s journey—the journey that led them to us. Why did they start thinking about us? That's what matters. Once we know this, we can stop guessing and come up with a strategy based on life, not “boardroom bullshit” as Louis put it.

The process of understanding the buyer’s journey needs to be more than “data-driven.” “The problem with [being] data-driven is that it could become an obsession, where you always need more data. And that's a problem I see a lot of,” Louis explained. “You will never have perfect data. As a result, you need to have a threshold, a standard of decision, where once you have enough, once you've talked to five customers, you don't need to interview five more . . . My problem with data-driven is it could be endless.”

Another problem with being data-driven is sometimes getting the wrong data. It also can take the focus away from the people. Data isn’t always about the people. We need to look at the right data to make sure it's obsessing over our market with the goal of helping them.

We can use Google Analytics every day, but that’s not necessarily going to help us understand our customers. A lot of data can be misunderstood. I’m not saying all data is bad and useless, in fact, it can be very helpful. What I am trying to say is, go beyond the data. Ask direct questions to your customers and get direct answers back.

Another tip Louis gave is to not outsource the data analyst. Don’t hire someone to go over the data for you. Read through the responses yourself. At the end of the day, designing the question is the most important, and we can only do this if we know a little bit about our customers.

Talk to the right people and ask the right questions. Don’t use analytics as a crutch.

Use Storytelling to Drive Success

We can use storytelling to drive success.

“Humans are learning and processing information better when it's about a story because that's what we're used to,” Louis said. “We tell each other stories so we remember stuff.”

When we hear a story, our brain creates visuals, audio, and emotions, helping us to remember it better (Source: Brandignity).

In our businesses, we can tell stories to leave a strong impact on our customers and help them remember us.

“Weaving learning into a story makes learning more interesting, activates the brain’s positive emotional state, and hooks the information into a strong memory template. The memory then becomes more durable as the learning follows the narrative pattern through sequences connected to a theme, time flow, or actions directed toward solving a problem or reaching a known goal.” (Source: Edutopia)

Most stories follow a very similar structure. There is a character with a problem who meets a guide to help them beat it. In our stories, our main character, our hero, is our customers and we are the guide. It is our job to help them solve their problem.

Being able to express the problem that they're facing can help differentiate our product. We need to find the problem and be able to effectively communicate a solution that resonates with our audience. We can do this by telling a story.

Storytelling won’t solve all their problems, but it will help. And remember, we need to solve their problems, not ours.

Give More Than We Take

When I asked Louis what his number one best monetization strategy is, he said it is to stop thinking about monetization and think about how we can help our people the best way possible. How can we be the best service possible? We shouldn’t focus on the money; We should focus on serving people, and then the money will come naturally.

“Marketing is about generosity. You can't expect to take before giving,” Louis said. “Generosity is the name of the game here. Switch your mindset from trying to take from people, [to] giving [to] people . . . The more you give, the more you're going to get.”

Once again, it goes back to obsessing over our market and providing them with value. We can offer free value through things such as eBooks, blog posts, videos, and more. Only after we establish our credibility and value with free service, can we ask for anything in return.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Louis for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Obsess over our minimum viable market.
Determine our customer’s problem and provide the solution.
Ask customers the right questions to understand their needs.
Our questions should focus on the customer’s journey—the journey that led them to us. Once we know this, we can stop guessing and come up with a strategy based on life.
Tell stories to drive success.
In our stories, our customers should be the main character. We should be the mentor that helps solve the main character’s problem.
Stories help us remember things better and help us feel a stronger connection.
We need to give more than we take. We need to focus on serving our customers, not the money.

Connect with Louis

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Louis or connect with him, you can find him on his website, everyonehatesmarketers.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How has obsessing over your customers help your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/96-4-essential-elements-of-customer-focused-marketing/

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Today I am joined by Louis Grenier, founder of the popular contrarian marketing podcast, Everyone Hates Marketers. His show has reached more than 1 million downloads with no ads in less than four years. He has 10 years of experience in marketing and has worked with businesses like Dropbox and Hotjar.

Today, we will learn how to drive success with great business processes.

Louis’ Story

Louis studied mechanical engineering until he realized it wasn't quite for him, and he eventually moved to Ireland for an internship and found a job in marketing. A few years later, he had saved up enough money to launch his first agency. He learned quickly just how difficult that can be. The four people that worked with him got burnt out and quit after two years to join another business.

Louis continued to work on his startup for three years and eventually started Everyone Hates Marketers on the side. He published an episode every week which became a huge success, and he has now been podcasting for four years and has published 175 episodes. “It wasn't part of the grand plan or grand design,” he said. “It was just a feeling that I could do this, that it could be quite fun.”

The Process

“I believe that the process trumps everything else, meaning what matters is not the number of downloads—that's just a vanity thing,” Louis said. “Yes, it's a bit for my ego and a bit for status so that you find me credible, but what matters the most is [producing content each week] because, without that, I wouldn't have gotten the feedback I got from early listeners.”

Louis’s early listeners told him what they liked and didn’t like on his podcast. He could then take their feedback and apply it, adjusting his podcast to fit the needs of his listeners. While the critics might have made him feel uncomfortable or irritated at first, it ultimately helped him grow.

He compared the process to the making of a pearl. A pearl begins to form when a small piece of sand or other irritant gets stuck in an oyster. The oyster begins to cover the sand in a protective coat, nacre (a mineral substance), and layer upon layer, a pearl is formed (Source: Live Science). This process can take up to four years (Source: American Pearl).

“The process is more important than anything. Because by shipping and putting that grain of sand out, it's not perfect, but it's going to turn into apparel because that's what makes you grow. You need to ship,” Louis said.

He explained the number one thing we need to do is to ship, meaning we must constantly create and send out our services, products, or our content. Being prolific is more important than being perfect. We just have to get our content out there. That's number one. This requires us to be patient. Success doesn't happen overnight, just as a pearl can’t be created overnight. It takes time. It has taken Louis four years to get to the point where he is today, but the process was worth it.

“The key is if you don't show up, if you don't ship something, if you don't stop caring about what people will think before it’s live, you can't really grow it. Nothing is real until the people you seek to serve see it,” Louis explained.

Getting Feedback

We have to learn from our audience. We're not going to be perfect the first time we go out there, so we've got to learn lessons from them. It's not just about our audience seeing our content, it's about them giving that feedback and then taking their feedback and iterating and pivoting based upon that.

After Louis’ podcast became successful, he launched an eight-week program. He described it as a “high-intensity program for risk-takers who want to really stand out.” He starts by running an early access cohort to get feedback and then applies that feedback to the second cohort he runs. Because he learned the value of feedback early on, he has been able to use it to his advantage and his second cohort sold out.

The goal of the program is to provide people with a roadmap to launching or relaunching a product and making it radically different. The biggest takeaway people get from his program is clarity. After completing his program, they aren’t worried about missing out on opportunities. They feel confident in making decisions for themselves for the rest of their entrepreneurship journey.

“All I've been doing is just learning from my own mistakes, reading a lot of books, interviewing a lot of smart people in my podcast, and making sense of it,” Louis said. “And so in that sense, creativity is connectivity.”

A great way to learn is to look at examples of people who have succeeded in what we want to do, and then apply some of their principles. We take portions of inspiration from the different people around us and use it towards our own success.

Louis’s greatest home run has been his podcast. For the first time in his life, he followed his gut and didn’t second guess himself. He went all in. He didn’t let the critics pull him down, but used their feedback to improve.

Understanding a Key Fundamental of Business

One of Louis’ other keys to success has been to focus on business fundamentals.

“I'm going to tell you that even though there are shifts happening, and I could pick a few, [putting] the audience first is absolutely one, radical transparency is another one . . . But what matters the most, above all else, is your ability to navigate those shifts without being scared,” Louis said. “Once you understand the fundamentals, you can basically do anything you want. You can really see anything coming and evolve if you want to and change things around because you have this foundation.”

Change through Tectonic Shifts

The fundamentals of business are things that will never change. One key fundamental Louis emphasizes is people. “People are never going to change,” he explained. “We are creators that have been created through 4 billion years of evolution. Our brain is the result of all of that. 20 years of smartphones or 10 years of smartphones is not going to change our DNA and the way our brain is done.”

The most important thing is understanding the fundamentals: taking care of the people. The second most important thing is understanding how to identify and leverage shifts as they happen and as they're appropriate to us. There will always be new changes, and the ability to identify and leverage them as appropriate without changing our core fundamentals is important.

“Once you obsess over a specific group of people, you have a market,” he said. We need to identify our audience, our people, our tribe, and obsess over them. And then if we can leverage shifts to better serve them, great. If not, don’t worry about it. It all comes back to that core of obsessing over our people.”

We don’t have to jump on every single trend or tectonic shift that occurs. That would be impossible and overwhelming. We only need to change when the tectonic shifts affect our people—our fundamentals.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Louis for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The process trumps everything else.
It is more important to get our content out there and ship it instead of waiting for perfect content.
Being prolific is more important than being perfect.
We have to learn from our audience and accept and implement their feedback.
There is creativity in connectivity.
The most important thing is understanding the fundamentals: taking care of the people.
We don’t have to jump on every single trend or tectonic shift that occurs. We only need to change when the tectonic shifts affect our people—our fundamentals.

Connect with Louis

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Louis or connect with him, you can find him on his website, everyonehatesmarketers.com. You can also watch, listen, or read episode two for more monetization strategies Louis shared in his interview.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

How have business processes helped drive your success? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/95-how-to-drive-success-with-great-business-processes/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the inspiring story of Moses and how he used delegation to become a successful leader.

The Story of Moses

Moses was a prophet called of God to do His work. God spoke to Moses in a burning bush and called upon him to save the children of Israel from the bondage of Egypt. The Israelites had been slaves of Egypt for 430 years, and after much pain and sorrow, Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, told Moses he could take his people and go.

Exodus chapter 14 is one of the most known in the Bible. While Moses led the Israelites to freedom, Pharaoh took 600 chariots and pursued them, trapping them against the shores of the Red Sea.

As Pharaoh’s chariots and horses marched towards the Israelites, they became afraid and cried out unto the Lord. In verses 13 and 14 Moses said, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you today . . . The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”

The Lord commanded Moses to lift up his rod and stretch his hand over the sea to part the waters. As Moses followed the command, the Red Sea divided and the children of Israel walked upon dry ground to safety.

When we are told this story, it often comes to an end in Exodus chapter 14. Moses saved the Israelites from slavery and led them to God’s promised land. The end. But it doesn’t end there.

Moses just saved a lot of people. Exodus 12:37 says, “Now the sons of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children.” If the 600,000 number is only the men, then including women and children, we can assume there were millions of Israelites with Moses.

Exodus 14:31, says the people “believed the Lord, and his servant Moses.” The millions of Israelites were all looking to Moses for guidance.

Leading the Israelites

With the guidance and direction of the Lord, Moses became the leader of all the Israelites. Exodus chapter 18, explains that Moses went to judge the people and listen to them from the morning until evening.

When Jethro, Moses’ father in law, saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.” (KJV Exodus 18:17-18) In other words, Moses was sitting in judgment alone and trying to do everything himself. He had not learned how to delegate.

Jethro counseled Moses to teach the ordinances and laws of God and to show them the way, but to also provide able men to be rulers over them and help judge. He said, “But every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.” (KJV Exodus 18:22)

Moses was an incredible leader, but in this situation, he was doing too much. He was taking on all of the burdens and doing everything alone. Not only is this exhausting, but also less effective and efficient. He listened to Jethro’s advice and appointed other judges to help him. With that help, Moses could help many more Israelites.

We can learn from Moses’ leadership and example. Being a leader doesn’t mean taking on every task ourselves. It also means delegating tasks to others. I like to tell my managers that their job is to get the job done, not to do the job themselves.

The Art of Delegation

Entrepreneurs are leaders. Building a startup business often requires entrepreneurs to be involved with many different aspects of the business at the beginning: sales, finances, marketing, content creation, customer service, staffing and management, strategy, and more. Like Moses, we may take on too much, but we need to remember that we don’t have to do it alone. In fact, we shouldn’t. Learning and applying the art of delegation will make our work go along much more effectively and efficiently. Delegation is essential to success.

Andrew Carnegie, an industrialist and philanthropist who led the expansion of the American steel industry and became one of the richest Americans in history said, “No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.”

In order to grow our businesses, we need to hire team members to do certain tasks and take responsibility for us. By getting help with the day-to-day responsibilities, we will have more time to focus on our higher priorities. When Moses was judging the people by himself, he spent morning until the evening working. However, when he appointed other judges, he had a lot more time to work on more important things. Freeing up time will also reduce stress and exhaustion, thereby improving our workflow.

With more team members, we will also have more talent, creativity, hours, and ideas to work with.

Richard Branson, an author, investor, and business magnate said, “I learnt from an early age the need to delegate responsibility out to other team members as there is just too much for one person to do themselves. What is the point of hiring talented team members if you don’t give them the freedom to make the most of the chance you have given them?”

We may have a lot of great ideas. We may have many talents. But, we will never have as many ideas or as many talents as a group of 20 people, or even three.

In a study of 143 CEOs, it was found that those with a higher talent in the delegation had an average three-year growth rate of 112 percentage points higher than those with low delegator talent. Those with a high delegator talent also generated 33% greater revenue than those with a lower delegator talent (Source: Gallup).

When we delegate effectively, we actually increase our chances of success and monetization.

Delegation doesn’t just mean handing off tasks to those around us while we watch them do it. We need to be a good delegator, something that requires us to help them be successful. This includes providing training and resources, authority, offering feedback, trusting, setting clear expectations, and ultimately, taking responsibility for the final results.

“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.” - John C. Maxwell, New York Times Best Selling Author

Moses and Delegation

Moses learned early on that he didn’t have to do everything on his own. He was eventually able to use delegation to be a successful leader.

In Exodus 35 to 39, Moses used delegation to speed up God’s work. God commanded Moses and his people to create a tabernacle, or place of worship, where the Israelites could make offerings unto the Lord. He also provided very specific instructions about how to do it. Moses gave these instructions to the people, and most people helped. Moses didn’t try to do everything himself.

In chapter 35, all of the Israelites provided offerings of materials to help build the tabernacle. “And they came, everyone whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the Lord’s offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments.” (KJV Exodus 35:21)

The women spun fine linen, rulers brought onyx stones and spice, and others brought jewelry, gold, brass, and more.

Then God appointed through Moses, Bezaleel and Anoliab, and every wise-hearted man, to be put to work to help build the tabernacle and altar. “Thus was all the work of the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation finished: and the children of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did they.” (KJV Exodus 39:32)

If Moses had tried to build the tabernacle himself, he could never have done it himself, even with a lifetime of work. However, because he effectively delegated the work to others, they were able to build the tabernacle in a much shorter period of time.

Just as Moses used delegation to speed up God’s work, we can use delegation to help grow our businesses and become successful leaders.

Key Takeaways Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Moses was able to effectively and efficiently accomplish God’s work when he delegated tasks out to others.
Like Moses, we don’t have to do everything by ourselves. A successful leader and entrepreneur need to be an effective delegator.
If we delegate day-to-day tasks, we will have more time to focus on higher priorities.
If we delegate tasks, we will have more talent and ideas to work with.
Delegating tasks helps our businesses grow faster and increases our chances for success and monetization.
To be an effective delegator we need to be involved. We should be clear about our expectations, provide training and the resources our team members need and take responsibility for the final outcomes.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive Entrepreneurs of Faith each Sunday.

Subscribe to the free Monetization Nation eMagazine.
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Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story How do you effectively delegate to your team? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/94-how-moses-used-delegation-to-become-a-more-successful-leader/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Daniel Burstein. In our previous episode, we talked about customer-first marketing and how putting our customers first is vital to our business sustainability. We also shared how to help our customers perceive the value of our products and services.

In this episode, we continue our conversation with Daniel where he tells us some of his secrets of successful content marketing and how to leverage digital products.

The Biggest Tectonic Shift Affecting Business Owners Today

Daniel believes today’s biggest tectonic shift is the shift to the empowered consumer. When he started in the advertising industry more than 20 years ago, advertisements were more like one-way conversations from companies to potential customers. The advertisers and the brands had most of the power and control. This was essential because they could get their messages out and broadcast them.

In the past, customers had only limited opportunities to share word-of-mouth referrals. If they were unhappy, they would tell one, three, or maybe 10 people. Now, customers are empowered and use digital tools to share their opinions. This is why we have to understand how important a customer-first marketing strategy is. Our goal isn't just to sell a product, this would be short-sighted. Our real goal is to have a successful customer. When we have a successful customer, and they refer us to their friends, we're going to have a much greater chance of sustainable business success.

Having Successful Customers is Our Goal

Our goal is not to sell a product; our goal is to help the client be successful. This is more important today because clients have more power than they've ever had. If we have enough successful customers, we will probably have positive customer reviews. This will drive more business and give us more credibility. But if we have too many unhappy clients, we’re not going to survive for long. Thanks to Google reviews, Yelp, Facebook, and other platforms out there, the customer is empowered like never before. If we're not creating true value for our customers, it's going to get out there, and ultimately will ruin our business.

Leveraging Digital Products in the Business

Daniel believes we’ve become used to digital products and so we take them for granted. However, he thinks it’s against human nature to buy a digital product. When we sell a digital product, it's all about perceived value. Take books as an example. When we go into a bookstore, we can see the book, flip through it, and get a feel for it. With an ebook, all a customer sees is an image on the screen. We must realize that customers don't perceive digital products as we do.

We need to ask ourselves, “How can we test our products with customers and understand how to communicate that value to them using the four elements we talked about before: appeal, exclusivity, credibility, and clarity?” Daniel believes the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make with digital products is they assume that customers perceive the value just as they do.

“Treat your content like a product.” - Drew Davis, author of “Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships”.

Secrets of Content Marketing

Over 41% of Americans use an ad blocker (Source: neilpatel.com). Since content is usually not treated as an ad, it has a much better chance to get the message across without being blocked.

Daniel spent a lot of time in content marketing in his career. I asked him to share with us his best secrets of content marketing.

Content is Not Free

Daniel’s first secret is that content isn't free. Oftentimes companies think that when they do a free webinar, a free email newsletter, or a free blog, customers will be rushing in, which is not the case. When we talk about content, we need to look at our content as an actual product, a digital one. We need to ask what we can do to create a value proposition for this content even if it's only a free webinar or a free email. Customers may not be paying money for this content but they’re still paying with their time and attention.

Give Value Away for Free

The second secret Daniel gives for successful content marketing is to give value away for free. If we’re looking to monetize digital products, we need to know where the cutoff between free and paid is. Daniel gives an example of having a digital course that has 20 sessions. The cutoff here would be to give two sessions for free. Then we can take information from those two sessions and turn them into webinars every month.

Another way to know if we have good content is when we have really good interaction with our audience. This means asking questions on social media or email. This is also where we need to decide when we can treat those questions as paid services or helpful engagement.

There is an Abundance of Good Content

Daniel noticed that when companies start with content marketing, their struggle is that they think they don't have any content. What they don't realize is that many companies are content-generating machines. This content can be the questions that they’re already answering for customers, an area where a lot of content is already being created. We need to look at the content we’ve created or we’re creating and develop a content marketing strategy.

The Most Effective Ways to Monetize Content

Daniel believes that when it comes to monetizing content, it’s simply about putting in a lot of hard work. We need to create something that has a unique value in the marketplace. So, the competitive analysis would be the biggest thing we have to do. The first thing we should do when we’re working on a paid content offering is to start with a landing page. We should create a landing page that has the four elements in it: it's appealing, exclusive, credible, and it's clear.

We also need to look at competitors, because this is what customers are doing. We want to put the page we’re creating for our content against the other offerings of other competitors. And when we have an appealing offer that is exclusive, credible, and clear, that's when we have a chance to succeed with our monetized content offering.

In the end, Daniel believes it’s important to remember that we are more than just our jobs and our roles. In his case, a marketer during the day, a person, a dad, and a husband at night. And so, he encourages people to bring their whole selves to work and realize that they’re people too. A lot of times marketers are failing because they act as marketers only and forget all their other dimensions. They write in ways they would never talk to other people. And this is how they think of their products. Daniel advises us to think of ourselves when we’re selling our products. What would an actual real person think about this? How would they react if I was talking to a real person, instead of talking like a marketer or writing on LinkedIn? How would I talk about this? What would I say if I was in physical proximity to someone if this wasn't digital?

Our end goal is to create value for our customers and communicate that value.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Daniel for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Our goal is not just to sell a product, our goal is to help the client be successful.
If we're not creating true value with our products, the word is going to get out there, and ultimately it’ll ruin our business.
Content is a very crowded marketplace. We must ask ourselves what our value proposition is and what customers are willing to pay their attention and interest for even if there's no monetary cost.
A lot of times our biggest failures come from having that blind spot from working in our office where we're only looking at our digital products and digital offerings and forgetting that there are real people just like us on the other side of what we're doing.

Connect with Daniel Burstein

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Daniel or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/danielburstein or visit the MECLABS website meclabs.com

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Share Your Story

How do you market and monetize your content? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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When customers have great experiences, they want to buy more and are more likely to remain loyal. A positive customer experience often results in positive word-of-mouth referrals. 73% of customers say a good buying experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties (Source: PwC).

Daniel Burstein is the senior director of content and marketing at MECLABS Institute. He oversees all content marketing coming from the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa brands, while helping to shape the marketing directions for MECLABS Institute, digging for actionable discoveries while serving as an advocate for the audience. Before joining MECLABS Institute, Daniel was Vice President of MindPulse Communications—a boutique communications consultancy specializing in IT clients such as IBM, VMware, and BEA Systems. Daniel has 21 years of experience in copywriting, editing, internal communications, sales enablement, and field marketing communications.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss customer-first marketing and how we can help our customers see the value of our products and services

Customer-First Marketing

Daniel is passionate about what he calls “customer-first marketing”. This is an area where MECLABS Institute has done a lot of research. Daniel said there are many different ways to succeed as a marketer. However, from different studies and research, they’ve done, they’ve found one of the most successful things we can do is put the customer first. As marketers, it’s part of the job to ask for a conversion. Daniel believes the best thing we can do is go back to our team and ask, “What can we do to put our customer first?”

MECLABS conducted a research study on 2,400 consumers to determine how they perceive companies. The research found that the customers who could perceive that their needs were being put first were more loyal to the company, more satisfied, and more likely to be repeat customers.

Daniel said the most important question we need to ask whenever we need to make difficult decisions, is the question of how we can put the customers’ needs first, while also achieving our business goals.

“Building a good customer experience does not happen by accident. It happens by design.” - Clare Muscutt, Founder of CMXperience

Actual Value Vs. Perceived Value

It’s important to understand the difference between the actual value and perceived value. Marketers have to communicate to customers the perceived value of the products a company is creating. This is the reason why we have content marketing and marketing in general. That’s why marketing plays a vital role in value perception. If marketers don’t do a good job and show the customer the value of what they’re offering them, they will likely choose another company.

Though the difference may seem subtle, it’s really important that our customers can see the value we’re providing. I see this happening all the time when companies provide so much value to the customer but they fail to communicate this value to the customer effectively. As a result, this makes it much harder to make the sale.

We can't just provide value to our customers. Our customers have to perceive the value we are providing.

What is Your Sign Out Front?

Just as luxury real-estate companies invest a lot of money in the sign in front of the development, we as entrepreneurs must ask ourselves, “What is our sign out front, and what does it say about our products?” Our “sign” can be our website or a free version of a premium course we’re offering. This sign has to indicate to our customers that what we offer is what they’re looking for. It has to help them perceive the value of our products.

Trust Through Transparency

Daniel mentioned the research from Michael Norton, at Harvard Business School, who spoke earlier at their event. In his research, he talked about what he calls “trust through transparency”. Once again, it comes down to value perception. A lot of times people don't understand what went into making the product or service they're buying. This includes the many years of experience we’ve accumulated to be that good at what we do.

If we’re trying to monetize our content, we need to show all the work that went into creating the content in order to help customers and potential customers perceive the value of what we’re offering.

The Conversion Sequence Heuristic

MECLABS Institute has patented methodologies based on research done to understand the factors that go into customer decisions. The MECLABS Conversion Sequence Heuristic is a framework of five factors on which marketers need to focus their optimization energy.

Daniel focuses on the “D factor” which represents the force of the value proposition. There are four elements that affect the force of the value proposition. Daniel believes these elements are critical when we consider monetization. Because then we have to build a value proposition for our product. It's even more difficult when it's a digital product when customers can't just walk into a store, pick up a book, flip it around, and perceive its value. That’s why, with digital products, we need to make sure we're communicating the value proposition right.

The four factors that form the force of the value proposition are appeal, credibility, exclusivity, and clarity. When we’re trying to create the value proposition for a product, we have to ask ourselves how we rank on these four different factors to a customer.

1. Appeal

First, we need to ask if our product has appeal. After we’ve created something that has appeal in the marketplace, our customers will want to know why and how our claims will work.

2. Credibility

We need to look for ways to add credibility to our product. This can be achieved through some third-party certifications, customer reviews, or testimonials. This is also where content marketing can come in.

3. Exclusivity

After we’ve created an appealing product that people believe in, we need to think about exclusivity. If everyone else is selling our product, it'll be a commodity that we won’t be able to sell at a higher margin. This takes us back to building the value proposition for our product. We must ask, “What is the exclusivity that we bring to this niche that no one else does?” It’s about finding out what differentiates our product.

4. Clarity

The fourth element is clarity. We can have the most appealing, credible, and exclusive product but without clearly communicating these values, the customer won’t care. We won’t be able to get their attention and convert it into interest. Daniel’s advice is to look for the exclusive value we offer in the marketplace and make it the headline.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Daniel for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

If we don’t put customers first, they won’t put us first.
If there’s one question we have to ask, it is, “How can we put the customers’ needs first, while also achieving our business goals?”
It’s important to show our customers all the work and experience that went into creating our content so they can perceive the value we’re offering.
To make sure our products have exclusivity we need to ask, “What is the exclusivity that we bring to this niche that no one else does?”
What is exclusive and appealing to one customer is not going to be to another customer. That’s why it’s important to identify and target our ideal customer.

Connect with Daniel Burstein

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Daniel or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielburstein/ or visit MECLABS website, meclabs.com

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Share Your Story

How do you help your customers perceive the value of your products and services? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/92-customer-first-marketing-and-how-to-help-customers-perceive-the-value-of-our-products-and-services/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Tim Ash. In the last episode, we discussed how to create a successful landing page. In today’s episode, Tim explains his entrepreneurial journey and the lessons he learned along the way.

Tim’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Tim was born in the former Soviet Union and moved to the United States when he was about 8 years old. His family ended up in California, and he eventually attended school at the University of California San Diego. He double-majored in cognitive science and computer engineering in graduate school. For seven years he worked towards a Ph.D., but eventually realized it wasn’t something he wanted to pursue. After he dropped out from completing his Ph.D., he started up his own business, helping people launch new startups, serving on their boards of directors, and raising their first rounds of venture capital.

He thought he could be more successful doing his own thing so he bought a desk and office space and took a leap. He was so excited. He said, “I remember . . . I called up my girlfriend and said, ‘Hey, I’m running around the office naked. You know why? Because I can; It's my frickin office.’”

For the last 25 years, Tim has built his own business from scratch—a journey he has referred to as a rollercoaster. Along the way, he started an international conference series, became a published author, and started keynote speaking. “It's been a lot of what you'd call pivots or just adjustments—wrenching adjustments. The survival enzyme has been running professional services firms for a long, long time,” he said.

In his journey, he has learned three key principles every startup entrepreneur should know and apply.

1. Know When to Accept Criticism

Over the past years, Tim has learned how to balance criticism and suggestions from his peers. It is a tension he has had to navigate many times.

There are always critics. People can think of a million reasons why our idea isn't going to work, and sometimes, we just have to push through it.

“I guess the one thing that stands out for what to do, all of that from an entrepreneurial standpoint, is this balance between saying, ‘Screw you, I'm going to do it anyway,’ which every entrepreneur needs, and throwing good money after bad saying, ‘You know, maybe it's time to go do something else.’ That's always the tension . . . People call with a thousand reasons why your ideas are not gonna work. And at some level, you have to plow on in spite,” he explained.

So where's that fine line? How do we know when to listen to people when they say our ideas are dumb, and how do we know when to ignore them and just keep moving forward?

A meme that has stood out to Tim is, “Never take criticism from someone you wouldn’t go to for advice.” - Unknown

He listens to the mentors and colleagues he respects, then tries to ignore the comments of everyone else.

When I started my first business, adoption.com, people told me my market was too small and my niche was too specific. They said I needed to pick a bigger market. I ignored them and went with my instincts, and we ended up being number one in our niche and category. There will always be naysayers. Part of being an entrepreneur means ignoring the doubts and trusting our gut. There's a lot of wisdom to sometimes ignoring the people that don't quite understand why we're doing what we're doing.

However, there is also wisdom in accepting criticism and making changes. In fact, we should advocate for testing different ideas. Just because something isn’t in our brand guidelines doesn’t mean we can’t test it out. The style guide or brand guide CAN be changed, and if multiple people are making the same suggestion, we shouldn’t let pride get in the way of trying something new.

Part of being an entrepreneur also requires us to be very clear about who we serve and what value we can offer to them. Having that laser focus allows us to cut through the clutter. If we truly understand our niche and our audience, it will be easier to ignore the doubts of the people around us.

On our journey, there will be times when we want to give up. It is natural, especially when it feels like we don’t have support from the people around us. Tim has had experiences just like this. “There were definitely several times when it gets harder to be an entrepreneur,” Tim said. “[But it comes with] belief in yourself that you get after being an entrepreneur for a long time.” Eventually, entrepreneurs learn to really trust themselves and their ideas.

2. Understand your “Superpower”

Learning to trust ourselves and understanding our strengths is just as important as understanding who we serve.

No superhero has every superpower. This same principle applies in business. Everyone has their own strengths. It is about finding our superpower and focusing on that. Nobody can be an expert in everything. As we move along on our journey, we will recognize what we are good at and eventually learn how to rely on ourselves.

“You can't be an expert at everything,” Tim said. “What I'm talking about is your ability to cut through the clutter and for people to remember what you stand for.”

3. Determine and Follow Marketing Ethics Before Money is Involved

Once we learn how to navigate through the critics and find our purpose, value, and strengths, we can determine what we stand for. As an entrepreneur, it is important to determine our marketing ethics right off the bat, especially before the money is involved.

“I think that we really need to step back and think about ethics,” Tim said. “One of the reasons that I wrote Unleash Your Primal Brain was kind of to level the playing field for consumers and individuals. We're being manipulated by large companies, by media enterprises, and they're all trying to strip mine us for value and profit.”

For example, I see a lot of people put a timer on an offer to create scarcity. They claim it is only available for a limited amount of time, but then the next day, that same offer comes up, creating artificial scarcity to manipulate people into buying. We need to question this stuff before we do it and ask ourselves if we will be okay with the results before the money even becomes a factor.

Tim saw an example of this manipulation when a business hid a disclaimer about their service or product. A business he worked for put the disclaimer in the heading of the page so people wouldn’t see it. The guidelines required to put the disclaimer above the CTA button, so they weren’t technically breaking guidelines, but they were trying to be dishonest by hiding the truth.

As we determine our values, we also need to look at our ethics. Marketing ethics ties into credibility. If credibility is the most important marketing principle happening today, is it ethical to say or do something that, when our customers discover the reality, will cause us to lose credibility? Is it ethical to give them a fake deadline? If our customers notice this, we immediately lose trust and credibility, ultimately leading to a loss in monetization as well.

As starting entrepreneurs, it is essential to navigating criticism. If we can’t, our ideas won’t make it very far. We need to find our superpower so we can provide value to our audience. And finally, we need to determine our ethics at the very beginning to make sure we keep our credibility and do what we know is right.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Tim for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We need to be able to sort through the good and bad criticism.
We should only take criticism from people we would take advice from.
We need to make sure we aren’t so prideful that we ignore good suggestions.
We need to learn how to trust ourselves.
We each have our own unique “superpower”. We need to discover what that is and learn how to use it to benefit our customers.
As an entrepreneur, it is important to determine our marketing ethics right off the bat, especially before the money is involved.

Connect with Tim

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Tim or connect with him, you can visit timash.com. For more about his latest book, you can go to primalbrain.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Tim Ash is a keynote speaker and best-selling author who has worked for top companies around the world. His knowledge of persuasion and online marketing has produced more than $1.2 billion of value for his clients.

He has presented at over 200 events across four continents on stages with more than 12,000 audience members. He was a co-founder and CEO of Site Tuners, a strategic digital optimization agency, and the founding chair of the international Digital Growth Unleashed event. He has helped brands such as Google, Facebook, and Expedia develop successful marketing initiatives and has authored more than 100 published articles. His most recent book, Unleash your Primal Brain, was released last month.

In today’s episode, Tim explains some of his secrets about creating successful landing pages.

The Holy Trinity

In order to create a successful landing page, there are three key questions to ask ourselves. Tim’s “Holy Trinity” of landing page optimization includes the following:

What is the page about?
1. The first thing we should know is what the page is about.
2. This should be the headline.
3. We should know what the benefit of the form is.
4. Often, this is the sub-headline.
What is the form asking me to do?
1. The CTA should fulfill the visitor’s needs.
What happens when I press the button?

Answers to each of these questions are essential in building a great landing page. We need to determine a purpose and provide a distinct Call to Action.

Purpose

A successful landing page needs to have a purpose.

Tim defines a landing page as “any page that has significant potential to have economic value flow through it” and channels significant traffic. This means a landing page could be a campaign stand-alone page, the homepage of our website, a catalog that’s indexed in shopping search engines, or a product detail page. Whatever the case, each landing page needs to have a specific goal and purpose.

What problem is our landing page going to solve? Or as the number one question in Tim’s Holy Trinity asks, what is the page about? Our landing page needs to focus on one specific goal. This purpose could be to raise awareness about a product or to get our customers to subscribe to our email list. Whatever the case, we have to make our purpose clear to our audience the second they land on our page.

The biggest mistake Tim sees people make is not addressing the needs of their audience. “The biggest mistake that I see marketers continue to make is that we're talking about stuff that's in our own self-interest as marketers. You know, ‘We're great,’ ‘This is the world's best solution.’” Tim explained. “It's really [about] having that user-centered focus . . . A well-designed landing page is going to address the needs of the person. And only by doing that, can you make more money as a business.”

Whether we want our consumers to watch a video, send an email, download an eBook, or make an appointment, it needs to be persuasive and focus on the visitor.

We need to understand exactly who we are talking to. Who is my tribe? What are their values? The same story can have two very different meanings depending on the person and their cultural background. In order to make sure we are getting our message across, we must understand who our audience is.

“The question is, does [our landing page] meet the needs of the intended audience, and do a high percentage of visitors act and do the thing that you want them to do?” Tim said. “The point of the landing page is to align with the goals of the visitors and to have them take action.”

Within the marketing funnel, our landing page is an essential element. The marketing funnel is a business process with steps, often starting with customer awareness and leading to purchase.

Call to Action

A successful landing page needs to have a Call to Action (CTA).

A CTA is the part of our landing page that tells our audience what we want them to do. This could be a form they need to fill out to “Subscribe Now” or a link that says “Read More” and directs them to our blog posts.

Here are some examples of a CTA:

Subscribe here for FREE weekly newsletters
Read more here
Sign up now
Follow our Twitter
Watch this video
Book your appointment today for 15% off
Contact us today for a FREE consultation

The best CTAs (calls-to-action) often start with an action word, create a sense of urgency, and tell our audience what’s in it for them (Source: SproutSocial).

Questions two and three of Tim’s Holy Trinity are: What is the form asking me to do? What happens when I press the button? We can also ask ourselves, where is the traffic going? Where do we want them to go? The CTA should answer these questions.

Visual Clutter

A successful landing page needs to avoid visual clutter.

The second biggest mistake Tim sees on landing pages is visual clutter or “visual boogers” as he calls them. “[Visual clutter] is death by a thousand cuts,” Tim said. “We start decorating [our pages] with drop shadow on the button, or just obnoxious extraneous detail and ‘visual boogers,’ I call them, all over your page and not having a sense of priorities. To me, landing pages should have a zen-like stillness, out of which the Call to Action naturally arises.”

To get someone on our website, we often need to interrupt them and fight for their attention. But once a visitor is on our website, it needs to be calm. We no longer need to compete for attention on the page. We need to simplify, simplify, simplify. We need to make our core message clear. For everything, ask, “Why is this on the page?” It should all have a purpose that goes back to our central goal.

“Figure out what's important, make that more visually prominent, and tone everything else down,” Tim said. “I'd say that taking a machete to all of the clutter on your website is step one.”

One tool we can use is a heat map to help determine what visitors aren’t using, and then go through and remove all the elements people aren’t clicking on. However, even before that, we should have the discipline to strip the access away so everything is visible on just one page (whether that be a laptop screen or phone screen). We shouldn’t have to scroll. If we do, we can cut more stuff. We should only have things on our landing page that answer the three questions in Tim’s Holy Trinity to landing pages.

“The visual priorities are, what's the page about? That's the headline. What's the form asking me to do? That's the form sub-headline. And what happens when I press the button? And that should be stated in terms of what's useful to the visitor. What do they get? So, if you have those three things as your top three visually prominent things on the page, you win, and anything else just needs to go,” Tim explained.

Trust

A successful landing page needs to establish trust.

Trust has to precede the conversation. “Another thing that marketers can take advantage of is badges that indicate various kinds of trust. Whether it's a transactional trust or third party credibility or testimonials, awards, that kind of stuff can be really, really powerful. Instead of you saying you're great, get other people saying you're great,” Tim said.

One of the most important things is our approach. The biggest mistake we can make is designing our page to focus on our own interests and toot our own horn. We don’t want to make our landing page an ad. We must have an outside-in mentality, meaning we are user-centered. As we do this, we build trust with our visitors and they will be more likely to complete our CTA.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Tim for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Our landing page needs to have a single, central purpose.
Our landing page needs to be focused on solving a problem for our audience.
Our landing page needs to have a strong CTA (call to action) with clear benefits for our visitors.
Our landing page needs to be simple. We need to cut out the clutter. Everything on our page should align with our central goal.
Our landing page needs to establish trust.

Connect with Tim

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Tim or connect with him, you can visit timash.com, and listen to part two of this episode. For more about his latest book, you can go to primalbrain.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What elements do you include on your landing pages? Do you implement the same key elements Tim does? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/90-how-to-create-a-successful-landing-page/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Ramon Ray. In the previous episode, we discussed five ways to use failure to our advantage. In today’s episode, Ramon shared about his most recent book, The Celebrity CEO.

Here’s a great example of the power of a celebrity CEO. When I ask people if they know the name of the CEO of Tesla, the vast majority of people correctly answer Elon Musk. I then ask people if they know the name of the CEO of Ford or the CEO of Toyota. I have never had anyone successfully give me the name of either.

Elon Musk is a celebrity CEO. For example, he has 52 million followers on Twitter. Compare that to only 33,000 Twitter followers for the CEO of Ford. And, I couldn’t even find an official Twitter account for the CEO of Toyota when I searched.

So, what’s the value of being a celebrity CEO and having all that reach and influence?

Ford has more than 3,000 dealerships. Toyota has more than 1,500 dealerships just in North America, not including the rest of the world. On the other hand, Tesla doesn't have any traditional dealerships. Tesla customers purchase their vehicles online

Ford was founded 118 years ago. Toyota was founded 84 years ago. Tesla was founded only 18 years ago, yet according to a December 2002 article in TheDrive, Tesla reached a market valuation more than the next 6 largest car companies combined. Tesla’s valuation today is approximately $650 billion. The power of a celebrity CEO has played a huge role in the success of Tesla, and in this episode, we’re going to learn how to become a celebrity CEO.

What is a Celebrity CEO?

You don’t need to be famous to everyone to be a celebrity. You simply need to be well-known inside your circle. An entrepreneur can become a celebrity in two ways: being well-known in their niche or in their geography.

“That's the aspect of being a celebrity. It’s not that everybody in the world knows you like Beyonce . . . or whoever it may be, but that your people know you. That's the beauty of Celebrity CEOs,” Ramon said.

In order to be a successful Celebrity CEO, we must become a brand, use self-promotion, build a community, and then use the marketing funnel.

Become a Brand

Entrepreneurs need to become a brand.

Who are you?

Contrary to what we might think, our audience isn’t just buying our products or service, they are buying us. In order to create digital monetization, we need to create a personal brand.

“For most small companies [or] for very small businesses, people are buying me,” Ramon explained. “People are buying my handshake, my smile, my life, how I talk, how I don't talk, my faith, my lack of faith.”

Building a brand starts with a purpose. What problem are we solving? What question are we answering? Once we know our purpose, we can create a brand. We need a certain style, a logo, font type, color, a business name, a trademark, and more. But beyond this, we need to focus on becoming our personal brand.

One way to do this is through our physical appearance. This isn’t about being a model. It’s about representing ourselves, our beliefs and values, by the way, we dress and act. We can ask ourselves, “What makes me different? What makes me stand out?”

I think we are a lot more critical of ourselves than we are of other people. If we stop and look at our role models, we will realize that none of them are perfect. We expect perfection from ourselves, but not from others. We shouldn’t put that standard on ourselves. We don’t need to be perfect. In fact, if we try to impersonate this perfect version of ourselves, we won’t resonate with our audience. We won’t seem credible or authentic.

Part of personal branding includes embracing our complete selves. We need to be real. When we are real, people will trust us more. Ramon calls this being magnetic.

“You have to be who you are. Part of that magnetism is a little bit of bravado, naturally, is a little bit of what makes you different,” Ramon said.

There is something about us that attracts us to others—what is it? Is it because we are thoughtful, energetic, introspective, bold? We need to use what God has given us to draw people towards us.

Self-promotion

Entrepreneurs need to focus on self-promotion.

Becoming a Celebrity CEO requires a celebrity mindset. To be successful we need to be willing to put ourselves out there. We have to recognize the need for self-promotion.

“I promote myself, and I hope it comes off in a nice, authentic, beautiful way,” Ramon said. “That's part of [having] a Celebrity CEO mindset: promoting yourself, telegraphing what you're doing, when you have a win, sharing it with your community, and building the fan base, building the community and rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.”

While we are promoting our business, we can’t forget to promote ourselves. That doesn’t mean being arrogant, stuck up, or self-absorbed. It means recognizing our value and sharing it with others.

Ramon explained self-promotion is his game and business. He consistently shares his stories on social media platforms. On his Instagram, he posts IG stories; on his Facebook, he posts videos. He also posts on his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. In a three to five-day period, Ramon shares several different videos.

“[For] those who want to be the celebrity CEO, yes, it's about your business. Yes, it's acknowledging your team . . . But on the business side, how do I make a living with the big brands I work with? I promote myself.”

Build a Community

Entrepreneurs need to build a community.

Ramon says the secret sauce of personal branding is to “ask for a smile before you ask for a sale.” We shouldn’t focus so much on the sale but on the needs of our audience. In order to build a community, we need to earn their trust.

“So many times we go for the sale first, the sale first, the sale first; we don't take time to say, let me just ask for a smile. That's so much easier to get than asking for a sale. And part of that aspect is building community. Part of that aspect is building my fan base,” Ramon said.

As we build trust with our customers, we can eventually get them to purchase our product or service. The secret is to build a fanbase and community before trying to convert customers.

Implement the Marketing Funnel

Entrepreneurs need to implement the marketing funnel.

After we become a brand, promote ourselves, and build a community, we can then implement more marking principles to monetize our brand and community.

People often ask, “How can I use my websites and social media platforms to build an audience that, at the end of the day, will give me a sale?”

Ramon says it starts with narrowing the trust gap. “Before I ask somebody to buy something from me, what I suggest is, use the digital tools that we have to offer something to someone, find out . . . what their real problem is, and say, ‘Let me educate you further about it. Let me give you a nibble about it. Let me help you get a taste of what I can do for you.’ Now they've taken a nibble. Now you can educate, educate, educate, educate, educate, until they buy from you, and you've narrowed the trust gap.”

The marketing funnel typically falls into these six steps:

Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Intent
Evaluation
Purchase

Before anything else, people need to know about our product or service and develop an interest. Once they have developed interest and consideration, we need to get people to start consuming our products. This is often done through free content such as eBooks, podcasts, blog posts, videos, images, and more. We can call these pieces of free content “investments”.

We give things away for free so we can ask for something in return such as a customer’s email (our lead capture) and eventually, money. Once we have a customer’s email, we have our leads. With these leads, we can continue to send newsletters and targeted emails, encouraging our loyal customers to buy our products. Without them, we have no way to nurture relationships.

To effectively use social media to build our brand, Ramon suggests four things: frequency, engagement, relevancy, and analytics. We need to constantly produce content, engage with our customers, meet our customers’ needs, and then, we need to use analytics to determine what is working and what isn’t.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ramon for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We don’t need to be famous. We simply need to be well-known inside our circle.
People are buying us, not just our services or products.
We need to become our own personal brand.
We need to build a following and community before trying to convert customers.
We should be focused on “asking for a smile before asking for a sale.”
We need to narrow the trust gap by providing our customers with valuable content.
We need to focus on using lead magnets.

Connect with Ramon

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ramon, connect with him on his website, ramonray.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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How do you build your personal brand? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/89-how-to-build-a-personal-brand-and-become-a-celebrity-ceo/

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In today’s episode, I was privileged to interview Ramon Ray, an incredible global keynote speaker, entrepreneur, best-selling author, event producer, and event host. He's the founder of SmartHustle.com, which inspires and educates small business owners like me.

Ramon has shared the stage with business icons such as Seth Godin, Daymond John, Simon Sinek, Gary Vaynerchuk, and many others. He has interviewed President Obama and joined Ivanka Trump at the global entrepreneur summit in India.

Over his extensive career, Ramon has written thousands of articles, spoken to thousands of business owners, and impacted hundreds of thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs to help their businesses thrive.

Today he shares his personal story of how failure helped him find success.

Ramon’s Story: Pushed into Entrepreneurship

Ramon studied business administration in college and worked full-time at the United Nations for more than 10 years. During his time at the UN, he was promoted to the administrative officer. However, his career path at the UN wasn’t a good fit for his entrepreneurial spirit.

Ramon started a few small companies while at the UN and was eventually fired. “I got fired from there, and that kind of pushed me . . . into going full-time entrepreneurship, and that's where I kind of had to learn books,” Ramon said.

Many entrepreneurs I've spoken with have been fired from previous jobs and just like Ramon, that firing or failure gave them freedom. It forced them to start on the path of an entrepreneur.

Sometimes we need failure to push us towards where we need to be. Sometimes God closes doors so he can push us in a better direction. Nobody is great at everything. We change the world through the unique talents and gifts God gives us. We must embrace what we are given instead of focusing on what we lack. It takes a journey to realize the gifts that we can share with the world.

Here are five ways we can use failure to our advantage.

Use Failure as a Way to Discover Unique Strengths

We can use failure as a way to discover our unique strengths.

“Your purpose in life is to use your gifts and talents to help other people. Your journey in life teaches you how to do that.” - Tom Krause, world-renowned baritone.

We will fail. Failure is a guarantee in life. We must accept that we will make mistakes and acknowledge our weaknesses. We can’t be good at everything. Once we accept that, we can use that knowledge to determine what makes us unique. Failure helps us find what we are bad at, and then, what we are good at.

I asked Ramon to share one of his best secrets about his monetization strategy. He told me it is to personalize and humanize our brands. “Let me be who I am; I’m not going to be for everybody,” he said. “Those who want me will see what I'm doing and ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. They will buy, and it's worked every time.”

We won’t be right for everyone, but we will be right for somebody. We must find what makes us unique. It’s not about being like everybody else; it’s about finding our personal strengths that make us stand out. Those things will attract the right audience.

Failure allows us to figure out what our strengths are. It teaches us how to use our personal gifts and talents.

One of the most important things to do in digital monetization is to build a community and personal brand. We can impact a small but powerful group of people. We don’t need to be world-renowned or good at everything to make an impact. We need to find our group of people we can help. To do this, we must use failure to find our unique talents and gifts that will resonate with others.

When we mess up, move on gracefully. We need to accept our failure and learn from it.

See Failure as an Opportunity to Learn and Grow

We can see failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” - Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company

Failure gives us the chance to recognize how we can improve. It forces us to adapt and grow. Failure is an opportunity.

In a 2018 study, researchers tried to determine the best method for studying. They had two groups of students complete a test. One group guessed the answers first and then got feedback. The second group studied by memorizing information. In the end, the students who guessed first and then got feedback did better than the students who simply memorized information.

“The researchers theorized that this is ‘because the students who guessed first were better able to reflect on their incorrect guesses and study the correct answers for the test.’” (Source: Water Ford)

Ramon explained he had made many mistakes while trying to grow his business. One mistake he made was using his credit card too much and going into debt.

“I think, some days I wish I would have spent money better,” he said. “Do I wish I would have done some things differently? Yes. Do I wish I would have taken time to think better, think slower, be more methodical? Yes. But I'm here talking. I'm alright.”

Because he made the mistakes he did, he was able to learn from them and not make the same mistake twice. It has allowed him to better save money and know where to spend his money.

Failure can help us understand things better when we learn from our mistakes. As Thomas Edison said, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Reflect on Our Mistakes

We can reflect on our mistakes.

“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” - Margaret J. Wheatley, American writer, teacher, speaker, and management consultant.

The only way to really learn and grow from our mistakes is to reflect and ask ourselves these questions: Why did I fail? How can I do better?

A study found that students who study in a way that allows for mistakes through self-reflection can increase critical thinking skills (Source: Water Ford). This same thing can apply to entrepreneurs. As we work in a way that allows for mistakes, we can continue to increase our skills.

As we embrace failure and reflect on what went wrong, we learn. Then we try again until we succeed.

Let Failure Build Persistence, Drive, and Determination

We can let failure build persistence, drive, and determination.

“Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try another approach is the secret of winning.” - Denis Waitley, American motivational speaker, consultant, and best-selling author.

Failure teaches us to keep trying until we get it right.

Nigel Barber, an evolutionary psychologist and contributor to Psychology Today, wrote, “People who fail repeatedly develop persistence in the face of difficulties . . . only people with extensive histories of failure could survive the difficulties that (some) individuals endured.” He continued, “With success, people keep on doing the same thing. When they fail, they are forced to adapt and change. That is not just a human characteristic but constitutes a basic feature of how the mammalian brain works.”

As we try, again and again, we develop a drive and persistence that will help us accomplish great things later in life. We learn to never give up. Whether we succeed in attempt one or 100, it doesn’t matter, as long as we allow each attempt to build character.

We must also recognize our wins as they come—no matter how small. It will help give us the motivation to push on.

Let Failure Build Courage

We can let failure build courage.

“The one who falls and gets up is stronger than the one who never tried. Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.” – Paulo Coelho, novelist, best known for The Alchemist

Don’t let fear of failure hold you back. Too often we’re afraid of rejection. Be yourself. Be authentic. Not everyone will pick us, and if we’re comfortable about that, we will be much happier. People will resonate with our message.

“There's so many lessons learned with just being ourselves,” Ramon said. “Everybody's not going to pick you and if you're comfortable with that, you're going to be much happier in the end.”

We must embrace our strengths and our failures. We must accept what makes us unique, as we talked about in the first tip. It's not about being like everybody else. It's not about sterilizing our message because we’re afraid that what we say is going to offend someone else. It's our unique personality (weaknesses and strengths) that is going to attract the right opportunity. It's going to create these points of connection.

Don’t run or hide from failure. We must let it make us courageous and brave. We must step out of our comfort zone. We can’t sit around idle waiting for the good to happen to us because we are afraid that if we take action, we will mess up. Try, try, and try again.

“Why wait for someone to call you?” Ramon asked. “Heck with it. Let me do my own event and call myself.”

Don’t wait around for life to happen—make it happen.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ramon for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We all have unique talents and gifts.
Most times we need failure to push ourselves towards where we need to be.
Failure is inevitable. It is how we react that helps lead us to success.
We must personalize and humanize our brands.
Failure gives us a chance to grow.
To learn from failure, we must reflect on our mistakes.
We need to recognize our wins—no matter how small they are.
Not everyone will pick us, and if we’re comfortable about that, we will be much happier.

Connect with Ramon

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ramon, listen to part two of this episode or connect with him on his website, ramonray.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What have you learned from your failures? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/88-5-ways-to-use-failure-to-our-advantage/

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“If there is a Golaith in front of you, that means there is a David inside of you.” - Carlos Rodriguez

This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the amazing underdog story of David and Goliath how entrepreneurs can learn from David to conquer their Goliaths.

The Story of David and Goliath

1 Samuel chapter 17 in the Bible tells the story of David’s victory over Goliath. In the Valley of Elah during the year 1063 B.C., two armies faced each other. On one side was the army of the Philistines and on the other King Saul’s Israelite army. Though the armies were somewhat evenly matched in the number of soldiers and skill, the Philistines had one thing that Saul’s army didn’t: iron.

The Philistines had been able to keep their knowledge of smelting and fashioning iron into formidable weapons of war a secret. Iron was far superior to the brass weapons of King Saul’s army.

During this time, it was common for champions to challenge others from the opposing forces to single combat. In fact, there had been several battles decided by individual combat.

One of the champions of the Philistines was a man named Goliath of Gath. His height was six cubits and a span, which is about nine feet tall. “He had a helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail . . . And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.” (KJV 1 Samuel 17:5-7)

Needless to say, Goliath was a fearsome man. Twice per day for 40 days, he called out to the armies of Saul, saying, “Choose you a man for you and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.” (KJV 1 Samuel 17:8-9)

Saul, the King of Israel, and the Israelite army were afraid and did not accept Goliath’s challenge. However, there was one who wasn’t afraid. The young shepherd David told Saul he would fight Goliath as he had fought lions and bears that had threatened his flock. Saul offered David his armor, but David refused. David prepared for battle by finding five smooth stones and taking them and his sling with him to meet Goliath.

Goliath taunted and mocked David. David said to Goliath, “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee.” (KJV 1 Samuel 17:45-46)

“When the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.” (KJV 1 Samuel 17:48-50)

Then, the Philistine army turned and ran. The Israelite army pursued and won the battle.

Force Multipliers

Like David facing Goliath, entrepreneurs also constantly face many challenges and obstacles. The Philistine army had leveraged the tectonic shift of iron, which gave them a huge competitive advantage.

I don’t have any experience with the military, But, I have been told that when one army has a competitive advantage over the other army, that competitive advantage is often called a “force multiplier.” For example, during the war with Iraq, the U.S. army had many force multipliers, such as superior aircraft, missiles, night vision, and a superior missile defense system. These force multipliers allowed the U.S. army to have a lot more force for each soldier engaged in that battle. Many of these force multipliers, such as advanced missiles and missile defense systems, could probably also be considered tectonic shifts in modern warfare. Because Israel had not leveraged that tectonic shift to iron like the Philistines, they were in a precarious situation.

Compete with Our Strengths Against Their Weaknesses

Often entrepreneurs are in a similar situation where one of our competitors has a huge competitive advantage over us. The competitor may have been in business a lot longer. They may have a lot more revenue, a much larger team, a bigger office, more customers, huge trade show booths, etc. They may have even leveraged a tectonic shift before us or may have purchased a competitor who effectively leveraged a tectonic shift. We may look at this competitor and feel that there is no way we can beat them because of their size and resources.

That fear is half true. It is true we cannot beat them . . . at their own game. If our competitors have a large advantage, then we should not take them on where they have a competitive advantage. We must find their weakness and figure out how to attack them there.

How did David beat Goliath? It is true that Goliath had an enormous competitive advantage in his size and strength and the quality and size of his sword and armor. If David tried to fight him strength against strength, or sword and armor against sword and armor, David’s chance of winning would have been very low.

Of course, that is not taking into account the power of God, who can do all things and is the ultimate competitive advantage. God gave David a different idea than fighting strength against strength and sword against sword.

Instead, David realized that Goliah’s competitive advantage, his force multiplier of iron, also had a weakness. It was very heavy, especially the amount of armor it takes to cover a nine-foot man. David knew that Goliath would not be able to move quickly and by choosing to wear no armor and to carry no sword, David could have a competitive advantage with speed. David could easily keep his distance from Goliath and sling stones at him, safe from that long iron sword.

By not trying to match up to his weakness against Goliath’s strengths, David was able to focus matching up his strengths—speed, a sling, and stones—against Goliath’s weakness—his lack of mobility.

Like David, sometimes we need to find unique ways to overcome those obstacles. Like David, it is generally best not to match our weaknesses against the strengths of our opponents. Instead, we need to find the weakness of our competitors and develop a strength we can use to attack them. David’s sling and stones might even be seen as his own tectonic shift in warfare, keeping distance from a competitor and shooting projectiles at them. That sounds similar to a strategy that helped the U.S. colonists win the Revolutionary War.

David could not beat Goliath doing the same thing Goliath was doing. David had to find and leverage a different tectonic shift. The same thing is true in business. When we face something like larger competitors with a lot more resources, we often cannot use the same strategies they are using to dominate. If we do, we will probably lose. Instead, we have to find our tectonic shift, something that our competitors aren't doing yet or aren't doing well.

Modern Day Davids and Goliaths

Malcolm Gladwell has a book about this called David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.

In an interview about the book, Gladwell said, “This is the classic story of the business world. The very same thing that appears to make a company so formidable—its size, its resources—serves as stumbling blocks when they're forced to respond to a situation where the rules are changing, and where nimbleness, and flexibility, and adaptability are better attributes. Which is the story of David and Goliath, right? David had nimbleness. He changed the rules. He brought in the superior of technology.”

Here are a few stories of companies that started out as underdogs, but who were able to succeed through innovation and leveraging tectonic shifts.

Apple

Apple was started in 1976, by college dropouts Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, who sold his share of the company for $800 three months later. Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, was skeptical about the company. He “once said that if he owned Apple he would shut down the company and give shareholders their money back.” (Source: Investopedia.com)

Jobs proved him wrong though. He said, "It's only us and Dell making money. They're making money because they're Walmart, we're making it because we're innovating." (Source: Investopedia.com)

Apple found success because they didn’t do exactly what Dell was doing. As Jobs said, they innovated, finding and leveraging the tectonic shifts that worked for their company.

“Since 1976, Apple has grown into the multinational technology mogul that we know today. Apple is now the world’s largest information technology company by revenue and the world’s third-largest mobile phone manufacturer.” (Source: Medium.com)

Netflix

Before Netflix dominated the streaming arena, it was a DVD-rental-by-mail company. Its biggest competitor was Blockbuster. “In 2000, Netflix executives met with Blockbuster and offered to sell the company for $50 million, which Blockbuster refused.” (Source: Investopedia.com)

Blockbuster has since filed for bankruptcy and shuttered 9,000 stores (Source: Medium.com). Now, Netflix has “193 million paid subscribers in more than 190 countries.” (Source: Investopedia.com)

Home Depot

Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank were fired from Handy Dan, “one of America’s leading home improvement retailer chains.” (Source: Medium.com) They decided to use this as an opportunity to start their own company. They opened Home Depot in 1981, creating “one-stop shopping for the do-it-yourself customer.” (Source: Investopedia.com) Home Depot now has more than 2,200 stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico (Source: corporate.homedepot.com).

Being Small and Nimble is a Competitive Advantage

“The big companies we compete against are like Goliath, large and lumbering, slow to change. Can we be David, quick and noble, willing to think outside the box, and find a new and disruptive way to solve the most important problem.”

(Source: Glenn Tulman in Forbes)

Choose an Unconventional Strategy

Ian Brookes in From the Lighthouse said, “The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft looked at every war fought in the past 200 years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5% of the cases. That is a remarkable fact, especially when the result is in the context of the sample of conflicts analyzed was where one side was at least ten times as powerful in terms of armed might and population as its opponent – even in those lopsided contests, the underdog won almost a third of the time. Why, what happened? Simply, the underdogs acknowledged their weaknesses and chose an unconventional strategy. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5% to 63.6%. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded.”

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

David changed the rules in his battle with Goliath and used the sling and stone as a tectonic shift to give himself a competitive advantage and remove Golaith’s advantage.
Like David, we can leverage tectonic shifts to give ourselves the advantage over much larger competitors.
Don’t match our weaknesses up against our competitor’s strengths. Instead figure a way to develop strength and use it to attack the competitor’s weakness, like David used his nimbleness to compete against the giant’s inability to move quickly in the heavy iron armor.
David was nimble and could adapt to his surroundings faster than Goliath. Being nimble and moving quickly is often a competitive advantage of small companies. Often small companies can adapt to changes in the world faster than large ones.
Don’t try to do things the same way as our larger competitors. Find an unconventional way to more effectively accomplish the most important goals.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

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Arianna Huffington is an author, columnist, and businesswoman. She was a co-founder of The Huffington Post and the founder and CEO of Thrive Global. She is also the author of fifteen books. Time Magazine named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and she built a business she sold for $315 million.

In today’s episode, we’ll explore how Huffington became so successful in her entrepreneurial journey. We’ll discuss the tectonic shifts she leveraged and other secrets to her success.

Huffington’s Entrepreneurial Story

Early Life and Career

Arianna Huffington was born on July 14, 1950, in Athens Greece. At the age of 16, she moved to England. She studied at the University of Cambridge and earned an economics degree(Source: Britannica.com).

After she finished her education and lived in England and a few other places, Huffington moved to the U.S. and became involved in politics, writing books and articles, appearing on several radios and tv shows, and speaking at conventions (Source: Wikipedia.org).

Huffington Post

In 2005, Huffington co-founded the Huffington Post. When the site launched, “it was structured as a group blog, publishing the words of hundreds of guest contributors each week.” AOL acquired the Huffington Post in 2011 for $315 million, and Huffington became “President and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, a new venture that included all the content from the Website and AOL.” (Source: Britannica.com) In 2012, the website became the first commercially run United States digital media enterprise to win a Pulitzer Prize (source: Crain’s New York). In June 2015, Verizon Communications acquired AOL for US$4.4 billion and the site became a part of Verizon Media (source: PR Newswire).

Thrive Global

To launch her new enterprise, Thrive Global, Huffington left AOL and the Huffington Post Media Group. Thrive Global offers science-based solutions to end stress and burnout (Source: wikipedia.org).

Huffington said, "After my collapse from sleep deprivation and exhaustion in 2007 I became more and more passionate about the connection between well-being and performance. And as I went around the world speaking about my experience, I saw two things: First, that we're facing a stress and burnout epidemic. And second, that people deeply want to change the way they work and live . . . That's why I launched Thrive Global—to go beyond raising awareness and create something real and tangible that would help individuals, companies, and communities improve their well-being and performance and unlock their greatest potential. At Thrive Global, helping you achieve these goals is our mission and our passion." (Source: thriveglobal.com)

“Too many of us leave our lives—and, in fact, our souls—behind when we go to work.” - Arianna Huffington

Tectonic Shifts Leveraged

Here are some of the tectonic shifts Huffington used to achieve her success.

User-Generated Content

The Huffington Post uses user-generated content, in the form of guest blogging, for much of its content. Guest blogging happens when someone publishes their article on a blog or online publication that they don’t own or regularly contribute to. Guest blogging usually comes with building brand awareness, strengthening credibility, or showcasing expertise for the writer.

“For the host blog that is publishing [a] guest post, they will receive a free piece of content that they do not have to write themselves or pay someone else to write it for them. The writer of the guest post, on the other hand, will get to enjoy the perks of amassing a growing readership and driving more traffic to their respective websites.”

The writer will also get instant exposure, expand their network, engage with other contributors, boost their social media follower count, strengthen their backlink profile, collect feedback, and refine their content (Source: ignitevisibility.com).

The Huffington Post used guest blogging when it launched and continues to use it today. It is a great way for them to get lots of content out quickly and expand their audience to include the audience of their many writers.

When I worked at Deseret Digital Media, they also very effectively leveraged user-generated content from guest writers, and I saw firsthand the tremendous value that brought the organization.

Media and Social Media

Huffington has had a big presence in the media that helped her to become an influencer. According to Wikipedia, she was a panelist on the weekly BBC Radio 4 political discussion program Any Questions? and the BBC television panel games Call My Bluff and Face the Music. She served as co-host of BBC's late-night chat show Saturday Night at the Mill for four weeks. At one point she was the co-host of the weekly, nationally syndicated public radio program Both Sides Now with Mary Matalin.

Before starting The Huffington Post, Huffington hosted a website called AriannaOnline.com. In 2008, She appeared as herself on an episode of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother in May 2010.

Huffington played herself in the Family Guy episode "Brian Writes a Bestseller" along with Dana Gould and Bill Maher in a live segment of Real Time with Bill Maher (Source: wikipedia.org).

Huffington has become a LinkedIn influencer, writing about success and sharing professional insights. She has almost 10 million followers on LinkedIn and more than 2 million on Twitter.

Other Secrets to Success

Here are two other secrets Huffington has learned in her career.

1. Creativity Comes When We Step Away from Technology

When Huffington collapsed from burnout and exhaustion two years after starting the Huffington Post, breaking her cheekbone as she fell, she started to reevaluate how she was living her life.

She said, “That was really the beginning of reevaluating my life and recognizing that I, like millions of other people around the world, had been suffering from the delusion that in order to succeed, we have to burn out.”

“And yet all the latest science disproves that. It actually proves that we need time to recharge, to sleep, to unplug from technology, and I became such a passionate evangelist for this message.”

“My best piece of advice is to make sure that entrepreneurs connect with their own wisdom and creativity, and that’s becoming harder and harder because we are so addicted to technology.” (Source: cnbc.com)

According to Hype Magazine, 65.7% of Americans admit to sleeping with their phone at night. “We are constantly engaging in notifications, social media, texts, emails. And yet the most creative moments come when we put all that aside. That’s why sometimes people’s best ideas come in the shower. So as an entrepreneur, make time for that reflection, ability to connect with your best ideas, and not to be constantly distracted,” Huffington said (Source: cnbc.com).

2. Love What We’re Doing

When Huffington was asked her best advice for starting a business, she said that we need to make sure we really love what we’re doing and believe in our products and services. She said, “When the Huffington Post was first launched in May 2005, there were so many detractors. I remember a critic who wrote, ‘The Huffington Post is an unsurvivable failure.’ . . . So when you get reviews like that and detractors like that, you have to really believe in your product. And when you believe in your product, you are willing to deal with all the naysayers and persevere. That for me is the best advice I got and the best advice I can give.”

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We have to remember to take care of ourselves and give ourselves time to rest and recharge.
Guest blogging can be beneficial for both the host blog and the guest blogger.
Huffington has gained many followers and gained a lot of credibility by being very prevalent in the media throughout her career.
Technology can inhibit our ability to be creative as entrepreneurs. Consider setting aside time to step away from it.
To persevere through hard times and reviews from harsh critics, we must love what we’re doing and believe in our product.

Connect with Arianna Huffington

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about Huffington or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariannahuffington/.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you seen a difference in your creative side when you step away from technology? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/86-how-arianna-huffington-started-the-huffington-post-and-became-one-of-the-worlds-100-most-influential-people/

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"A better domain name will lower your lifetime marketing costs."

-Frank Schilling

I recently published an episode about bootstrapping to fund our businesses. In that episode, I told the story about buying or selling millions of dollars worth of domain names over the years to help finance the growth of my companies.

I’ve helped numerous companies find great domain names for their ventures. For example, I’ve helped buy and/or sell adoption.com, today.com, stockmarket.com, advertising.com, law.com, retirement.com, families.com, familias.com, woman.com, and many others. In this episode, I’m going to share tips, tricks, and tools to help us find great domain names.

Choosing a great domain name is important for many reasons. It is often one of the first impressions a potential customer has with our companies. It can add to or detract from our credibility. It can help or hurt our SEO. And, it can be a great branding opportunity if done right.

Here are my tips, tricks, and tools for finding and choosing great domain names:

1. Play the long game.

I recommend we try to play the “long game” with our primary domain name to get it right the first time. We shouldn’t buy a domain name we are planning to change. It can take a lot of time and money to change domain names, and a lot of the value we’ve built up in a domain name can be lost when we change it. It’s worth it to invest the time and resources upfront to get the right domain name the first time. That doesn’t mean we can’t change it in the future. It just means we may lose a lot of value if we do.

2. Make a master spreadsheet of possible domains.

At the beginning of our research, avoid getting too emotionally connected with one domain name. Entrepreneurs often decide they like one domain and they stop their research or stop considering other domains. This is a mistake, because there may be a better domain name we can uncover in our research process. Or, we may hit a roadblock and get paralyzed in our efforts to buy the one domain name.

Instead, I recommend we do a bunch of research and create a list of all of the possible domain names, including information about them, into one spreadsheet. I recommend Google Sheets for this because it can easily be shared with others in a collaborative way.

I recommend keeping good notes on the research we do. Which domain names are available? Which domain names have sites already? Are they listed for sale, and what are the asking prices? What is the contact info of the owner? What is our communication history with the owner? If we don’t keep good records, they will start to blend together, and important data will be forgotten, and work will need to be duplicated.

3. Include a top keyword in your domain.

I recommend using a tool such as SEMrush.com or KeywordTool.io to find the best keywords related to our niche. Then, I recommend we try to find a domain name that includes one of the top keywords. This can help with our SEO in the niche, and make it easier for our target audience to know what our site is about. For example, the word “monetization” described our niche focus well and had a large number of monthly searches in Google, so I decided I wanted to include “monetization” in my domain.

4. Use a .com domain name… usually.

There are many other extensions we can use to register a domain name today such as .me, .store, .info, .biz, .io, and .bargains. However, .com domains have more credibility than these other extensions. Plus, when we tell people our business name, they will often put a .com after our business name when they are looking for our website. For example, if the name of my business is Monetization Nation, people will naturally expect my site to be at MonetizationNation.com and will type that in when they are looking for my site. So, if I try to save money by buying a domain name other than a .com, I’m going to lose a lot of my potential customers to whoever owns the .com version of my domain. It’s not worth it. Get the .com.

If we become very successful at an extension other than .com, we may have to pay a lot of money to buy the .com version. For example, early in my career, an executive of Alta Vista came to my office to meet me. Alta Vista used to be one of the top internet search engines. This executive told me Alta Vista had purchased AltaVista.net as the domain name for their search engine early on. However, when their search engine took off, they were losing so many visitors to the owners of AltaVista.com that they had to pay $4 million to buy the AltaVista.com domain name. It would have been much less expensive if they would have started out with a .com domain name.

For example, I own the shorter Monetization.org domain name, but I use the longer MonetizationNation.com domain name as my primary domain because it is at the .com, along with some other reasons.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. For example, like a non-profit or an association, people might expect the domain name to be at .org. However, if we use a .org, we need to realize that many people will still type the .com version of our domain name, and it is a good idea to get the .com version and redirect it to the .org site.

5. Avoid dashes and numbers.

We should try to avoid dashes and numbers in our domain names. If we use dashes in our domain, such as over-the-counter.com, many people will mistype our domain as overthecounter.com. Numbers are also confusing because when we tell people our domain verbally they don’t know whether the number is in numerals or written out in letters. It then requires additional explanation. This makes sharing our domain through audio marketing problematic and prone to misspellings.

If you remember, Walmart used to be Wal-Mart but removed the dash.

6. Keep it short and simple.

I try to keep domain names shorter if I can, but this is not an absolute rule. Longer domains sometimes are the right choice. As a general rule, we should try to keep it as short as we reasonably can. I recommend trying to keep the domain name at two words or less, if possible. One word is ideal, but often very expensive. I pay a lot of attention to syllables and try to choose domains with fewer syllables because they are easier to say. Remember, the longer our domains become, the easier they are to forget or misspell, and we may lose some credibility if they are too long or complicated.

I love domains that don’t require explanation, where potential customers can see our domain name and easily understand the focus of the site.

7. Pick a name that’s easier for your target audience to spell.

We should try to choose a domain name that is difficult for our target audience to misspell. Here is a list of some of the most commonly misspelled words. I try to avoid homophones, which are words that sound the same but have different spellings, such as “won” and “one”. Here’s a list of common homophones. If our target audience knows how to spell our keyword or brand, we have more flexibility. For example, monetization is a word regularly used by entrepreneurs and CEOs, so I felt comfortable using it in my domain name even though it is more difficult for people to spell.

Sometimes people intentionally choose a misspelled domain name believing that the misspelling will make them unique and brandable. I strongly advise against this strategy. This intentional misspelling will probably make it much more difficult for our customers and may send a lot of our hard-earned potential customers to a competing website.

8. Use a thesaurus.

When trying to come up with a great domain name, I regularly use one or more thesauri to help me identify synonyms and think outside the box for my top keywords and domain names. It’s a great way to generate new word ideas. Thesarus.com is a great resource to check out.

9. Use a domain name generator.

A domain name generator allows us to enter our keyword and then it combines that keyword with possibly thousands of other keywords that can be used in the domain name. It checks availability and then gives us a list of the available domains. I love domain name generators. Before domain name generators were popular, I created my own domain name generator and used it to find available domain names to register. This can be a very effective tool to find available domain names. There is no way we could ever think of all the variations on our own. I recommend trying domain name generators such as NameMesh.com, LeanDomainSearch, Wordoid, or NameBoy to find potential domain names.

10. Try to create new words.

We might try to take one of our top keywords, and create a new word with it, or merge two keywords together to create a new word. For example, if our new company was about branding, we might try new words such as Brandly.com or Brandify.com, etc. Good domain name generators like NameMesh can help us come up with many of these new word options.

11. Register a domain name the moment it expires.

Very frequently people buy domain names, and then forget to renew them, or decide they don’t want it anymore. When they don’t pay the renewal, the domain name eventually “drops” and becomes available for other people to register. The lists of expiring domain names from many domain name registrars are published. And, there are various services that specialize in helping their customers register those domain names right as they expire.

I recommend NameJet and DropCatch as services to register expiring domains. Both of these services have been very successful in grabbing domain names for me. Some people say Pool.com is the best service to grab domain names as they expire, because they have such a huge amount of servers doing the grabbing, but I have not had a lot of success with that service. It is ok to try to use several services to grab a domain name because most services don’t charge anything unless they are successful in registering the domain name for us.

I have set up email alerts with NameJet, and I receive those emails each day with expiring domains that match my keywords and other criteria. Most days, the lists don’t have any domain names I’m willing to register, but sometimes, I can get a great deal on very valuable domains.

To give an idea of how effective and valuable this service is, for years I have wanted to write a book with the title Credibility Marketing. I tried to buy the domain name CredibilityMarketing.com and tried contacting the owner many times. I would have paid thousands of dollars for that domain name. However, I was never able to reach the owner. Years after I started trying to buy this domain, the domain name expired, and I was able to register the domain name for about $170. Normally, registering an expiring domain name costs less than that, but multiple people were trying to grab this domain. So, the company that registered the expiring domain name held an auction between the different parties.

This expiring domain name strategy is probably not a short-term strategy that will help us get a great domain name we love this month. However, this can be a cost-effective strategy to pick up great domain names in our niches as they expire over time.

12. Expired domains.

Regularly, people buy domain names, allow them to expire, and nobody immediately registers them. One website, ExpiredDomains.net, has made a publicly searchable database of these expired domains. When I’m looking for a domain name for one of my projects or for a client, this is one of the first websites I go to in search of a domain name containing one of my top keywords. The problem with this database is the massive amount of data it contains. I recommend using filters to narrow down the domains we are shown by keyword, length of the domain, .com domain extension, no dashes, no numbers, etc. This will make the number of domain names we have to go through much more manageable. I have found and registered many domain names using this service.

13. Domain name marketplaces.

There are numerous domain name marketplaces that allow domain name owners to list their domain names for sale. Then, domain name buyers can search to find a domain name they like, and use the marketplace to contact the owner and negotiate the purchase. Some of the best domain name marketplaces are SEDO.com, GoDaddy Auctions, Flippa, Afternic, NameCheap Marketplace, and BuyDomains.com. Domain names listed at marketplaces can sometimes be a little pricey, but there are often deals as well.

14. Contact domain name owners of your favorite domain name options and ask for pricing.

It may be a good idea to reach out to the owners of top domain names on our list and ask for their pricing. If the domain name is listed for sale, we can sometimes type the domain name in a browser, and find pricing information on the domain name. Or, we might find a form on the domain name that we can fill out and request pricing. If we can’t find information on a site, we can try to find the owner’s contact information through the Whois database. It’s often best to start here:

lookup.icann.org or who.is.

However, these sites often do not list the contact information of the owners because the domain name is privacy protected. However, they often list the whois of the registrar for the domain. I recommend finding the whois search for that registrar and see if it’s possible to find more information or a way to reach out to the owner there.

15. Buy Domain History.

If we can’t find the owner, we might try buying a whois history report at who.is. Maybe the current owner registered the domain name with their real name and later added privacy protection. In this case, a whois history report for that domain name may allow us to find the contact information of the owner.

16. Trademark search.

Once we have found some possible domain names we are considering, we can do a trademark search to see if there are confusingly similar trademarks for the term in the domain name(s) we are considering.

Once we are ready to search the trademark database, go to this page on the US Patent & Trademark Office site.
Click on “Search our trademark database (TESS)”.
Click on “Basic word search (New user)”.
Type your search term in the “Search term” box. Don’t include the .com in your search term, and add a space between words. In addition to searching the exact phrase, you might want to search for the keyword as well. For example, when I wanted to buy the domain name MonetizationNation.com, I searched for trademarks containing “monetization nation” and also “monetization”.
If you find a trademark that might be confusingly similar, look at the status of that trademark. Trademarks with the status of “live” are the ones that present the greatest issue. Some trademarks have a status of “dead”. The USPTO defines a dead mark as: “a dead or abandoned status for a trademark application means that specific application is no longer under prosecution within the USPTO, and would not be used as a bar against your filing.” If you find a confusingly similar trademark, it is often best to look for a new brand and domain name, unless you want to buy the confusingly similar trademark from the owner.
Be sure to read the instructions.
I’ve successfully registered a lot of trademarks. However, I’m not an attorney, so be sure to get advice from an attorney instead of relying on any advice I give you.

17. Search Google for your keyword

We should try to identify other competitors using the brand names or domains we are considering. This will give great information, but just because we find something here does not necessarily mean we need to abandon our proposed new brand. We may find the term being used before, but make a calculated decision that we still want to proceed with a domain name and brand.

18. See if you can register or buy the social media usernames with your brand.

I recommend searching the social media sites where we want to create social channels and see if we can register or buy the usernames or accounts with our brand or keyword. For example, before I purchased MonetizationNation.com, I made sure I was able to register social usernames such as instagram.com/monetizationnation, youtube.com/monetization, and facebook.com/monetizationnation. I also searched the podcast platforms to ensure nobody already had a podcast with a name similar to “Monetization Nation”.

19. Get feedback.

Once we’ve generated a list of our best options for a domain name, and gathered all the relevant information we need, I recommend asking for feedback from people who belong to our target audience. For example, if our target audience is lawyers then we need to ask for feedback from lawyers and not from our friends and family members who aren’t lawyers. We can ask for this feedback with direct phone calls, or through a survey tool such as Google Forms.

20. Get a domain name valuation.

Before we make an offer on a domain name, it’s a good idea to understand the fair market value of that domain name. Two great tools that provide valuations for free (at this time) are Estibot.com and GoDaddy Appraisals. However, please understand that these valuations are generated by a computer, so they might not be completely accurate. However, they may be a good starting point. To get a great domain name, we often may have to pay more than the domain name valuation from these two services.

21. Research the domain history before buying.

Before we buy an existing domain, it is important to try to understand the history of that domain name to be sure it wasn’t used for something spammy, pornographic, or illegal. One great way to do this is to search for our domain in Archive.org and look through the history of what was published on that domain in the past. If the domain was used for something sketchy in the past, it may be blocked by internet service providers and search engines after we purchase it. If we find this out, the domain name may be important enough that we still choose to go forward with the purchase, and invest the time to work through whatever issues the domain name might have. But, it’s at least good to know what we are up against.

22. Consider using a domain negotiation platform.

There are numerous reasons why we might consider using a domain negotiation platform. For example, maybe we are concerned that when the seller discovers who we are, they will ask for a higher price for the domain name. Or, maybe we’re having a hard time finding the contact information of the owner, and need someone who can contact the owner for us. For these and other reasons, we might consider using a platform such as DomainAgents.com that allows us to submit offers anonymously, helps us contact the owners, and uses their platform to negotiate a sale price for the domain.

23. Use an escrow agent.

If we are buying a domain name from another party for a substantial price, I highly recommend using an escrow agent for the domain name purchase and transfer. I recommend escrow.com as a great and reasonably priced escrow agent to buy or sell domain names. They have a smooth process to enter into an agreement with both parties, receive payment, coordinate for the domain name to be transferred, and release the payment after the domain name has been transferred. This reduces the risk for the buyer and seller, because the seller knows they will be paid after the transfer, and the buyer knows that the seller won’t receive money from the escrow agent until the buyer has received the domain name.

24. Protect Your domain names.

Many people have domain names spread across different registrars. This can result in domain names “slipping through the cracks” and being lost. I recommend keeping all domain names together in one domain name registrar account to make it a lot easier to manage and renew the domains.

I recommend we set our domain names to “auto-renew”, so our credit card is billed automatically when the domain name comes up for renewal. This way, we don’t lose a domain name if we accidentally forget to renew it.

I also recommend turning on the “registrar-lock” to our domain names to help prevent them from being transferred to a different registrar without your permission. We can also turn on privacy protection on each of our domain names to block people from seeing the registrant’s contact information and reduce spam.

As our business grows, the value of our domain name will grow. Our domain name may become the most valuable asset of our organization. This is certainly the case with adoption.com.

So, I recommend we only register our domain name in an account we own. NEVER register a domain name in the registrar account of any other party. If our domain name is in the account of another party, then I recommend working to get that domain name transferred to an account in our name and with our email as soon as possible.

The same is true for social channels. Our social channels should always be registered in our name and account. I had a client who spent a lot of money building a social account, but the social channel was in the name of the marketing manager. The business owner had a falling out with that marketing manager, who left the company. The business was never able to regain access to that social account.

I also recommend we be very careful with the login information of our domain name registrar account. As our domain name grows to be very valuable, we may treat access to our domain name registrar account with higher security than access to our bank account. We need to be very careful with who we give access to that account. Don’t share domain registrar passwords through insecure communication channels such as email.

25. Buy and Redirect Misspellings.

I recommend registering the common misspellings and variations of our domain and redirecting them to our primary domain name.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Play the long game and try to get the right domain name the first time.
Make a master spreadsheet of possible domains and all relevant information.
Consider including one of your top keywords in your domain name.
Use .com unless you are a non-profit or association.
Keep the domain short and simple, without any dashes or numbers, and easy to spell.
Use a domain name generator and a thesaurus to come up with many domain name variations.
Try to find a great domain on an expiring domain registration service, an expired domain name service (such as expireddomains.net), or a domain name marketplace (such as SEDO) to find a deal on a great domain name.
Contact the domain name owners to get pricing, and use a domain agent if necessary.
Do a trademark search, and search Google for your brand to see if there is anything that would prevent you from using that brand.
Make sure you can get the social media usernames you will need.
Get feedback from your target audience about the domain name options.
Get a domain name valuation and research the domain name history before purchasing.
Use an escrow agent and be sure to protect the domain name carefully.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Share Your Story

What stories and strategies can you share about domain names? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/85-how-to-find-great-domain-names/

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Welcome back to the second episode of a Monetization Nation interview with Redge Allen. In the previous episode, we went through Redge’s story and how he became a revolutionary entrepreneur. We discussed the importance of building skyscrapers on land we own, creating relationships with our clients, recognizing the lifetime value of a customer, and maintaining credibility and transparency.

In this episode, we will discuss the gamification Redge and I have implemented to help us reach our goals.

Proper goal setting and careful, thought-out plans of action can help us in many ways. They can help us become a better person, spouse, parent, entrepreneur, etc. Redge and his system for gamifying goals has had a big impact on the goals I have set for myself in recent years.

Some of my goals I have tried to do for years, and have failed at for years. But, by implementing a system of gamification, I’ve become more successful with my goals. The inspiration for my goal gamification came from a TEDx Talk that Redge gave, called “5 Minutes of Courage,” which is about habits. You can find the link to his TEDx Talk down below in the “Connect with Redge” section.

This second episode with Redge explores the methods he has adopted in gamifying his goals, as well as in helping others to reach their goals.

Identify Behaviors in Setting Goals & Change

Before I set my goals, I ask, “What are the most important things I want to achieve?” Then, I set my goals based upon the most important things I can do to achieve those goals.

“There’s something really powerful about focusing on our behaviors. Writing them down and having evidence of them allows us to see them. It becomes more real and allows for momentum to continue.” - Redge Allen

Redge is also a big proponent of identifying which behaviors he can control in his success.

Take Control Where Control Can Be Taken

About ten years ago, Redge used to be morbidly obese, and he had no idea how he would break some of the patterns he had in his life. “I think people set goals and hope they’ll lose 50 pounds. But, that’s a lot harder to control than it is to say. If I spend my effort on things I can control, then I can guarantee success in my own way rather than spending my efforts and resources on things I can’t control.”

Redge then went on to explain that when we identify daily behaviors, it helps move us to who we want to become. That is where the real power is. Redge said, “Sometimes entrepreneurs and others spend so much energy thinking about things that they can't control that they forget about what daily behaviors will absolutely move them to what they want for the future.”

Say my goal is to make $10,000 a month in recurring revenue. What am I going to do today to make the first $10? What are the things I’m going to do every single day to work toward that goal?

For Redge, one of the tectonic shifts in his life is when he went from being acted upon and thinking that things just happen, to making things happen and having an internal focus of control. He said, “All of a sudden, I realized I can be the author. I can be the creator, and I can have something come from nothing but my actions.”

Personal Accountability with External Help

When Redge originally wanted to lose weight, he realized there was something missing. He had the discipline but needed structure to know how to be successful.

“I started using technology to publish my goals or my daily behaviors. I started with a Google document; I've later moved on to an app called HabitShare. But basically, I am putting in the daily behaviors I plan to have. I'm then finding accountability partners who care about my success, who are willing to check my goals daily and to see if I completed them. I do the same for them, and it reciprocates that way.”

Redge is one of my accountability partners; I report to him and nine other men I respect that will hold me accountable. Each day I report how I did on my goals in a spreadsheet that they can see.

Leverage Consequences

On top of that accountability, Redge uses consequences to make sure he completes his goals. He does this to build trust with himself and keep his commitments with himself. So when he doesn’t complete one of his goals, he has a consequence. For example, if he doesn’t work out one day, his consequence is donating $100 to the politician he dislikes the most. As we can imagine, it’s a pretty strong motivator.

“If the consequence is more painful than the pain of doing a goal, then I'll do the goal . . . [and] very rarely will I miss.” - Redge Allen

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Redge for sharing your stories and goal gamification strategies with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Goal gamification is a great way to help us reach our goals.
We need to identify the most important actions that will help us achieve the goals that are most important to us.
Take control where we can and focus on what is within our control.
Do something today and consistently work towards our big goals.
Find others who will help by holding us accountable for our daily goals and habits.
Leverage positive and negative consequences to help motivate us to reach our goals.

Connect with Redge

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Redge or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/redgeallen/. You can also watch his TedTalk “5 Minutes of Courage” at https://youtu.be/ciKYCsEmrFU.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What strategies have you used to help reach your goals? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/84-4-methods-to-implement-gamification-to-reach-our-goals/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Jim Sterne. In the last episode, we talked about the importance of passion marketing and value-based pricing. In this second episode, we’re going to review successful ways to use metrics to drive growth in our businesses.

Navigating Tectonic Shifts

The business landscape is constantly changing. We’ve especially seen change and tectonic shifts during this past year as we’ve been hit with a worldwide pandemic.

“I think what COVID-19 has done is force us to up our game in being human,” Jim said. It has forced businesses to become more personalized.

When the pandemic struck, many businesses were forced to close their doors and move remote. This meant many CEOs were leading Zoom meetings from their homes. “Suddenly that CEO is a human being and corporations are now made up of people, not offices and hierarchy. It's a bunch of people dressed like we are, in spaces like ours right now, doing our work,” Jim explained.

In order to adapt, businesses have embraced the personal aspects of their brands. They are shifting their focus more and more to how they can relate to their customers. We need to focus on the customer, but it has to be an even softer pitch—it has to be about how our products and services will help our customers.

But how do we do this? How can we be more personalized with our customers and really understand them and their needs?

One way to do this is to launch different marketing campaigns and then analyze them. If we’re going to spend resources, time, and money doing an ad or campaign, we need metrics to know what’s working and what’s not. The more we do this, the more we can learn and narrow down what resonates best with our audience in order to serve them better.

In order to effectively measure the success of our businesses, we need to measure and leverage metrics. Jim, author of Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment, has shared three ways to do this.

Match Our Metrics with Our Business Goals

We need to match our metrics with our business goals. Our metrics need to be aligned with our highest priority as an organization as we then use them to measure and drive our success.

"That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially." - Karl Pearson

One of the most important metrics to measure is customer lifetime value—what is the cost of the product, and are we attracting people who are coming back? We should choose a handful of metrics to measure and report consistently.

Jim currently runs the business 2Y3X that helps businesses with growth. 2Y3X helps a business team reengineer the company. This is a two-year program that takes time and work. It focuses on making monthly goals and analyzing them to determine success. As we develop our own metrics, we should follow a process similar to Jim’s business. We should be using our metrics to make monthly goals and then reevaluate them at the end of the month to see our progress. And just as with Jim’s business, this process will take time and work before we will start to see obvious growth.

The metrics we choose need to be measurable, preferably measured month-to-month so we can see progress.

One great tool to measure some metrics is Google Analytics, a simple way to start off for free. Then, once we start gaining more data, we can gear up and integrate better tools.

Choose Specific Key Performance Indicators

According to HubSpot, “A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric used to measure and track your progress toward achieving a specific goal. Business KPIs, which can vary by department, may help gauge a company's long-term performance against its own targets and industry standards.”

We want to have one to three good KPIs by which we measure everything. When done correctly, these KPIs drive our decision-making and priorities as an organization. The worst thing we can do with our KPIs is to have too many. When everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.

“[KPIs] is absolutely crucial to having everybody in the company be aligned to doing the right stuff,” Jim said.

I used to do a lot of work for Azul airlines, a new airline started by David Neeleman The founder of JetBlue. I helped him start this Brazilian airline, which was an incredible learning experience. Here’s one example of a great lesson I learned from David. He was very good at using KPIs to make company decisions. His company focused on two specific KPIs: one was the cost per seat flown, and the other was the revenue per seat flown. Many of their decisions were based on those two KPIs.

For example, the front of their company’s headquarters was purple, even though their brand was named Azul (blue). But the color of their building did not affect either of their KPIs and so they kept the front of their building purple while I was there. They clearly identified their two KPIs from the beginning and made decisions to improve and optimize those two KPIs.

One of Jim’s KPIs is to get people to open the emails he sends. Over time, he has realized that the best way to do this is by creating a catchy subject line. He then measures success based on how many people open his email.

Another term similar to KPI is a “northstar metric”. The term northstar metric is often used in the growth hacking community. This is where we pick one metric that we try to base all of our decisions on. Whatever the case, whether a northstar metric or two KPIs, it is essential everyone in the business knows these specific goals and we base our key decisions on these metrics.

Communicate Goals Effectively

We need to communicate our goals effectively with the entire business.

The biggest mistake Jim sees is when there is a lack of communication. The analysts need to communicate to the business side of the organization. They should be taking the data and pulling out clear insights everyone else can easily understand, and then quickly and effectively communicating that with all relevant players.

“An analyst spends their time data mining in the coal mine, hacking away at the data, and wrangling it so that it will be in the right configuration so that they can do an analysis, and then they come up with an insight,” Jim said. They shouldn’t pass on the data, they should pass on the insights they gained and any other ideas they have to improve.

A good analyst will take a look at a set of data, find the problem or friction in the data, understand the cause, and then make suggestions on how to fix it. They need to be on the business side more than the data side of things so they are generating value for the organization from the data.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jim for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

COVID-19 has caused a tectonic shift. It has forced businesses to become more personalized. A great way to do this is through metrics.
We need to match our metrics with our business goals.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be used for making decisions and setting priorities company-wide.
Our metrics must be clear and measurable.
We need to turn our data into insights and then communicate those quickly and effectively to all stakeholders.

Connect with Jim

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jim or connect with him you can find him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/jimsterne/ and his website, targeting.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What are the KPIs of your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/83-3-ways-to-effectively-use-metrics-to-drive-growth/

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Jim Sterne is a digital marketing and analytics expert with 35 years of experience. He is the author of Social Media Metrics, and a dozen books on advertising, marketing, customer service, email marketing, and web analytics.

He is the founder of the Marketing Analytics Summit, the co-founder of the Digital Analytics Association, and the creator of the Analytics Cohort Mutual Mentorship Program.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss passion marketing and learn Jim’s number one monetization strategy: value-based pricing.

Jim Sterne’s Story: Understanding Customers

Jim’s first job out of college was in customer service. “My exposure to the world of business was being an advocate for the customer. It was my job to take the customer's calls and figure out what went wrong and make it right. That sort of defined how I view the world,” he said.

From the beginning, Jim understood the value of the customer. Building a business isn’t about us. It’s about the customer’s wants and needs.

From working in customer service, Jim moved to sales where he sold software development tools into enterprise businesses and government organizations. After a while working with the company, he became frustrated with the company’s marketing materials and took the initiative to create his own. He went to his boss and asked to take over marketing. This ended up providing him with enough success and resources to buy his first home in Santa Barbara.

Then, in 1993, he tripped over the internet. “I went into teaching mode, and I became a public speaker, an author, and a consultant on how the Internet was going to change the world,” he said. “That was my consultancy—how do we make our website better? Well, better at what? What are you trying to accomplish? Why do you have a website? And that question opens up a whole can of worms: who are we selling to, what are we selling, what is our business model, and what are the politics?”

Once he discovered analytics, he was able to prove what worked and didn’t work on a website with data. It led him to start a conference on web analytics, which became the Marketing Analytics Summit and the Digital Analytics Association with about 6,000 members and 100 companies.

“The foundation underneath all of that is the view of the customer first,” Jim said. “And all sales and all marketing are about what the customer needs. I don't care who you are or how long you've been in the business, you are not the target audience; your customer is, and that's my religion.”

3 Key Points

While customers are central to monetization, there are two other supporting parts. Jim gave three key points for improving marketing and increasing sales and growth.

People
Process
Technology

“There are three legs of the stool: people, process, and technology,” Jim said. “The technology is cool when it works, but without the people and process, it's just an expensive piece of software. I am passionate about aligning people to sales and marketing to work with data to improve what they're trying to accomplish.”

Passion Marketing: People

Understanding the importance of the customer can often fall into the tectonic shift of passion marketing—connecting with customers through their level-10 passions.

Passion-driven marketing is where we focus on what our customers are passionate about and connect with our customers through those passions. It’s all about what our customer needs and helping solve their problems so we become a priority. We are not the target audience, our customers are.

In Jim’s conferences, he focuses on building relationships. He implements passion marketing by really getting to know what his customers want. He shakes their hands, gets to know their names, and connects with them.

When hosting conferences, Jim follows two strategies for putting on and effectively monetizing live events. He says to use sponsors and webinars.

Being a sponsor means money. “Whether it's an online event, or an in-person event doesn't matter. Be a sponsor and get your logo in front of the right audience,” he said.

The second strategy is to put on our own webinar. What do we do better than anyone else? We need to show our audience we have what they need and can help them get it.

“What is the biggest benefit you offer? What is your proposition?” he explained. “A webinar says, ‘This is what you need, and we can help you.’ And only the people who need what you offer will show up . . . now [you] have increased your prospect list, and you have permission to talk to them and to email them and to follow up. If you do this on a regular basis, maybe every couple of months, you will create a pipeline.”

Hosting a successful webinar and becoming a sponsor is one strategy to help increase our success rates. It helps us learn what type of people want the products and services we offer. It helps us get to our customer’s level and determine their passions.

Value-Based Pricing: Process

Passion marketing works hand-in-hand with value-based pricing. So, what is value-based pricing?

The value-based pricing strategy determines prices based on how much a customer believes our product or service is worth. Instead of factoring in the costs of production, value-based pricing focuses on the output—what the value is.

For example, a tax attorney can save individual thousands of dollars in taxes in a few hours. Instead of charging the client for our time (the price of what the service is worth), we can charge the client for the value we are providing (saving them thousands of dollars).

When I asked Jim what his best monetization strategy and process is, he told me it was value-based pricing.

Jim said it means not talking about features and only talking about the benefits. “It's explaining what you get out the other end, the things that you have that you cannot put a price tag on. And if you are selling business consulting, you're talking about not just increased revenue, but an increase in profit share, increase in employee satisfaction, increase in customer satisfaction, increase in the cultural perception of being able to work in such a company—all of these intangible things that will make a company grow like crazy.”

Instead of setting prices based on time or cost, he sets prices based on the value the customer receives. The value might be expanding a network, increasing employee satisfaction, learning new strategies, building reach and influence, increasing credibility, and more.

“You go to a conference to meet people and grow your professional network,” Jim said. “That's the value. It's the ability to, five years from now, reach out and say, ‘Hey, we met at that conference, and I have a question,’ or ‘I'm recruiting for a role’ or ‘I'm looking for a role,’ and making that reconnection to somebody that you have met before. That's a career-maker.”

One way to help determine our customer’s perceived value is by conducting surveys. It is essential to take the time to dive deep into what our consumers want. How often do we get follow-up emails after completing a service? Whether it’s the dentist or our auto insurance, they frequently ask us to rate our experience.

This method of value-based pricing typically works better with companies that provide highly valuable and unique products than with companies that sell commoditized products (Source: Investopedia).

Machine Learning: Technology

The final key point to creating a successful business is technology.

Jim is the author of Artificial Intelligence for Marketing: Practical Applications. While people and processes are crucial in building a successful business, he also recognizes the large part technology and data play. Technology and data can help us process the information we get about our consumers.

He told a success story of a business working with AI. The company wanted to find patterns in behavior when people came to look at their website. They had a machine look at social media campaigns, email campaigns, subject lines, a variety of photographs, and more. After analyzing the data, it came up with 10 micro-segments, showing the company what types of people they should send their message to. This caused their sales to go through the roof.

While the starting entrepreneur won’t have enough of their own data to fully take advantage of AI and machine learning, there is data out there that can be used. “For most entrepreneurs, an Excel spreadsheet is awesome,” he said. “But if you do have a lot of data, and a very complex question, machine learning is something that we just haven't had before, and it's very powerful.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jim for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The customer’s needs must come first.
We must connect with our customers and can do this through implementing passion marketing.
Value-based pricing determines prices based on the value a customer receives from our product or service.
Machine learning and AI can help process relevant data to help us understand our customers.
Hosting a successful webinar and becoming a sponsor of industry events may be good ways to increase our success rates.

Connect with Jim

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jim or connect with him you can find him on LinkedIn and his website, targeting.com. You can also watch, listen, or read episode two for more stories and secrets Jim shared in his interview.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Have you tried value-based pricing, and if so, how did it work for you? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/82-how-to-use-passion-marketing-and-value-based-pricing-to-monetize-a-business/

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John Lee Dumas is one of the most successful business podcasters of all time, with more than 1 million listeners, more than 100 million podcasts listen, and many millions of dollars of revenue. Just last month, John’s Entrepreneurs of Fire show generated $313,000. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss two key principles that helped John achieve this success.

How John Escaped the Rat Race

It took six years of struggle. Six years of failure. Six years of feeling trapped.

John Lee Dumas found himself sitting at a red traffic light with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Even after college and eight years as an officer in the army, his life moved at the same rate as his car in rush hour. It was going nowhere.

“I had done all the right things, and now, here I was, stuck on this hamster wheel going nowhere, inspiring nobody, especially not myself, and just feeling like I was trapped in this world that I had created,” John said.

As he inched along the roadway, he went to listen to a podcast, only to find he had finished the series. He drove on in the silence for 45 minutes, listening to cars honking, tires rubbing against the asphalt, and the quiet hum of the radio.

At that moment, a “lightbulb” went on. There needed to be a daily podcast interviewing successful entrepreneurs. “There should be someone who creates it, why not me? I know all these great entrepreneurs who are hosting their own shows. I can be just like them, I can do this,” John said to himself.

John Lee Dumas is one of my heroes. After years of struggle, John is now the founder and host of the award-winning podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire. With more than 100 million listens, of his more than 3,000 episodes, John has turned Entrepreneurs on Fire into a media empire that generates more than 1 million listens every month and seven figures of net annual revenue for eight years in a row.

He just published the book The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which I have personally been devouring and loving. John's book, based on thousands of interviews from his highly acclaimed podcast, teaches his revolutionary 17-step roadmap that outlines a proven path for entrepreneurs to achieve the financial location and lifestyle freedom they're looking for.

From years of failure to years of inspiring success, here are two key principles that helped him do it.

1. Become a Person of Value: the Solution to Someone’s Problem

“Do not try to become a person of success but try to become a person of value.” – Albert Einstein

John decided to become a person of value first and foremost. “If you are the number one solution to a real problem in this world, you will win,” he said.

In John’s book, he says every human is tuned in to the same radio station: WIIFM—What's in it for me. That’s what it all comes down to. People don't care about us and what we're trying to do. They don't care about our business or our branding; they care about how we can help them achieve what really matters to them.

“[People] will ignore the second-best solution, all the way through to infinity, because people want the best solution to their problem, and if you provide that, you will win,” John said.

It’s about filling a void, solving a problem, and finding the niche that isn’t being served. Anyone can be passionate, but who cares? It all comes down to the question, “What’s in it for me?”

“What I saw was a bunch of great business podcasts interviewing entrepreneurs, and they were all doing it one day per week,” John said. “But I had a problem with them because I wanted a podcast that delivered a fresh episode seven days a week . . . So I said, ‘I'm going to fill that void, I'm going to solve that problem.’ And I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire, the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, and it was a Grand Slam.”

We can take what we are passionate about (the big idea), determine our niche audience, find a problem, and be the solution.

In order to determine what unique value we can offer, we must keep our eyes open, dive deep into areas of our passions, and uncover problems that aren’t being solved. People will pay good money if you are the best solution to their problem.

A good entrepreneur doesn’t just find a problem and solution and run with it. They must constantly check in and make sure they are meeting their audience’s needs. We can’t assume we know what our audience wants. We must ask them. One of John’s biggest failures was simply because he built and launched a service and then discovered after it was launched that his customers didn’t want the service. Remember, success relies on being able to provide VALUE to our customers.

4 Questions to Ask Our Audience:

John gave four questions we can ask our audience to help determine how we can increase monetization and the value we offer.

How did you first hear about me?
What do you like about my content?
What don’t you like about my content?
What is your biggest struggle right now?

Don’t stop there. John encourages entrepreneurs to continue to diversify their revenue streams. Provide value in different formats.

Building additional revenue streams will help prepare for unexpected circumstances. In John’s case, he doesn’t only produce a podcast. He has other revenue streams such as affiliate marketing, books, online courses, a membership site, and more.

We must ask, what is it going to take for people to join our revenue streams? What will it take to keep them in? Every month we must prove we’re worth it to our customers.

2. Surround Ourselves with Mentors and Peers

“You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Roans

John shared steps five and six from his book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success.

Step 5. Find your mentor.

We must get the right people to help us on our journey. A great way to find personal success is by following the clues of success others leave. As John said, “Your best mentor is currently somebody who is where you want to be one year from now.” They are still relevant because they just did what we are about to do.

One of the most impactful things he learned from his own mentor is that your network will equal your net worth.

“I've always fostered my network, and that's why I'm so obsessed with Entrepreneurs on Fire and interviewing the world's most successful entrepreneurs and surrounding myself with the right people,” John said. “I truly believe that to the core.”

Step 6. Create or join a mastermind.

Being part of a mastermind, or group will help us get to know people and build trust and respect.

“Everybody deals with fear and doubt,” John said. “I thought I was the only person that was scared to launch a podcast . . . but then I joined a mastermind, and I realized, ‘Oh, everybody feels this way.’ What a comforting feeling supporting and guiding each other through this; it was critical.”

The most impactful thing John learned in a mastermind is that everybody struggles with fear and doubt. Masterminds provide support and help guide us on our path to success giving us more confidence to move forward.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much John for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Become a person of value.
Provide the number one solution to real problems.
Fill the void. Find the problem that isn’t being solved and be the one who solves it.
Don’t let failure stop you.
Follow the clues of success.
Our best mentor is someone who is where we want to be one year from now.
Build our network and surround ourselves with good examples.
Create multiple revenue streams and provide value in more than one format.

Connect with John

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about John, you can find his website at eofire.com. To read his revolutionary 17-step roadmap that outlines a path to financial freedom and fulfillment, go to uncommonsuccessbook.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What key principles have helped you on your path to success? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/81-2-key-principles-that-helped-john-lee-dumas-become-a-multi-million-dollar-podcaster-with-100-million-listens/

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“If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.” Buzz Aldrin.

In today’s episode, I will share with you a cause I’m passionate about… working to solve world hunger through entrepreneurship. This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host.

Going to Bed Hungry for the First Time

In 1994 I was a volunteer missionary in a rural, northeastern Brazilian town named Arcoverde. I remember one night I was there that I went to bed hungry for the first time in my life. I had no food and no money with which I could buy any food. Missing one meal was really not that big of a deal, but the feeling of helplessness that I was hungry and there was nothing I could do about it, was a big deal.

And, I cannot even begin to imagine how I would feel if my wife and children were also regularly going to bed hungry. That would be far worse.

What I went through one night is completely insignificant compared to the millions of people around the world who regularly go to bed hungry due to food insecurity. Imagine the helplessness and hopelessness they feel.

World Hunger Statistics

Here are a few statistics to help us understand the magnitude of the world hunger crisis:

1 in 9 people still goes hungry every day. (source: Concern USA).
Each year 2 million children die from malnutrition. (source: Jonathan Sacks)
More than 820 million people go to bed hungry every night. (source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)
And hunger isn’t just an issue in developing countries. "One in four kids in the U.S. faces hunger.” (sources: Jeff Bridges)
"35 million people in the U.S. are hungry or don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and 13 million of them are children. If another country were doing this to our children, we’d be at war." (source: Jeff Bridges)

Credible Sources Encouraging Us to Help the Hungry

"I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education, and culture for the minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits." Martin Luther King, Jr

Matthew 25:37-40 (NIV) teaches: "Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you as a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

Causes of World Hunger

Global hunger is caused by many issues such as food shortages, disasters, conflict, forced migration, crop failure, etc. And, I know there are many great organizations working to implement numerous great solutions to world hunger. Today I want to talk about one of these solutions.

One Sustainable Solution to Help Conquer World Hunger

According to a World Bank report, poverty is the principal cause of hunger. We definitely need to help provide food to the people who are hungry today in the short term. But even more importantly, we can help people to become more self-reliant by building sources of income so that they can provide food for themselves and their families in a sustainable, long-term way.

One of my all-time favorite websites is Kiva.org. On Kiva, we can see photos and stories of different entrepreneurs around the world and learn about the ventures they are trying to grow and why they need funds. These loans they are requesting are relatively small, ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. These loans are often used to purchase livestock and animal feed so the entrepreneurs can raise animals they can sell for a profit.

Once we select one or more entrepreneurs on Kiva, we can make a donation of as little as $25. A group of lenders combines their funds to provide the resources the entrepreneur needs. When all of the funds are raised, Kiva makes the loan to the entrepreneur, along with providing support resources to help the borrower be successful. 100% of the money loaned goes to the field. And, remember, this is a loan, not a donation, which means the funds are almost always repaid.

Kiva borrowers have an astounding 96% loan repayment rate. Think about that. Only 4% of Kiva borrowers default on their loans. Compare that to the default rate of more than 8% on mortgages in the U.S. When the funds are returned to us, we can choose to then reinvest those funds with another entrepreneur, or withdraw the funds. So, the same money we use to fund our first loan to an entrepreneur on Kiva could be reinvested dozens of times to bless the lives of dozens of other entrepreneurs and their families.

So far, the Kiva community has 1.9 million lenders in 77 countries and has funded more than $1.6 billion in loans.

Proverbs 28:27 gives us a promise when we feed the hungry. It says, "He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse."

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

World hunger is likely a solvable problem. If we can put astronauts in space, we can definitely conquer world hunger if we all work together to solve it.
More than 820 million people go to bed hungry every night.
Each year 2 million children die from malnutrition.
We can choose an entrepreneur (or entrepreneurs) on Kiva.org and make a donation.
Our loan funds are repaid to us and we can choose to make the loan to another entrepreneur.
Kiva has a 96% average loan repayment rate.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive Entrepreneurs of Faith episodes.

Subscribe to the free Monetization Nation eMagazine.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story What do you feel are the best solutions to conquer world hunger? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/80-if-we-can-conquer-space-we-can-conquer-hunger/

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Welcome back to another episode with Shane Barker. In episode 1, we discussed Shane’s story to become an expert influencer marketer and some of his secrets for influencer marketing. In today’s episode, we will be discussing some of Shane’s secrets to product launches and content marketing.

Tips for Product Launches

80% of the work is done before the product launch.

Shane has had a lot of people come to him and say, “Hey, I just went live with this crowdfunding campaign, and I have 30 days to promote it. What do I need to do?” And Shane tells them they need to take it down. He says 30 days is just not enough time.

Many people don’t realize that 80% of the work is done before the product launch. In fact, the launch should be one of the easiest parts because most of the work is already done. Before the launch, most of the PR aspects such as a press release, talking to news stations, bloggers, or reviewers should be done.

Look at the History of Launches for Similar Products

The beautiful thing about the internet is we can find out pretty much anything. So, for a similar product to ours, we can look at other launches and see what they did and whether or not it was successful. We can see what kind of PPC ads they put up, what keywords they went after, who put up backlinks to their product, who interviewed them about the product, etc.

“We’ve got to figure out: what is my competition doing? What did they do successfully, or why did they fail? And how can we make things better and improve upon that?” - Shane Barker

Creating a Buzz

Product launches happen every day, so we have to establish what makes us different, why people should spend their hard-earned money on this, and why people should be excited. A lot of it is pulling on people’s heartstrings and educating them.

“It comes down to messaging and having a very clear message, understanding exactly who you're going to go after, and then going after them aggressively.” - Shane Barker

We must create an audience that trusts us and likes us so we have a following, then create a great, unique product, and then have scarcity and urgency, so our audience has to act quickly.

Tips for Content Marketing

Easier than Ever

Content marketing is a lot easier nowadays because there's software and there are all kinds of technology at our fingertips to help us. This interview was only possible because of video conferencing technology. There is a lot of great technology, software, and tools that make it easier to produce content than it was just a few years ago.

Be Consistent and Patient with Ourselves

Rome wasn’t built in one night, and so it is with our businesses. When we’re doing content writing, it might take a long time. The important thing is that we are consistent and patient. We can’t put up two blog posts and expect to make history.

When someone wants to build muscle and get a six-pack, it takes time. It’s not going to happen after going to the gym twice. Content marketing is a long-term strategy.

Shane’s website has 160,000 visitors per month. While his team does do some outreach, it’s mostly inbound marketing. It often comes down to putting out consistent content, saying, “Hey, if I want to become an Instagram influencer, I’m going to take a year to do that.” Then we have to consistently put out content once a day or twice a day or however often that is. Many people start pursuing their goals to become an influencer but quit after a month or two. Therefore, if we are consistent and pursue it for long enough, we are likely to have success. There's no substitute for hard work.

Start Somewhere and Don’t Worry About Perfection

The first videos of those who are popular on YouTube now were terrible. They often had poor video and sound quality and were probably very awkward in front of the camera. But they started where they were at and improved with time.

Shane hasn’t gone back and listened to his first podcast because he knows that it wasn’t good. He didn’t have great equipment. He just wanted to start interviewing great people and educating people, and now it's turned into something he can monetize. And he kept going and his podcast is number 33 and climbing on iTunes’ business category.

Shane also has left his first blog post on his website even though he doesn’t think it was very good. He leaves it because it’s a reminder of his past and where he started. He also likes to show it to his students because it shows them they don’t have to start at a perfect level.

Shane thinks of his first podcast episodes and his first blog posts as before and after pictures like on a workout ad. People can see that they can do it too when they compare those first posts or those first episodes with what he’s producing now.

Repurposing Content

Another thing Shane recommended with content is the repurposing of content. When we produce a core piece of content, we can cut it up and reformat it into other pieces of content to be published on many other social and marketing channels. For example, if I do an interview, I can post the video on YouTube. I can also turn the audio into a podcast. Then I can write a blog post about it and put it on my website, along with LinkedIn and Medium. I can cut that blog into pieces and turn them into Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter posts. So, I produced one piece of content, and then I repurpose it and publish it on many different platforms.

Shane’s Home Runs

One of the home runs in Shane’s career is that he has had the opportunity to speak all over the world, such as in Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Another big win for Shane is when people come up to him and they say, “Hey, I read your content, and you helped me do this thing!” Shane is a humble individual and feels like he’s still trying to be the person that has accomplished all that he has. So, it means a lot to him when people reach out because it shows him that he’s really making a difference in people’s lives and helping them with their businesses. It’s valuable for him when he can use what he’s learned, leverage it, and then educate others with that knowledge to help them in their businesses.

“If I went to bed knowing that I wasn't helping anybody, I don't think I'd go to bed.” - Shane Barker

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Shane for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Prepare for product launches before the launch. Most of the work should be done beforehand.
Look at how launches have gone for similar products, and see how we can learn from them and improve upon them.
Focus on what makes our products different from the many products that launch every day.
Content marketing can take a long time, so we should be consistent and patient.
We must start somewhere with our content marketing, even if we’re not where we’d like to be with it. We will get better over time.
We can repurpose our content to be used on many different platforms to give our content much more reach.

Connect with Shane

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Shane or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanebarker/ or check out his website at https://shanebarker.com/.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Where have you found success in your product launches? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/79-6-tips-for-product-launches-and-content-marketing/

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What businesses say about themselves is no longer credible, and influencers have become highly credible sources that customers look to and trust instead. In this episode, Shane Barker, an influencer marketing expert, is going to share some of his secrets about influencer marketing.

About Shane Barker

Shane Barker is a UCLA professor. He teaches a class about personal branding and how to become an influencer, and he's developing a course that will be available for anyone to take online and learn the things he teaches in his class. Shane is a consultant. For example, he created a startup that reached more than a $25 million valuation in two years. His consulting practice specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, content marketing, sales funnels targeted traffic, and website conversions.

He consults with multiple fortune 500 companies, and he has some A-list celebrities as clients, including Angela Bassett and Shane Sparks. Shane writes for Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Huffington Post. The infographics he’s created have been viewed more than 350,000 times and have been featured in more than 950 articles and publications. He publishes the marketing growth podcast. Marketing insider group named Shane one of the top content marketing influencers, and Salesforce named him one of the industry's top influencers. He also has published a series of ebooks.

2 Influencer Marketing Secrets

We don’t have to have a million followers.

We don’t have to have a crazy, huge audience. Shane knows of influencers who have followings in the thousands, but they have courses where they are making hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. We also don’t need to be on every social media platform. We can still be successful without having millions of followers on every platform.

Influencers need to educate brands.

About a year and a half ago, Shane did a big event, renting out the floor of a hotel with Amazon and 35-40 brands. They did the training, and Shane realized there was a big disconnect between brands and influencers. He needed to get in the middle and educate people on both sides so they could start having a lot more successful influencer marketing campaigns.

Many influencers don’t understand the value they have. This can be a problem because they don’t know how much to charge brands for their sponsorship or how to campaign products for brands. They often wait for brands to come to them instead of pitching their services to brands. Influencers should be able to educate the brands on why their services are valuable.

To do this, influencers should be able to say “I’ve worked with these brands, and here’s the data from their campaigns.” They should be able to show brands the number of clicks or views their content usually receives. They should be able to tell them exactly what they are going to do for their campaign: a blog post, podcast episode, YouTube video, etc. If they are going to put content on their website, they should be able to tell brands, for example, “My website indexes well for these certain keywords, and 10,000 people look at it monthly.” Influencers should know their data so they can tell brands exactly what their value is.

Shane said, “The good thing about influencer marketing for a brand is there are millions of potential influencers. But the problem is, how do I know who's better than the other person? It’s the influencers that are educated and say, ‘let me show you how to put this campaign to really show you how this was successful.”

Shane’s Passion: Helping Small Businesses

Shane is passionate about many things, but right now he is focusing on his passion to help small businesses. Currently, he’s working for the SBDC (Small Business Development Center), trying to help businesses that have been put in a difficult situation because of COVID. He aids them in transitioning to online from offline, or in figuring out how they can have other revenue streams or keep their doors open. Shane wants to give small businesses the information he has learned in the last 25 years.

He started working with the SBDC because a friend of his is a director for them. They went out for drinks, and Shane said it was like a Jedi mind trick. “I had one beer, and then all of a sudden, by the end of it I was working for him.” When Shane told his team he was really excited to work there, they were skeptical, especially when they learned Shane would be taking a significant pay decrease. Shane told them it wasn’t about the money though; it was about helping people.

Shane’s heart is with small businesses. He’s always had small businesses and been able to grow them. Unfortunately, with where he’s at in his career, he is too expensive for most small businesses to afford his help. Shane thought that wasn’t fair because he has knowledge he can give to people for free. But now he can do that with the SBDC.

Shane realizes that entrepreneurs are strong and can get through difficult times. But, it becomes more difficult when you have something uncontrollable like COVID or government. It’s not that these entrepreneurs aren’t working hard enough; it’s that there are other forces stopping them.

Shane’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Chevy’s Mexican Restaurant

Shane started off as a busser for Chevy’s Mexican restaurant when he was 16. Eventually, he moved up from bussing tables to becoming a waiter, then a server, and then they wanted him to become a manager. Instead of being the manager, Shane traveled around the country opening new restaurants.

Hot Pad

While Shane was in college, he started a business called Hot Pad, which sold reusable, non-toxic heat packs. He opened kiosks, got investors, hired freelancers for the logo and the website, and put the whole project together. They started doing different kinds of hot pads: ones for the shoulders, ones for the back, etc. The business did really well.

After graduating from CSU, Shane started his own business. There was one business he took from 0 to $25 Million in 2 years with 130 employees and 3 or 4 locations. That business was actually sued by the Attorney General for about $60 Million. They ended up settling on the case, but Shane learned from that experience more about being an entrepreneur than a degree from Harvard or Yale ever could. Ever since then, Shane has been doing consulting, helping businesses drive traffic and convert traffic into online sales.

Influencer Marketing

Soon, Shane jumped into the influencer space. He had a client by the name of Zoe Rodriguez. She was a fitness influencer making about $40,000 a month, and Shane’s business helped take her from 400,000 to 1.6 million followers. She already had a very engaged audience, so when they redid her website, logo, and sales funnels, it accelerated the growth.

Content Marketing

Shane now writes for 150 different websites including Forbes and Huffington Post with the help of his team. He also has a podcast that just reached number 33 on iTunes for the top business podcasts.

How does he do it?

So how does Shane manage all of his ventures? For many years, Shane was the bottleneck in his processes, always wanting to approve everything. But, there were simply not enough hours in the day for him to catch up. He’s learned the value of delegating, having really good processes in place, and having a strong team.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Shane for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Influencers are credible sources with reach that customers trust.
We don’t need millions of followers to be successful in our influencer marketing. A small, but engaged, following can often give us a lot of success.
Both brands and influencers should be educated about all the services an influencer can provide. An influencer that is knowledgeable is more likely to be hired by brands to promote their products.
Writing for a lot of other credible organizations is a great way to establish our own credibility.
Delegating, having good processes in place, and having a strong team can help relieve entrepreneurs’ stresses and give them more free time to do more of the things they love.

Connect with Shane

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Shane or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanebarker/ or visit his website at https://shanebarker.com/.

Share Your Story

How have you seen influencer marketing used effectively? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/78-secrets-from-an-influencer-marketing-expert/

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Feeding a Baby Giraffe

I’m on a business trip today in Fort Worth, Texas, and I’m so grateful that my youngest daughter was able to come with me on this trip. After our business meetings were completed, we were able to get to the Fort Worth Zoo about an hour before it closed. USA Today has ranked the Fort Worth Zoo is the top zoo in America, and it has a vibe similar to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, without the rides.

My daughter’s favorite experience was feeding a baby giraffe. The Fort Worth Zoo has an enclosure with a bunch of giraffes. The giraffe enclosure has a walk-up platform near eye level with the giraffes. Near this platform, the zoo has an employee selling leaves of romaine lettuce. 3 leaves of lettuce for $6. That’s a great profit margin, and he was selling a lot of lettuce. Then, zoo guests can hold the leaves of lettuce out over the fence, and the giraffes walk up and eat the lettuce out of the guests’ hands

So, I purchased lettuce leaves for my daughter, and a baby giraffe walked over and ate the lettuce directly from her hand. The giraffe tongues are surprisingly long and caused a squeal of delight from a little girl who was next to us. On the YouTube video version of this episode, I’m including video clips of my daughter feeding the baby giraffe. That simple feeding created an amazing, memorable experience that my daughter and I will remember for a very long time.

So, here a monetization framework a learned from feeding a baby giraffe today:

Create a Product or Service Around Something Our Potential Customers Already Want to Do. It seems like every zoo has signs telling guests not to feed the animals. They have to post these signs because people naturally love to have encounters with and connect with animals by feeding them. Usually, zoos try to prevent these animals from feeding. However, the Fort Worth Zoo embraced it and decided to turn that natural desire of guests to feed the animals into a revenue stream.
Turn an Expense into a Profit Center. The zoo already had to buy lettuce and other food to feed the giraffes. So, the Fort Worth Zoo took an expense of lettuce for which they were already paying and turned it into a profit center when they started selling lettuce for the guests to feed the giraffes. Not only did selling the lettuce reduce an expense, but it also generated a lot of profit. By selling lettuce, the zoo is also able to control what type of food their guests are feeding to the animals.
Turn the Product or Service into an Experience Through Which Customers Can Better Connect with Us. By allowing my daughter and me to feed the giraffes, the Fort Worth Zoo allowed us to engage with and connect with the giraffes and the zoo itself. This was very different than just looking at the giraffes from a distance. After that experience, I bought my daughter a mug and a shirt, and I called my wife and we planned to bring her back so I could share that experience with her as well. My daughter and I both like giraffes and the Fort Worth Zoo far more now than we did before that experience. These things never would have happened if we had just looked at giraffes from a distance.

Application to Our Businesses

So, how do we apply the three principles of this framework to our businesses? Here are a few examples:

Are you a popular speaker at events, and you try to avoid people mobbing you after you speak? Then, maybe you could start charging a small group of fans for a chance to speak with you after your events. This fee will make you more money for something you are already doing. And, you will create a unique experience with fans who can better engage and connect with you and are willing to pay for it.

Or, do people constantly email you with questions, looking for free answers. I’m not talking about pre-sales questions. Maybe instead of ignoring these emails, or resenting the fact that answering these questions takes so much time, we could turn this expense into a profit center. Maybe we could start charging customers a flat price to answer a question with a video, and we could post the video answers online, to create more pages of content in search engines, and establish more credibility with customers. In addition to a new revenue stream, these direct answers would provide more engagement and connection with our customers.

Or, do people regularly call you wanting to do lunch and pick your brain about their businesses? Then, maybe you could start charging these people for a chance to go to lunch with you and get your advice on their business.

Let’s find what our potential customers want most, and instead of trying to prevent it or avoid it, let’s embrace it, by offering that product or service as a new revenue stream, and allow them to better connect with and engage with us.

That’s all of today. I wish you success in your monetization efforts.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

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What business lessons have you learned during the pandemic? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/77-what-we-can-learn-about-monetization-from-feeding-a-baby-giraffe/

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There are 3.5 billion social media users, which is about 45% of the world’s population (Source: Oberlo). That number is only growing. Social media is one of the best ways to reach our customers. In today’s episode, Warren Whitlock and I discuss 3 of his secrets to using social media effectively and more.

Warren Whitlock is a digital business development strategist. In 2008, he wrote the first book on Twitter and mobile marketing called Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online. He was also named one of Forbes’s Top 10 Social Media Power Influencers. Warren helps businesses transform into a new way of doing business. His breakthrough strategies to integrate mobile marketing, public relations, and lead generation with conversions to return on investment for lifetime value have helped hundreds of businesses achieve rapid and continuing results in the marketing process.

Warren’s Top 3 Social Media Secrets

Be a Thought Leader

Warren said the biggest tip he can give is to be a recognized expert in your field. To do social media well, we need to pick a niche and be an expert in that. We want to be a recognized thought leader in our niche.

Warren himself is a recognized thought leader. He’s an author and has regularly been asked to speak at events.

Be Authentic

Warren tries to be the same person all the time on social media. He wants to truly be himself, even if that means making a dumb joke because that’s his personality. People will connect with us easier if we don’t try to put on a fake personality for the sake of our following. Our followers want to see a real human being.

Engage with Our Following

Liking others’ posts is important, but it often isn’t what Warren focuses on. He wants to have conversations with people through social media. He asks himself, “What can I do to show some love?” He then adds to the conversation wherever he can, and he expects reciprocity.

Warren’s Passion: Giving

One of the things Warren is very passionate about is giving. There is a moral and spiritual side to give, but putting that aside, Warren firmly believes the more we give, the more we get.

Sometimes in business, we can be too focused on beating out the competition and doing whatever it takes to succeed. Warren has learned that it doesn’t have to be that way. It is much better when you have people who want to work with you and hear from you because of the value you have given them. It’s human nature that when people do things for us, we naturally want to do something for them.

“Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

Reciprocity

Warren recommended a book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. I recommend it as well. It details a study where participants were paid to take a survey. After the survey, the facilitators talked with participants for 10-15 minutes. In the control group, the facilitators would then ask, “Do you want to buy some raffle tickets? You could win a car, and I could win the prize of best salesman.” In the other group, five minutes before asking, the facilitator would say, “Hey, I’m going to go down the hall and get a soda. Do you want one?” Then they would give them the same pitch. The ROI on the second group was 10 times the amount spent on soda, and it sold twice the number of raffle tickets as the first group.

This is a great example of reciprocity. Warren said, “We normally think of reciprocity as I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. But, that’s not how reciprocity works. It works when you give without expectation of return.”

This doesn’t mean we can just give all of our time, products, or services away for free. As with this interview, Warren spent his time with me, giving me value. In turn, I will promote this, promoting Warren with my audience at the same time. If we all practice reciprocity, then we can all benefit from helping one another.

One of Warren’s Failures and What He Learned

Warren had a small business selling laser printers. He was advertising, getting good ROI, and using the internet when a lot of people weren’t yet. Warren thought he would offer a money-back guarantee because he knew a lot of people would say, “I'm going to buy this because I can just ship it back in a week.” When they got the product and it was okay, they would say, “this may not be everything I want, but I'm not going to go through the trouble of shipping it back.”

The business was doing well, and Warren got used to spending a lot of money on advertising. He was so focused on advertising, however, he didn’t prioritize giving himself a salary. He was also spending more money than he had. Then one day, Google made a change and their advertising results fell flat.

This led to Warren moving to Las Vegas. When he eventually reached the point where he had enough money, he got into the real estate side of the business. This was about 13 years ago, shortly before the market crashed. Warren got hit pretty hard; he couldn’t pay for things and made some bad decisions about where to borrow money. From this whole experience, Warren learned that when something works he should keep doing more of that.

Now that Warren is advising startups, he has realized there is a marketing chasm, a big hurdle that startups have to get over. This happens when a business starts doing well and expanding, and when the market dips for a while. One man Warren interviewed said, “No matter what you're doing, you're going to reach that point where you're in the chasm, and you think you're just going to die and many businesses just go away.” If we can push through that hard time, we can survive the marketing chasm and really grow our business.

Businesses might try to get through the chasm by offering deals. For example, a tech company might have a one-day-only sale where their software is 75% off. This might help them for a while, but it won’t work long-term because the customers who come for that are either bargain hunters or those with a lower income who really can’t afford higher prices, and so they are much less likely to become long-term customers.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much, Warren for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The more we give, the more we get. But we should also give without the expectation of return.
When something works we should keep doing that, scale that, and do more of that, and stop doing the things that hurt us.
Marketing strategies offering big deals can help our businesses with short-term cash flow, but they likely will not work and will hurt us in the long term.
To grow our social followings we must be thought leaders, be authentic, and engage with our following.

Connect with Warren

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Warren or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/books/ or visit his website at https://warrenwhitlock.com/.

Share Your Story

How have you seen someone find success through becoming a thought leader on social media? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/76-3-social-media-tips-to-help-us-grow-our-following/

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Customers today are more informed than ever before. With the accessibility of online information before they make a buying decision, they study their options and educate themselves. By the time a sales rep contacts a customer, they have already identified specific solutions for their needs (Source: CSO Insights). Research has found that customers are 57% through their purchase process before they make any meaningful contact with a sales rep (Source: Gartner).

Brian Mitchell is a Sales Challenger Model expert. The model is a sales approach in which the seller challenges potential customers. Brian is also an associate partner with Leads Online Marketing. He served four years in the United States Marine Corps before he worked at AT&T leading a team that transitioned the company from Yellow Pages to the digital world. Brian led the sales enablement team for YP.com, which was a top 30 Digital Property. His department sold more than $300 million in digital ad revenue annually.

Today, Brian and I discuss the tectonic shift of the Yellow Pages which he has witnessed. Brian will also teach us about the Challenger Sales Model.

Sales organizations can increase business by challenging customers — delivering customer interactions specifically designed to disrupt their current thinking and teach them something new. It’s not just about selling something anymore,” (Source: Brent Adamson, Distinguished Vice President, Advisory, Gartner, and co-author of The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation)

Helping Small And Medium Businesses Grow

Brian grew up in a household where his father owned a small business handed down to him from his father. From an early age, Brian was exposed to the ins and outs of owning and operating a business.

Working for AT&T

While Brian worked for AT&T, a huge portion of the company’s revenue came from selling Yellow Page ads. I asked Brian how efficient this advertising model was, and he told me at that time, it had a good return on investment. Brian said that sometimes a small column ad would generate enough business for a year for their customer. Based on how the return was, the customer would evaluate their marketing budget for the following year.

Brian understood the challenges which separated his customers from being great, and he consulted with them on areas where he thought there was a good opportunity. He would try to drive more exposure by taking out a bigger ad and diversifying into digital ads.

In order to measure how effective a campaign was, Brian would set performance indicators like setting a number of leads that should come in each month. If this number wasn’t met, they would place additional advertising to reach the goal of leads.

The Challenger Sales Model

In 2008, despite the recession, there were still companies with record-breaking sales. Brian said those companies were scrutinized to understand how they were able to be successful during a recession.

As it turned out, the sales teams that worked for those companies were doing a better job of understanding their customers and the challenges they were facing. Based on their understanding, they developed plans and solutions that served their customers’ needs, whether it was better branding, getting more traffic, or growing their market share. In the end, these methods led to a solid ROI for their customers.

The Challenger Sales Model is about following a process. Even during challenging times, like 2020, the Challenger model still worked. It didn’t matter if people were an introvert or an extrovert, the model worked just as well. In fact, Brian said introverts can often make better salespeople because they pay more attention to details and usually are well-prepared. The challenger model drives hard conversations with business owners about their pain points and what is holding them back from being great.

The Challenger Model vs. Relationship-Driven Sales

When I looked up some numbers prior to my interview with Brian, I found that “40% of high sales performers primarily used a challenger style, and that high performers were more than two times more likely to use the challenger approach than any other approach.” (source: Gartner)

Brian agrees that although he’s traditionally a relationship person who builds rapport and develops trust with his customers, he’s come to see how a blend of relationship skills and the Challenger model has allowed him to become more successful. Brian says it’s not enough to be successful in relationships. It doesn’t always close sales. The Challenger model is more about doing business, which comes with knowing our customer’s industry and every parameter within it.

It’s important to have challenging conversations with business owners about what differentiates them from the competition and how they’re willing to change. Brian says the most remarkable thing about the Challenger model is there isn’t much room to fail. It’s built on engaging with the decision-maker with facts and data. Even though it sounds simple, the Challenger Sales Model takes practice. We can’t read the book and just expect to hit the ground running.

What made the Challenger Sales Model easy for Brian is he had been selling that way his entire life without realizing it. Having grown up doing sales in a small business environment made this sales model feel natural to him.

Pros and Cons of the Challenger Sales Model

Brian believes that the Challenger model makes it possible for us to be present with our customers, no matter where they are in their buying cycle. We’re always trying to educate, inform, and make recommendations that are going to benefit our customers and drive sales. Another advantage Brian sees in the Challenger model is how it enabled him to grow digital ad revenue. This sales model allows sellers to come up with a fresh and insightful approach that is new to their customers.

Brian thinks the Challenger Sales Model needs to be managed appropriately. It has to be followed by proper training and role-playing with the sales reps in the front lines to show them how they should communicate and talk to the client. If this doesn’t happen, sales calls can go in different directions and down a path that will not lead to a close.

Brian believes instituting the Sales Challenger Model is a process that's been proven. As we follow and develop it, it's going to continue to help us help our clients.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Brian for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Today, customers are more informed than ever before. That's why we need to offer our customers a buying experience that goes beyond product selling.
The Challenger Sales Model helps us engage with our customers at any stage in their buying cycle.
Relationship skills are very important, but the Challenger sales model maybe be able to provide even more results.
The Challenger model is more about doing business, which comes with knowing our customer’s industry and every parameter within it.
When we follow the Challenger Sales Model, it brings us up to speed in a short period of time, even if we don’t have the experience.

Connect with Brian Mitchell

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Brian or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/briansmitchell or visit his website www.mitchellbrian.com

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Share Your Story

What has been your experience with the Challenger Sales Model? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/75-how-to-close-more-sales-with-the-challenger-sales-model-which-is-used-by-40-of-star-performers/

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

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One of the most important factors of monetization is creating a great product that people would want to buy. However, the process of creating and developing a new product can be very daunting. In fact, more than 30,000 new products are launched each year and 95% of them fail (Source: Harvard Business School). Moreover, only 40% of developed products make it to market and of that 40%, only 60% will have any success at all. (Source: Marketing Research Association).

That’s why I have Bob Healey with me today. Bob is the founder and CEO of GrillBlazer, which makes a line of products called GrillGuns. Bob has worked as a consultant, helping different organizations with their products, processes, and business development.

Bob is an engineer who loves to find the root cause of any problem and come up with creative solutions. Today, Bob and I discuss how he started GrillBlazer, and Bob explains his process and secrets concerning product creation and product development.

Looking at the Big Picture

Bob believes that the reason he is who he is today, an engineer and a businessman, is his ability to see the finish line faster than anybody else, even when he doesn’t know what he wants to do. It’s like when he used to flip houses when he was younger. He would see the potential of a house well before he remodeled it to match the picture he had in his head.

Bob doesn’t think it matters whether or not we’re working on something we’ve done before. Even if it’s something we’re doing for the first time, we should be able to see what the end looks like.

Do We Have What it Takes?

Bob says that a lot of people have crazy and great ideas, but most of them don’t understand what it takes to make those ideas come true. His advice is that whenever we want to accomplish something, we need to know if we have the necessary resources to make it happen.

“Success is not for those who want it, nor those who need it, but for those who are utterly determined to seize it一whatever it takes.” (Source: Darren Hardy, New York Times best-selling author)

As an engineer, Bob used to design a lot of products for other companies. Part of what he did was to improve the performance of these companies’ processes or products. He had worked for American Electric Power as a contractor. For 6 years, Bob worked for AEP managing contracts and negotiations until the company, looking to cut down costs, decided to let go of all their contractors. Bob found himself stuck between two options: either work for AEP full-time or find something else to do. Since he didn’t want to work for the company anymore, he decided to leave.

After Bob told his wife he was no longer working for AEP, they spent a few days making a list of the things he wanted to do. Bob started by prioritizing what he believed was important. He also gave himself the freedom to add to his list whenever he came up with something new. He needed to find out whether or not its priority took precedence over what he was currently working on.

Knowing When NOT to Proceed

For a whole year, Bob worked on two products prior to GrillBlazer. He had finished the development of both products when he was trying to figure out what was required to be successful in launching these products as businesses. One of the two products was in a very mature multi-billion dollar industry. Bob took time to understand how he would enter that market, what it would cost him, whether or not this business would bring him personal stratification, and what the end result would look like.

After Bob had thought about all these factors, he realized that this wasn’t where he wanted to end up. Bob believes that it takes discipline to stop working on what doesn’t bring us closer to where we want to be. Having enough discipline, Bob decided not to proceed with launching the product.

How GrillGlazer Started

Bob and his family enjoyed having barbecues. It didn’t matter what time of the year it was, they would just have people over and charcoal grill a meal. It was during one of those barbecues, in December 2017, that Bob realized not a lot of people liked to charcoal grill when the snow was blowing. It was too much effort to try to light the grill.

Bob realized that his way of lighting the grill was much easier and it worked all year round. While he was standing out in the cold, taking steaks off the grill, he found his next project.

He started discussing his idea with his family. He knew what he wanted to do and what the end product should be, but he just didn’t know how to do it yet. Although his way of lighting a charcoal grill was efficient, it was complicated and unattractive. So, one of his sons-in-law suggested he make the product look like a gun because people would think it was cool.

It turned out to be great advice. Bob recalls one of his earlier conversations with an attorney, who he was considering as his legal counsel and who was really excited about Bob’s product. Bob asked him if the product had a different design, would he have still bought it? The answer was no. Bob realized that the gun shape made his product look cool, and it was one of the primary reasons why people bought it.

Understand What the Market Wants

Bobs says that it’s essential to figure out and understand what the market wants. Had he not considered what people wanted before he developed his product, he would have ended up with a product that no one wanted to buy. He would have spent all his energy and time trying to convince people that they needed to buy his product. Instead, he just designed a product that people found cool and inclined to buy.

“Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers.” - Seth Godin

How to Come up with a Highly Profitable Product

When I asked Bob to share with us his top strategies to develop a profitable product, he said starting a business from scratch is a complex process. We have to take into consideration all of the aspects of how to design something people will want and then create, manufacture and finance it. Bob advises that we start by asking ourselves: “How are we going to make it happen?” It’s not enough to think that just because we have a great idea, someone else will want to do the work for us.

When Bob was in the process of creating GrillBlazer, he knew because of his experience whenever he would face an obstacle, he would find the resources needed to overcome it. Bob believes we must fully understand the tremendous amount of work involved in this process. Because if we’re not willing to go the distance, we’re not going to make it. Bob also stresses how important it is to ask ourselves if we have what it takes to make our products happen, without having to rely on someone else to do it for us.

Creating Credibility

Bob mentions how important it is to create credibility so that people can trust us. He tells us how he was able to raise $560,000 by running a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. Although some people doubted if his product was going to sell, by going on to sell $2M worth of products in just the first year of launching, Bob proved how successful his product was.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Bob for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The most successful people have the ability to look at the big picture. They see what the end looks like.
It’s not enough to have a great idea. It’s equally important to understand if we have what it takes to get this idea to the finish line.
It takes as much discipline to know when to stop just as it takes to proceed.
If we don't reach beyond our skillset and find people who will augment what we know, we’ll be stuck where we are.
Before we put time and effort into developing a product, we must ask ourselves if we have what it takes for our product to be successful.

Connect with Bob Healey

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Bob, you can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/bob-healey-8bbb00b or visit GrillBlazer website https://grillblazer.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Share Your Story

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Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/74-how-to-build-a-highly-profitable-product/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the concept of entrepreneurship as a stewardship.

Rapunzel’s Dream vs. Flynn Rider’s Dream

In the Disney animated movie Tangled, after Rapunzel escapes from the tower where she has been imprisoned, the character Flynn Rider takes her to a tavern full of ruffians to convince her the world is scary and she should just go back into her tower.

While they are in the tavern, the ruffians sing a song called “I have a dream” in which they share their touchy-feely dreams such as collecting toy unicorns and making cupcakes. The ruffians then coerce Flynn to reluctantly share his dream, and Flynn says he wants to retire alone to a deserted island surrounded by enormous piles of money.

Rapunzel shares her dream that she wants to see the floating lanterns that appear each year in the sky on her birthday.

Shortly thereafter, the authorities arrive to try and catch Flynn. One of the ruffians opens up a secret door to help Rapunzel and Flynn escape. The ruffian tells them “Go and live your dream.” Flynn responds, “I will,” and the ruffian says “Your dream stinks. I was talking to her.”

Do Our Dreams Sometimes Resemble Flynn Rider’s?

Each of us has dreams. However, sometimes our dreams might resemble Flynn Riders a little bit, where our focus becomes to make a lot of money to spend on ourselves, and not use to help anyone. When we have this kind of dream, it can be very uninspiring and off-putting to those around us, such as the ruffian expressed when telling Flynn that his dream stinks. People around us, such as customers and team members, don’t care about a dream we have to make a lot of money. They care about how we can help them achieve something they are passionate about.

Read the full article here: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/73-entrepreneurship-is-a-stewardship/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation. In our previous episode, we talked about four business lessons learned during the pandemic such as: being quick to pivot or change, the advantages of working remotely, diversifying revenue streams, and showing more compassion and patience for others.

In this second episode, we will discuss five more business lessons we can learn from the pandemic, including:

Investing in technology
How marketing budgets are essential
Changes that are here to stay
Family connection and its importance
How things will get better

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The life of an entrepreneur is filled with a rollercoaster of emotions, adventures, and stories. The lows on that rollercoaster can be so low, leading us to question why we stepped into entrepreneurship in the first place and to possibly quit. The highs can be so high that we believe they can transform our lives, our family, and our social contributions.

The road to becoming a revolutionary entrepreneur is daunting and grueling. Many have fallen off the steep, slippery ladder leading to success. But those who persevere, and reach their entrepreneurial success can find life-changing rewards.

One of the secrets of highly successful entrepreneurs is that they are constantly learning from other successful entrepreneurs. This is one of my favorite reasons for doing this show: to learn from the amazing entrepreneurs and monetization experts I am able to interview.

In this episode, I was privileged to interview and learn from Redge Allen, who is an experienced and highly successful entrepreneur, realtor, podcaster, business owner, event planner, professor, and good friend.

He is currently the Vice President of Marketing for a company with billions of dollars of annual revenue, and he has been fortunate to have founded, sold, or been a part of a number of highly successful companies. Redge created his first small business as a Phoenix real estate agent at the age of 22. He then grew the company to achieve a personal profit of more than $1 million before the age of 25 and ranked in the top 20 realtors out of more than 60,000 realtors.

Redge Co-founded Color in Motion 5K, which is an event where people throw colored chalk at each other while running a race. Redge turned that into a national event company with races all over the country. He organized the events and received more than 100,000 participants nationwide.

He regularly consults organizations on leadership, marketing, business strategies, and professional negotiations.

Redge is a dear friend of mine. Jim Rohn said, “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Redge is one of those people I want to be more like. This is part 1 of 2 episodes with Redge. In this first episode, he shared four actions of a revolutionary entrepreneur.

Redge’s Story: A Road that Paved the Way for Success

Redge was raised in a family with a meager financial situation. “We lost our home growing up, I had times of being displaced, and I didn’t know what clothes were outside of Goodwill,” Redge said. Due to his background, he gravitated towards the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki, which focuses on obtaining financial security. He was so inspired by this book that he jumped into learning about real estate without previously understanding what it really was. After completing a class at the local community college, Redge took the real estate exam and became a realtor.

Here are 4 actions that Redge took in becoming the revolutionary entrepreneur he is today:

4 Actions In Becoming a Revolutionary Entrepreneur

Build on Land We Own

Big, national brands would advertise to realtors saying, “Come work for us!” But as Redge thought about it, he said, “I’ve got a chance to go with these companies that take a substantial amount of profits from my sales. Instead, I saw a company on a bulletin board who hardly took anything. They would only charge me $200 per transaction. They wouldn’t offer support, help, or anything. They would just meet the legal requirements, which sounded like a great opportunity to me.”

In Redge’s mind, he thought if he was going to start from the bottom and have to spend time building his business anyways, why wouldn’t he build on land he owned versus upon a national company, who supposedly knew the secrets and gained his success? Redge wasn’t looking to build someone else’s brand; he was looking to build himself and his own brand.

His first success in real estate was helping a friend’s cousin purchase an $80,000 condo. “I had no idea what I was doing, but I gave my best to my client,” Redge said.

Three days later, a friend of Redge’s client contacted him and said how much their friend couldn’t stop talking about him. They sought his help in finding their own home, and sales became a snowball effect from there. Eventually, he went from selling two to three homes to selling 11 or 12 in one day!

“It was the perfect storm where I was giving my heart, but I was building my business versus building someone else’s business. I’m stubborn enough that I would rather learn on my own through my own experience, rather than hoping someone else is going to own my success. I was selling well over 100 homes a year with my own personal business. To go through that process and learn and grow from it was invaluable. I wouldn’t change it at all.” - Redge Allen

Create Relationships with Clients

“I wasn’t a genius in real estate. For me, people knew whether I genuinely cared or not. It’s not so much what you say. When I’m sitting down looking for homes with people and they sense that I care genuinely about them, it gets reciprocated ten-fold,” Redge said.

Moving forward, Redge decided to maintain relationships with his clients. “I kept track of everyone’s birthday, their anniversaries, their kid’s names and birthdays, and sent them hand-written cards for these special events.” For children, he even included a $5 gift card to Cold Stone Creamery or another ice cream place. He would receive calls from children saying, “Hey Mr. Redge! I just wanted to say thank you.” He expected nothing in return and showed genuine care that became a huge ROI.

Redge got to a point where he’d send potential clients a card. They would call him up and say, “but I don’t know if I’m going to use you.” Redge was investing in them. He would respond, “If it turns out that I’m not the right fit for you, you’ll never question whether or not I care. Because that’s my primary focus.”

Redge said, “It always paid greater dividends. Realtors would hire me to buy or sell their homes because they had high trust in my ability to perceive and meet client’s needs. They knew I cared more than anyone else would. That was worth the financial investment from them. It was about their trust within me, and when they gave me that trust, it paid dividends for them.” His venture grew by building relationships, reaching out in love and compassion toward clients, and showing he valued people more than money.

Recognize the Lifetime Value of a Customer

Individuals would ask Redge, “What happens if you invest all that money and someone doesn’t buy a home from you?”

Redge would respond, “What if I don’t invest and they don’t buy? I can’t afford not to invest my best.” Redge understands the value of a customer.

Let’s use an example of a small business owner with a hot dog stand. If Redge were to consult them, he’d say, “You have the best hot dogs, and everyone will love them. Let’s offer free hot dogs to every person who comes today.” The owner of the hot dog stand might respond with: “I can’t afford to pay for those free hot dogs!”

Redge would then say: “let’s say people love this hot dog so much; it has value, and they could get the first one for free. They return, and after buying a hot dog every week for one year, with a $1 profit each time, the business would make $52 of profit in one year.”

Redge wants business owners to begin seeing that if they invest “Y,” they will get “Z” back. “They can make decisions based on long-term applications by recognizing what the lifetime value of a customer actually is, rather than being focused on a single instance that they lose out on the big perspective,” Redge said.

I would add that it’s not just about providing value first. It’s about consistently providing value. Every time a customer buys something from us, they make sure it has enough value and feel good about the purchase. That’s the only way they will trust us enough to buy something in the future.

Maintain Credibility & Transparency

In 2012, Redge founded and directed the start-up Color in Motion 5K, which achieved millions of dollars in revenue by attracting hundreds of thousands of participants in major markets. The mission with these races was to bring people together in communities “to have fun and support a common goal.” (Source: Color in Motion 5K)

Large events were held all over the US including venues at Lincoln Park in Chicago, Reliant Stadium in Houston, and Seattle. They were able to partner up with many national organizations and then sell the start-up after accepting an offer only 13 months from beginning operation.

“When I started Color in Motion 5K, the first event we had brought in 10,000 members to the park,” Redge said. He was sitting in the park in Dallas, Texas, and went online to check their social media feed. As he scrolled through, Redge found some negative things that were happening at the event. He remembered having the dilemma in his mind: “as someone who owns this social media channel, what do I do now?”

Because he had the power to do so, Redge could have deleted the negative or less than “picture perfect” content. “I found that rather than deleting it or blocking someone, I chose to let those negative comments stay. Not because they were negative, but because they were honest. It allowed me an opportunity to give an honest response. When I responded thoughtfully to those less than ideal comments, people saw how I responded to that type of information. That says far more about building credibility as a company than to look at a company that is purely sanitized and untrustworthy,” Redge said.

At the end of the day, Redge believes that negative comments or situations aren’t really negative. They are simply opportunities to show genuine care, listen, and be receptive to real, meaningful feedback from customers.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Redge, for sharing your story and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Whether you are a genius or not, it is more important to show that you genuinely care about people. People know if you care or not. It pays great dividends.
Recognize the lifetime value of a customer. Maintain relationships with clients and find ways to build long-term connections with them.
Consistently provide value.
Own the land where you build your skyscraper. Don’t spend your time building someone else’s brand. Build your own brand.
Create direct relationships with customers. Rely upon the value of this.
Credibility isn't built in a moment. Invest in the long game of credibility.
No company can control whether or not bad things happen, but they can choose how to make things right. Responding well to things going wrong is an opportunity to provide amazing customer service and build trust.
Negative comments or situations aren't negative. They are simply opportunities to show genuine care, listen, and be receptive to real, meaningful customer feedback.

Connect With Redge

If you enjoyed this interview and you want to learn more about Redge or connect with him. You can find him on https://www.linkedin.com/redgeallen/. Follow his "Brother Redge'' podcast, or email him at redgeallen@gmail.com

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John D. Rockefeller is considered the richest man to ever live. His net worth, when adjusted for inflation, would be more than $340 Billion in today’s currency, beating the richest person alive today, Jeff Bezos, by more than $150 Billion (Source: celebritynetworth.com).

In today’s episode, we’ll learn how Rockefeller became so successful through his entrepreneurial journey. We’ll discuss what tectonic shifts (including the lightbulb, automobile, Civil War, railroad, and more) he leveraged to boost his success. We’ll also detail the other secrets like perseverance and stress management that he used to accomplish so much.

Rockefeller’s Entrepreneurial Journey

His Start in Entrepreneurship

John D. Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839. By the age of 16, Rockefeller had his first real office job as an assistant bookkeeper. After success in that job, he partnered with Maurice B. Clark to start their own business in produce. The company, Clark & Rockefeller, earned $4,400 in the first year and $17,000 in the second, which is about $530,000 in today’s currency (Sources: biography.com and the successbug.com).

Standard Oil Co.

In 1863, Rockefeller went into the oil business, opening up a refinery near Cleveland, Ohio. Many others sought success in the oil business but ultimately failed. Rockefeller’s success in this venture may have been because, unlike other refineries that would keep the 60% of oil product that became kerosene and dump the other 40% in rivers and massive sludge piles, Rockefeller sold the 40% others were wasting as lubricating oil, petroleum jelly, paraffin wax, tar, and other by-products. In other words, he monetized an asset he already had.

Rockefeller grew Standard Oil Co., and by 1872, he had purchased 22 of the 26 competitors in Cleveland. The company also acquired their entire supply chain, adding their own pipelines, tank cars, and home delivery network (Sources: biography.com and the successbug.com).

Corporation Challenges

Standard Oil controlled more than 90% of the oil industry, causing legislators to take notice. Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was created. Rockefeller had to dissolve Standard Oil and allow each property to be run by others, though the corporation’s board maintained control over the individual properties (Sources: biography.com and the successbug.com).

In 1909, “New Jersey . . . changed its incorporation laws to effectively allow a re-creation of the trust in the form of a single holding company. Rockefeller retained his nominal title as president until 1911 and he kept his stock.” However, in 1911, “the Supreme Court . . . found Standard Oil Company . . . in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.” At this time, Standard “still had a 70% market share of the refined oil market but only 14% of the U.S. crude oil supply. The court ruled that the trust originated in illegal monopoly practices and ordered it to be broken up into 34 new companies.”

These companies included Continental Oil, which is now part of ConocoPhillips; Standard of Indiana, which is now part of BP; Standard of California, which became Chevron; Standard of New Jersey, which later became, Exxon, and is now part of ExxonMobil; Standard of New York, which became Mobil, now part of ExxonMobil; and Standard of Ohio, which became Sohio, now part of BP.

“Rockefeller, who had rarely sold shares, held over 25% of Standard's stock at the time of the breakup. He and all of the other stockholders received proportionate shares in each of the 34 companies.” Rockefeller had reduced control over the oil industry. However, over the next 10 years, the breakup would prove to be immensely profitable. “The companies' combined net worth rose fivefold and Rockefeller's personal wealth jumped to $900 million.” (Source: wikipedia.org)

Philanthropy

Rockefeller believed in the Methodist preacher John Wesley’s dictum "gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can." (Source: wikipedia.org) It isn’t possible for me to include all of Rockefeller’s philanthropic endeavors because there are just too many, but here are a few.

“In 1884, Rockefeller provided major funding for Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in Atlanta for African-American women, which became Spelman College. His wife Laura Spelman Rockefeller, was dedicated to civil rights and equality for women.” When speaking about Laura, Rockefeller said, "Her judgment was always better than mine. Without her keen advice, I would be a poor man."

“The Spelman Family . . . along with John Rockefeller, were ardent abolitionists before the Civil War and were dedicated to supporting the Underground Railroad. John Rockefeller was impressed by the vision of the school and removed the debt from the school. The oldest existing building on Spelman's campus, Rockefeller Hall, is named after him.” (Source: wikipedia.org)

After his retirement, Rockefeller also helped pay for the University of Chicago, donating more than $80 Million to it. He helped found the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which was later named Rockefeller University (Sources: biography.com and the successbug.com).

Rockefeller “founded the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in 1909, an organization that eventually eradicated the hookworm disease.” (Source: wikipedia.org) By the end of his life, he had donated more than $530 million to various causes (Sources: biography.com and the successbug.com).

This is one of the best parts of capitalism and entrepreneurship. They give entrepreneurs the resources and ability to make far greater social contributions.

Tectonic Shifts Rockefeller Leveraged

The Light Bulb and the Automobile

Before the introduction of electricity, oil was the main source of lighting. Whale oil was expensive, but kerosene helped that become available to the working and middle classes, and Rockefeller took advantage of that. However, the invention of the lightbulb changed all of that. It “gradually began to erode the dominance of kerosene for illumination.”

Standard Oil had to adapt to this tectonic shift by “developing a European presence, expanding into natural gas production in the U.S., and producing gasoline for automobiles, which until then had been considered a waste product.” (Source: wikipedia.org) Rockefeller was able to find success with the tectonic shift of the automobile.

Food Supplies During the Civil War

As mentioned earlier, Rockefeller and his partner went into the produce business early in his career. Their business did well in its first two years, but when the Union Army called for large amounts of food and supplies in the Civil War, their profits soared.

During the Civil War, “Rockefeller tended his business and hired substitute soldiers. He gave money to the Union cause.” He said, “I wanted to go in the army and do my part. But it was simply out of the question. There was no one to take my place. We were in a new business, and if I had not stayed it must have stopped—and with so many dependent on it.”

“When the Civil War was nearing a close and with the prospect of those war-time profits ending, Clark & Rockefeller looked toward the refining of crude oil.” (Source: wikipedia.org)

The Railroad

Rockefeller “was well-positioned to take advantage of postwar prosperity and the great expansion westward fostered by the growth of railroads and an oil-fueled economy. He borrowed heavily, reinvested profits, adapted rapidly to changing markets, and fielded observers to track the quickly expanding industry.”

Standard Oil “became one of the largest shippers of oil and kerosene in the country. The railroads competed fiercely for traffic and, in an attempt to create a cartel to control freight rates, formed the South Improvement Company offering special deals to bulk customers like Standard Oil, outside the main oil centers. The cartel offered preferential treatment as a high-volume shipper, which included not just steep discounts/rebates of up to 50% for their product but rebates for the shipment of competing products.” (Source: wikipedia.org)

Our Business Should be About Our Passions—Not Money

“If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.” - John D. Rockefeller

Rockefeller truly loved what he did. He knew business would be better if there was something bigger behind it than money (Source: 2x.co).

“I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.” - John D. Rockefeller

Credibility

Though Rockefeller wasn’t perfect, he cared a lot about his credibility. He often struggled to get the amount of money he needed to achieve his goals, but he won the trust of banks and investors, enabling him to take his business farther than he would have been able to otherwise.

It is said that Rockefeller remembered 3,000 of his employees’ names (Source: 2x.co). An impressive accomplishment that showed his employees that he cared about them, pushing his credibility through the roof because of the respect they likely had for him.

By showing people we care about them by doing something as simple as remembering their names, we can boost our credibility. In addition, it will help us build stronger relationships with those we work with.

Building “Skyscrapers” on Land We Own

As Standard Oil grew and purchased its competitors, it got into the business of buying pipelines and terminals and setting up a system of transport for its own products. Standard came to control or own almost every aspect of the business, and its grip on the industry tightened. It even bought thousands of acres of forest for lumber, drilling, and blocking competitors from running their own pipelines (Source: biography.com).

While the monopoly was later deemed unlawful by Congress, we can still learn the value of controlling the aspects of our businesses from this example. If we build our business on a platform that we don’t own, we have limited control over that platform, and the platform can change the rules and have a huge impact on our business.

Other Secrets to Success

Perseverance

“I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.” - John D. Rockefeller

As entrepreneurs, our businesses might not take off right away despite our hard work. Rockefeller had to start out his career as an assistant bookkeeper before he could start the business he wanted to. He persevered in that job until he and his partner could start their own business.

Sometimes our goals take longer than we expect, or we have to do things we don’t want to in order to reach them. It is important to keep our goals in mind and let them drive us when things aren’t how we want them to be. If we work hard and persevere, things often get better.

Keeping a Cool Head

When circumstances went wrong and others began panicking, Rockefeller was known for keeping his cool. Even though he started his career during a great market depression, he remained calm, being careful and watching others learn from their mistakes (Source: forgefinancialfreedom.com and 2x.co).

“I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.” - John D. Rockefeller

We, too, can keep our heads during stressful situations, and it will help us make better decisions. It will also encourage our employees and associates to remain calm as well.

Stress Management

There were several periods of Rockefeller’s life where he experienced great stress. In the 1870s and 80s, Rockefeller was carrying out his plan of consolidation and integration and was being attacked by the press while doing so. He complained that he couldn’t stay asleep most nights. He later said, “All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate me for the anxiety of that period.”

When he was in “his 50s Rockefeller suffered from moderate depression and digestive troubles; during a stressful period in the 1890s he developed alopecia, the loss of some or all body hair.” Rockefeller started wearing toupées by 1901. Unfortunately, his hair never grew back. However other health complaints subsided when he lightened his workload.

To help manage his stress, here are a couple of tactics Rockefeller used.

The Importance of a Consistent Schedule

Rockefeller had to keep a meticulous schedule, planning every minute, otherwise, his day would fall into chaos. He never diverged from it. However, he didn’t let it control him either. He was the master of his schedule, and the schedule was not the master of him.

By keeping such a strict schedule, he was able to be in the present moment. He could focus more easily because he devoted time to each of the important things in his life, and therefore, he wouldn’t get distracted by other things (Sources: forgefinancialfreedom.com and 2x.co).

“Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim.” - John D. Rockefeller

The Importance of Rest

One aspect of Rockefeller’s schedule was his time dedicated to rest. He loved to nap after lunch and dinner. When he was in his 30s, he installed a telegraph wire between his work and home so he could spend 3-4 afternoons during the week at home, gardening and enjoying the outdoors (Source: cnbc.com).

Entrepreneurs often forget how important balance is in life. We often get excited about the ventures we are working on and forget that it is crucial to take time to relax or be with loved ones so we don’t exhaust ourselves and burn out.

“It is remarkable how much we all could do if we avoid hustling, and go along at an even pace and keep from attempting too much.” - John D. Rockefeller

Faith

During his childhood, Rockefeller attended a local Baptist church with his mother and siblings. Rockefeller’s mother was very religious. She was a major influence for him in religious matters. While they were at church, she would encourage him “to contribute his few pennies to the congregation. He came to associate the church with charity.” Religion became a guiding force throughout his life, and he believed it was the source of his success (Source: wikipedia.org).

As a devout Northern Baptist, Rockefeller read the Bible daily, attended prayer meetings twice a week, and even led his own Bible study with his wife. He supported Baptist missionary activity, funded universities, and heavily engaged in religious activities at his church. While traveling the South, he donated large sums of money to churches belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention, various Black churches, and other Christian denominations. One time, Rockefeller paid for a slave's freedom, and another time he donated to a Roman Catholic orphanage. As he grew rich, his donations to churches became more generous (Source: wikipedia.org).

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We can boost our credibility by remembering our associate’s names.
Having good credibility can lead to help from people like bankers and investors. This help can allow us to take our business further.
We should build skyscrapers on land we own.
Perseverance is one of the most important attributes an entrepreneur can have.
Keeping a consistent schedule can help us focus more easily and be more efficient in our work.
In addition, taking time in our schedule to relax can help us keep a balanced life.
We can make better decisions and help our associates remain calm if we keep a cool head in stressful situations.
Philanthropy is one of the best parts of capitalism and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs have the resources and ability to make far greater social contributions.
Rockefeller leveraged many of the tectonic shifts like the light bulb and the railroad. We can leverage the tectonic shifts in our time to gain success.

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As COVID-19 struck this past year, we have all been affected in one way or another. Unfortunately, many have been negatively impacted by COVID’s health conditions, changes, economic status, and numerous other ways.

Specifically, in business, many companies around the world, from start-ups to larger companies, have been forced to close their doors, file for bankruptcy, lay off employees, or think quickly about how to best adapt to the strenuous circumstances. So, what are the most important lessons we can learn from this global pandemic?

“When you look at any other major disaster to have taken place throughout history, the world always finds a way to bounce back from the amount of trauma caused by it. Whether it be the Great Depression, World War II, or 9/11, there’s a lot you can learn from the response to huge global disasters from the past.” (Source: Keap.com)

This is episode 1 of 2. In this episode, we will be discussing some business lessons we can learn from this worldwide pandemic, and how we can use this crisis as an opportunity to pivot, improve, diversify our revenue, and become more compassionate and patient with those around us.

Be Quick to Pivot and Change

If anything is consistent, change is, and it happens quickly. When change occurs, it’s easy to fight against it or resist. Quite often, it’s much more difficult to adapt or “give in” to change. Many changes have taken place this year: a worldwide pandemic and its effects on countries, communities, families, individuals, and the workplace.

“Businesses have, for a long time, taken for granted just how stable (comparatively speaking) our cultural climate has been and how quickly things can change. Businesses that have been able to pivot amid massive, rapid change have survived. Meanwhile, those that have not been agile have either not survived or have taken a major loss. It’s important to see opportunity in the midst of a crisis or confluence of events, and not be upended by the fear the change may pose.” - Steven Le Vine, Grapevine PR & Consulting (Source: Rolling Stone)

Many times, it is necessary to pivot or change the direction we are going in with a venture, product, service, etc. In the case of COVID-19, the workplace has pivoted to a remote, work-at-home setting (much more than it used to be), and in many other ways. We need to be prepared to adapt to these changes happening around us. Businesses that don’t adapt will suffer challenges such as employees finding a better work-life balance working remotely somewhere else, and clients going to other businesses for help who provide video meetings.

“We are in a transitional period and employees are becoming more assertive and clear-headed about what they do and do not want out of their employment. That trend started when the millennial generation entered the workforce, but it has become more pronounced across all generations due to the pandemic. Employers looking to recruit and retain top talent will need to meet the expectations of these employees or risk losing them to competitors who offer more flexibility.” (Source: JD Supra)

This crisis has definitely been a tectonic shift that is changing the business landscape, but this has also opened up many doors and created many opportunities for entrepreneurs that were not “typical” before COVID hit.

Remote Work Has Many Advantages

Remote work has caused many valuable shifts in the workplace. Some of these shifts that will stay, according to Tech Republic, include businesses being more trusting and empowering of employees, managers increasing flexible working hours, virtual teams working across locations and departments, and agile teams forming and disbanding around specific activities.

Working from home has definitely been a shift for many businesses and individuals, but it is possible and allows for valuable opportunities such as those previously mentioned. I personally have benefitted from working remotely. It allows me the freedom to interact with my family and help them as needed. It allows me to spend less time away from them. I also feel that working from home avoids many of the distractions that can take place in a typical work environment and gives me more time to focus on creative and priority projects. And, I love the money I’m saving not having to pay rent and all those related expenses.

According to Arjun Bajaaj on Forbes, with the necessary tools and resources, remote work has resulted in a much more productive outcome, even more so than in an office environment. We need to consider the long-term potential of working remotely. This can help prepare us for other crises in the future, but it also helps the workforce maintain a better work-life balance, which results in a valuable outcome and decreases the expenses of running an office or renting a space.

Many companies have shifted into this remote work environment, and “they’re finding it works. Not only are employees able to complete their workload [while dressed comfortably], avoid frustrating commutes, and reduce dry cleaning bills, they’re keeping pace with production and morale is high. Some businesses are running with the trend. Twitter and Square have notified employees they can work from home permanently if they choose. Google and Facebook have extended work-from-home options through the end of the year… we may have been thrust into telework, but it seems to be working.” (Source: Zenefits)

Diversification Can Provide Stability

“Through the pandemic, we’ve learned to diversify further, because you really never know what will happen.” - Bridget Hilton (Source: LSTN Sound Co.)

One of the main tectonic shifts I focus on is recurring revenue, and having multiple streams. When we pour all of our eggs into a single basket, it can be quite dangerous. What if the only revenue stream we have is destroyed overnight? What other revenue is there to rely on?

This, unfortunately, was evident as COVID spread. Various stores have been hit hard by the effects of COVID and have had to go out of business either because of the pandemic or because they were barely surviving before it. Diversification of revenue can come in many ways, such as SaaS products, membership sites, online courses, masterminds, recurring product shipments, entertainment subscriptions, etc.

Luis Carmona, the founder of Tripboxx, said:

“As the owner of a few small businesses (an interior design firm, a small creative agency, and a photography business), I have been told too many times to count, ‘If you focused on just one of your businesses, maybe you can grow that one a bit more.’ Now, more than ever, I have never been so glad that I didn’t listen to that advice. I understand the reasoning behind the comments, but this pandemic has shown me that having multiple revenue streams in different fields is the way to go. When one type of business hurts, the others may save you from going completely under. A varied business portfolio is key to ensure that you can stay afloat with the natural ebbs and flows of a small business. I will continue this business model to ensure the longevity of my business.”

(Source: Spectrum Business)

Steve Haffner, the founder of Pinnacle Thinking, was also forced to develop other areas of products and revenue during the pandemic:

“As a solopreneur who makes his living as a professional speaker at on-site events, the pandemic completely pulled the rug out from under me. What I have learned is that having multiple delivery methods for my intellectual property is not just as “nice to have” but a necessity. The forced time away from the stage has given me the chance to spend time developing other formats and products that are still true to my brand and expertise.”

(Source: Spectrum Business)

More Compassion and Patience

Despite living through a pandemic, everyone is battling their own struggles or challenges. It’s difficult to see many of those challenges. It is important, however, to be aware of the struggles or challenges going on in the lives of our business partners, employees, and co-workers.

Add a pandemic to those already current challenges or struggles. “Everyone is dealing with the stresses of this strange season differently, and it is critical to remember that almost everyone is surrounded by shadows you cannot see through Zoom or hear through a phone call. However, these shadows are very real to them and are likely impacting their worldview massively. This is a great time for extra compassion and patience. And the remarkable thing is that this is in no way unique to these times of plague. I find that a valuable thing to reflect upon, and I hope that those of us reminded of that this year go forward with more compassion and patience.” - Tim Fields, Kabam (Source: Rolling Stone)

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from today’s episode:

Don’t be afraid to pivot or change. Businesses that are able to effectively and quickly pivot when needed are the ones that survive.
Crisis opens the door to opportunities.
Employees today are more clear about what they want from their employment. We need to try to better understand and meet these expectations as best we can, or risk losing top employees to competitors.
Working remotely brings many advantages such as a more convenient work-life balance, not having to commute, decreased office expenses, flexible working hours, more focus time, better family connections, and more agile teams.
Diversifying our revenue streams can increase stability, especially during times of crisis. More revenue streams also increase the chances of higher revenue.
Everyone has their struggles or challenges with the pandemic. Many are struggling with challenges other than the pandemic. It is important to be aware of others, what they are going through, and to be more patient and compassionate.

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Having an efficient sales process in place can be the difference between a high-performing and an underperforming sales organization. 48% of participants from underperforming sales organizations said they didn’t have a strictly structured and enforced sales process (Source: Harvard Business Review).

Chris Ochs is a sales process optimization expert. He’s currently the VP and head of sales at Factoreal, a marketing, automation, and customer engagement platform. Chris is also many other things. He is an entrepreneur, senior sales executive, public speaker, and endurance athlete with 20 years of management experience in companies ranging from organic food, software-as-a-service, online event planning, and email deliverability.

Chris is also the managing partner of CK-HS Consulting, a management consulting company. His company works with small businesses to improve operations and finances and increase the customer base. He has completed more than 50 triathlons, including two Ironman races.

An Early Sales Journey Chris started hustling as a kid. He sold Girl Scout cookies for his sisters. When he got into Junior High, he made $200 a week selling lollipops. He was selling so many lollipops that the Dean of Boys suspected he might be selling drugs. That was when Chris realized he liked making money.

However, his real enabler was his first job. Right after college, he started selling Cutco knives. The job helped him make lasting connections but more importantly, it made him realize that he hated losing in sales. One day after he lost a sale, he called his manager frustrated to tell him about a customer who couldn’t see how valuable the knives were. His manager told Chris he would teach him so that this would never happen again.

This was the start of Chris’s sales education. He started learning about sales as a process, science, consumer psychology, behavior, and methodology. When he left the company 12 years later, he was one of the top managers in the history of the company.

Building Sales Processes for Start-ups Chris spent the next 2 years helping a friend with a new companyーReturn Path. It was also one of the first companies in the space of digital marketing and data analytics. Even though he had no understanding of the technology, he built out their entire sales process till the company had achieved great success.

Chris’s next stop was at ACTIVE Network, a global marketplace for activities and events that connects participants and activity organizers. When he first joined the company, Chris had a sales team of 24 people covering the U.S. and Europe, but they had not implemented a sales process. He was shocked when they told him it was taking them 3 days to respond to a sales lead.

He developed and refined a sales optimization process and strategy. By the end of the year, the company implemented it. Chris managed to increase deal velocity and the average order. The following year, the company witnessed $3 million of growth.

Despite the fact that the entire events industry began to shrink after that, Chris’s department was the most profitable in the company. They were able to contribute $4 million of profit to a company that only posted $2 million of profit. In other words, the company would have had a $2 million loss without Chris’s division.

After Chris left ACTIVE Network, he worked with a friend to develop and implement a sales process for an organic food company in San Diego. Once again, Chris found himself in a business that he knew nothing about. But, this didn’t stop him from implementing a sales process and shifting the company from one that lost $50,000 a month to a company with 12% growth month over month for the following year.

Business School and a Sales Consulting Company Chris started business school at UCLA where he specialized in finance, international management, marketing, and entrepreneurship. After he graduated, he looked around and realized that not many people in Los Angeles knew how to sell. So, he started his sales consulting company that specializes in driving sales through market analysis and sales force effectiveness.

Chris helped more start-ups get off the ground until most recently he joined Factoreal as Head of Sales. He feels that he has come full circle with his current job where he can put to use everything he’s learned over the years.

Sales Optimization Strategies I asked Chris to tell us about some of his sales optimization secrets and strategies.

Sales is a Science Before Chris started business school, he always looked at sales as a science. We would also benefit from looking at sales this way, and viewing it as a process with inputs and outputs. When we do a presentation well, we’re building value. We’re presenting a solution that solves a problem. That’s when we get a “yes” and close the sale.

Understand the Customer’s “Why” We should ask ourselves “why would our ideal customer buy our products?” If we’re not sure of the answer, then we haven’t done enough probing. That’s when we need to go back to the process before we can move any further. It’s too expensive to neglect those steps because if we continue, we will get a “no” and the sale will be lost. We need to focus on providing value first.

Chris believes it’s important to know what drives our customers. When there’s an objection, we need to dig deeper and try to uncover this objection. He recalls when he used to work with the organic food company selling goji berries to the Category Manager at the Whole Foods Market in Venice, California. Chris’s customer cared much about leaving work at 3 pm to avoid the traffic jam, so he came to work at 5 am every day. Chris understood this, and when his customer asked for a meeting, Chris told him he would meet him at 5:20 am. His customer was so impressed, and it made him see that Chris took his work and their business seriously.

Chris showed his customer how buying his product would help reduce his customer turnover, increase his revenue, and become more profitable. Above all, Chris told him he wouldn’t have to justify why he had to leave work early anymore.

Customers Asking for a Discount

When the customer asked for a discount, Chris moved the conversation to another value proposition, offering to do a promotion for him in his local area instead. It would help drive more people to his customer’s store, hence increase the traffic and sales.

“The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven't given them anything else to care about.” Seth Godin

Build Rapport Before Asking the Tough Questions We can’t approach a customer and ask them about their marketing budget before we’ve broken the ice and provided value first. After they’ve seen the value we can offer them, they’ll be willing to answer some of the tough questions.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Chris for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

An efficient sales process can be the difference between a high-performing and an underperforming sales organization.
Sales should be regarded as a science. The output we get is the result of what we feed into the process.
It doesn’t matter if we don’t understand a certain technology or are working in an unfamiliar industry. These things can be learned. What matters is having a solid sales process.
Before we can uncover our customers’ objections and passion, we must first build rapport with them.
Strive to understand the core why’s of our target audience.

Connect with Chris Ochs

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Chris Ochs or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/chrisochs, visit his consulting company website www.ck-hs.com, or Factoreal website www.factoreal.com.

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In this episode, I’m speaking with Jeff Warnick. Jeff is a portfolio Executive Director and marketing lead at Bristol Myers Squibb, a $140 billion pharmaceutical company that manufactures prescription drugs for cancer, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, hepatitis, arthritis, and psychiatric disorders.

Passion-driven marketing is where we focus on what our customers are passionate about and connect with our customers through those passions. In today’s episode, Jeff Warnick and I discuss how his company has successfully implemented passion marketing, credibility marketing, and other marketing strategies.

Connecting with Physicians through Passion Healthcare is one of the most passionate markets, especially for someone like Jeff who is working with oncologists who are trying to help cancer patients. The customers are in life-or-death situations. It’s a tough area to market in because you are marketing a product that helps customers conquer something they hate (such as cancer) rather than marketing through a level-10 passion that customers love. People don’t exactly line up for chemotherapy as they do for the newest iPhone. The industry Jeff works in is also heavily regulated, and he doesn’t have the creativity and freedom most marketers do.

Previously, Jeff and his team had marketed to oncologists using primarily analytics with lots of charts and tables, focusing on the data. They wanted to better identify the passions of the doctors and test connecting with doctors through those passions.

How Jeff Connected to the Passions of His Customers Jeff helped set up a system of market research about the doctors’ passions. When physicians participated in this market research, they came into the interview with certain expectations. They thought Jeff was going to give them a patient case study.

Instead, Jeff had them lay back on a couch with the lights dimmed. He asked them why they decided to become a doctor. This takes the physicians out of their element, causing neurons and synapses in their brain to fire that they weren’t expecting.

To do this, Jeff asks questions such as, “Why did you become an oncologist? How can I work with you to help patients more? Where is a place where you are happy?” and more. He also thanks to them for their hard work.

This disruption from the normal gives the physicians something unexpected, appealing, and intriguing. Because Jeff has established an emotional connection by showing the physicians that he cares about them, their patients, and their passions he is able to establish deeper connection and communication.

When Jeff would ask these physicians why they became a doctor, it almost always came back to a family member or friend who had cancer or got sick. He realized that they had deep personal connections that drove them to choose their careers.

Understanding this core motive had a big impact on Jeff. He wanted to help these doctors help their patients. Patients always want more time, and if they can’t have that, then they want the best quality of time they can receive.

Focus Groups with Multiple Doctors Sometimes Jeff does the same exercise in a focus group with multiple doctors at the same time. These doctors are used to other doctors attempting to trip them up. They are continually testing each other because that is the culture of the medical world with lives on their hands. So Jeff has to be careful about which doctors he chooses for each group. If there is someone with an alpha personality, the other doctors might be more hesitant to open up. Or, the oncologists often don’t like to get emotional in front of each other, so they tend to be more analytical about it.

Using Story to Focus on Passions “The highest level passions are the emotions attached to the decision, not the decision.” -Jeff Warnick

As marketers, we often focus on the buying decision itself because that’s where we get paid. The key to successful passion marketing is to focus on the passion behind the customer’s decision to buy.

If we know that a customer likes chocolate ice cream, we can’t just say “here’s chocolate ice cream.” However, if we realize that they like chocolate ice cream because they used to have it with their grandpa every summer, we can connect with that. We can use the story to find a parallel path and serve it up as the emotional driver. The passion is not the ice cream; the passion is the experience associated with the ice cream.

Recurring Revenue The healthcare industry looks at recurring revenue a little differently than most other industries. They don’t like to think of people’s illness as recurring revenue streams because unfortunately, that means they’re not being cured or they're still ill. However, there are certain types of medical conditions, like diabetes, that end up being recurring. They are also trying to evolve cancer treatment to be something that is manageable like diabetes, making progress toward it being a chronic condition instead of a terminal condition.

Recurring revenue is still beneficial to companies like Jeff’s because they are a public company with shareholders they are responsible to. However, they don’t look at it in dollars; they look at it in terms of patients. How is staying on a medication going to improve a patient’s life? How is the medication going to combat their symptoms or keep their blood pressure where it needs to be?

This patient-oriented view can be beneficial in other industries as well. We can look at how our product or service will improve a customer’s life and market it that way, implementing a recurring revenue system to ensure our products and services continue to improve their life.

The key takeaway here is to build our products and services around something that improves our customers’ lives on a sustainable basis and not just one time.

Credibility Marketing Personal health is an intimate subject, so physicians are very careful with how they make decisions. Their patients, however, really need two major things when they are making decisions.

The first thing patients need is all the information. They want to know about the side effects, co-pay assistance, what they should talk to their doctor about, etc. The second thing they want to hear about is the experience of someone else who has been in their situation or who has their condition.

We can use both of these elements when we are building credibility with our customers. We can give our customers all the necessary information they need to make an informed decision and share the experience of other customers through testimonial videos.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeff for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Passion marketing is a great way to make sure we are focusing on our customers and their core wants and needs.
We can get great results if we mix passion marketing and analytics.
One way to connect with customers is to disassociate them by taking them outside of their everyday life. Then we can get to the truths behind what they’re passionate about.
Focus on the passion attached to a customer’s decision, not the decision itself.
Use a story to package that passion.
Focus on how a product or service can improve a customer’s life.
Build credibility by giving customers all the necessary information they need to make a decision and by helping them connect with other customers.

Connect with Jeff

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Jeff, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-warnick/.

Share Your Story

How have you seen successful businesses use passion marketing? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/67-how-a-140-billion-pharmaceutical-company-used-passion-marketing/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss a sermon by a church leader named Becky Craven about how we can use change to become better people and run better businesses.

Keep the Change

Becky Craven said, “Imagine someone going to a market to purchase an item. If she pays the cashier more than the item is worth, the cashier will give her change.”

Craven likened this to Christ giving us so much, “the heavens, the earth . . . all the beauty we enjoy . . . His loving Atonement,” and “[redemption] from sin and death.” So, what can we give in return? Change—our change.

This change can be “a change of thought, a change in habit, or a change in the direction we are headed.” He asks us for a change of heart for our benefit, not His. He invites us to keep the change.

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” - Ezekiel 36:26 KJV

Change Leads to Action—Not Perfection

This call to change doesn’t immediately lead to perfection, but it can immediately lead to action. We have the power to change things in our lives immediately. We can decide to run our businesses differently or treat our associates better right away. These actions lead us to be better, but it is something that we need to continually work at in our lives. When we combine our efforts with the Savior’s ability to change us, we can become new creatures.

"Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change." - Henry Steele Commager, American historian

Enduring to the End Means Changing to the End

Craven continued, saying, “When I was younger, I visualized myself walking along an upward, vertical path toward my goal of eternal life. Each time I did or said something wrong, I felt myself sliding down the path, only to start my journey all over again. It was like landing on that one square in the children’s game Chutes and Ladders that slides you down from the top of the board back to the beginning of the game! It was discouraging!”

As she started to understand change, she found she could apply it daily in her life, giving her hope. If we continually apply this principle of change, we can endure to the end. Enduring to the end means changing to the end. Craven now understands that she isn’t starting over with each failed attempt, but with each try, she is continuing her process of change.

We must intentionally seek change. “Our daily choices will either help or hinder our progress. Small but steady, deliberate changes will help us improve. Do not become discouraged. Change is a lifelong process,” Craven said.

Help from Others

Craven said, “trusted family members, leaders, and friends can be helpful in our efforts to change. When I was eight years old, my older brother, Lee, and I would spend time with our friends playing in the branches of a neighborhood tree. We loved being together in the fellowship of our friends in the shade of that tree. One day, Lee fell out of the tree and broke his arm. Having a broken arm made it hard for him to climb the tree by himself. But life in the tree just wasn’t the same without him there. So some of us steadied him from behind while others pulled on his good arm, and without too much effort, Lee was back in the tree. His arm was still broken, but he was with us again enjoying our friendship as he healed.”

We may know those who have fallen out of the tree, but we can be the ones to help them back up and urge them to be where they are supposed to. “Can we gently tug a little here and hoist up a little there to help them heal while they enjoy our friendship?” In addition, we may be the ones who’ve fallen out of the tree. If this is the case, we shouldn’t be afraid to accept or ask for help. We have people in our lives who are ready and willing to help us.

“The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.” - Gordon B. Hinckley

“You haven’t changed at all!”

Craven also said, “I occasionally run into friends whom I haven’t seen for many years. Sometimes they say, ‘You haven’t changed at all!’ Each time I hear that, I cringe a little, because I hope I have changed over the years. I hope I have changed since yesterday! I hope I am a little kinder, less judgmental, and more compassionate. I hope I am quicker to respond to the needs of others, and I hope I am just a little bit more patient.”

Similarly, we should hope that our businesses change over the years. We should strive to continually learn how to improve them, learning how to better help our customers and treat our employees.

Don’t Wait to Change

Craven loves hiking in the mountains near her home. She says, “Often, I get a little rock in my shoe as I walk along the trail. Eventually, I stop and shake out my shoe. But it astounds me how long I allow myself to hike in pain before I stop and rid myself of the irritant.”

As we make our way through life we might pick up little rocks in the forms of bad habits, mistakes, or bad attitudes. “The quicker we shake them from our lives, the more joyful our mortal journey will be.”

Maintaining change takes effort. Craven cannot imagine stopping along the trail to put the annoying and painful rock she’d just removed back in her shoe. She says, “I would not want to do that any more than a beautiful butterfly would choose to return to her cocoon.”

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." - Henri Bergson

Key Takeaways

Here are a few of my key takeaways from this episode:

We have so much that we are blessed with; how can we give back? With our change.
Change requires action.
Changing and becoming a better person is a lifelong process.
Not only should we help others when they fall off track, but we also shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help when we need it.
Let us hope over the years we grow a little kinder, less judgmental, more compassionate, quicker to respond to the needs of others, and more patient.
Our bad habits, mistakes, and bad attitudes can be like rocks in our shoe. If we remove them, we can more easily continue on our journey.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive Entrepreneurs of Faith each Sunday.

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Share Your Story How have you seen change work for good in your life? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/67-keeping-the-change-how-to-use-change-to-become-better-people-and-run-better-businesses/

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Bootstrapping is when entrepreneurs find a way to self-fund businesses instead of accepting investment from outside sources.

“Bootstrapped startups have a long history in the U.S., with many of the biggest companies in the world starting just from one good idea and no initial funding.” (source: USchamber.com)

Successful Bootstrappers

The history of business is filled with many successful entrepreneurs who bootstrapped their businesses. For example, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built their first computers in Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage. Their first computers, the Apple I, were MVPs (or minimum viable products) through which they could quickly generate the capital they needed to build their business.

Basecamp, formerly known as 37 Signals produces award-winning project management and team communication software that is trusted by millions of customers around the world. Basecamp was bootstrapped by providing web design services to other companies. According to Jason Fried, one of Basecamp’s founders, the company grew from $1 to a $100 billion valuation without any external investment.

MailChimp helps companies send email newsletters and generates about $700 million in annual revenue. They were bootstrapped by co-founders who had been laid off from their web design jobs. They were named Inc’s Company of the Year in 2017 and are still 100% owned by the founders.

Tough Mudder produces extreme races. “Thousands of people will pay good money to run the most grueling obstacle course ever invented, which will include ice baths, extreme hill-climbing, and electrical shocks” (source: USchamber.com). The two founders each invested $10,000 of their own money to start Tough Mudder, and with no venture funding, more than 2 million people have now run Tough Mudder races.

Why Do Businesses Bootstrap?

Why do businesses turn to bootstrapping? Sometimes entrepreneurs don’t have a sufficient track record to secure venture funding.

"Someone once told me that the probability of an entrepreneur getting venture capital is the same as getting struck by lightning while standing at the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. This may be too optimistic.” - Guy Kawasaki

Entrepreneurs who are successful at bootstrapping their ventures can receive many benefits, such as retaining more ownership, decision-making authority, and creative control over the business.

“A slow bootstrap worked really well [for GoPro]… As long as you can bootstrap not at the sacrifice of competitive advantage, bootstrapping is a really powerful thing because it allows you to be totally devoted to your vision.” - Nick Woodman (GoPro Founder)

4 Bootstrapping Strategies I Have Used to Help Fund My Businesses

I have created and sold three digital ventures that used bootstrapping for all or part of their funding. Here are 4 strategies I have used for bootstrapping my businesses:

Arbitrage

We can bootstrap a business through arbitrage. According to Wikipedia, arbitrage is “the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded.” In other words, arbitrage is the process of finding something we can purchase at a low price from one source and resell for a higher price to a buyer.

For example, in the early days of my Adoption.com venture, my best way to bootstrap was to sell domain names. Back then, Network Solutions was the only domain name registrar, but people didn’t really trust the internet to buy and sell yet. So, when Network Solutions let people like me register a domain name, they would physically mail me a paper invoice for that domain name. They gave me 90 days to pay for the domain name. If I didn’t pay for a domain name within 90 days, they would take it from me and put it back into the pool of available domain names for someone else to register.

So, I would register large groups of domain names. Then, during the 90 days of free ownership, I would contact potential buyers and try to sell the domain name. If I was able to sell the domain name, I would pay the Network Solutions bill, then transfer the domain to the new owner. If I was unable to sell the domain, I generally let the domain name expire instead of paying for it.

Years later, as I had a little more money, domains had become much more scarce and were increasing rapidly in prices. So, I developed a list of hundreds of short domain names I felt would be very valuable. I then reached out to the owners of all those domain names, and I found the best deals. I purchased those deal domains, held onto them for a little while, and then sold all of them to help fund my business.

Over the years, I sold millions of dollars of domain names, which provided needed capital for my growing businesses. My goal was not to be a domain broker. I always saw this as a short-term arbitrage to help fund my long-term businesses.

This concept of arbitrage can work well in many different niches other than domain names. For example, many people buy products at thrift stores and then resell those items on eBay for a profit. As another example, I know someone who has family connections in the diamond wholesale market. So, she buys diamonds through that wholesale connection and resells them in her small-town college market.

Professional Services

I have helped bootstrap three of my startup ventures over the years by providing professional services to other organizations. I provided digital development, marketing, and monetization services. For example, in the early days of Adoption.com, I helped a lawyer build a website for lawyers. Also, through the years, we have done consulting and web development for adoption agencies and attorneys. The funds from that consulting and web development work were used to bootstrap the core Adoption.com business.

Years later, I started a venture to create and grow niche online communities. To fund that venture, I did extensive consulting work for businesses in Brazil, such as Azul Airlines. I spent about ½ of my time over about 3 years working for other companies in Brazil.

This method of bootstrapping can often be the most lucrative in the short run. For example, when I was doing consulting in Brazil, my business partner and I generated more than $1.5 million in consulting revenue our first year. However, bootstrapping through professional services does have its pitfalls. Because professional services usually trade hours for dollars, this type of bootstrapping can consume a lot of time. As a result, there may not be enough time left to effectively grow the core business. The reason this worked for me is that I had a tremendous business partner named Brad Pace who stayed in the U.S. and ran the business while I was consulting in Brazil.

Also, bootstrapping through professional services is only available when the entrepreneur has developed sufficient skills and experience to sell the professional services for a substantial fee. Young entrepreneurs without a track record may not be able to sell professional services for a large enough fee to make this worth their while.

Business Plan Competitions

Prize money from business plan competition wins can be incredibly valuable for startup ventures because it is an investment that never has to be repaid, or for which we don’t have to give away equity. Further, it builds credibility and gives exposure when a group of expert judges proclaims to the world that we have the best business plan.

In the early days of my first business, Adoption.com, I helped bootstrap the business through business plan competitions. I submitted business plans to two competitions and won both. In addition to the prize money, in both cases, I was offered unsolicited investments shortly after winning the competitions.

I remember one night a business plan competition application was due. The plan had to be postmarked that day. I had gone home to get some dinner, and after dinner, I was going to finish up the application and take it to the post office. As I was on my way back to the office, I was rear-ended. It took forever for the police to arrive and take care of the situation.

When I was able to leave, I raced to the office and printed the application. Then, I headed to a post office in Phoenix that gave postmarks and was open until midnight. By the time I arrived at the post office, it was after 12:20 am. Remember, the business plan competition application had to be postmarked the previous day.

As I walked up to the post office, I found it was dark and locked up. However, I saw an employee leaving an employee entrance. I walked over and handed the postal worker the application, and I said “This has to be postmarked yesterday. It’s to help children find loving families through adoption.” The postal worker looked at me, then took the package, and went back inside. Not long after, the postal worker came back out the employee entrance and said “You are in luck. The person in charge of turning over the date stamp was at a baby shower in the post office and hadn’t done it yet. So, I was able to postmark it yesterday.”

There are ethical issues related to that postmark date and the fairness to other applicants I did not consider at that time. I should have been more prepared, and I should not have arrived at the post office so close to the deadline. However, the bottom line is the money, exposure, and credibility from winning that business plan competition was ridiculously valuable for our company, and played a huge role in helping us bootstrap, survive, and grow.

Preselling

After I had been running Adoption.com for a few years, we had a very kind but pesky competitor running a site called Adopting.org. That competitor was undercutting us on price and making our monetization more difficult. I really wanted to buy this competitor, but I didn’t have the cash to do so.

However, because I was running a business in the same niche, and already had all the technology and relationships to monetize the site, I knew how much money I could generate per thousand page views. In the negotiation process, my competitor shared with me her site’s page views and her revenue, so I was able to calculate her revenue per thousand page views to use as a comparison. I believed I would be able to implement our revenue streams onto her site after the purchase and make more money from her site than she was making.

To test this theory, we went to our advertisers and pre-sold essentially all of the advertising on our competitor’s site before we even completed the purchase. Preselling helped remove the risk of this transaction and allowed me to bootstrap the purchase of our leading competitor.

Many businesses today have seen a lot of success bootstrapping their ventures by preselling through crowdfunding platforms such as IndieGoGo and Kickstarter. One of my past consulting clients named Inergy Solar wanted to make industry-leading, light-weight portable solar generators. They had designed the product but needed the capital. So, they created a great video, put it on IndieGoGo, pre-sold a huge amount of generators, and started production. They secured the capital they needed without having to take out a loan or give away any equity.

I recently interviewed Eric Farr for the Monetization Nation show. Eric is the Owner and Executive Officer of Brainstorm. Eric told the story of how they found a client who wanted a specific software solution. That client agreed to pay enough money that Eric and his company could build the software. The client retained the right to use the software for their business, and because they funded the software development, they had a lot of say in the features and roadmap for the software. It was a win-win because the client received exactly the software product they wanted for a fair price. However, Eric retained the right to license the software for other businesses and started his software company. This type of preselling is a common way that software companies bootstrap themselves.

Cost Containment

In addition to generating capital through bootstrapping, another essential element of bootstrapping is cost containment. Because bootstrappers don’t have all the financial resources of venture-funded companies we have to be more frugal and find less expensive ways to do things.

When we bootstrap, we will often have to forgo the perfect team with seasoned track records. Instead, we will need to find “young and hungry” members of our team from college campuses or overseas who are able to work for a price we can afford at the beginning, with the hope that they can grow their compensation as the profits of the organization grow.

Getting to Profitability as Fast as Humanly Possible

If we choose to bootstrap, we must get to profitability as fast as humanly possible. In this situation, we must remember that cash flows don’t start until we start shipping. So, bootstrappers don’t have the luxury of being perfectionists. Bootstrappers usually have to be willing to sell and ship products that are “good enough” and not wait until a product is “perfect”. Bootstrappers have to remember that good enough is good enough, and that perfect is the enemy of cash flow.

Conclusion

Bootstrapping a business is probably going to take more time and than taking an investment. But in the end, we may have a lot more control over our businesses. We will probably be retaining the ability to run the business the way we want to run it. We probably won’t have investors pressuring us to make short-sighted decisions to make quick profits. We will instead have the freedom to focus on the long game if we want to.

“When someone says ‘Think of all the things you could do if you raised a ton of money,’ I instead think of all the things I couldn’t do. I value independence more than any check anyone could ever write me.” (Jason Fried)

Key Takeaways

Many of the world’s most successful companies have used bootstrapping.
Successful bootstrapping can have great upsides, such as retaining more ownership, decision-making authority, and creative control over the business.
Bootstrapping can also have downsides, such as slower growth, more personal risk, and distraction from our core focus.
Bootstrapping through arbitrage is when we buy something inexpensively from one source and sell it to a different buyer for a higher amount.
Bootstrapping by providing can often be the most lucrative in the short run, but young entrepreneurs without a strong track record may not be able to earn enough money from this to be worth their while. Also, this may distract the entrepreneur from their core business.
Bootstrapping through winning business plan competitions can be a great strategy because we never have to give away equity or repay this investment. Plus, the credibility from winning the competition can give us strong credibility.
Bootstrapping through pre-selling products and services can also give us the capital we need without having to give away any equity or taking out a loan. Crowdfunding platforms can be a great way to do this.
In addition to generating additional capital through bootstrapping, cost containment is also an essential element of bootstrapping. Because bootstrappers don’t have all the financial resources of venture-funded companies we have to be more frugal and find less expensive ways to do things.
If we are going to pursue bootstrapping we have to be laser-focused on getting to profitability as quickly as possible. Bootstrappers have to remember that good enough is good enough, and that perfect is the enemy of cash flow.

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For sales reps that invest in social media, 64% hit their team quota—compared to only 49% of reps hitting their team quota that don’t use social media (Source: superoffice.com). In today’s episode, we are going to dive into the tectonic shift of social selling with Tim Hughes and explore 2 common social selling objections and mistakes.

Tim Hughes is recognized by many as the world's leading pioneer of social selling, and he's currently ranked number one by Analytica as the most influential social selling person in the world. He's the co-founder and CEO of DLA ignite and co-author of the best-selling books Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers and the book Smarketing: How to Achieve Competitive Advantage through Blended Sales and Marketing.

Common Social Selling Objections and Mistakes Here are two of the most common objections people have to social selling, and how to overcome those objections.

“Our customers aren’t on social media.” One common objection is the belief system that customers aren’t on social media. A specific 55-year-old finance director might not be on LinkedIn, but chances are most business people in the U.S. will be.

Tim is working with a company that sells supply chain software, and they told him there will be 100 people involved in the sale. Of those 100 people, there might be one person who isn’t on social media.

“We’re doing social already.” When a company tells Tim they are doing social already, they are doing it tactically. They’re posting once every two weeks. So, 13 of those 14 days they are invisible to their client. If their client only goes on social every few days, they’re going to miss their post. If the client goes on social on a Tuesday, but the post is on Wednesdays, the client isn’t going to see it.

Tim sees social as totally transparent. He can see so many things that are going on in an organization from their page. Their page displays their organization’s culture, their purpose, and how they value themselves, their team, and their customers.

It isn’t enough to be on social anymore. Tim teaches his clients to be completely dominant, putting out their competition. Then when people search for that product or service, they are the only answer. That can be done through searching on social or searching through things like Google and Bing.

“It's not about being on social anymore. It's about digital dominance.” -Tim Hughes

How Tim Became an Expert on Social Selling Starting with Stories In 2014, Tim was involved in a big sales transformation with a US software company. He was in a meeting when one of the individuals there said, “We always close at the end of the first meeting.” Tim told them they were going to go through a complete transformation of the way they sell.

Over two years, they taught 2,000 salespeople and 2,000 presales people about storytelling and opening presentations with a story. Opening with a story makes such a difference because they’re selling something that’s boring and complex. But, starting with a story really makes us more successful.

Tim’s Book One day, Matt Reynolds contacted Tim on LinkedIn, and they ended up meeting for coffee. By the time they finished their coffee, Tim said, “Why don't we write a book?” Within three months, they had a book deal, and three months after that, the book came out. The book has now sold 5,500 copies.

DLA Ignite Because of the success of that book, Tim was able to set up his own business, DLA ignites, which transforms companies using social selling. They started off building the social selling programs, which they now use, but their goal and vision were always to get businesses to use social media strategically. They strip out costs and make organizations more efficient, and he believes they are the only company in the world that does this.

There are people who do social selling, and there are lots of people who do LinkedIn training, but they don't do social selling the way Tim’s company does. They treat it as a change program, using change management techniques as a method. What usually happens in training courses is the employees listen to the course, say it’s really interesting, go back to their desks, and then do things the same way they were doing them before. That doesn’t work with social.

“To use social to sell, it's not what you know, it's what you do.” -Tim Hughes

What Tim has to do with his students is invoke a mindset change and a habit change. Getting people to do the social selling is not difficult, but getting them to stop posting about their company or their products is. People are usually not passionate about companies, and they are often not passionate about products.

We generally don't like or trust salespeople, and we avoid them. We spend time looking for things online so we don't want to go to a salesperson because they tend to try to manipulate us. However, Tim has developed a program in which they use psychology as a way to position their clients on social so people will walk towards them and actually see them as human.

One of Tim’s partners and resellers is a great example of this. Her profile draws people’s attention and makes them want to meet her because she looks interesting. That is the transformation and difference between the way people are teaching social and the way they're teaching LinkedIn. It’s a focus on people instead of a company or product. If we have 200 salespeople and scale that across our business, that’s 200 salespeople that people want to talk to.

Tim’s business is not a full-service marketing agency. They focus on social selling, digital selling, virtual selling, or remote selling. They don’t go into organizations and sort out sales compensation because they don’t want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none.

COVID-19’s Impact on How We Do Business Here are a few of Tim’s thoughts on how COVID-10 has impacted the way we do business: The Buying Process The buying process has changed, and it started to change before COVID. When Tim was first in sales, customers had to come to him to buy something from his company. There was no website or anything like that for them to purchase from.

Now we can go online and look at brochures, videos, reviews, and demos, and we can buy whatever we want without ever speaking to a salesperson.

Five years ago, Tim was aware of somebody that made a $250,000 accountancy software purchase through watching YouTube videos. They called the salesperson and said, “I want to buy.” The salesperson said, “Don't you want to demo?” The person responded with, “No, I just want to buy it now.”

COVID has accelerated this switch to online. For those who are in lockdown, they can’t go outside very much, so they buy most things online.

The Vaccination’s Impact COVID is also going to affect how we do business. We have to think about things like: will a customer want to meet with a salesperson who isn’t vaccinated? Will a salesperson want to meet with a customer who’s not vaccinated? Is the vaccine going to be required for us to go on a flight or on a cruise? Or to go to an industry convention?

In-Person Meetings In the past, I never closed a big deal without a face-to-face meeting with someone. That was my philosophy, and I would always fly out for those big deals, or meet them at an event. I would invest face-to-face time into that relationship. I interviewed someone recently who took the opposite approach. She had almost no local business, lived in a small town, and almost 100% of her business was from all around the country. She never flew out and met any of her clients, and it worked just fine. She had a great business. Obviously, there is value in face-to-face, but if we leverage technology effectively, we can do it without an in-person visit.

Tim has an associate who was hired during COVID, interviewed online, and has only ever been to the office once. He was living in London but wanted to move to Barcelona because all the work was online.

This kind of thing is more possible now than ever. Why shouldn’t we live anywhere we want to? This is a huge tectonic shift. When I first started my business, video conferences and international phone calls were expensive. Now we can do those things for free, without any satellite delay.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Tim for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

The majority of our customers these days will be on social media.
If we think we are doing social already, we may want to examine how we are doing it to make sure we are reaching our ideal customers.
Don’t use the same messaging from ads, emails, or cold calls on social media. Social media messaging should be used to form organic relationships with customers.
Consider opening presentations with stories to engage our audiences.
People usually aren’t super passionate about our companies or brands, but they care about how we can help them achieve the things they are passionate about.
As we navigate a post-COVID world, we must consider how it will impact business and pivot to take advantage of those opportunities.

Connect with Tim

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Tim or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling or visit DLA Ignite’s website at https://dlaignite.com/.

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How have you seen businesses effectively using social selling? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/63-2-common-social-selling-objections-and-mistakes/

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Welcome back to another episode with Josh Steimle. Previously, we discussed Josh’s career and content writing. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the 7 Systems of Influence and how they can help us gain influence with our ideal customers.

The 7 Systems of Influence The seven systems of influence include vision, genius zone, audience, content, action, collaboration, and love. They act as a framework, a way of thinking and organizing information, to create influence and then leverage that influence to achieve goals.

Arguably the most effective way to get what we want is through influence. We say knowledge is power, but knowledge can’t really get us anywhere without influence. So the seven systems of influence are the fundamental steps, or systems, we can use to create, leverage, and maintain influence.

Vision The first system is vision. For anything we want, we have to clearly visualize it. For example, if what we want is our child to take out the trash, we have to visualize it. Whether it is something small like that or something big like creating a billion-dollar business over the next 10 years, we have to visualize it. Then we have a clear vision of where we need to be going, and it will be much easier to stay focused on it.

We may run around chasing a goal that we haven’t fully visualized. We end up chasing visions we don’t really want because they have not been fully formulated. By sitting down and going through the right process, we can clarify our vision and make sure it's what we really want. Then we focus our time and resources to ensure that vision happens.

Genius Zone System number two is the genius zone. This system asks questions such as “Who are you? What are you good at? What is your knowledge? What is your experience? What is it that makes you special? What can you do that no one else can do?”

Josh grew up skateboarding. He ran a skate shop as a kid, and today, he’s still connected to the industry. So, he knows a bit about skateboarding. However, he isn’t the only one with that knowledge; there are probably 20 million other people in the world who know as much as he does about skateboarding. Josh also knows a bit about marketing, having run a marketing agency for 20 years. But again, he’s not the only marketing expert in the world.

When Josh overlaps these two expert zones, they create a genius zone. There aren’t many people who have his knowledge about skateboarding and marketing combined. This makes him unique in this area. So, he could go to a company like Nike with this experience and help them market shoes to skateboarders.

This is a simple example of overlapping two areas, but we might overlap in five different areas. It might include the language we speak, somewhere we live or some other experience in our background. When we start listing out our expert zones and looking for unique connections and overlaps, we'll find genius zones that nobody else in the world has. Typically, we have one genius zone that stands out to us, one we are passionate about and want to spend the rest of our life doing.

Audience The third system is the audience. Who can we serve with our genius zone? The question is not “Who is anyone in the world who might care a little bit about our genius zone?” The question is “Who are the people who desperately need what we offer through our genius?”

Josh likes to ask his clients how many customers they would need to totally change their business. For those who are doing consulting, the answer is typically 10 or 20. Josh then asks how many potential customers they have in the world. His clients respond by saying, “millions.” Then Josh says, “If you only need 10 or 20 to change your business, why are you creating your content and messaging for millions? Why would you create content marketing and messaging that appeals to millions rather than to the 10 people you would ideally love to work with?”

We can pick and choose. For example, with Josh’s published author program, he decided he wanted to work with entrepreneurs. He could work with a lot of people and help them to write books, but he loves working with entrepreneurs. So, he decided to narrow it down and only work with entrepreneurs, creating content marketing and messaging directly for them. Because of this, they often feel like Josh is speaking right to them, and they want to work with him because of that.

61% of consumers say that they are more likely to buy from a company that provides custom content (Source: dragon360.com).

Content Content is system number four. Now that we know our ideal audience, we can ask what will motivate them to take action. We often think of content as a book or website, but it's also our words or example. It can be the chore chart on the fridge to track tasks for our kids.

If we’re trying to build a billion-dollar business over the next 10 years, then it’s important to ask: what's the content we need to create to recruit partners, to recruit clients, and to get people to fund this?

Action System number five is action. What is the plan to get this done? If the content is a book, the action questions may be how are we going to finish this book? How are we going to write it? How are we going to get started? Are we going to write the book ourselves or hire a ghostwriter to do it?

“Everybody needs a plan to actually get to a destination.” - Josh Steimle

Collaboration The sixth system is collaboration. The central question of this system is how can I work with other people to get 1,000 times the influence that I have on my own?

Josh has a friend, Derek Andersen, who started a company called Startup Grind. The company started because Derek began interviewing successful entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. He hosted a fireside chat and only about 10 people attended, but they wanted him to do more. About 20 people attended the second one, and more went to the third one. Someone came to Derek and asked if they could host one of the events in San Jose. Derek said yes, and they partnered together to start Startup Grind. Today, Startup Grind has 800 or 900 chapters around the world, and they've hosted millions of people at their local events. Derek has been able to influence millions of people, which he never would have been able to do by himself.

Collaboration allows us to spread our influence a lot further than we could otherwise on our own. We can think about: who can we work with? Who has the same audience? Or who has the same audience but is selling something else? How can we find somebody who wants to connect with the same audience we want to connect with? How can we collaborate in a way that we both end up with more influence?

Love The final system of influence is love. This was a difficult system for Josh to come up with. He had the first six, but he knew something important was missing. He realized it was love through a discussion he had with his business partner about parenting. Josh’s business partner said, “If you know your parents love you, it really makes up for a lot of the mistakes they make because you know their hearts are in the right place.”

The truth of this statement stuck with Josh and made him realize that love was the last element he needed in his systems. We often let people do crazy things if they have good intentions, but love is all about goodwill and good intent.

“If people feel like you are trying to help them because you really want to help them, then you can get almost everything else wrong in the systems of influence, and you will still have influence. But if you get everything else right—the vision, the genius zone, the audience, the content, everything—you can do everything else right. But if there's no love, people will just ignore it, and then you have no influence.” - Josh Steimle

Why are they called systems? Josh calls them systems because they don’t have to be done in order like steps. As with a car and its propulsion system, steering system, navigation system, etc., all the systems work and run at the same time. Then we can move from point A to point B. However, if one of those systems is not working well, it can throw everything into reverse.

The Importance of Data in Marketing One of Josh’s favorite interviews from his book, Chief Marketing Officers at Work, was with Seth Farbman, the former CMO of Spotify. Seth told Josh a story about the importance of data in marketing. Seth and his team were looking at Spotify user data, and there was a group of people listening to Spotify consistently for about seven or eight hours without any interaction. They weren't changing or skipping anything. Seth was unsure what these users were doing for so long without interaction, but he eventually realized they were sleeping with music on.

This realization allowed Spotify to set up many playlists for people to use while they were sleeping, and to further entrench themselves with that user group. Spotting trends from data can lead to product development and new ideas. Looking at the data allowed Spotify to do marketing that further connected them to their users.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Josh for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

It is important to visualize our goals so we have a clear direction and increase our chance to accomplish them.
We can combine our expert zones to create a genius zone, which becomes a skillset unique to us.
We must think about who our ideal audience is to create content marketing and messaging that will appeal specifically to them.
If we’re trying to build a billion-dollar business over the next 10 years, then we have to think about what content we are going to create that will help us do so.
In order to achieve our goals, we need a plan of action.
We can collaborate with others to gain even more influence.
Without love, the other systems of influence won’t help us. We have to care about our audience and our business.
Use the systems together to achieve our goals.
Spotting trends from data can lead to product development and new ideas.

Connect with Josh

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Josh you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuasteimle/ or visit his website at https://www.joshsteimle.com/.

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“72% of marketers say content marketing increases engagement. In addition, 72% say it has increased the number of leads.” (Source: optinmonster.com)

Content writing can be a great way to boost leads for our businesses. In today’s episode, Josh Steimle and I discuss how he got into content writing and how he is helping others to do the same.

Josh Steimle has generated more than $10 million in revenue from his businesses by authoring books and writing articles for publications like Forbes, Fortune, Time, Inc., Mashable, TechCrunch, and Entrepreneur. Josh created the 7 Systems of Influence. He wrote the book Chief Marketing Officers at Work, which contains 29 interviews with Chief Marketing Officers from organizations such as GE, Harvard Business School, Spotify, Target, and PayPal. He won the BYU Business Plan competition in 2001, the same competition that helped me start my first business in 1997. He was also named Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002 by the Utah Small Business Association.

Josh’s Entrepreneurial Journey Starting Entrepreneurship Young As a child, Josh loved to find creative ways to make money. He was always recycling paper, cans, and newspapers. In high school, he even sold skateboard goods and competed with the vending machines by selling a lot of candy at school.

When he got older, Josh planned to be an artist because he knew how to draw. He didn’t realize that entrepreneurship was something he could study. He then learned about business school after his first year of college and immediately switched from art to business.

Starting His Own Business As John got further into the business world after college, he realized he wanted to start his own business. So, he quit his full-time job in 1999 and started a web design firm.

“The problem with entrepreneurs is that we have a high tolerance for risk and a low sense of reality. And so I thought, I'm gonna start a business. This is going to be great, I'm going to make a lot of money, and everything's going to be awesome. I had no clue what I was doing.” -Josh Steimle

Josh had a difficult time signing on clients at first. He hadn’t landed a single client when a telemarketer called, trying to sell him something. Josh told the telemarketer he didn’t have any money, and the telemarketer then asked what Josh did for a living. Josh said he designed websites, and the telemarketer replied with, “Oh, my brother needs a website, let me connect you with him.”

That’s how Josh received his first client. Things didn’t go well at first, but eventually, they picked up. Josh was able to make enough money to survive. He expanded the business to focus on the marketing side of things, providing services such as SEO and paid ads.

Becoming a Writer When Josh was at a low point with that business, he did two things that changed his life. He brought in a partner, and he started writing for Forbes magazine. Up until this point, Josh had never thought of himself as a writer, even though he’d done lots of blogging.

As Josh started writing for Forbes, he began receiving a lot of leads from it. Clients were coming to him after reading his articles, wanting to hire John’s agency to do their marketing. This attention from Forbes helped his business grow.

After writing for Forbes, Josh wanted to see if he could write for other publications. He started writing articles for Entrepreneur, Fortune, Mashable, TechCrunch, Time, and Business Insider. Josh really enjoyed writing for these publications, which sent his business a lot of leads. Writing also led to his first book deal.

Shortly after his book deal, people came to Josh for advice, wondering how he created content that generated attention for his business. He then began coaching clients on how to build a personal brand, how to engage, and how to create thought leadership content. This coaching is what Josh focuses on today.

The Importance of Audience Of all the publications Josh has written for, Forbes has been the best for generating attention to his business. At one point, Josh did an experiment with different publications. He had an article on Forbes that led to millions of dollars of revenue for his business. He wrote very similar articles like the ones published on Forbes and published them in other publications, but nothing happened. The articles didn’t generate any leads in the other publications. Josh realized that Forbes had the right audience to generate his ideal leads while the other publications didn’t.

Josh’s Passions: Influence and Helping Others Josh is passionate about influence, which is where the seven systems of influence came from. But, it all started when Josh realized he wanted to share what he’s learned over the years about marketing and thought leadership. He wanted to help people share their message and make the world a better place. He wanted to help by mobilizing people to become more influential by writing books or building large followings on social media.

Biggest Home Run When I asked Josh about the biggest home run in his career, he responded that he didn’t think about the most satisfying moments in his career as financial home runs. Rather, the biggest, most important, and most satisfying moments in his career have been about individuals. His home runs have come by doing something that changed a person's life. He finds it satisfying when they come back and say, “I'm a different person!” or “My life has improved because of what you guys did for me.”

Recently, one of the students in Josh’s Published Author program said to Josh, “I’m not going to write the book I was going to write.” When Josh asked him why, the student said, “I went through your workbook, and I realized I don't even like this business that I'm in. I'm going to go change my career, and I'm going to start something entirely different than what I thought I was going to do.” Josh thought it was amazing he was able to help this student realize he wanted to do something else, which would change this individual’s life direction.

Published Author Program Josh’s new published author program is about making it easy for entrepreneurs to publish books that they are going to use as marketing tools for their businesses. In addition to using the book as a great marketing tool, they want them to write meaningful books, books that will help people and make a difference.

The program walks these entrepreneurs through each step of the book publishing process. The program includes different levels. They have some free content on Josh’s Published Author Podcast. Then they have a large group that's more affordable, a mid-tier group, and one-on-one coaching.

Length of Business Books Most business books are 150 to 200 pages or 50,000 to 80,000 words. Shorter books are becoming more popular. However, Josh says the length doesn’t really matter as long as it has good content and is well written.

“The fact is that people will pay attention to any content that's good, and if it's good, they generally want more of that. That's why kids read Harry Potter and these other huge books because it's great content, and they want more of it. If a book is boring, it's not necessarily because it's too long. It's just that it's too boring, and the content needs to be written better.” -Josh Steimle

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Josh for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We shouldn’t be afraid to make changes in our lives to help us get where we want to be.
We can use good content to help us generate leads for our businesses.
If we are writing for other publications, make sure their audience matches ours so we receive good leads.
The length of a book often doesn’t matter as long as the content is valuable and well-written.

Connect with Josh

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Josh or his business, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuasteimle/ or visit https://www.publishedauthor.com/.

Share Your Story

How have you used content to help grow your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Welcome back to the second episode of Monetization Nation interview with Jeremy McGilvrey. In the previous episode, we explained why Instagram is a leader in social media. We also discussed 4 simple, yet powerful, strategies to grow an Instagram audience. In this episode, we will explore strategies that can help us increase our Instagram engagement and turn followers into buyers. We will reveal additional Instagram strategies and secrets and how Instagram influencers can help our brands.

Promoting Our Products through Famous and Credible Instagrammers

Brands need influencers to help drive growth. This follows the same rule as peer recommendation. People are more likely to buy a product or service that is recommended by those they trust, such as famous and credible Instagrammers they follow.

I asked Jeremy how we can get Instagram influencers to promote our brand. While he believes in the power of influencer marketing over ads, he doesn’t recommend the shoutout strategy which means going to an influencer and having them promote our page. Instead, he believes that it’s best to have them promote a free piece of digital content that will lead potential customers to our page. Then we can follow up with these leads with an offer or get them to follow our Instagram account through an email sequence.

Connecting with famous Instagrammers isn’t as difficult as it seems. Most Instagram influencers write in their bio how to connect with them, whether it’s through email or direct messages.

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is—it is what consumers tell each other it is” Scott Cook, CEO, and founder of Intuit.

Growing an Instagram Account

Jeremy knows that most people want to grow their following on a budget. It’s very reasonable since there are many different areas of their products or services where they need to allocate their money as well. He believes that the most efficient way to grow an Instagram account without spending a fortune is to first get a niche-based Instagram account that shows the benefit of whatever product or service we’re trying to sell.

The next step would be to find influencers and to pay them per shoutout. However, it’s again a shoutout that should go to a digital product. Jeremy advises us to Google our products and finds a private label-right ebook. Giving away this ebook as a free lead magnet will help entrepreneurs build their email, which should be one of the highest priorities of our marketing efforts.

Increasing Engagement with Instagram Followers

It’s not enough to have a lot of followers on Instagram. Instagram measures how our audience interacts with our content. There are many metrics by which Instagram measures engagement. Comments, likes, shares, and DMs are all included in those engagement metrics.

Why does engagement matter? With more than 1 billion people using Instagram every month, engagement is a key factor in Instagram’s algorithm (Source: Hootsuite). When people engage with our content, it means that they like the content. The more our followers engage with our content, the more likely it is to be boosted in the Instagram newsfeed.

In order to increase the engagement of people following our Instagram accounts, Jeremy believes one key is to ask questions. This will get our followers to respond with a comment, which counts as a higher vote for Instagram’s algorithm. Jeremy suggests starting with simple questions such as “yes” or “no” questions. Then we can ask questions that will get higher engagement, like “ruin the first date in 5 words” and ask people to comment below. Jeremy said it would be even better if we could reply to these comments as well.

Another secret Jeremy provided us was to boost our engagement with our followers through DMs. When we put a question as a story, instead of asking them to comment, just write “DM me,” for example. When they do DM us, this tells Instagram that these people are our friends. The platform then makes sure those individuals see our posts when they get back on Instagram.

Turning Followers into Buyers

Working hard to gain followers on social media is important, but it is even more important to help followers convert into buyers. Step one of any social media marketing campaign is to build a strong following. The next step would be to monetize our following.

When I asked Jeremy what advice he had to turn our followers into buyers, he focused on the importance of having an email list. He believes it’s a poor strategy to keep running offers to our followers.

He finds it frustrating when people randomly run ads and leave them on their page for long periods of time. What would be a better tactic, Jeremy says, is to put our ad out for 5 or 6 hours and then delete it. Then we can put it up again for another 5 or 6 more hours and delete it to get it back at the top of the news feed.

Jeremy advises anyone who is trying to make money on the platform or preserve their followers to always have something in their story, like a free opt-in to encourage potential customers to give us their emails. This is when we can send our leads helpful and value-added content through email, and sparingly through our Instagram pages. Jeremy finds that one of the best results about automation, whether it’s a sales funnel, email marketing, or text messaging, is they help us build a tightly engineered sales funnel.

The Biggest Tectonic Shifts for Businesses Today

Jeremy believes that the global economy and what happened with the recent pandemic have pushed toward one of the biggest tectonic shifts that businesses face. Before shoppers buy a product now, whether online or offline, 80% of them are Googling (not Yahooing or Binging) the business they want to purchase from. When they Google our business, it's similar to a credit report. For instance, when we go to buy a house or car with no credit history, or bad history, we are unable to be financed for anything.

80% of shoppers Google a business before they make a purchase (Source: Oberlo)

The same goes for our customers. Before they make a purchase, they Google us, and that’s the big shift that’s taking place right now. Jeremy advises us to work on the customer journey and experience before we rush to sell another product. He suggests opening an incognito window and Googling our product name. If we’re not impressed by what comes up on Google, with the images, the reviews, and the organic search, then something needs to change.

I personally believe that credibility marketing is the most important digital marketing trend happening in the world today. People no longer trust what we say about ourselves. They want to hear from unbiased actual customers and learn from their experiences. We have to find more ways to get credible sources to tell the world how great we are.

“Credibility marketing is the most important digital marketing trend happening in the world today.” Nathan Gwilliam

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeremy for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

For memes to be effective, we need to find the most authentic component and be unique.
It’s better to get famous Instagrammers to promote a free piece of digital content instead of promoting the product ourselves.
Building engagement with our followers is more important than having many fans who are not engaged with our channels.
Instagram doesn’t replace the need for a solid email list. A large, engaged email list is better than a large, engaged social platform. This is how we can turn our followers into buyers.
A big shift that’s been happening for quite a while now is how 80% of shoppers Google a business before they make any purchases. That’s why we need to fill in search results and review site results with great information about us.

Connect with Jeremy McGilvrey If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jeremy McGilvrey or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jeremymcgilvrey, or visit his website www.jeremymcgilvrey.com and subscribe to his blog.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
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Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
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Share Your Story What strategies have you used to convert more Instagram followers into buyers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Happy Easter! This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. Today, I will be sharing 6 lessons I learned from an amazing business partner who committed suicide.

One Sunday morning a few years ago, I was getting ready to go to church when I received a call from one of my business partners. I was in Idaho and he was in Arizona. My partner told me he was going to church to support his child who had been baptized the day before, and then he was going to kill himself.

After assessing the situation and realizing he was going to go through with his plan, I told him I would be on the first flight to Arizona and asked him to not leave the chapel. I called two family members in Arizona who knew my business partner, gave them the address of the chapel, and asked them to go there immediately to stay with my business partner until I arrived. They both agreed.

I packed a suitcase quickly and raced to the airport. I was able to get a seat on the next flight, rented a car at the airport, and drove to his chapel. I met my business partner at the chapel and spoke with him together with one of his church leaders.

For the next five days, I stayed with my business partner as much as possible and tried to help, along with other caring friends. Another friend of his had driven in from California to help, and all of us stayed together in the house of yet another friend. My partner was surrounded by people who loved him and were trying to help.

My partner was facing some problems he felt were impossible to solve. We tried to help him see the numerous options and solutions he had. We tried to help him see the people who loved him and needed him. I tried to get him to fly with me back to Idaho to get some new scenery, get his mind off what was consuming him, and chart a different path than the one he was on. We enlisted the help of a high-profile mutual friend, who offered to help him restart his career on a new path. We tried to help him realize the sun was going to come out tomorrow and that world would look brighter, but he did not have hope in that.

One night I slept on a couch, and even though he had a bed in another room, my business partner slept on the floor right by me because he didn’t want to be alone.

His group of friends was so concerned that we had him involuntarily admitted to a hospital for professional help. However, he was very smart. He had a Harvard MBA and was an extremely successful businessman. He knew all the right things to say to the doctors, and they discharged him soon thereafter.

We prayed for him and with him. He received priesthood blessings. We assured him of God’s love for him, and all of the other people who loved him.

I did everything I knew how to do and tried to get him help from people much more qualified than me. After five days, I had to leave to go home because of family responsibilities. So, I left my business partner with a mutual friend, and I returned to Idaho.

About 5 days later, I received a call from the mutual friend that my business partner had taken his own life. This death was a tragic loss for me, for his family, and for the world. My business partner was a great man, who had done a lot of good for a lot of people, including my family and me.

I returned to Arizona for the funeral. My business partner had been a high-profile figure who had done a lot of great things. So, there were a lot of notable people at the funeral, such as Arizona’s Governor, a United States Senator, and national leaders from our church.

This episode will be published on Easter, the day we remember the Savior’s death, and the blessing of His resurrection, which gives us the assurance we will live again after this life. It’s a day we celebrate that He saved us from sin and from death.

This Easter, in addition to remembering and celebrating Christ, I am also reminded of my partner’s death, and the blessing he was in my life. In this episode, I’m going to share some of the most impactful lessons I learned from my business partner:

1. Be there for people during their hard times. When I was in one of the darkest times of my business career, and I needed a large investment quickly, my business partner was there for me. He believed in me. He stepped up and made the investment on very fair terms. And, he was a great business partner thereafter. I learned from my partner the power of being there for people during their hard times, and how it can build fierce loyalty. It made me want to be there for my partner and do everything I could for him and his family.

2. The front page rule of ethics. There was a time my partners and I were trying to figure out the best way to handle a difficult situation. We weren’t considering doing anything illegal or even unethical, and it was a decision probably nobody would ever know about. However, this business partner advised we should follow a higher standard. He proposed a “front page rule”, which meant we should only make decisions we would feel comfortable being on the front page of the newspaper. Thereafter, our standard for decision making wasn’t just if something was legal or ethical, but also, if we would feel comfortable with the decision being published on the front page of the newspaper, and the world knowing about it. This front-page rule made it very easy for us to make ethical decisions.

3. You can’t do good business with bad people. My partner taught me that it’s not just about putting together a good deal. The character of the people we do business with is even more important. If we put together a good deal with unethical, untrustworthy, or bad people there is a high likelihood they will not treat us honestly and ethically in that deal regardless of what the agreement says. On the other hand, if we put together a deal with lesser terms but with honest, ethical, good people, they will often treat us right because that is who they are, regardless of what the contract says. That lesser deal made with good people will end up being the better of the two deals.

4. Don’t drive a tank over a footbridge. I used to live by a beautiful river in Utah, and right by my house, there was a sturdy footbridge across the river. This bridge was strong and stable for pedestrians to walk across, but it was not intended for motorized vehicles. Forty people could have walked across the bridge at the same time, and it would have held up fine. However, if someone would have tried to drive a tank across the bridge it would have collapsed. It was not designed and reinforced for that kind of weight.

Sometimes in our lives, we have too much stress and pressure that hits us simultaneously. We are probably able to handle life just fine normally, but sometimes we have more weight on our mental “bridges” than we were designed to carry, and we collapse emotionally.

That’s the best analogy I can think of for what happened to my business partner. He was smart, a creator, and a very capable problem solver. But, at the time he took his life, he had way too much weight on his mental bridge. He had viable solutions he could have taken to solve the problems he felt were impossible. But, because of his overloaded bridge, he could not see them. He was certain that his situation was impossible.

Different people have different weight limits on their mental bridges. We need to watch carefully when the pressure on our bridges or the bridges of people around us becomes too much. That’s when we know we have driven a tank onto a footbridge. When that happens, we need to immediately stop and remove weight from our footbridge or the footbridge of others and get back to a “healthy” level. We need to never allow too much weight to be on our mental bridges. When that happens, we don’t see and interact with the world in healthy ways.

5. Just Love. Sometimes people say that everyone who commits suicide is going to hell. I know that is not true. It is not our place to judge that person. That is not our judgment to make and we need to trust a kind, merciful, and loving God. Instead, it is our place to love. If someone broke their arm we wouldn’t tell that person to “tough it out”, or judge them because their arm was hurting and they weren’t able to do strenuous work. Rather, we would try to give that person with a broken arm the medical care, support, love, and space to heal they need. The same is true for mental illnesses. They are just as real as a broken arm. And we, likewise, need to give people struggling with mental illnesses the same medical care, support, love, and space they need to heal, whenever possible.

6. Connection. A lot of times people think suicide is caused by depression. I’m not a doctor or an expert on suicide. I believe there is some correlation between suicide and depression, but I don’t think it is as strong of a correlation as people think. However, I think there is a very strong correlation between connection or disconnection and suicide. It is my belief that many people who commit suicide are feeling disconnected from their support network. I believe that besides professional help, one of the best things we can do for people who are considering suicide is to help them re-establish strong and healthy connections in their lives. In addition to building these connections with people they love, these connections can also be with causes and service opportunities. One of the best ways for us to find connection, meaning, and happiness in our lives is to get out of ourselves to love and serve other people.

“When we recognize that someone is having [suicidal] thoughts and we reach out, we are instantly planting a seed of hope that they’re not invisible, that they’re not alone.” (Misty Vaughan Allen, Nevada Office of Suicide Prevention Coordinator)

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Be there for others during their hard times. This can build much more loyalty than helping when times are good.
Use the front page rule for ethics, and don’t do anything we would not want on the front page of the newspaper.
You can’t do good business with bad people. Choose honest, ethical, good people as your business associates.
Don’t drive a tank over our footbridge. When the pressure on our bridges feels too great we need to immediately reduce that pressure.
When people are having mental health issues, don’t judge, just love.
If someone has committed suicide don’t assume they are going to hell. We don’t know that. God is far more loving, merciful, and forgiving than we can imagine. And, by saying that, we can cause a lot of needless hurts.
When people are dealing with suicidal thoughts, in addition to helping them get professional help, I believe we should try to help them create more positive and healthy connections.

Do you struggle with suicidal thoughts?

Do you struggle with suicidal thoughts? If you do, please know that you matter and are loved. Please have hope that there are solutions to problems that seem impossible right now. There are people who love you. There is much good you can uniquely do in the world. The world is not as dark as it seems right now. Have hope that the sun will rise and your world will look brighter. If you are dealing with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to people around you and get professional help. Asking for help shows strength, not weakness. Please try to get reconnected with positive influences in your life. Please try to love and serve other people. As you help improve the lives of others, I promise that your life will improve. And remember that God loves you always!

Read more at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/59-6-lessons-i-learned-from-my-business-partner-who-committed-suicide/

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Facebook used to dominate as a social media platform for advertising. Though it has more active users than Instagram, the stats show that the median Instagram engagement rate per post is 1% across all industries in comparison to a 0.08% median engagement rate per post on Facebook (Source: Rival IQ). When it comes to influencer marketing, 90% of US marketers consider Instagram the most important social media platform (Source: Sprout Social).

In today’s episode, I talk with Jeremy McGilvrey, the bestselling author of “Instagram Secrets”, about why he believes Instagram dominates every other social media platform for marketing. He explains which Instagram strategies are the most important to know.

Jeremy is a Harvard-educated marketing expert. He helps business owners leverage the power of the internet to transform their businesses through innovative traffic strategies. He didn’t get where he is today by preaching what he doesn’t practice. Jeremy is the winner of the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award for generating more than $1,000,000 in a sales funnel. He is in fact his own best customer. That’s what makes him credible and reliable. He knows exactly what it’s like to be risking his money and his livelihood. Just like anyone else, Jeremy has had his share of setbacks but his enthusiasm has always kept him going.

“The ability to bounce back after a setback is the single most important trait an entrepreneurial venture can possess.” Sir Richard Branson - Business magnate, investor, and author.

Progress is in the Process

Jeremy started his entrepreneurial journey very early on when he was just a kid. When he was a child, he started shoveling people’s walks for just $2. He then took what he earned and invested it in baseball cards. It’s very similar to what he’s doing today in his business: building his brand and investing most of the revenue back into growing his business.

Jeremy believes that many of us have a job for the safety of the paycheck. Working for an employer is easy at the beginning but then it gets hard. When we work for a company, we just need to do what they ask us to do because they have systems and processes in place. This is very unlike entrepreneurship, which is really hard at the beginning but then it gets much easier.

When we understand that anything in life is really just a process, it’ll help us build successful systems. This is one of the things I like best about processes. They help us to consistently do the same thing over and over again. When we put a process in place, we don't have to be waking up every day and wondering, “What am I going to do today?”.

“It seems like the greatest victories happen when we consistently implement effective processes to help us accomplish the things that matter most.” Nathan Gwilliam

Why Instagram Dominates Every Social Platform

In his book “Instagram Secrets”, Jeremy talks about 12 reasons why Instagram dominates every social platform. He believes that one of the best things about Instagram is that it’s an extremely affordable place where entrepreneurs can connect with influencers in their niches. When influencers endorse our products or services, the influencer recommendation can increase our credibility and conversions much better than paid ads.

Jeremy tells us how to connect with influencers on Instagram. Whether it’s through Telegram or reaching out through the contact information in their bio, there are many ways to catch influencers. He advises keeping it simple and friendly. We need to express genuine interest in their work and what they do.

Influencers usually have a lot of people trying to connect with them. They get tons of messages so entrepreneurs who want to connect with them need to get their message across in as few words as possible. It’s good to tell them how our product or service is going to elevate their brand. What’s in it for them?

Jeremy also says that while it’s extremely affordable to work with influencers, we can’t expect them to work for free. These are people who invest a lot of their time and put in all the hard work to build their following, so it’s only fair to pay for their services.

Strategy 1: Select a Great Instagram Name

Jeremy believes that when thinking of an Instagram name, we need to begin with the end in mind. This means deciding on the direction the business will go before we pick a name.

It’s important to think about the benefit that people would get from engaging with this name. Jeremy explains that Instagram is moving more towards search engine optimization. This means that a great Instagram name must be concise, clean, and benefit-based.

Strategy 2: Instagram Bios and Profiles

Jeremey told me that a bio needs to be concise and clear as well. If someone is going to promote affiliate products, they shouldn’t be using those ugly affiliate links that look spammy. Instead, for just $8 or $9, they can buy a benefit-based domain name through GoDaddy.

Jeremey pointed out a great resource, leandomainsearch.com, to find a domain name based on a certain keyword. The website digs up available domain names that have this keyword in them. The next step would be to go to GoDaddy and buy the domain that looks most clean.

Strategy 3: Drive Customers to Free Offers

When I asked Jeremey about which rules he thought were the most important, he told me that it no longer works to drive people directly to paid offers. We need to give something for free. For example, this can be a free PDF or an ebook that offers valuable content to customers. This will drive the leads to leave their email to get the free offer. Free email traffic like this will continue to grow the email list that we can market indefinitely.

Strategy 4: Model Successful Instagrammers

I asked Jeremey about how to learn from people who have already done that and who have been quite successful at it. Jeremey explained that this was how he built everything in his life; by modeling what successful people have been doing.

Jeremey believes that we should never take advice from someone we wouldn’t trade places with. So when looking for a successful model to follow, we first need to make sure they’ve been successful at achieving what we are trying to achieve. We don’t need sophisticated software to figure that out. Jeremey says that some common sense can go a long way. We need to measure the number of followers someone has on Instagram up against the level of engagement (likes and comments) they get. If someone with 600,000 followers and they have 2000 likes on their account and only four comments, this can’t be a real following.

Jeremey recommends doing a little research first. It’s quite simple. Just document a 15-day average of what those Instagrammers are posting, their likes, and comments. This will show if they’re authentic or not.

“Successful people don't fear failure but understand that it's necessary to learn and grow from” Robert Kiyosaki - businessman and author

Connect with Jeremy McGilvrey

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jeremy McGilvrey or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jeremymcgilvrey, or visit his website www.jeremymcgilvrey.com and subscribe to his blog.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeremy for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Practice what we teach so we have “been-there-done-that” credibility.
No matter how many setbacks we face, never lose our enthusiasm to keep moving forward.
Working for an employer may seem easy at the beginning but then it gets very hard, while entrepreneurship will seem hard in the beginning and then get easier.
The greatest victories happen when you are able to consistently implement effective processes to help achieve the things that matter most.
Customers are no longer being driven effectively on Instagram to paid offers.
A great Instagram name is concise, clean, and benefit-based.
Before we model successful Instagramers, we should do our research and model the most successful ones.

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Welcome back to episode 2 with Damon Burton. Damon is the founder and CEO of a highly successful SEO agency. In the previous episode, we discussed how Damon is able to set effective boundaries to balance work and family life. We also talked about Damon’s journey to become a successful SEO expert and entrepreneur. In this episode, Damon will be debunking three common SEO myths, and he’ll share a few tips on how to improve our SEO.

3 SEO Myths We Need to Stop Believing Here are three common myths about SEO (search engine optimization) and why we shouldn’t believe them.

Myth 1: Keyword Stuffing is a Great Way to Boost Our Site’s Ranking Keyword stuffing is when a webpage attempts to rank higher on a search engine by filling its page with hidden keywords. This used to be extremely popular, and for a while was effective. Damon still gets clients who ask about it, but Google has eliminated this tactic’s effectiveness. Now a website earns its rank only from what a real person would be able to read on the site.

In fact, attempting to hide keywords can now do more harm than good. Google pays attention to a webpage’s bounce rate, which is the percentage of site visitors who enter and then leave without continuing to view other pages within the same site. If a site has poorly written content or it’s stuffed with keywords and doesn’t read well, people will abandon it. If a site’s bounce rate is too high, Google won’t direct viewers to it because they want to create the best experience for their users.

Myth 2: We Must Get as Many Backlinks as Possible Another common SEO myth is that we should try to get as many backlinks as possible, regardless of the quality of the source. Backlinks are when another website links to our website. Those links count as votes for our site in a credibility-building popularity contest. These links do have value and they always will, but the goal is not to get as many backlinks as possible from unrelated sites. Google gives much more weight to backlinks from the high-quality, related content.

Damon helps his clients focus on creating high-quality content that will attract backlinks naturally from high-quality related sites. These kinds of backlinks will be much more influential in Google’s search algorithm than the backlinks from low-quality, unrelated pages.

Myth 3: Google’s New Algorithm Will Ruin Our Site’s SEO Many people worry every time Google makes changes to their algorithm. Damon, however, never worries himself with the intricacies of Google’s new algorithms and he has still been able to drive tremendous SEO success for his clients. He thinks that if someone has to worry that much about a Google algorithm change, then it means they’re cutting corners, and it’s going to catch up to them.

With his clients, Damon focuses on the core concepts and principles of SEO, such as site speed and creating great content that people want to consume and share. Because of this strategy, more often than not, his clients aren’t affected too badly by Google algorithm changes, and if they are, it usually impacts them positively.

“I actually don’t get too worried about the intricacies of Google’s new algorithms because if you have to care that much, then it means you’re cutting corners, and eventually it’s going to catch up to you. So, I focus on the core concepts and principles of SEO, and we’ve never had a client get a penalty.” - Damon Burton

Let’s talk about a few of Google’s major algorithm changes and how they focus on quality.

Google Panda Update In 2011, Google came out with the Google Panda Update, which focused on the uniqueness of content, not allowing content scraping or stealing content from other sites.

Google Penguin Update The 2012 Google Penguin Update focused on backlinks. Prior to this update, it was all about the number of backlinks over the quality. Immediately after Penguin, the relevance and quality of backlinks became a lot more important than quantity because Google had recognized that people were abusing it. That is another reason why Damon doesn’t focus on backlink quantity.

Mobilegeddon Mobilegeddon was another algorithm update. It focused on emphasizing the value of mobile-friendly web designs.

These updates were about improving the quality of the websites that Google recommends. It all comes back to a good page look, a good user experience, and good content. If we deliver good content then our site will rank well.

“Long story short, I don’t care about algorithm updates because as long as you’re not trying to game the system, you’re always going to be on the upside.” - Damon Burton

Good Content As we’ve discussed, having quality content is essential for SEO. Good content has a good site structure where users and Google can find everything easily and identify the product or service that we offer. Good content is also unique, not the same as what everyone else is doing. It should speak to our readers' problems and pain points and put us in a position of authority to speak to those things.

How Damon’s Team Used Keyword Research to Create Content For the Utah Jazz’s Team Store When Damon was working with the Utah Jazz team store, they were thinking about what their campaign could monetize. They didn’t want to rank number one on Google for random word bragging rights; they wanted to rank for something they could profit on.

So they did keyword research, starting with relevancy and looking for what people were searching forーwhich keywords were more relevant to their audience for their product or service.

The Utah Jazz’s retail division needed to attract buyers for newer players like Donovan Mitchell, but they also wanted to sell merchandise for legacy players like Karl Malone. They looked into what people were searching about these players, and through the research found something that they never would have thought about. People were searching, “how did Karl Malone die,” but Karl Malone isn’t dead.

It was a great find for them because no one else was going to be writing about that. It didn’t matter that the customer was wrong, that’s what they were searching for. That was an opportunity to consider unique topic ideas like “10 Myths of How Karl Malone Died” that addressed customer’s concerns, and it was the only thing that directly addressed the customer’s intent.

Just because a word has high competition or low search volume doesn’t mean we should say no. In fact, quite often, the words that have little search volume are the best ones to target because they are the most immediately relevant to our product or service. Would we rather have a word that people search 1,000 times and get one conversion from it, or would we rather have a word that people search 100 times, but we get 10 conversions? The payout is what matters.

Being Human on Social Media to Build Relationships We are constantly bombarded with influencers showing us their spotless houses, perfect bodies, and expensive cars. We’ve become numb to this stuff, which is why it can be very rewarding to be human and vulnerable. It really stands out when someone posts something in their messy house where their kid just broke something. It feels real and we’re able to connect with that person because they’re being human.

Damon always tries to keep his posts relatable, so that his followers will trust him. He talks about real problems people face with SEO or with being a parent, which helps in building his expertise. Then when they are ready for the product or service he offers, they come to him and say, “how do we get started” because they already have that relationship.

“You have a scalable, quantifiable return, and you have a better client because they know what you do.” - Damon Burton

Damon made a post on LinkedIn that resonated with a gentleman who reached out to Damon. He said he was considering SEO, and he’d like to meet with Damon. They met about a week later, and shortly after the meeting, the gentleman called Damon and said that most marketing meetings he leaves more confused than when he came in. With Damon’s meeting, however, Damon explained why he should and shouldn’t work with SEO National.

The gentleman ended up becoming a client, and two weeks later, he introduced Damon to his neighbor, who worked for a law firm and also became a client. Shortly after, the attorney-client asked Damon if he could introduce him to the Utah Jazz because he was the exiting vice president of the retail division responsible for filling the marketing roles before he left. Damon ended up getting the contract with the Utah Jazz.

So within the span of about a month, he got three new clients all from one authentic post on LinkedIn. Because of quality content creation and credible authenticity, Damon was connected with Jazz. He never would have been able to do that even if he had spent $1,000,000 on paid ads.

Being Human with Our Teams “Highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability.” (Source: Forbes.com)

Damon has a remote team of about 30 people that he’s been working with for about 14 years. Most of them he has never met in person. Despite that, he has very close connections with all of his team members.

Two of them have asked him to be the godfather for their child. One almost named their kid after him. When two of them were getting married in the Philippines and Damon couldn’t make it because his wife was pregnant, they ordered a 6-foot tall cardboard cutout of him. Cardboard Damon was in the wedding pictures and stood in the line behind the bride and groom.

The emotional ties and connection Damon has with his team aren’t possible without being vulnerable and being human.

Future of SEO Damon believes that whatever the future holds, virtual reality, augmented reality, or something that doesn’t exist yet, it will rely on the same things it does now: trustworthy, unique content that’s accessible quickly and easily. As long as we understand the importance of establishing ourselves as credible, we won’t have to care too much about the future.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Damon for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Don’t attempt to use keyword stuffing.
Seek after quality backlinks, not the quantity of low-quality backlinks.
As long as we are creating quality content people want to read and link to, we probably don’t need to be worried about Google’s latest algorithm.
Good content is unique, easily accessible, speaks to our readers' problems and pain points, and puts us in a position of authority to speak to those things.
Be human on social media and with our teams to establish strong relationships.

Connect with Damon

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Damon or connect with him or his business, you can find him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/damonburton/ and SEOnational.com.

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Technology has enhanced the business world in innumerable ways, and it is largely because of technology that many businesses were able to stay afloat after the COVID-19 pandemic started. However, while technology can do good, it can also hold us hostage. Most people nowadays are constantly checking their email and social media.

“Technology should be your servant, not your master” -Ludovic Tendron

Damon Burton is the author of the book Outrank, which focuses on search engine optimization. Damon is the president of an SEO agency called SEO National that he has run for about 14 years. He writes for Forbes, where he serves on the Forbes Council.

In today’s episode, Damon Burton and I discuss how we can use systems and processes to our advantage by controlling technology and not letting technology control us.

Managing a Business without Being a Slave to Technology Damon used to work for a man, who was pretty successful but not the best to work with. One Friday night around 7 pm, Damon was out to dinner with his wife, and his boss called him. Damon didn’t answer, so his boss then texted him. Damon didn’t respond. This was at the time when email was new on phones, and his boss also emailed him. Damon decided right then that this was never going to happen again. He deleted email from his phone and has never gone back.

As technology and social media have evolved, Damon has made sure he limits what is on his phone. He is very active on LinkedIn and Facebook, but he only uses them on his desktop. He’s also disabled automatic downloads and dock notifications on his desktop email, so the only time he gets emails is when he manually presses the button. This prevents him from getting distracted by the flood of notifications.

So how does he manage a highly successful business and retain relationships without these forms of communication? Damon says it’s simpler than we might think. From day one, Damon sets expectations with his team and with his clients. In client contracts, it says SEO National is not available after 5 pm on weekdays, they’re not available on weekends, and they don’t do launches on Fridays because if anything goes wrong they won't be working on the weekend.

“I’ve made very clear, hard boundaries, and I’ve never had a problem with it because I set the expectations with the clients.” -Damon Burton

Damon has set boundaries without having issues because he established the expectations with his clients, telling them, “we’re not available at these times but that’s okay because we’re proactively doing other things to make sure everything works.” Because Damon has systems and processes for effective communication, he doesn’t have emergency communications at undesirable times.

Damon’s Start with Technology Damon grew up in a lower, middle-class family, and they didn’t have many luxuries. So, when Damon took a typing class in junior high, he loved having access to a computer. He embraced all the opportunities he could to learn about technology. When Damon was in 9th grade, he was in an “exclusive class” with just six or seven other students. Graphic design and website builder technology had started to come out, and the class was able to use it to design things such as the school lunch menu.

In high school, Damon was learning HTML for the first time, and he loved it. He had the opportunity, with half a dozen other students who all knew HTML, to do the school district’s website.

Using a Passion to Build a Successful Website In college, Damon took a communications class that had a project where students had to build an HTML website. Damon didn’t want to work hard on this website only to have it deleted off the school’s server later. He asked his professor if he could buy a domain and do the project there. Damon’s professor said that was fine, so Damon set to work creating this website.

At the time, he was a big car enthusiast, so he would stop nice cars he saw while driving and keep a little info sheet in his car. He’d ask the owners about the car, the make, model, and what modifications they’d made. Then on his website, Damon created little bios for the cars. The site started to pick up traction, especially when he added a message board. Damon wanted to make it better, and that’s when he took an intentional interest in design. As the site continued to grow, the movie The Fast and the Furious came out, which grew the market more. Damon thought. “how do I monetize this” and that’s what led him to marketing.

Documented Processes For the next couple of years, Damon began building websites on the side. He got better and better at it, to the point where he was spending about 20% of his time on it, while it brought in 50% of his income. He decided to leave his day job and start doing websites full time. Within 3 months of devoting all his time to websites, he was able to make more than he had made in his previous job.

Damon grew the business, bringing on an employee. A company asked him if he would consider consolidating with their company, and Damon learned that if he wanted to sell, buyers wanted a business with documented processes to take the keys and drive. He declined the offer and spent the next year documenting everything. After that, his company was immediately scalable, as it brought on more people and signed bigger contracts.

Damon’s Next Step For Damon, being an entrepreneur is what he’s passionate about. He has other interests, but entrepreneurship is what he truly loves. Because of this, he is able to divide his time between his family and his work. He puts his family first, setting aside time for them.

Now, it’s been about 14 years since Damon started his business. He is at the point where he could leave the business, but he doesn’t know if he wants to. He is still passionate about the business he’s built. He loves networking, building relationships, and finding opportunities. However, part of him wants to take a break to find himself again. Entrepreneurs can often lose themselves a little bit in the process, and Damon wants to reconnect with himself. Another part of him wants to try something totally different, a new adventure.

Three of Damon’s Biggest Home Runs 1. Having the Freedom to Block Off Family Time One of the things Damon is most proud of in his career is that he can separate his work and family life and not feel like he is missing out on one while he is doing the other. He is able to block time out from about 7:30 to 8:45 every morning to eat breakfast with his kids or walk them to school, depending on the weather. He is also able to do the same thing from 3:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon when he walks or drives to school to pick them up.

2. Working with the Utah Jazz’s Team Store Damon was able to work with the Utah Jazz team store and help the NBA team increase their merchandise sales. This was special for him because when Damon was a kid he was a part of the Junior Jazz, a youth basketball league. He also remembers going to his first Utah Jazz game when he was young.

3. Damon’s First 5-Figure Recurring Monthly Retainer Shortly after Damon finished his process documentation, the company got its first 5-figure monthly recurring retainer. Damon wouldn’t have been confident bidding on that client if he hadn’t done his process documentation. Because he had done that, he could confidently bid on it, knowing he would be able to fulfill that promise and build a good reputation.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Damon for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We can be the masters of our technology instead of allowing it to master us.
Take advantage of opportunities in school and other places to learn about your passions.
Process documentation is a key to being able to scale the business.
Process documentation can save you time and make your business more appealing when you are ready to sell.
Build your life to make time for the things you love as Damon has done with his family and business.

Connect with Damon

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Damon or connect with him or his business, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/damonburton// and SEOnational.com.

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How have you used systems and processes to effectively manage your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Historically, businesses would focus on purchasing advertising and reach and then use that reach to tell people how awesome they were. That model doesn’t work very well anymore. If I want to buy a new SUV, I’m not going to go to a Toyota salesperson and ask them what the best SUV is. I’m going to go to credible sources such as review sites or safety rating sites to pull incredible data to help me make a decision.

One of the credible sources people go to now are influencers, experts in the field who have a wide audience and a lot of credibilities. 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations (Source: digitalmarketinginstitute.com). In today’s episode, Josh Albrechtsen and I talk about how we can leverage influencers and other strategies to boost our credibility.

Josh Albrechtsen graduated from the BYU Marriott School with a BS in Management Information Systems. He started his full-time career at Entrata as a development project manager, and he was promoted to lead different parts of the company over his 5-year tenure, including the development, services, and product management organization. Josh left Entrata to become a Licensed Nursing Home Administrator with the Ensign Group. He met Riley, his partner and the founder of Cortex, while running a Skilled Nursing Facility in Orem, UT, and eventually joined Riley as a co-founder of Cortex. Josh has accepted a spot in the MIT Sloan EMBA Class of 2023.

Entrata and Influencer Marketing Entrata was Josh’s first job out of college. He started doing development project management for them and was eventually promoted to lead that team. While in that position, Josh had the opportunity to work with developers in India and travel there. He transitioned to a services leadership role for about two years. Then, he moved to project management as Entrata was growing there.

Early on while Josh was working at Entrata, the company’s sales began to grow. But, they were growing fairly linear. Josh was a part of the executive team when they made the decision to connect with some industry consultants in the multifamily space. These consultants were highly regarded at trade shows and were there on the panels talking about multifamily. Entrata did a consulting arrangement with each of them, and ultimately the arrangement led to more conversations that would not have happened, otherwise, because the consultants had the network and credibility that Entrata could piggyback off of. Entrata grew exponentially purely because of that change.

Influencer marketing can lead to a lot of success and growth. Entrata found people that have influence in the space, and they positively associated themselves with those influencers and leveraged their credibility.

Using the “Kind of Like” Strategy to Describe Our Business Josh left Entrata and became a nursing home administrator. He did that for two years and then co-founded Cortex.

When Josh was describing Cortex to me, he said Cortex does follow-up phone calls for healthcare providers to patients recovering at home, employing registered nurses to make the phone calls. Then he said it’s kind of like Uber for nurses doing in-home health care.

This “kind of like” strategy of describing a business is one of the secrets for credibility. This strategy is a great element of credibility because we can take something that is credible― something that everybody knows is credible and knows how it works―and associate it with ourselves but with a small twist. If we were to describe Airbnb this way, we’d say it’s kind of like Uber for homes.

Being Vulnerable to Build Credibility One of Josh’s mentors and associates is Johnny Hanna, the CEO, and co-founder of Homie. Recently, Johnny has become more prolific on LinkedIn, and he’s been doing mental health Monday posts. He is being very vulnerable on LinkedIn about mental health issues he has struggled with or that he’s helped other people with, inviting them to be more vulnerable and open.

Initially, these mental health posts had some traction, but now they have massive followings. In the comments, people repeatedly say that when Johnny pulled them aside or sat in their car and talked to them about this topic, it really resonated with them. These individuals have since been seeing a therapist, working on their mental health, or doing something else to address this issue.

Being vulnerable with our associates is a huge aspect of credibility. One of the secrets is the secret of imperfection. When we try to be perfect, we’re not real. But, showing the scars we have actually gives us credibility. It allows people to connect with us in a way that is otherwise difficult when we are trying to be “perfect.” Perfect is not relatable because nobody is perfect.

“Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement.” -Brene Brown, American professor, lecturer, author, and podcast host

Listening First Another concept of credibility is listening first. Josh’s father is a great example of this. Josh called him before the interview, asking him for advice on something, and Josh said he talked for the majority of the time while his dad just listened to him.

When Josh was growing up, his dad was the CEO of a motorhome company. Josh asked him how he managed his life with all the people in his company. His dad said he just stayed quiet and listened. People usually assumed Josh’s dad was smart, but he surrounded himself with smart people who could help him.

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand." -Karl A. Menninger, American psychiatrist

The Most Credible People in Josh’s Life When I asked Josh who is the person that has the most credibility for him in his life, he said first his father and outside his family, Johnny Hanna. He said they are very similar in many ways. They both always do what they say they’re going to do. They are both vulnerable. Despite having a lot of success, they both haven’t let that go to their heads; one wouldn’t know how successful they are if they met them on the street. Johnny and Josh’s father are intelligent, well-versed in business and life principles, and they rely on those principles instead of the opinions of others.

Month-to-Month vs Long-Term Contracts When I was running Adoption.com, I had a client that stayed with me for 11 years, the longest client I’ve ever had. This client was on a month-to-month contract with me, and I believe that is one of the reasons he stayed with me for so long. If there was something wrong, I had to fix it immediately. It forced me to try to make him happy every month.

Long-term contracts are the enemy of successful long-term business relationships. If a customer isn’t happy, they will cancel as soon as they can. Most SaaS customers usually sign month-to-month contracts for this very reason.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Josh for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We can connect and build positive relationships with influencers to connect with their credibility and network.
To establish credibility when we’re describing our business, we can use the “kind of like” strategy to connect customers with something familiar and credible and put our own unique angle on it.
When we are vulnerable with our customers, we can connect on a higher level and establish credibility with them.
Listening to others is a great strategy for credibility because it shows them we care about what they have to say.
Just like Johnny Hanna and Josh’s dad, if we are committed, vulnerable, humble, and hold strong to our principles, our credibility will probably grow.
Consider using month-to-month contracts to encourage us to keep our clients happy. We may be able to keep our customers for a longer period of time this way.

Connect with Josh

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Josh or his company, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshalbrechtsen/ or email him at josh@cortexhc.com.

Share Your Story

What strategies have you used to boost your credibility? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/55-how-to-use-influencer-marketing-and-other-strategies-to-increase-credibility/

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Welcome back to the second episode with Tim Hughes. Tim is recognized by many as the world’s leading expert on social selling. In our first episode with Tim, we discussed his career in social selling, common objections and mistakes in social selling, and how COVID-19 will impact business going forward. In today’s episode, Tim shares 3 secrets of effective social selling and examples of good and bad social selling.

3 Secrets of Social Selling Here are 3 of Tim’s secrets to social selling:

A Buyer-Centric Profile The first thing we need is a buyer-centric profile. It's not a profile where we say how great we are, how many times we've made news, etc. It’s also not a profile where we focus on our company or product.

We need to put ourselves in our buyer's shoes and say, “Okay, if I were a buyer, what would I be looking for in a person who is going to help me?” A buyer is looking for help, not someone to sell them something. This isn’t about selling; it’s about getting a conversation. Once we get to the conversation, the person will give us permission to pitch or not.

There are three types of people. One is someone we can sell to. Another is someone we can get a referral from. So they may say, “I'm not the person you need to talk to, but you need to talk to my brother-in-law. He's actually looking for this right now.” The third person is what Tim calls someone with a big mouth, which is somebody who will take our insights and our influence and share it through the network.

For examples of great buyer-centric profiles, check out Tim’s LinkedIn profile or the profiles of Priscilla McKinney, Eric Doyle, Adam Gray, or Vanessa Gartell.

A Large Network The next thing we need is a network. This is not just a bunch of contacts. These are people we don't necessarily need to have a phone conversation with, but we need to know. These are people that we could have a conversation with if they came to us.

“You need to build a network, and your network needs to be as big, as wide, and as varied as you can have it.” - Tim Hughes

BMW is one of Tim’s clients, and they have about 100,000 employees. So to sell to BMW, we would have to be connected to 1,000 people.

Tim does risk forecasts by using social for his clients. One client was selling to Domino’s Pizza, and they said it was a done deal to happen that quarter. Tim said, “It won’t happen.” When they asked why, Tim said, “Because the salesperson isn't connected to anybody in Domino's Pizza.” The sale didn't happen. If the salesperson isn't connected to anybody in the meeting, there's no relationship there.

Humanizing Content The third thing we need is content. Tim’s company has done the research for what content works and what content doesn't work. Unsurprisingly, the content that doesn't work is advertising because no one's interested in our products, services, or anything that says our company is great. However, people are interested in our people.

Eric, one of Tim’s employees, posted about his family going to the beach for his son’s 16th birthday. The post got 168 likes or comments and about 10,000 views. It took him 10 minutes to post, and from that post, he got 168 leads, two proposals, and one purchase order. There is not one single demand generation method out there (cold calling, advertising, email marketing) that can generate that kind of result in ten minutes. That’s the difference digital dominance makes.

“The more humanized that you can be with your content, the more engagement you get.” - Tim Hughes

Examples of Poor Social Selling One of Tim’s friends used to work at an organization, and this organization had a poor social selling strategy. They would have someone post something, and then tell everyone in the organization to go like it. Tim said there was even an employee whose title was “social selling expert,” but they clearly didn’t understand social selling.

Tim went into a big corporate organization to help them with their social selling. In a meeting, they told Tim their social selling was going very well. They said they were sending out brochures through emails. Tim turned to the gentleman next to him and asked him what he does when he gets an email. He said, “I just delete them.” Tim turned to the woman in charge of marketing and asked her what she does when she gets an email. She said, “I just delete them.” The two turned to each other and realized that it was actually not going well at all.

Brochures don't create sales conversations or great sales. The trust and the likability that comes from conversations can cause the sale. Though, we don’t necessarily have to like someone to trust them and buy from them.

Examples of Effective Social Selling Tim was recently working with a drains company. They did a pilot program of 6 people for 3 months. In those three months, they got 26,608 likes and 2,688 comments, just about 30,000 interactions. Interaction on social media is an opportunity to have a conversation. So, even if we took out 20% of those because they were friends liking the posts, that's still a massive opportunity to have conversations with people.

Before Tim started helping them, their goal had been 4 sales-qualified leads a week. After Tim came in, they were getting 12-14. They got just under 2 million views, and they've grown their network by about 5,000 people. So think of that as increasing an email database by 5,000, except unlike an email database, we actually know the people, have had an interaction, and they know and trust us.

There’s another company Tim has worked with that got 100% ROI. That transformation is bigger than Tim’s wildest dreams. At that point, it’s a money-making machine. For every $1 they put in, they get $2 back. Because of that, they don’t need an advertising budget.

What Metrics to Track in Social Selling Two of the most important metrics Tim’s company tracks are revenue and inbound clients. Generally, he has his clients create a campaign code, tracking business found through social media and business influenced through social media. Business found through social media is when the company puts out a post, and they get a response or an opportunity. Business found through influence is when the company goes into a particular account and connects to lots of people, growing its influence in that particular account.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Tim for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We should humanize our content.
Focus on what a buyer is looking for in our profiles. They are probably looking for help, and probably not for our company, brand, products, or services.
Having a large network of people who like us and trust us will allow us to sell more easily. When we have connections to the people we are selling to, they are more likely to buy from us.
If our content focuses on people instead of products, we will have more engagement.

Connect with Tim

Share Your Story

What results have you seen from social selling? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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When I started Monetization Nation less than 2 months ago, I accepted a challenge from Russell Brunson to publish every single day for a year. This is the 54th episode, and the best part about this journey is the amazing guests that I’ve been able to interview and learn from. In addition to the published episodes, I have already recorded about that many episodes which have not yet been published. I’m in awe of some of the amazing people who have agreed to be on my show.

Cringe-Worthy Moments in My Show

As I’ve recorded and published the episodes so far, I’ve had some truly cringe-worthy moments. Here are a few examples:

When I recorded the episode of John Lee Dumas, the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, who is one of my heroes, my Internet connection died as I was introducing him. Thankfully, he was gracious enough to let me reschedule the interview.
I received my first real backdrop on the day I was interviewing a high-level video producer at Apple. I had woefully underestimated how many clips I needed to keep the backdrop tight. So the backdrop was embarrassingly loose behind me, and I didn’t realize how bad it looked until I was reviewing the footage after the interview.
When I interviewed one of my past business partners, there was a significant audio/video sync lag so his mouth and the sound were saying different things.
When I interviewed a top user experience designer, the audio quality was painfully distracting.
When I interviewed one successful entrepreneur, he had a bright window behind him and I didn’t ask him to close the blinds. As a result, the lighting on his face was horrible.

As I’ve reviewed some of the episodes I’ve published so far, I’ve cringed and been tempted to not publish them. However, I published these episodes and learned from them. When I realized how bad the backdrop was in my video with the Apple video producer, I emailed him and apologized. I loved his response. He told me not to worry about it, and that "It is better to be prolific than perfect." I believe that original quote was from Joe Polish.

Picasso Was Prolific

Picasso is a great example of this principle of prolific over perfection. He could have spent months or years trying to create one perfect masterpiece. But, instead, he created his masterpieces by being prolific.

“Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings, 1,228 sculptures, 2,889 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs.” (source: Patrick O’Brian in Picasso: A Biography)

Most of those paintings, sculptures, and other forms of artwork were not masterpieces, but because he created so many different pieces of artwork, he had many more chances to create his masterpieces.

Strive for Continuous Improvement

“Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection.” (Kim Collins)

Through the last two months, producing Monetization Nation has forced me to be in a state of continuous learning and improvement. When my audio quality was unacceptable, I had to learn about microphones and how to get the sound I want. I had to learn to keep my mouth close enough to the microphone whenever I was speaking. I had to learn how to check to be sure Zoom was actually recording with the microphone I wanted it to use. When my backdrop sagged, I had to learn how to secure a backdrop correctly. When my episodes had too much echo, I had to learn how to stop the echo by putting sound-absorbing squares on the walls of my office.

I’ve made a lot of progress in producing my show, and I feel much better about the episodes I’m recording now than those first episodes. However, my show and I are still very far from perfect. There are still issues I’m working to fix. For example, I’m out in the country and only have access to wireless internet connectivity, and I know I need a much better Internet connection. I’m still working to find a solution for that.

When I started this show, I could have focused on creating perfect episodes, but if I had done that I probably would have only been able to publish about ⅓ as many episodes. Because I was willing to publish imperfect content, I was able to publish a lot more content, and learn many more things I could never have learned. Plus, content producers never know which blog post, podcast, or YouTube video is going to really take off. By producing a lot more content, I have a lot more opportunities to find that “masterpiece” that goes viral.

Perfection is the Enemy of Progress

“Perfection is the enemy of progress.” (Winston Churchill)

Hopefully, as entrepreneurs see me learn cringe-worthy mistakes, they will connect with me since they also make mistakes. None of us are perfect, so it’s really hard for us to connect with and relate to someone who appears to be perfect.

Imagine a software company that keeps putting off its release while they work to perfect their software. First, their software will never be perfect. Second, the only way to learn how to make great software is to put it out there and get real feedback from real users. Putting out imperfect software and then improving based on the feedback of real users will get us much closer to perfection than trying to create the perfect software in a vacuum.

Perfection is the Antithesis of Authenticity

But, you might say, that’s scary. Other people are going to see my cringe-worthy video or software.

My response to that is that there is a power in imperfection and that visible imperfection we are willing to show to the world creates authenticity.

“Perfection is the antithesis of authenticity.” (Willie Garson)

I have a good friend named Deidre Henderson who was recently elected as the Lieutenant Governor of Utah. Deidre told NPR, “I got married after my freshman year at BYU. I was 18 years old. I had five babies in eight years. I spent 13 years after that, you know, working to get my husband through physical therapy school, wiping noses and bottoms, doing all of those things."

After putting her college degree on the backburner, she ”kind of fell into politics.” Deidre felt shame about not having her degree, and that kept her from pursuing it. In 2014, she “decided to be open and to be transparent about it and to hopefully encourage other women or men who are in a similar situation, where they're wanting to go back, but maybe feeling awkward about it, too, to help inspire them to just do it."

Because Deidre is so open about going back to school, among other things, this makes her very authentic and relatable to so many people. It’s no wonder why she was selected as the running mate by the leading candidate for governor.

Hopefully, as entrepreneurs see me someday have a successful business powered by this show, they will have seen that I went on the journey they want to go through. They will see all these mistakes that I learned along the way in learning how to do it right. And, they will trust me to guide them through their journey to do something similar for their businesses.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from today’s episode:

The expectation of perfection is the entrepreneur’s enemy.
This expectation of perfection can paralyze an entrepreneur from being prolific and can reduce the opportunities for the entrepreneur to find their masterpiece, like Picasso.
Let’s be prolific so we have more opportunities to create our masterpieces.
This expectation of perfection can prevent an entrepreneur from being authentic and connecting with their customers.
Imperfection can give us authenticity. Perfection is the antithesis of authenticity.
The goal is not perfection. The goal is continuous improvement. Gragos Roua said, “Perfection is boring, getting better is where all the fun is.”
Let’s leverage the power of imperfection to be far more successful than is possible from pretending to be perfect.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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How could you be a little more authentic by focusing a little less on perfection? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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People often talk about spirals that descend downwards, but we often forget that spirals can go upwards too. In today’s episode, James Clarke and I talk about some of the ways to propel our credibility into an upward spiral.

James Clarke is the managing partner of Clarke Capital Partners. Early in his career, James founded and led a Utah-based online retailer named CLEARLINK with more than 2,000 employees. He’s earned some prestigious awards. For example, the Utah State Bar named James as the "Technology Pioneer of the Year" and BusinessQ Magazine named him as one of their “10 Coolest Entrepreneurs”. He is also the Governor-appointed Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees at Utah Valley University.

How Credibility Can Work Like an Upward Spiral Credibility spirals can start in a small situation with low stakes. Maybe it’s a project that is due. When someone comes through for us in that situation, and they do what they say they are going to do, we tend to give them more trust. Then we’ll ask them to do something with a little higher stakes. When they prove they can do that they earn even more trust. That same process repeats in an upward spiral of responsibility and trust.

James shared an example of how he saw this upward credibility spiral happen with his business partner. They knew each other in school, and as they built their relationship, that trust grew. It spiraled throughout the years, and now they have an implicit trust with one another, trusting everything about each other.

Likability, Trust, and Reliability “When we like people we want to work with them, when we trust them we want to work with them, and then the last part is about the nuts and bolts of what we do as a business.” -James Clarke

A mentor of James’ taught him about the three things that make people want to work with each other... if we like the person, trust the person, and know that they’ll make us money. Those last two elements are obviously elements of credibility. It is important for us to instill that trust in our associates, and we do that by being reliable and ethical.

There are people we like that we don’t want to do business with and it’s often because we don’t trust them and know they aren’t reliable. We need to become the kind of people that we want to work with. We must do what we say we’re going to do, be honest at all times, especially when it’s hard, and take responsibility when things go wrong.

Education--Connections and Credibility James did the Owner/President Management (OPM) program at Harvard Business School. He spent two years in the program and built some of the best relationships he’s ever built in his life there, working with incredible people, a handful of whom were already billionaires. It was his first experience and exposure to great business professionals.

The program didn’t grant a master’s degree, but it gave James wonderful connections and the credibility that comes with saying he went to Harvard. James realized that a master’s degree would give him even more credibility, so he decided to go to Oxford. This is another school that provides instant credibility.

Why do these schools provide so much credibility to graduates? One reason may be that they have rigorous application and interview processes, and the programs themselves are rigorous. Graduates from these schools are considered intelligent and hard working.

In addition, most people believe in a traditional education like this. Society generally supports the idea that the best way to become educated is to attend a university, and one of these prestigious universities will give us an even more prestigious education. Wherever we are in the process of our education, receiving higher education, if that is an option, maybe something to consider because it may give us greater credibility.

“Upon the subject of education… I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.” -Abraham Lincoln

Love We don’t generally think about love as a part of business, but there are a couple of concepts related to love that build credibility. For example, we don’t care what someone has to say until we know that they care about us and what we’re doing. This also plays into the credibility spiral. When someone really loves us, we are open to them giving us good advice, and we’ll apply their advice more often. When their advice works in our lives, they have more credibility in our eyes, and we listen to their next advice more, and the credibility just keeps building.

James has hired thousands of employees, and he’s seen this play out with many of them. If it doesn’t work out with an employee, it’s usually for one of two reasons. The first reason, which is very rare, is that they just don’t get it. They don’t have the mental capacity, or they don’t have what it takes to understand.

The second reason is that they just don't care. They just don’t love what they’re doing, so they don’t care about their job or the people they’re working with. Unfortunately, when this is the situation, we can feel it in every part of what they’re involved in.

This is why it is important to go into fields that we love and work with people we love. We will do better work, give better advice, and rise in our credibility spiral with those around us.

“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States

Another Angle of Love--Passion-Marketing There is another angle of love that we can relate to marketing, which is passion-marketing. This is finding what customers love and connecting with them through those top-level passions. At PetIQ, where James worked for about 10 years, they didn’t focus on their products in their marketing. Instead, they focused on what their customers are passionate about their pets. They were no longer pet owners, they were pet parents. For many of their customers, their pets are like their children, so they used that passion to market to their customers.

James has done this kind of thing in other organizations as well. In healthcare, for example, James can’t imagine anything nobler than trying to save people’s lives, so they talk about helping cure highly infectious diseases, which is something that people can be highly passionate about.

Losing Credibility When James was selling CLEARLINK, he started doing business with a good friend of his. Six months into this service, James was billed for the equivalent of five years of fees in one single quarter. He knew something was wrong but didn’t know what. James immediately brought it to the attention of his friend, who humbly apologized and said he would take care of it.

James thought the issue was a mistake that had been completely resolved and continued to work with the friend, but he soon learned that the same thing had happened to others that James had referred to as his friend. They had all been overbilled and not by small amounts but by hundreds of thousands of dollars. That relationship ended before it really began. Fast forward to today that individual has now been sentenced and is headed to federal prison. We need to be sure we always strive to do what we say we’re going to do so we increase instead of destroying our credibility.

“Once you lose your credibility, you can never restore it.” -Reinhold Messner, Italian mountaineer, explorer, and author

Who is the most credible person in your life and why? James and his aunt both had a very similar upbringing. They came from middle-class families, working on their family’s farms. James’ aunt built her own global business named Diet Center and was very successful. She was also very generous, always telling James he could borrow her very nice car, or asking him how she could help his school. She was a great example of James being successful and giving back, and he thought, “If she could do it then I can do it.” She and her husband were truly authentic and credible. They got behind different causes, and they really helped build up the community. James thinks of her as the most credible person in his life because she was very successful and generous.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much James for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Start growing our credibility spirals by doing what we say we are going to do and proving we can be trusted in low-stake situations, then building toward being trusted in higher-stakes situations.
Be honest and quickly take responsibility when things go wrong.
Education can really boost our credibility. Consider getting more relevant education or training if we haven’t already.
Share love to show people that we truly care about them and what they love to further build our credibility.
Go into fields we love to ensure that we care about what we’re doing and increase our chance of success.
Use passion marketing to connect with the things our customers are most passionate about.
When we are successful, be generous with that success to help others.

Connect with James

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about or connect with James or his business, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesclarke2/.

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How have you seen others propel their credibility in an upward spiral? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. Today, we’re talking about a better way to apologize that can show we really mean it and help restore relationships.

“The art of a sincere and heartfelt apology is one of the greatest skills you will ever learn.” - Jeanette LeBlanc

Yesterday I interviewed an amazing entrepreneur and CEO who happens to be a woman. I was impressed by her. I have 3 daughters, and I thought to myself how valuable it would be for women like them to be mentored by her, someone who had “been there and done that” so successfully. I asked her what advice she would give to a conference of women. However, my guest graciously commented that her advice would be helpful to everyone. After the interview, I thought about what she said and understood her point and my mistake. Of course, her advice would absolutely be valuable to everyone and not just women. I had not meant that her advice would only be valuable to women, but nonetheless, my comment was thoughtless and wrong. So, I immediately contacted my guest and apologized, and she immediately forgave me.

In our current social and political climate many people feel apologizing for shows weakness, and when these people are wrong, instead of apologizing, they double down on explaining why they were not wrong. Or, if they do need to apologize, they give a non-apology, such as “I’m sorry if you were offended” which doesn’t take any responsibility or apologize for anything. The lack of apology or the non-apology conveys exactly the opposite of a good apology. It conveys that the offender is not sorry, and reinforces the offense.

“Never believe you’re so great or important, so right or proud, that you cannot kneel at the feet of someone you hurt and offer a humble, sincere apology.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

When my wife and I were parenting our young daughters, as happens with all siblings, there were times when one daughter would do something to hurt or offend one of our other daughters. The offending daughter would sometimes refuse to apologize, and we as parents would step in and require the offending sister to apologize. Then, the offending sister would reply with the words such as “fine, I’m sorry” as sarcastically as possible. She would be saying the words we wanted but conveying exactly the opposite meaning. Or she would give a non-apology such as “I’m sorry you got hurt” specifically avoiding responsibility for what happened.

“‘I’m sorry you’re angry’ is not an apology.” - Lisa Lut

So, my wife researched and found a better way to teach our daughters to apologize in a way that shows we really mean it, and that can help diffuse the situation. It’s a simple 4-step system for offering an effective apology.

We say “I’m sorry for ….” and then fill in the blank with the specific thing we did wrong. This cannot be a vague statement such as “I’m sorry I hurt you.” We must specifically state how we hurt the person and take responsibility. This shows we recognize what we did wrong. This is so important because if we don’t even recognize what we did wrong, there is very little chance we will not repeat the mistake again.

“Apologies require taking full responsibility. No half-truths, no partial admissions, no rationalizations, no finger-pointing, and no justifications belong in any apology.” - Cathy Burnham Martin

Then, we say “This was wrong because…” and then fill in the blank with the reason why we are sorry. This takes more thought but is our chance to show that we understand why what we did was wrong. This step forces us to put ourselves in the shoes of the person we offended or hurt, and show empathy. This may be the most important step in gaining forgiveness.

“Empathy, the ability to identify with someone else's suffering, is certainly a prerequisite for a genuine apology.” - Danielle Ofri

Then, we say “In the future, I will…” and fill in the blank with the specific plan of action we will try to implement to prevent this from happening again. For this step, it is often better to focus on the positive action we will take instead of the negative action we will avoid. For example, it is better to say “In the future, I will speak to you respectfully” instead of “In the future, I will not call you a name.” We can apologize over and over, but if our actions don’t change our words are meaningless. This is our chance to show how we are going to change, and give our words more meaning.
Finally, we ask “Will you forgive me?” Then, it is up to the other person. They may not forgive us. That’s their choice. But at least we ask for it.

“ An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can rankle and fester and erupt into their own hatreds and wrongdoings.”

Margaret MacMillan

My wife printed up these four steps, put them up on our wall more than a dozen years ago, and they are still up on the wall of our mudroom today even though we have moved homes multiple times since then. This better way to apologize has been used many times in our family to apologize, diffuse charged situations and restore important relationships. I found that these steps work effectively in our personal and professional relationships.

And, I’ve learned that the faster we apologize, the more effective it can convey our true remorse.

Conclusion

Apologizing when done correctly is not a weakness. There is a deep power that can come from apologizing quickly and effectively. It can help restore and heal breaches in important relationships.

I know that sometimes apologizing effectively can put us in a position of vulnerability and humility. That’s scary sometimes. But it’s worth it.

“An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything.” - Lynn Johnston

However, apologies are essential to repair and retain great relationships with people that matter to us and anyone else we hurt or offend.

“An apology is such an expression that shows, not only greatness and insight; whereas, it also protects from breaking the family ties, and friendly contacts.” - Ehsan Sehgal

These four quick and simple steps work really well and make apologizing immensely more effective.

I’m sorry for...
This is wrong because…
In the future I will…
Will you forgive me?

The challenge for this week is to try using these four steps to apologize this week, notice the difference it makes, and then strive our best to not repeat the mistake.

“Apologies aren’t meant to change the past, they are meant to change the future.” - Kevin Hancock

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Are you a great problem solver? Great entrepreneurs are often great problem solvers. They find a way to overcome the challenges and problems they constantly face and to get it done and make it happen. In today’s episode, I’m going to tell you a story about the first business conference I attended, and the challenge we faced.

My First Conference

I launched Adoption.com in February 1997. Just two months later, in April 1997 the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys was holding a conference in Sanibel, Florida. At this time, I was a college student with no money. But my business at that moment was based on an advertising model, and I knew many of my potential advertisers were going to be at that conference. I knew if I missed that opportunity to meet those adoption attorneys it would be another year before I had the opportunity again. And, I needed their advertising dollars to get my business through that year.

So, I used my credit card to buy flights, purchase a vendor table, and reserve a hotel room. I wanted to show our Adoption.com site to the conference attendees, so they could visualize what their listings and advertising would look like and where it would be placed on the site. Back then, online advertising was very new. Monitors at that time were far too big, expensive, and delicate to reasonably take on a flight as checked baggage. So, I rented a large screen monitor in Sanibel, which back then probably weighed more than 50 pounds, and arranged for it to be delivered at the hotel.

As the day of the conference arrived, we went to the airport to catch our flight. However, we discovered there was a winter storm in Denver, where our flight had a layover. The Denver airport was closed and all flights going through Denver, including my flight, were canceled. The airline could put me on a flight the next day, but that meant I would miss the first day of the conference. I couldn’t take another flight that could get me to Sanibel in time for the conference. And, frankly, I didn’t have the money to buy a last-minute flight on another airline, even if there had been another option.

I was determined our vendor table was going to be set up and ready for the adoption attorneys when they showed up on the first day of the event. As I later learned, the first day of the conference has the most traffic and engagement by far at the vendor tables. The conference attendees may visit the vendor tables once at the beginning of the conference and then never visit again.

Plan B

After pleading, the same airline was eventually able to re-book us to go through a different city that didn’t have weather issues, and we were scheduled to arrive on the other side of Florida late that night. We took it. When we arrived, we rented a car and drove across Florida through the night. I don’t think we slept at all that night. But, we arrived in Sanibel and had time to set up our table and the monstrous monitor before the conference attendees arrived.

I think we made a good impression at that first conference. We established many relationships that day that become friends and advertisers for a long time. Those adoption attorneys provided much-needed income for my startup venture. That adoption conference and those relationships were pivotal in helping adoption.com become the #1 adoption site.

There was another startup adoption site at that conference, but over time they didn’t make it, and I don’t even remember their name now. What would have happened if we had not been there, and that competitor had made that impression and established those relationships instead of us? What would have happened if I wouldn’t have had the revenue from those adoption attorneys during my first year?

Entrepreneurs are Problem Solvers

My lesson learned from this story is that it feels an entrepreneur’s job description includes being a perpetual problem solver. It feels like every day there is a series of problems and challenges that entrepreneurs have to face and overcome. Are you a good problem solver? If yes, then, you might be a good entrepreneur.

I learned the term “self-efficacy” years later. According to Wikipedia and Albert Bandura, “A person with high self-efficacy views challenges as things that are supposed to be mastered rather than threats to avoid. These people are able to recover from failure faster and are more likely to attribute failure to lack of effort. They approach threatening situations with the belief that they can control them.”

As entrepreneurs, we must have high self-efficacy. It is our job as entrepreneurs to find the solution, to find a way to get it done and make it happen, even if that means flying to the other side of the state and driving through the night so you can arrive at the conference before the attendees arrive.

So that we don’t have to solve the problems by ourselves, it’s smart for entrepreneurs to find, hire and retain team members who are great problem solvers as well. My job postings regularly say that I’m looking for a “get-it-done, make-it-happen” person who can help solve problems and overcome challenges.

The most successful people see adversity not as a stumbling block, but as a stepping stone to greatness. - Shawn Anchor

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Entrepreneurs are perpetual problem solvers and find a way to get things done and make things happen.
We should strive to have strong self-efficacy and see challenges as things that are supposed to be mastered rather than threats to avoid.
We should hire and retain team members who are also great problem solvers.
Let’s use our stumbling blocks as stepping stones to greatness.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 2. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Mckinsey Global Institute found that data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times more likely to retain customers, and 19 times more likely to be profitable.

Charles Davis is a data analytics expert. He is Vice President and a partner at Blast Analytics & Marketing, a strategic analytics consulting company. Blast solves clients’ data challenges to help optimize marketing campaigns, improve customer experience, increase competitive advantage, and, ultimately, EVOLVE organizations. Blast has been named one of Inc. magazine’s top 5000 fastest-growing private companies.

In this episode, Charles Davis shares strategies to use data analytics to make data-driven decisions that drive growth.

Charles’ Journey to Become an Analytics Expert

In college, Charles’ wife had an incredible idea to start a meal preparation business. Charles was studying biology and computer science at the time, but when he graduated, he and his wife focused on growing this meal preparation business for about five to six years. Their business had so much growth they expanded to about 20-25 different locations.

As Charles was growing his meal preparation business, he was a client of Blast Analytics and worked very closely with the CEO of Blast Analytics. After selling the meal preparation business, Blast offered Charles a job, and Charles joined their team. Blast now provides a great place to work for about 65 teammates across the country.

Making Data-Driven Decisions and Using Intuition: Putting the Two Together

Insight-driven businesses are growing at an average of 30% each year; by 2021, they are predicted to take $1.8 trillion annually from their less-informed industry competitors. (source: Keboola) While I worked at Deseret Digital Media with Clark Gilbert, one of his core strategies was making data-driven decisions. He taught me that it doesn’t matter what my opinion is or somebody else’s opinion is, test them both, and let’s find out what actually works. Then, let’s make our decisions based on the data.

That was an enlightening perspective that changed my view about business decision-making. Too often, business decisions are made based on “who” is right, and we end up making less-effective decisions than when we collect great data and make decisions based on that data. Data-driven decisions can often make us look really smart.

Charles and Blast help their clients do more of what works and less of what doesn’t by leveraging data analytics and intuition. Charles said, “As a good business person or a good human, we have good intuition in the details. We can also use data to drive that intuition forward and make sure that our business decisions are as informed as they can be. I worry sometimes that people think making data-driven decisions means we’re not using our business sense or intuition.”

He followed up by explaining that our intuition doesn’t work if we are using bad data to make a decision. We should consider being more data-driven. “Making good data-driven decisions means we’re making that decision with all the right information we need in order to make the best decisions we can.”

How to Build Credibility Through Industry Associations

In the book I’m writing, I focus on credibility as one of the most important tectonic shifts today. Credibility can come in many different ways, such as through participating with associations and tradeshows.

Charles described two of the biggest factors that have helped Blast build credibility through industry associations and events.

Serving as part of the Digital Analytics Association.

Charles has been a member of the Digital Analytics Association and volunteered his time on different initiatives. He recently joined the board of directors. He has also helped lead the local Bay Area Chapter for seven to eight years. The opportunity to serve and help the digital analytics industry move forward through educational events and other initiatives has helped build credibility for Charles and Blast while working with peers from different companies.

The longevity of going to conferences and events.

These events and conferences have all gone online during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Charles is still able to connect with those he has seen every year from various conferences and summits. “I’ve presented at different conferences as well, and those give you the opportunity to build credibility. One of the great things about our industry is that it is a very supportive industry,” Charles said.

There is a Slack channel that has also been set up within the digital analytics industry, which allows people to connect, ask questions, and receive responses to their questions. “It’s things like that: the sharing of knowledge, the participating in the community, etc. that ultimately builds credibility. Almost every industry has some kind of community associated with it, and if you go into that community looking to serve, you will gain a good reputation. It will give you an opportunity to grow and progress your career.”

The Most Important Pieces of Data: Quantitative & Qualitative

Charles explains that there are two types of data every entrepreneur should be looking for, and how we can use those types of data to learn about our customers and business.

“When we talk about data, we often only think of what we would call quantifiable data. This includes how many visitors come to our website, how many sales we have, etc. What’s often missing with this data is the qualitative side, such as why were those people coming to our website, and why did they make purchases,” Charles said. If he were to give advice to any entrepreneur, it would be to understand the difference between quantitative data and qualitative data and then collect both.

Charles described a curse of knowledge that we entrepreneurs sometimes have. “We know our business really well and how everything works. Then we get blind spots when somebody from the outside comes in, uses our product or service, and then tells us they don’t know how to get from ‘Step A’ to ‘Step B.’ However, we think it’s obvious how to go from step A to B.”

Blast was working with a client by conducting a quantitative test. This company had enough traffic, so they decided to do A/B testing. In this case, they discovered results they weren’t expecting. Luckily, they also had qualitative data on top of that test, and they were able to survey a small percentage of the customers. What they found was that a set of customers were coming to specific website pages who had a completely different purpose for being there than what was expected. They never would have discovered this if they just relied on the A/B test.

“As entrepreneurs, if we can understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative data, and incorporate both as inputs to our learning, that’s my best advice.” - Charles Davis

Digital Analytics Tools

Some great tools in the digital analytics world that Charles recommends are Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Sessioncam, and Hotjar.

Google Analytics

Google provides Google Analytics which is free to customers up to a certain amount of traffic. “Probably 95% of the websites in the world are using Google Analytics because it’s free,” Charles said. This is probably the most well-known free tool.

Google Data Studio

Another tool by Google, Google Data Studio, is not as well-known, but it is a great visualization tool that is pretty simple to use by pulling data from a spreadsheet. Charles said that even relative novices can use the tool to connect a visualization tool to a spreadsheet in order to analyze data better. We can analyze year-to-year trends, segment customers, and more by using Google Data Studio.

Sessioncam and Hotjar

Sessioncam and Hotjar are great tools for gathering qualitative data, and they are fairly inexpensive. We can put them on our websites which will allow us to ask questions or survey customers in order to gather better data.

Analytics to Measure

Charles suggests we always segment our data, and segment specifically our customer base.

No customer has the same needs, nor is any customer the same type. As entrepreneurs, it’s good to understand who our best customers are, what they’re doing, and how often they’re re-purchasing from us. It’s also important to recognize our average customers and worst customers.

“This segmentation of our customer base is probably the most powerful thing that business owners should be doing with their data,” Charles said.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Charles for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t work. Conduct tests to discover what actually works. Then make decisions based upon the data.
We can make data-driven decisions together with our intuition to improve the success of our decisions.
Sharing knowledge, being involved, and serving within the community create opportunities to grow our careers and gain credibility.
Look for ways to gather quantitative and qualitative data.
There are great, free, and inexpensive tools out there to gather and analyze data such as the Google tools, Sessioncam, and Hotjar.
Segment data, specifically to a customer base.

Connect with Charles

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Charles or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesjdavis/ or check out http://www.blastam.com/.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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When have you seen a company effectively use analytics and data-driven decisions? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/50-how-to-use-data-analytics-to-make-data-driven-decisions-that-drive-growth/

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86% of consumers suffer from banner blindness. This means that they consciously or subconsciously ignore information that looks like an advertising banner, even if it contains the information they are looking for (Infolinks).

Furthermore, a study on adblocker usage in the United States, found that 45% of respondents aged 15 to 25 said they used an adblocker. The same was true for 42% of respondents between 26 and 33, and respondents between 46 and 55. (Statista)

Why are so many businesses focusing their advertising campaigns around advertising banners, when the vast majority of internet users are ignoring or blocking those advertising banners?

With the proliferation of adblockers and users ignoring ads online, it is becoming harder for advertisers to get their messages to potential customers. One way to get around adblockers and banner blindness are through native advertising. Native as are 60% more engaging and 3x more memorable than traditional advertising (source: IHS).

Todd Handy, a native advertising expert, will share his insights in today’s episode. Todd Handy is the chief digital officer at Beasley Media Group, which runs 65 radio stations in 15 markets. He is an endurance athlete who has done LoToJa, a 206-mile race from Logan, UT to Jackson Hole, WY, 11 years in a row. He was the CEO of Intermountain Hearing Centers and was a sales manager at AOL during its heyday.

What is native advertising? Native advertising is the use of paid ads that look, feel, and function like the media format in which they appear. They are often found in social media feeds or as recommended or sponsored content in the content feed of a website. Native ads usually are valuable pieces of content or features that are part of the native functionality of the site and don't really look like ads. Consumers look at native ads 53% more than display ads, and they create an 18% increase in purchase intent (Source: Outbrain.com).

Why Use Native Advertising Native advertising has been a tectonic shift away from banner ads, partly because native advertising helps solve the problems with banner blindness and ad blockers. Native advertising provides value first with the information it gives, and as such can help establish the credibility of the advertiser. Contrast that to banner ads which generally focus on persuading users to click and then buy their product or service, before the advertiser has provided any value to the users.

Success with Native Advertising A little while ago, Todd helped work on an article called “10 Ways to Know You’re a Utah Driver.” This article was sponsored by a personal injury attorney. It’s difficult for personal injury attorneys to advertise because we don’t need them until we’ve had an injury. Because of this, PI attorneys are constantly trying to build their brand so that people know who to contact when they get in an accident. The article this PI attorney sponsored went viral because of its content, taking the attorney along for the ride. This virality helped the attorney build their brand and get their name out there.

In 2013 while Todd and I were working at Deseret Digital Media, our sponsored content or native advertising was taking off. We had the opportunity to go to a large conference with many big companies. This conference enabled us to be at the forefront of seeing what was working and what wasn’t in the advertising world. Todd also put together an entire conference around sponsored advertising.

AOL and CompuServe Todd worked for AOL during its most popular time. AOL started out with an hourly model. Users paid based on how many hours they used AOL’s services. When AOL switched to a flat-rate monthly model, their customers suddenly increased the amount of time they spent using their dial-up service. The problem was that this was in the days of dial-up internet, and with the increased usage their customers frequently encountered busy signals. CompuServe, one of AOL’s competitors, decided to take advantage of this situation. A 30-second Super Bowl ad that year spent almost all of the ad playing the busy signal from AOL. Then at the end of the ad CompuServe gave their phone number: 1-888-NOT-BUSY. Although this ad does not fit the description of native advertising. Compuserve created an entertaining, memorable and unexpected ad aimed at solving a pain point of their target audience.

Shifting Businesses with Tectonic Shifts: Analog to Digital Todd was the CEO of Intermountain Hearing Centers, a business founded on an antiquated model of advertising. People who use hearing aids are usually older people who would go to a phone book to find hearing aid companies. The internet and specifically Google changed how people search for companies and their products and services. Todd and his associates became very good at bidding on key search terms related to hearing aids, so in a Google search, they were one of the first companies shown in the results. They took a business that was founded on an antiquated model of yellow page advertising and transformed the company through the tectonic shift of digital advertising.

Focusing on Low Prices vs Target Market Todd and I talked about some of the successful examples of credibility marketing he has seen. There seems to be a difference between brands like Walmart that focus on having low prices and brands such as Allstate or Home Depot that focus on their target market. Allstate’s slogan is "You're in Good Hands with Allstate." They know, being an insurance company, it is important to their customers that they feel taken care of, so they strive to do that. Home Depot’s slogan is all about doers because they know that their customers want to get things done. So their focus is all about helping them do more. In our marketing, we can choose whether we want to focus on low prices or our customers.

Tips for Setting Up Recurring Revenue (Source: blog.fusebill.com) So how do we implement subscription business models or recurring revenue streams? Todd gives us a couple of tips.

Todd had an opportunity to build an inside sales team. One of the things he coached this team on was not saying, “that’s $500,” to the advertiser. Instead, he told them to say, “that’s $500 monthly.” It’s essentially the same thing, but it immediately sets up an ongoing transaction. This monthly cost also allowed them to set up a system to charge their credit card monthly instead of calling them every month to complete the transaction. because they told the advertisers upfront that it was a monthly cost. Todd and his team let them cancel at any time. With these strategies, their recurring revenue increased every year.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Todd for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Native advertising may be a great way to solve the mounting problems with ad blockers and banner blindness.
Consider using native advertising to provide value first before trying to sell.
Native advertising can help build a sponsor’s branding and credibility.
As CompuServe did with their ad, we can take advantage of the situation around our businesses and niches and turn it into something unexpected and entertaining to help promote our products and services.
When tectonic shifts happen, we must shift our businesses to match those tectonic shifts and leverage them.
Consider which focus will help our businesses best succeed: low prices or focusing on providing top-quality products and services to our target market. We often cannot have both.
We can establish our revenue models to be immediately recurring with a few simple words to our customers.

Connect with Todd

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Todd or his company, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddjhandy/ or at bbgi.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Connect with Nathan Gwilliam on Linkedin. 6. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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What problems have you seen with advertising banners and what success have you seen with native advertising? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/49-how-native-advertising-can-help-solve-banner-blindness-and-ad-blocker-problems/

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Recurring revenue models can provide our businesses with many benefits. “The recurring revenue model is the model most commonly used by businesses because it is predictable and it assures the company’s source of revenue as ongoing.” (Source: corporatefinanceinstitute.com) In addition, introducing subscription-based services or recurring revenue models to our products or services could increase our valuation by up to eight times that of a comparable business with little recurring revenue (Source: fusebill.com).

Katie Harris is one of the managing partners at Get Found First, a digital agency that specializes in PPC (pay per click) advertising. She is also a member of the Forbes Agency Council. In today’s episode, Katie Harris and I discuss the benefits of the recurring revenue model.

Benefits of a Recurring Revenue Model According to Katie, recurring revenue is one of the greatest things ever created for a business owner. Katie has clients that work in all areas of business. Some have recurring revenue models and some don’t, but Katie has seen many of the benefits recurring revenue can provide.

She thinks those clients with recurring revenue models sleep better at night, not having to worry about making the next payroll. Recurring revenue provides stability in a bad economy or bad times. With recurring revenue business owners have some idea of what cash flow is going to look like month to month, which is incredibly important to allow for planning, investment, hiring, and growth. Recurring revenue takes away a lot of the risk. Another benefit to a recurring revenue model is it frees us up to be a little bit more creative with our businesses instead of having to focus on making payroll each month. Recurring revenue can also make it a lot easier to make long-term decisions. Once we have a recurring revenue model in place, we just have to look at what is the next thing our clients need and how can we offer that product or service that they’re going to need.

“If there’s a way you can look at your business and find a way to create a recurring revenue model somehow within it, your days will be better.” -Katie Harris

Restoration Companies and Recurring Revenue Katie works with a lot of restoration companies, and it is very difficult to implement recurring revenue within restoration companies. Recurring revenue is the most common challenge her clients face no matter what part of the country they’re in. There just isn’t an inherent recurring revenue model for restoration. That means cash flow is always a challenge because they might be so busy in December when weather events hit, when pipes freeze, or basements flood but come March or April and they’re wondering how they’re going to keep their employees busy. A recurring revenue model takes a lot of that inconsistency, instability, and risk out of the equation.

For example, many of Katie’s clients pair restoration and cleaning together. Katie had one client that only focused on the restoration aspect of the business. Year after year this client was struggling to keep their employees busy at certain times of the year. Then, they added carpet cleaning services, which was an easy way to implement a recurring revenue model. The client purchased all the equipment, and they already had relationships with potential clients from their restoration work, so they could easily set up a model where they clean a customer’s house every 90 days and the customer pays for that every month. They were able to keep their employees busy and apply a recurring revenue model to the business that gave their business much more stability.

Recurring Revenue and Building Long-Lasting Relationships Something that has been important to Katie is when she has a recurring client, she has a longer period of time to build a relationship with that client. It is so important to move from a vendor-client relationship to a strong relationship. For those first 30 days, Katie and her associates are still a vendor to their clients, but then they start to connect with their customers in a different way, showing them they really care about their business.

At Get Found First, they look at the first 90 days as a time to build a strong relationship and connect with their client. Their recurring revenue model is not automated in the sense that a client buys something once and never hears from them again. Instead, their model is set up in such a way that the relationship grows month after month, getting better and stronger.

This model also gives them time to get to know their clients’ goals. They spend the time, in the beginning, to go in and understand the highest level passions of their target audience, in Katie’s case the business she works for. When we understand what those top priorities are, we can then build a relationship with them, connect with them, through those highest-level priorities and passions.

How COVID-19 has Impacted Katie’s Business Initially, Katie’s business had a 20% decrease. It was heartbreaking for her to watch what was happening. Every business was unique, and each experienced a bit of a roller coaster in different ways. Get Found First had a client based in San Francisco that booked tours and travel for Japanese tourists, and COVID was extremely hard for businesses like that because they could not operate in the pandemic environment, and there was nothing Katie could do to help.

She also had clients that had to shut down because of orders by the state or different situations like that. Luckily, that was a very short-term thing and about 92% of those clients are back. They were also fortunate to have many clients doing e-commerce, who had record-breaking sales during the pandemic. The huge growth can also be stressful as they figure out how to deal with that many sales.

Another large chunk of Katie’s business is focused on in-home care for the elderly, restoration services, sanitization services, or taking care of floods or other disasters. These services didn't stop, so for that Katie is very grateful that they had a strong client base in those industries.

Bridging the Credibility Gap In the early years of Katie’s business, they had a hard time convincing people in their small town that they were really good at what they did; they couldn’t get people to do business with them, so they focused on getting business from other more populated areas like Chicago and California.

A representative from Google came to talk to Katie’s business and asked them about their local clients. Katie told him they didn’t have any local clients because they couldn’t convince them that they were trustworthy. The Google rep was incredulous. He told Katie, “you have a responsibility to take care of people in your local community. If you need to convince them, convince them, but you have a responsibility to do it.”

This changed Katie’s way of thinking. She started thinking about how to change these perceptions and build credibility. It was around this time that they had some great opportunities with Forbes and different recognitions from Google. They shared those points of credibility and it helped a bit.

Ultimately it came down to relationships and trust. The way she bridged that credibility gap was through talking to people and being real with them. Katie’s business hosted one-on-one meetings and joined the local chamber of commerce and BNI group, not to tell people how great they were, but to make connections and see how they could help people. It took time, but they were able to bridge that credibility gap.

Video Marketing Katie’s first piece of advice when it comes to video marketing is to just start. It doesn’t have to be super professional as long as it is real. Stop waiting for it to be perfect. We can easily pull out our phones and film a genuine client and just let them talk. If we start somewhere our video will get better and better as we go.

Then we can start looking at what is common and what is going on in marketing. Right now we’re seeing major shifts in consumption of YouTube videos. They are being viewed at an unprecedented rate, and it’s only going to grow. Each day, people watch more than a billion hours of video on YouTube (Source: blog.hootsuite.com).

Katie has a local client that sells appliances and furniture. They’re very successful, but they have an annual parking lot sale that has been a bit stagnant for the last couple of years. Katie helped them do some videos promoting it on social media. The sale was a huge success that year and those videos were the only thing that changed in their marketing.

Google and YouTube Ad Strategies Katie has a few tips for using Google and YouTube ads. The first is to understand your audience. Google’s and YouTube’s audience targeting is fantastic, so the number one thing we have to do is figure out who our audience is. Sometimes who we think they are is not really who they are. We must take a look at our Google analytics and see what kind of secrets or insights about our audiences we can get from that. Then we can see how to implement targeting based on those audiences.

For example, we might think our best audience is a 40-year-old woman, but if we dig into our analytics and figure out our best audience is actually somebody who is really interested in the stock market and in traveling, now we’ve expanded the whole approach to who we can target.

Katie’s next tip is don’t be afraid to ask questions. Sometimes we waste a lot of time because we are afraid to ask for help or we don’t know who to ask. To solve this, we should find someone with experience and knowledge and simply ask them for help.

Katie’s last piece of advice is to subscribe to Think with Google. It's a free service with a lot of information that’s going to keep us on the cutting edge and keep us thinking big with forward-thinking.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Katie for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Recurring revenue models can help business owners sleep better at night, provide stability, reduce risk, allow for more creativity, help us make long-term decisions, and plan for the future.
If there isn’t an inherent recurring revenue model for our business, we may be able to find things related to our business that we can set up in the recurring revenue model.
We can use the month-to-month or annual time that recurring revenue can give us to build stronger relationships with our customers.
If our businesses are experiencing a credibility gap, we may be able to bridge that gap by getting involved in the community, talking with people, and being authentic in the connections we make.
Start somewhere with video marketing. It often doesn’t have to be extremely professional at first.
When using Google and YouTube ads, use their analytics to learn about our audience. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and consider subscribing to Think with Google to stay informed.

Connect with Katie

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Katie or her business, you can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-harris-idaho/ or reach out to her directly at katie.h@getfoundfirst.com.

Share Your Story

Do you feel recurring revenue is important for your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/48-why-you-should-consider-implementing-a-recurring-revenue-model-in-your-business/

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I’ve seen numerous business ventures fail when they build metaphorical “skyscrapers” on “land” or platforms they don’t own. This happens when a business relies too much on a platform they don’t control like Google or Facebook and then the platform changes something and it destroys that business. The problem with this is that the business has no control over the “land” or the platform on which they have built their business.

Jon Stoddard is a partner and Investor at Acquisition Partners. He was the CEO of Century Hearing Aids, which was the second-largest online seller of hearing aids. He worked in business development at Intuit, and he was the co-founder and VP of TurboSquid. He is also the author of Pitch Deck Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Attracting Investors to your Deal.

Recovering from Building a “Skyscraper” on “Land” We Don’t Own Jon was working at Intuit when he realized he wanted to own his own business and not work for someone else. He knew one of the fastest ways to build a business and get revenue is by buying an existing business. So he bought a company that already had a website and a relationship with the manufacturers. Because the company’s advertising was making more money than it cost, his job to grow the business was pretty easy. All he had to do for a while was spend more money on Google Adwords. It was kind of like a money machine. If you put a dollar in and get two dollars out, then we just need to put more money into the money machine to grow our profits.

Unfortunately, Google decided to make major changes to the way they displayed their advertising. Because of Google’s shift to more mobile-focused advertising, they eliminated ads on the right side of the page. Unfortunately, those side ads were where Jon was seeing the most effective return on his advertising. This change substantially increased Jon’s advertising cost. Jon discovered that his business was too dependent on one source of leads, but he quickly had to figure out other sources of advertising to reduce his dependence on Google.

Jon couldn’t profitably advertise in Google’s new system, so he had to do something different. He looked at Facebook, but he couldn’t really advertise hearing aids on Facebook because it’s a medical device, and Facebook has some restrictions on this type of advertising. Instead, he tried inbound content marketing, answering every question related to hearing aid he could (how to read an audiogram, how to change your hearing aid battery, how to clean your hearing aid battery, etc.). Jon published 100 videos online answering these questions. He put the videos up on Facebook and whichever video got the most engagement he would just retarget to that video again and again.

He also sought testimonial videos from customers. He would often get them from these men that were 75 or 80 years old, sitting there stoically saying, “I love these hearing aids.” Those videos did really well and led to sales. So Jon’s advertising model changed completely after moving away from Google Adwords, and he grew the business to be the second-largest online seller of hearing aids.

Trying to Do Everything When Jon went to sell the business, he was talking to a potential buyer who asked him how much time he spent on the business. Jon told him he spent 60-70 hours a week on it. He was taking all the orders from customers and doing too much.

The buyer was appalled. He told Jon that he should only be spending 15-30 hours a week; he should be optimizing his tools and outsourcing. That way someone will buy the business because they can easily add that to their other businesses because it is running automatically.

Jon took the next year, not only moving to the new funnel and advertising sources, but also automating all of his systems, outsourcing everything he could, and taking himself out of much of the day-to-day operations. He got to the point he didn’t have to do anything except just make sure things were running well. When he put the business up for sale again, Jon received offers in 24 hours and sold it in three days.

"Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish - don't overdo it." -Lao Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher, writer, and founder of philosophical Taoism

Competing with an Insurance Company The margins for hearing aids were fantastic. Jon could buy a hearing aid for $135 and sell it for $795. The problem, and one of the reasons Jon wanted to sell the business, is there was no upsell, cross-sell, or down-sell. There was just one product.

One of Jon’s major competitors was an insurance company. He couldn’t compete with them because, even though their hearing aids were the same price, they could spend unlimited amounts of money to acquire a customer, and all they have to do is sell a small number of health insurance policies to make a lot more money than Jon. In other words, they could easily outspend Jon on the advertising because they could make a much higher profit per order.

Part of the reason that an insurance policy as a monetization element is so valuable because it’s recurring. Unlike the one-time sale of a hearing aid, the insurance policy is a product that delivers a monthly revenue stream. The valuations are so much more on recurring revenue models.

Providing Value Jon hired a digital agency to help him redo his website or funnel. On his new funnel, Jon gave away a free lead magnet to provide value, establish a relationship, and capture leads of site visitors. The agency helped Jon implement the 7 laws of persuasion into Jon’s website, showed customer reviews and testimonials, and worked on the conversion funnel to increase his sales. As a result, over a period of four months conversions improved by 220%, revenue by 300%, and profits by 3000%.

Goodwill “In many cases, the amount of money you make will be in direct proportion to the amount of goodwill you have in your market.” -Frank Kern, internet marketer and copywriter

Jon feels that the vast majority of the initial communication between businesses and customers happens on Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. So we have to send out goodwill on those platforms to build up trust in our brand. We have to create products and content that people care about to add value to our relationships. We must show people how we can help them, otherwise, we will lose their interest.

When we provide value it turns into a credibility spiral, building every time we deliver. To boost our credibility spirals, we can over-deliver on the value we add and nurture our relationships. Then we’ll be able to reach the point where they’re willing to pay for those high-ticket purchases.

Million Dollar Pitch Deck When Jon was working at TurboSquid, they needed to raise money. Jon found that he really liked this. He enjoyed writing the marketing plan, looking at resources, what they need to do, and how they’re going to get it done.

He started offering this service with free training on pitch decks, going through all the necessary slides in a deck, what’s behind each, and why they need to be in the deck

Jon’s advice on pitch decks is to make sure we know our numbers, market, and how we’re going to succeed more than anyone else. He said if your pitch deck looks like a high school hypothesis, it will be easily dismissed. People would rather put money into a company that they know the facts about, so it can’t just be a high school hypothesis. It must be a proven business.

“You need to know your numbers, your market, and how you’re going to get there better than anyone else.” -Jon Stoddard

Certainty People are often willing to pay a lot more for certainty. Let's say there’s a 90% chance that the funnels someone creates for us are going to be successful. We may be willing to pay that person $200,000 to build that funnel. However, let’s say someone like Russell Brunson has a 100% certainty that the funnel he creates for us is going to make $20 million. We will easily pay $1 million dollars for that. So, what can we do to increase the certainty that our products and services will help our customers achieve their desired outcomes?

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jon for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Don’t rely on only one source of advertising, especially when that is a source we can’t control.
We can recover from building skyscrapers on land we don’t own by diversifying our advertising sources and moving to platforms we can control, such as gathering email addresses of potential customers.
When running a business it is important to not try to do too much of the work ourselves. Creating a business that can run without us can give us a much better entrepreneurial lifestyle, and it can be much more attractive to potential buyers.
Just like Jon’s competitor added an upsell insurance policy, we should strive to add in other upsell products or services. We want to make more money per sale than any of our competitors. One of the best ways to achieve this is to implement recurring revenue streams.
When creating pitch decks it is important to know our numbers, market, and how we’re going to differentiate our business to succeed. Investors are more likely to invest in a proven business, not a hypothesis.
People are willing to pay a lot more for certainty.

Connect with Jon

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Jon or his company, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonstoddard/ or visit his website at https://www.investorattractionsecrets.com/.

Share Your Story

Have you seen others recover from building a skyscraper on land they don’t own? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/47-how-jon-stoddard-recovered-from-building-a-skyscraper-on-land-he-didnt-own/

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What is your greatest pet peeve as a manager? In this episode, I’m going to share my greatest pet peeve as a manager, and I’m going to share with you the story that I tell my team to help them understand our culture, what we expect from great team members, and what it takes to thrive in our organization.

I feel so blessed to have an amazing team I get to work with. Every single one of them. Entrepreneurship is not an individual sport. I would not have achieved any business successes without talented team members, and I’m so grateful for them.

In the masterpiece book Good to Great, Jim Collins teaches how one of the most important roles of CEOs and entrepreneurs is to first focus on getting the right people on the bus, focusing on the “who” before the “what”. In other words, get the right people on the bus first, and then decide where to drive together. I agree that hiring the right team is one of the most important things CEOs and entrepreneurs can do.

Most successful entrepreneurs and CEOs surround themselves with great team members who take ownership and responsibility, innovate, pay attention to the details, and help others to be successful. Instead of just complaining to their supervisor about problems, these team members identify, recommend and implement solutions. These individuals don’t just do what we ask them to do, but they find a better way to accomplish our top priorities more effectively. These individuals help drive the company’s success and profitability, and not just their own raises and promotions. I call these the “get-it-done, make-it-happen” team members. These team members are worth their weight in gold, and I’ve been blessed to work with many of these team members during my career.

I love it when I assign an important task to a team member, and they take care of it, solving any problems they encounter, and reporting back to me when it is done. When team members do this, I can emotionally let go of the task and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Do you want to know my biggest pet peeve as a manager? I have a really hard time when I assign a task to a team member, they commit to doing it, but they let it slip through the cracks. Then, later when I follow up with them they tell me they didn’t do it because of some challenge, yet they didn’t try to overcome the challenge or ask for help.

Unfortunately, sometimes we have a team member who has a lot of potential to be a right person on the bus, but that person is not yet reaching their full potential yet at work. So, what can we do to help them achieve this potential so they can stay on the bus, and help us drive the bus to amazing places?

One thing I like to do in this situation is to tell a story. I believe that stories are the best way to say something that engages our listeners in a way they can best remember, and that will more effectively drive change. There is a story called the Parable of the Oranges, that has been told and retold in my company over the years, to help team members understand our culture, and the expectation we have for people who take responsibility to get things done and make things happen.

I’m going to tell the story in my words, as it has evolved over the years, but the original version of the parable came from the book “Living with a Purpose” by Randall L. Ridd.

An ambitious young man took a job with a company at a lower role and compensation than what he was hoping for. However he liked the company and he felt that if he put in his time, he could work his way up the ladder. Over the next five years, he did what was asked of him and completed his assigned tasks. Then, the position he was hoping for opened, and he applied for the position. However, one morning he arrived at work and discovered that an employee who had only been with the company for a few months had been given the manager position. He was very upset and went to his boss and demanded an explanation.

The boss said he would answer the question, but first, he had a favor to ask from the employee. The boss asked “My wife needs some oranges. Would you please go buy some oranges?” The young man agreed the boss gave him $30 and a short time later the young man returned with a bag of oranges for his boss.

The boss thanked him for his help and said he had two questions. First, “What type of oranges did you buy?” The young man replied that he didn’t know. “You just asked me to get oranges, and that’s what I did.”

The boss then asked, “How much did you pay per orange?” The young man again replied that he didn’t know. He said “You gave me $30 and I bought the biggest bag I could buy for that amount. Here are your receipt and change.”

The boss thanked the young man again and asked him to have a seat in his office for a moment. Then, the boss called the new manager in his office, asked her to do the same task. She agreed and the boss gave her $30. A while later, the new manager returned and reported back to the boss that the task had been completed.

The boss asked her if she could have a seat, and also invited the young man back into his office. The boss then asked the new manager, “What type of oranges did you buy?” The new manager replied, “When I arrived at the store I discovered there were many varieties, and I had no idea what type of orange to buy because I didn’t know what they were going to be used for. You told me that your wife needed them. So, I called your secretary, she gave me your wife’s number, and I called your wife and asked for what purpose she was going to use the oranges. She told me you guys were going to have a party tonight and that she needed the oranges to make orange juice. So, I went to the produce manager at the grocery store and I asked him which oranges make the best orange juice. He told me that the Valencia oranges would be the best, and we looked it up online just to confirm. So, to answer your question, I purchased Valencia oranges.”

The boss then asked the new manager, “How much did you pay per orange?” The new manager replied, “I didn’t know how many oranges I needed to buy. So, I called your wife back and asked her how many people would be attending the party. She told me, and then the produce manager helped me calculate how many oranges we needed to buy to make enough orange juice for that many people. I realized that you didn’t give me enough money to buy enough oranges to make enough orange juice. The oranges were priced at 75 cents each, but because the produce manager and I had become friends, he agreed to sell me enough oranges for 50 cents each. I hope you don't mind, but your wife told me what time your party starts tonight, and I knew you would not get home with enough time to make the orange juice, so dropped the oranges off at your house on my way back from the grocery store.”

The boss thanked the new manager and then turned to the young man, who slumped his shoulders and said “I understand” as he walked out of the office.

In our company, we tell this story to illustrate our corporate culture that we expect people to pay attention to the details, to take ownership in their assignments and responsibilities, to get things done and to make things happen. We are not just looking for people to execute what we tell them to do. Even more, we expect people to think and to innovate, and find better ways to accomplish the things that really matter than what we even asked them to do. Also, the best way to be successful is to help others be successful. We let people know that we don’t give raises and promotions based on how long someone has been with the company, or for “doing their job”. Instead, we give raises and promotions based on how people have exceeded our expectations and helped to drive the growth of the organization.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of the key takeaways from today’s episode.

Focusing on getting the right people on or off the bus first may be more important than figuring out where we’re going to drive the bus.
Hiring the right people is one of the most important things we can do as a CEO or entrepreneur.
Storytelling can be a very effective way to teach our team in a more engaging and memorable way that can cause longer-lasting change.
We need to hire team members we can trust to take responsibility, get things done, and make things happen.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. Today, we’re talking about how to forgive.

“Leave it Alone” There was a man named John who was deeply in love with his wife, and they were expecting their first child. The night the baby was to be born, there were complications. The only doctor was somewhere in the countryside tending to the sick. After many hours of labor, the condition of the mother-to-be became desperate. Finally, the doctor was located. In the emergency, he acted quickly and soon had things in order. The baby was born and the crisis, it appeared, was over. Some days later, the young mother died from the very infection the doctor had been treating at another home that night. John’s world was shattered. As the weeks wore on, his grief festered. “That doctor should not be allowed to practice,” he would say. “He brought that infection to my wife. If he had been careful, she would be alive today.” He thought of little else, and in his bitterness, he became threatening. Today, no doubt, he would have been pressed by many others to file a malpractice suit. A church leader asked to speak with him. The counsel was simply, “John, leave it alone. Nothing you do about it will bring her back. Anything you do will make it worse. John, leave it alone.” This became his trial—his Gethsemane. How could he leave it alone? Right was right! A terrible wrong had been committed and somebody must pay for it. Finally, he determined that he should be obedient, follow the counsel of the church leader, and leave it alone. It was not until he was an old man that he could finally see a poor country doctor—overworked, underpaid, run ragged from patient to patient, with little medicine, no hospital, few instruments, struggling to save lives, and succeeding for the most part. The doctor had come in a moment of crisis, when two lives hung in the balance, and had acted without delay. If the young father had not left it alone, it would have ruined his life and the lives of others. Many times he thanked the Lord for the advice of a wise spiritual leader to “leave it alone”. (Source: Boyd Packer) We Want to Forgive, but How do We Forgive?

In this episode I will focus on an important lesson the Savior taught from the cross when he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) This is not a talk about why we should forgive. We already know that. We want to forgive, and we try to forgive. But, sometimes we still see the person who hurt us, and those negative emotions bubble up again. This episode is about HOW to forgive.

What Forgiveness is Not

Before I begin, I want to make 3 clarifying points.

Forgiveness is not a weakness. Gandhi said “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Forgiveness is not condoning the wrong that was done to us. It is not saying that what they did is ok.
Forgiveness does not mean putting ourselves or others in an unsafe situation again.

Jeffrey Holland said: “Christ taught ‘I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.’ It is, however, important for some of you living in real anguish to note what He did not say. ‘You are not allowed to feel true pain or real sorrow from the shattering experiences you have had at the hand of another.’ Nor did He say, ‘In order to forgive fully, you have to reenter a toxic relationship or return to an abusive, destructive circumstance.’”

Now, I will address 7 secrets that can help us to forgive.

Secret #1: We can CHOOSE to love and forgive.

Maybe a good first step in the forgiveness process is to write down who we choose to forgive, and for what. Then, we can write the reasons we love and are grateful for the person.

Thomas Monson said, “Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.” In 2004, a group of teenagers used a stolen credit card to buy a 20-pound frozen turkey in Long Island. As they drove, an 18-year-old named Ryan Cushing threw the turkey out of the car and into Victoria Ruvolo’s windshield. The impact broke every bone in Ruvolo’s face, which required a 10-hour surgery, three titanium plates, and a wire mesh for her left eye socket to correct. The teens were arrested shortly after, and several of them agreed to testify against Ryan. Cushing would have faced up to 25 years in prison if he was convicted. Instead, Ruvolo intervened on his behalf and worked to get him amnesty for the crime, and he was imprisoned for only 6 months. Ruvolo wrote, “Some people couldn’t understand why I’d done this but I felt God had given me a second chance and I wanted to pass it on.” (source: The Forgiveness Project and the NY Post)

Secret #2: We can replace that darkness and hurt with light and love through acts of kindness.

One of the first and best ways to replace darkness with light and love is for us to pray for that person.

Matthew 5:44 teaches “pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;”

We can pray for Heavenly Father to bless that person. We can express gratitude for the good things the person has brought into our lives. We can pray for strength and courage to forgive. We can tell our Heavenly Father that we have chosen to forgive the person. Then we can pray for our hearts to change, to let go and ask that we can then feel love in place of hurt, sadness, anger, and resentment. We can ask Heavenly Father to help us see that person how He sees them.

Matthew also exhorts us to: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you” with special emphasis on the phrase “do good”. I think that’s one of the biggest secrets to being able to forgive.

Choosing to forgive and letting go of the darkness is not enough. We must fill the darkness with light. If someone has hurt us, we can serve them, do good to them, and watch as darkness evaporates and light and love start to increase in the place of the hurt and resentment.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Mary Johnson lost her son in 1993 after a then-teenaged Oshea Israel got into a fight with him at a party, and shot him. Johnson went to visit Oshea in jail. After their first contact, she said “I began to feel this movement in my feet. It moved up my legs, and it just moved up my body. When I felt it leave me, I instantly knew that all that anger and hatred and animosity I had in my heart for 12 years was over. I had totally forgiven [him].” The two now live as neighbors in the same duplex, and Johnson has even referred to Israel as “son” in interviews.“ (source: The Daily Beast)

Secret #3: We must forgive others so we can be forgiven by the Savior.Matthew 6:14-15 teaches, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Thomas Fuller said, "He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven."

In 1918, three law officers were murdered when they attempted to arrest several criminals. Glenn Kempton’s father was one of the officers killed. Glenn is my great uncle. The murderers were captured, tried, and sent to prison for life. As a boy, there grew in Glenn’s heart a bitterness and a hatred toward Tom Powers, the confessed slayer of his Father. One day, Glenn was on a business trip in Arizona and detoured to the prison where Tom Powers was being held. He arrived after visiting hours and spoke with the warden, who arranged the meeting with Glenn and Tom. The two had a long talk and at the end, Glenn shook Tom’s hand and said, “With all my heart, I forgive you for this awful thing that has come into our lives.” Glenn says it is a glorious thing when bitterness and hatred go out of your heart and forgiveness comes in. As he walked out the door and down that long flight of steps he knew that forgiveness was better than revenge, for he had experienced it. As he and his wife drove toward home, a sweet and peaceful calm came over Glenn and he had found a broader, richer, and more abundant life. (source: The Miracle of Forgiveness)

Secret #4: We can remember that everyone makes mistakes, especially ourselves.We are all human, and therefore, we are all prone to making mistakes. Nobody is perfect. Knowing and recognizing our own faults allows us to give others the right to make their own mistakes. (Source: Allan Halls) We can seek to understand the hurt and traditions of the fathers that contributed to the person doing what they did.

We can think of the many things we have done for which we need forgiveness. When we remember how much for which we need to be forgiven, it makes it easier to show mercy to those who have hurt us.

We can also give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they have good motives.

Forgiving can also become easier when we remember a time when we were forgiven, focusing on how it made us feel. (source: Louisya Graves)

According to People, teen Jordyn Howe took his stepfather’s gun to school and accidentally shot Ady Guzman-Jesus’s daughter, Lourdes, while showing the firearm to friends. Astonishing the judge and community, Guzman-Jesus not only forgave the boy but also asked for him to get a lighter sentence, telling reporters that she believes her daughter would have wanted it that way. Howe will only serve one year in a juvenile detention center and will visit local schools with Guzman-Jesus to warn kids of the dangers of guns.

Secret #5: We can move on with the next chapters in our lives.Our past histories are not here in our present realities. We shouldn’t allow them to be here in our minds, muddying our present moments. Our lives are like plays with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play; others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary, otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. We can embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Former South African leader Nelson Mandela was sent to prison in 1963 on charges of trying to sabotage the nation’s government, which advocated a policy of apartheid that treated people of different races differently. Mandela advocated a democratic society in which all people would be treated equally. Mandela spent the next 27 years in prison, but after he was released in 1990, he forgave the people who had imprisoned him. Mandela later became South Africa's president and delivered speeches internationally in which he urged people to forgive each other because forgiveness is God's plan and, therefore, is always the right thing to do.

Secret #6: We can become more like Jesus Christ by forgiving.Learning to forgive is part of our journeys to become more like the Savior.

When we hold on to anger and resentment, we lose the Spirit, and the help from the Spirit to forgive. When we choose to forgive, we can receive the help of the Spirit to forgive.

Sandra Walker, a mother of two, lost her husband in a car accident that also caused her to have a life-changing brain injury, according to The Daily Mail. At the trial for the accident, in her court statement, Walker said she sympathized with the woman who crashed into them—who herself lost a child in the accident—and gave her a hug. “I know she is going through as much pain as I am feeling. I wanted her to know that I forgive her for what she did,” Walker told WSB-TV.

Secret #7: We can give it to God. Forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves, by letting God carry the burden of judging and punishing. We don’t have the wisdom or strength to do those things without hurting ourselves and others. (source: Sherrie Call) Forgiveness is in part trusting that God will take care of things. Romans 12:19 teaches, “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.” In this scripture, Christ is asserting his role of judge and is wanting us to trust his judgments, let go, and move on. It’s a tender mercy. He’s asking us to trust his perfect understanding of the lives, abilities, and circumstances of all. I believe that as long as we have faith in Christ as a redeemer and as a judge, we don’t need to stew over those who have wronged us. Christ will give them what they need and will give us what we need. He knows that better than us, and we can trust Him. Once we’ve given it to God, it’s not ours anymore. It’s His, and we cannot hold onto it anymore. (Source: Samantha Abildskov)

Key TakeawaysIf we try to forgive, but the feelings of hurt and resentment come up in the future, we can go through this process again. If we need additional help, we can find that help through prayer, fasting, and sometimes professional counseling.

I challenge each of us to pick someone today who we need to forgive and to go through appropriate steps to “leave it alone”, to forgive them, and to receive the liberating power of forgiveness in our lives.

I am so grateful for the forgiveness I have received from my Heavenly Father, from my family, and others. I am grateful for Jesus Christ’s atonement that has made this possible. I’m grateful He is quick to forgive us when we sincerely repent. I know that as we forgive, we will also be forgiven.

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"Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows." -Ben Stein, American writer, lawyer, actor, comedian, and political and economic commentator

Relationships aren’t just important in our personal lives. 85% of positions are filled through networking, and 70% of people found a job through connections in a company (Source: review42.com). So how do we build strong relationships in our business?

Craig Earnshaw started off as the founder of LifeLink. He sold the company in 2004 and currently works as a startup investor. He is also currently a professor of entrepreneurship at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, specializing in teaching IT entrepreneurship.

In this episode, Craig and I will discuss the secrets of successful business relationships.

1. Honesty with Ourselves, Our Teams, and Our Customers When Craig first started his company, they only had about 40 employees. With each employee, Craig would sit down and talk to them. One of the things he talked to employees about was honesty. He would specifically talk to them about being honest with themselves, their team, and their customers.

By being honest with themselves, Craig means that if an employee is not capable of the job, Craig would ask that they tell him, not covering it up or faking it. He promised that if they came to him for help he would help them. He’s hired people with geology degrees and, through working together, has made them into developers.

Along the same lines, Craig asked his employees to be honest with their teams. Being honest with our teams creates an understanding that helps us to create camaraderie in a working environment. We shouldn’t fake it with our teams either and should ask for help if we need it.

Third, and probably most important for the company, is absolute honesty with our customers. LifeLink sold to all of the biggest life insurance companies in the country; it was a dangerous world to work in, with giant companies trying to help them sell a complicated product. All kinds of mistakes could be made, and the liabilities were quite large. In the 25 years that Craig worked at LifeLink, he was never involved in a lawsuit. He attributes this to the fact that he was always honest with his customers and knew how to manage expectations.

2. Managing Expectations “The most important thing you can do in your life is to manage expectations” -Craig Earnshaw

Craig didn’t start out his career as a salesman, but as he and the company became more sophisticated they learned how to sell better. Many of their competitors were telling insurance companies “We are the smartest guys on the planet. We have the coolest software. We always deliver on time, and we don't have any bugs.” This kind of approach set their clients’ expectations extremely high, too high for them to meet. Then, it harmed the relationship when they were not able to meet the expectations.

Craig and his company, on the other hand, loved to tell insurance companies “This only works if we have a partnership with you. You have to tell us what you need, and then we have to try to deliver that to you. We’ll do our best, but I want you to remember that we’re just the dumb software guys.” It was Craig’s favorite line to tell them, and he’d say it to every client at least 10 times.

When we set expectations that low we can always over-deliver. That was Craig’s goal: under-promise, set the bar low, and then over-deliver. We must be transparent and honest but do it immediately. As soon as we start promising the moon, we’ll be in big trouble because nobody has control over that.

Along the same lines, saying no is one of the best ways to give us credibility. If we’re able to say no when people ask for new features or ask us to do new things that are not our core competency, it actually gives us more credibility because we’re not over-committing.

3. Selling to the Middle of the Pyramid When Craig teaches his class, he often draws a pyramid and tells his students that it represents the number of life insurance agents, the worst agents are at the bottom and the best agents are at the top. Then Craig will ask his students “Who am I trying to sell to in that pyramid?” Almost everybody will pick some place in the middle of the pyramid and draw lines, saying he’s selling from here up. Craig will then explain to them that he doesn’t really want to be selling to the very bottom or the very top of the pyramid.

Those at the bottom of the pyramid are often too casual. They’re usually not full-time agents and not worth the time or trouble. Those at the top of the pyramid can also be a lot of trouble. They’re often super demanding, accustomed to having things like custom illustrations done for every presentation. They probably have a staff of six or eight people, and they look to Craig as another member of their staff. No matter how hard we might try to make those guys happy, we just can’t. Craig tried to focus on the sweet spot or ideal customer in the middle of the triangle.

4. Connecting through Level 10 Passions When I asked Craig who the most credible person in his life is, he quickly responded by telling me about his father. His dad has never let Craig down. The whole time Craig was growing up, his dad was a bishop (the unpaid minister of their local congregation), and Craig was always proud of that. When Craig’s dad was released as bishop, there was a meeting where everybody said what a wonderful guy Bill Earnshaw was, and Craig says that was one of the proudest moments of his life.

When Craig was about 15 years old, he told his dad he wanted to get his pilot's license. His family didn’t have a lot of money, but instead of telling Craig no, his dad told him he’d look around and see if he could find a way for Craig to get it. He found a flight instructor who was building a plane in his garage. The man agreed to hire Craig, giving him one hour of instruction for every two hours of work. Craig got his license for a total of $400, only paying for the plane.

Craig’s dad connected with his son through a level 10 passion just as we can connect with our customers through their high-level passions. Craig’s father found Craig’s level 10 passion which was becoming a pilot, and he figured out how to help Craig achieve that. By doing that, he associated himself with Craig’s level 10 passion, and his credibility and connection with Craig increased.

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” -Dale Carnegie

5. The Secret to Giving Advice Craig’s best mentor in his business life was a man named Walt. He was a customer, and Craig ended up working in Walt’s office because Craig’s company did so much work for them and the insurance company they represented. Walt, in the kindest way, used to tell Craig that he couldn’t sell worth anything, present worth a darn, or manage people worth a darn. Then he helped Craig improve each of those weaknesses.

Walt took Craig to lunch all the time, never letting Craig pay for lunch. Craig kept trying to pay, but Walt would never let him pay for lunch, saying, “No, you’ll have somebody you’re mentoring later in your life and you can buy their lunch.” Because of that, now Craig takes two or three of his students to lunch every week and pays for it.

The secret to giving advice is first we have to gain credibility. Once we establish credibility, then we can give the most direct advice or the advice that is necessary but hurtful. When we’ve established a relationship, we can really help the people we’re mentoring. When they take that advice and their life improves because of it, our credibility increases.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Craig for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

We must be honest with ourselves, our teams, and our customers to help each other and build a great working environment.
Don’t over-commit. It is much easier to over-deliver on our promises when we set the bar lower initially.
Potential customers on the low and high ends of our pyramids often are not worth the effort it takes to sell to them. If we focus on the middle of the pyramid it is often the sweet spot of our ideal customers.
Our credibility can increase if we can connect through level 10 passions in our relationships.
In order to give good advice, we must first establish a relationship and credibility with those we’re advising. Once we do that, they will be more likely to listen and trust our advice. When the advice works, it helps to further increase our credibility.

Connect with Craig

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Craig you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelcearnshaw/.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business. 2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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What are the most successful ways to build business relationships? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Whether it’s starting a business or investing in stocks, our endeavors often come with risks. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% fail during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. And as much as 90% of people lose their money in stock markets (Source: Research & Ranking).

These statistics may be discouraging, but risks can yield a big reward too. For example, when Whole Foods Market was created in the 1980s the United States had less than six natural food stores. There wasn’t evidence that there was a large market for natural and organic food. Despite its rocky start, Whole Foods was able to become the industry-leading grocery-store chain for healthy food (Source: Washington State University). Whole Foods Market now operates 472 stores worldwide with a net income of $245 million (Source: Statista).

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” -Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook

Justin Hatch has taken some risks in his career. Some of them have panned out while others didn’t. However, in both failure and success, he learned from the chances he took, and he used the lessons he learned to create a successful business that helps others understand their endeavors and calculate their risks.

Justin Hatch was a VP for Profire Energy. and helped take the company from 4 employees to 150. He was the CEO of Strategy SMB, an idea development and business planning software company. Justin is now the CEO of Reach Reporting, a software made to absorb complexity and simplify financial reporting. He believes there are innumerable unsolved problems the world contains, and there are equally as many people that are looking at those problems with questioning eyes. In addition, he believes in finding and pursuing your passion.

The Cost of Not Understanding the Information We Have Here are two experiences Justin had that led to creating Reach Reporting.

1. Trying to be Everything for Everyone Growing up, Justin, like many entrepreneurs, was the kind of person that didn’t mesh well with school. He struggled with focus. He struggled with the system, and because of that, he didn’t plan to go to college. So after high school finished, he wasn’t sure what to do. He was given a lot of counsel and advice, but one piece stuck with him; he was told that he should start a business. Justin took the advice to heart.

He knew how to paint, so he started painting apartment buildings. It was grueling work, but it was a lucrative job. He was able to support his young family on the salary it gave him. Over time, people started asking him if he knew how to do other services like repair drywall. Justin usually answered, “No, but I can figure it out.” He bought tools for tasks that weren’t part of his business, and he spent far too much time and money trying to learn how to do these other odd jobs. He could barely make ends meet. It wasn’t a very good business strategy. Because he didn’t have a firm hold on his spending, he was never able to have more than just barely enough.

2. Losing $75k in Stocks Every Day for a Week and a Half Not long after, Justin was approached by an oil and gas company. He worked as a VP for them for several years and helped them reach the next level in their business. At the end of 2014, he felt like he didn't fit with this business anymore, so he resigned. He and his wife had some money saved, some stock options, and some equity, so they had enough cash to build a little business.

After about a year, they lost a lot of value in stock after it plummeted. Justin spent many sleepless nights watching the stock drop. He was losing $75k a day for about a week and a half, and he ended up having to pay just under $400k in taxes. He realized that other people are losing money and don’t have a firm grasp on their financials too, and he wanted to help them.

Creating a Business to Prevent Others from Experiencing the Same Loss After this loss, Justin started thinking about what things would have really helped him as a 22-year-old entrepreneur. He realized that if he could have understood the information he had about his finances, he would have been able to make better financial decisions. He brought in a partner, and they started brainstorming ideas for a business, wondering if there was a market for a business that could help, not only young entrepreneurs like Justin but all kinds of business owners. This brainstorming session would eventually lead to the creation of Reach Reporting.

Reach Reporting became something that solved a problem for people that brought them pain, and it solved it in a way that enabled them to be so much more successful. Their goal became doing anything they could with financial reporting to make their customers more successful and to help them grow their business.

“Ignorance is not a bad thing but it is a thing that we need to recognize. We are so much more powerful if we can understand how ignorant we are of something.” -Justin Hatch

Reach Reporting Reach Reporting is a dashboard and reporting system that gives businesses the ability to see and understand their data in a way that is unique. Reach pulls the data out of the accounting software and applies it to a series of reports and dashboards.

If you're looking for a deeper understanding of your business, you can use Reach to help you. Maybe you don't understand the balance sheet as well as you’d like to or you want to have a deeper understanding of it. Reach Reporting’s goal is to absorb complexity so that the customer doesn't have to. They connect to the accounting software you use, pull the data, aggregate it, and put it into beautiful reports and dashboards. You don't have to lift a finger unless you want to. Their customers have built incredible reports with this software.

Justin’s Advice on Enduring when Our Endeavors Fail Justin went through a lot of hard times on the journey to creating Reach Reporting. Most of us have a long road before we reach success, but we can’t give up. Justin believes that there is something in each of us that we can do that nobody else can. The key is to recognize what two or three skill sets we have that can have a dramatic and meaningful effect on an industry, market, or person. It’s going to take grit, a good mindset, humility, and a strong work ethic, but we can make it through hard times and accomplish our goals.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl, Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor

Make the Customer the Hero According to Deloitte and Touche, customer-centric companies were 60% more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the customer (Source: Building a Story Brand). People don’t trust what companies say about themselves anymore, but they do trust what customers say. We can seek customer testimonials to not only boost our confidence in our products and services but also to share how customers have used our products and services with potential customers. When we focus on what our customers have done, it makes them the hero of the story and shows potential customers that they can be the hero too.

Key Takeaways Thank you Justin for sharing your stories and secrets. Here are some of the key takeaways from today’s episode that stood out to me.

We can utilize tools such as Reach Reporting software to understand our business and make informed, data-driven decisions.
After we’ve gone through hard times we can use the knowledge we’ve gained to help others in similar situations.
Realize and accept that the road to success is going to be a long one.
It’s going to take grit, a good mindset, humility, and a strong work ethic to endure hard things.
The more knowledge we have the more we will be able to assess the risks before us and make informed decisions. No matter how much we know we can always learn more.
Make the customer the hero in your storytelling.
Seek testimonials from our customers. Not only do they boost confidence in our products and service, but they are also great for grabbing the attention of potential customers.

Connect With Justin To learn more about or connect with Justin and his company, please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinwhatch or

https://ReachReporting.com

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 6. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story What have you learned from a risk you or others have taken? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/43-how-losing-750k-led-justin-hatch-to-build-a-successful-software-company/

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“What new technology does is create new opportunities to do a job that customers want done.” -Tim O’Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media

Technology has created a new type of venture, digital ventures. As the internet and technology become more and more part of our lives it is essential that businesses take advantage of them. Brad Pace has been a part of 8 successful digital ventures that we discuss in today’s episode.

Brad Pace is a former business partner of mine. We were partners in SocialNexus, where we did a lot of work creating digital ventures with Brazilian companies. He has also worked on many other successful digital ventures, including Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com, About.com, Finicity, World Vital Records, and more. He is currently the president of TeamDial.

Ancestry Early in his career, Brad heard about Ancestry and decided to go work there. He was their 30th employee and one of the first developers working on myfamily.com. Myfamily.com became very successful, one of the top ten most-used internet sites. It was one of the first photo-sharing sites. At the time Myspace was one of the only other social networks, but people weren’t sharing photos there, and MySpace didn’t have a lot of the traditional social networking features. Brad and his coworkers made it really easy for users to share photos between them and their extended family. They had more photos shared on their network than anyone else on the internet. At the time, it was the second-largest subscription service on the internet. Also at Ancestry, Brad helped build the first online family tree.

About.com In the year 2000, About.com was very popular. About.com had guides who published content on hundreds of topical sites. They specialized in human-curated content and it was one of the top five internet properties. Brad worked for a company that had been purchased by About.com.

Finicity After About.com, Brad worked for Finicity, an online budgeting system. Their system was based on the envelope budgeting system when you have an envelope with your budget for food, an envelope for spending, etc., and can only spend what is in the envelope. When most people stopped using physical money, Finicity was the first to bring the envelope budgeting system online. However, they didn’t have a platform mentality. Finicity thought their value was in the subscription to use their software, but the actual value was in the data they were collecting. A new company called Mint came along, offering the whole thing for free, and then monetized with the data. Mint had a platform mentality and understood the value of the data they were collecting. Brad stressed the importance of entrepreneurs today having a platform mentality.

World Vital Records & We’re Related While Brad was working for Finicity, the founder of Ancestry called Brad and told him about a new business he wanted to start. Brad joined him and they co-founded World Vital Records, a company similar to Ancestry, but instead of owning the content, World Vital Records leased it. With this system, they were able to approach content owners throughout the world who had refused to sell to Ancestry. World Vital Records leased the content, putting it in their database and paying the content owners a percentage based on the content’s usage. World Vital Records monetized the family history records by selling subscriptions to members.

Around this time, Facebook announced that they were going to let third parties develop on their platform. Brad and his cofounder decided they were going to build an app for Facebook that customers could use to connect with their families. They called the app We’re Related. At the time, you couldn’t go on Facebook and say this is my dad, brother, mom, etc. In a short period of time, the app reached more than 60 million users and became the fourth largest Facebook app based on the number of app installs. They received an offer to buy from The Walt Disney Internet Group because of this success.

However, this is a perfect example of building a skyscraper on someone else’s land. After Facebook saw the success of We’re Related, they implemented some similar functionality into the core Facebook offering. Then, they implemented new policies to make it very difficult for We’re Related to compete. The parent company of We’re Related ultimately sold their assets for an amount far less than what Disney had been willing to pay.

We should do our best to build our ventures on land or platforms we can control. If we do build our ventures on someone else’s land, we should also build something on a different piece of land that we own, and working to drive people from the leased land to the land we own. Entrepreneurs almost always underestimate the risk related to building their business on other platforms or leased land, and this often is very destructive.

SocialNexus After World Vital Records, Brad went on to co-found SocialNexus. At this venture, Brad and I helped build several digital ventures in Brazil and built niche social sites. We funded the business by doing consulting work and put much of the profits back into the business to build our own sites. In our consulting work, we helped Brazilian companies to take concepts that were working in the US and roll them out in Brazil. This is a monetization model called “cool hunting.”

Partner Fusion and TravelPass After we sold SocialNexus, Brad became one of the 6 founders of Partner Fusion. Brad and his partners worked in the travel and entertainment space but wanted to pivot into being a platform and product company. Partner Fusion began by working in many different verticals, such as hotel booking sites, airline ticket sites, show tickets sites for Las Vegas, health and nutrition sites, etc. They tested all these sites and ran with the best one which was in the hotel space. After that, they focused on selling hotel rooms and changed their name to TravelPass. They sold hotel rooms to big online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia, Priceline, and Booking.com and became an OTA themselves.

In spite of competing with these large OTAs, TravelPass had a lot of success. They were able to compete with companies like Booking.com--which buys more ads from Google than anyone else in the world--because they were scrappy and agile; they had the flexibility that Booking.com didn’t. They were also paying attention to the small details and therefore knew their customers really well. Another key element to their success was their platform. Instead of regurgitating 500 results as other platforms did, their platform pulled hotel inventory in, figured out who had the best price, and gave that price to their customers.

They doubled their growth every year, and in 4 years they grew it to $450 million in annual revenue, doing $1.5 million in bookings every day.

Soar.com After TravelPass, Brad moved on to Soar.com, a company that helps coaches run their businesses. Brad had never had a coach before, but he quickly learned the value of having a personal coach, whether it’s for your business, personal life, health, etc. Soar.com built their platform so every coach could run their business as a small business. Many didn’t know how to manage their business or understand who their target audience was. To help with this, Soar.com provided master classes, zoom conferencing, billing, and help with marketing.

At the same time, part of Soar.com focused on voice technology with an app for Amazon Alexa and other virtual assistants. One of Soar.com’s customers was one of the top sales training companies in the world who had a lot of content (hours of video, voice, etc.) that would sit on their website unused. Brad and his associates made all of that content available to them by building an app to provide the best info through voice technology. With this app’s great tagging and searching technology, their customers are able to ask their virtual assistant things like, “What are the four sales techniques that I need to use?” and it will play the audio that they are looking for.

Users can also upload their own audio. Brad uploaded a recording of his grandfather from the 1960s singing songs at his 80th birthday party. Brad was able to play this for his day by simply saying “play Grandpa Western.”

TeamDial Brad’s latest venture is a startup company called Teamdial. A friend of his had been running and building technology for a call center for more than 8 years. Brad came in and suggested that they make this software self-serve. TeamDial allows people to organize and make their outbound calls from their small team. They have realized that even with social media, email, and texting, the best way to connect to customers is still through voice.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Brad for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

As Brad did with Finicity, we may be able to take something that works in the physical world and transfer it into the digital world.
As with the, We’re Related Facebook app, we should build skyscrapers on the land that we own, and avoid building our skyscrapers on leased land.
Brad and I both had connections to Brazil before doing SocialNexus. We can find successful concepts or products from one market and use our connections to take them to another market. This is called “cool hunting.”
Just like Partner Fusion/TravelPass tested many different verticals and then decided to focus on hotel bookings, we can also test different opportunities, and then focus on the opportunity that proves the most successful.
We can add new product lines by selling coaching to our existing customers.

Connect with Brad

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Brad or his business, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/radpace or visit his company’s website at https://www.teamdial.com/.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Could “cool hunting” work for you? Is there a product that has proven successful in one market you could take to another market? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/42-how-brad-pace-helped-create-8-successful-digital-ventures-including-one-that-reached-450-million-in-annual-revenue/

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In the early days of Eric Farr’s company BrainStorm, Inc. a client came to them about a problem with an order. Their client needed the order for a training meeting the next Monday and Eric’s company promised they would have the order in their European office in time for the training. Later the BrainStorm team discovered that the only way they’d be able to get the order to the client in time was to fly there themselves, bringing the order with them.

Eric, the company CEO, bought a last-minute flight on the Friday morning before the training with almost too many layovers to count. Eventually, he and the order ended up in Scotland, where the client was. He delivered the order and stayed in Scotland with the client for about two hours before flying back to the United States.

That client then became one of the top five clients of BrainStorm for several years. This story has become company lore at BrainStorm. The company teaches and strives for this kind of dedication to their commitments in dealing with all their clients.

"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses - only results." -Ken Blanchard, author, business consultant, and motivational speaker

Eric Farr is the owner and executive officer of BrainStorm, Inc., a software company that offers a SaaS platform that helps large organizations manage employee change, providing solutions and methodology that not only help employers train their employees but also enact real change in their organizations. Eric received his Bachelors in economics from Brigham Young University and went on to receive his MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

1. Provide Much More Value Than the Cost One of the goals of Eric’s company is to make the value their business provides clients much greater than the cost of their products or services. Because of this goal, they strive not only to follow through with their commitments but also to go above and beyond what their clients expect from their commitments. As in the story above, their client likely didn’t expect Eric to personally haul their order across the world. But Eric had made a commitment, and he was going to follow through with it because it was the right thing to do.

This legendary story has sparked many other stories of how the company has provided value to its customers by exceeding expectations. Because the company has Eric’s story to live up to, they keep going the extra mile because it is a part of the corporate culture. This culture of providing value by exceeding expectations creates meaningful relationships and builds trust with our customers.

Eric has spent thousands of dollars making sure the value was high enough for clients that he was certain weren’t going to come back. He did it because of who he is and not because of the payoff. Eric is all about doing the right thing, regardless of how it can help him.

2. Build Client Relationships through Recurring Revenue Streams “Recurring-revenue business models, also known as a subscription or usage-based models, are creating new opportunities across all industries—even in sectors where they haven’t traditionally appeared before. Advances in social media, mobile devices, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are now enabling businesses to leverage these new models to generate entirely new revenue streams... 52% of the CFO Research/Salesforce survey respondents have companies where at least 40% of revenues are recurring” (Source: cfo.com).

Recurring revenue streams make planning and budgeting easier, raise the value of a company, and create predictability in our revenue. Everyone is jumping on the recurring revenue bandwagon, so it is more important now more than ever to show our clients how we value them through our recurring revenue streams.

Eric doesn’t consider someone a customer until they have renewed with the company. This attitude ensures that he, and everyone in the company, don’t forget about his customers in the time between renewals; he’s thinking about the lifetime value of a customer. When a customer buys something we owe them value the whole time they are using our products or services. Whether we have monthly renewals or annual renewals, we need to take care of our clients through that whole time. This all starts in the sales process when we set expectations and then consistently provide value.

“We want customers. We don’t want transactions.” -Eric Farr

3. Improve through Month-to-Month Contracts “There doesn’t appear to be a correlation between length of contract and lifetime retention of a client. In fact, there seems to be quite a bit of evidence that month- to- month agreements last longer and have a higher sales close ratio.” -Danny DeMichele, Marketing Consultant

The client that stayed with my company for the longest amount of time was with us for 11 years. Their contract was month-to-month and could be canceled at any time. I believe the month-to-month aspect was the reason for their longevity. The month-to-month contract forced us to maintain the relationship and keep the client happy every month.

4. Come Together to Meet Our Clients’ Needs "Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." -Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist

BrainStorm had a deal with a Fortune 10 company to create software for them. It was a great deal because BrainStorm could get paid to create the product for one client and then monetize it through selling it to other clients. Their client, in turn, would be able to give their input on the product so it would be exactly what they needed. In January of that year, their clients said, “We’ll buy this from you now if you can deliver it to us in December.”

The year went by and they made great progress on the software. In the first week of December, however, their client came to them, saying they needed the software to be ready in about a week. The software was not ready to be delivered that soon, but Eric and the rest of the company came together and decided they were going to try to make it happen.

They set to work, operating 24 hours a day and staying at the office all night, only leaving to shower or get food. They hired about 40 new people to help. BrainStorm finished the product on time and delivered it to the client, never telling them what it took to get it finished. Now their employees who weren’t there at the time want to have a moment like that where they can all come together with a common goal and work hard to achieve something amazing.

5. Help Our Clients Achieve their Most Important Goals BrainStorm is a software company that offers solutions and methodology not only to help employers train their employees but also to enact real change in their organizations. One way they do this is by focusing on their clients’ goals. If a company wants to reduce costs by $20 million, BrainStorm focuses on that. If they want to get their products to the market faster, BrainStorm shows them how to utilize their technology to do that. BrainStorm finds the client’s highest priority and sells them a solution to that.

For example, they had a client that said they had chosen a specific way to store documents and data to the cloud. BrainStorm gathered data about the company, and they had billions of records of how people were using the company’s software. BrainStorm was able to see in their data that the company’s employees were using 15 different ways to store data on the cloud including using their own personal Dropbox accounts. The client had no idea, but BrainStorm was able to help them standardize their data storage.

The information that BrainStorm provides allows their clients to make good business decisions about the technology that they’re using in line with their business objectives, whether that be increasing revenue, decreasing costs, or dealing with security. Because of this, BrainStorm’s clients are extremely satisfied with the service BrainStorm provides. Likewise, we can have satisfied customers if we focus on helping them achieve their most important business objectives.

Connect with Eric

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Eric or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/eric-farr-402141 or visit his company’s website at BrainStormInc.com.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Eric for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode to help us provide greater value to our clients:

Make the value of our products and services much greater than the cost.
Go the extra mile to exceed customer expectations and make them happy, as Eric did by personally delivering the order to Scotland.
If you haven’t already, consider implementing recurring revenue streams into your business.
Take care of our customers throughout the time between renewals in our recurring revenue streams.
Consider using month-to-month contracts so we are motivated to provide value and keep our customers happy every month. We may be able to keep our clients with us longer.
Create a culture that when a client needs something that seems impossible, our team can come together and make it happen.
Focus on helping our customers reach their most important goals.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What are some of the best ways you have seen companies provide value to their customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/41-5-ways-to-provide-value-to-our-clients/

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Bill Crawford owns an amazing pizza restaurant named Righteous Slice, which makes some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. When entrepreneurs own a business like the one Bill Crawford owns it is important to have loyal customers. The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5-20% (Source: Markinblog). In this episode, we discuss some of the ways Bill has developed a strong base of loyal customers.

Bill Crawford graduated from Harvard with his MBA. He is a former Air Force fighter pilot and stealth bomber pilot. He’s a professor of entrepreneurship, and he just may be the coolest pizza restaurant owner ever.

1. Hiring Friendly Employees One of Bill’s main focuses with customers is to make a personal connection with customers from the second they walk in the door until the moment they leave. This isn’t common for a business to think about, but it makes a big difference in establishing customer loyalty. That’s why when Bill hires new employees, he looks for people who have a natural talent for talking to customers and making them feel great. Bill says their pizza is good, but what makes people come back is the people who work there and the way the customer felt while they were there.

“Motivating employees to work at their full potential is the main premise of successful management.” -Eraldo Banovac, Croatian author and professor

2. Training Employees: The Secret Shopper Program Bill doesn’t just rely on his employees’ natural outgoing tendencies. As part of the hiring process, Bill puts his employees through what he calls the “secret shopper program.” He asks people he knows to come into the restaurant and test his candidate by acting like they have a problem, then he sees how the trainee reacts.

For example, the trainee will bring them the salad they ordered--the salad that is clearly on the receipt--and then the customer will say that's not what they ordered. They will act like they ordered something else. Then Bill can see how the candidate responds to that kind of situation and select for it in his hiring.

Bill actually had me help them do this type of secret shopper test recently with a new candidate. I hid where the candidate couldn't really find me, and didn’t respond when they called my name to see how they would handle it. The candidate passed with flying colors.

This kind of thing happens all the time, especially in the food industry. We're dealing with humans, both customers and employees, who make mistakes. So it is important to train our employees to be able to handle these mistakes.

3. Use Technology and Review Platforms to Seek Reviews To seek reviews, Bill’s company pays for a service that lets them see how their customers are feeling about their experience. This was one of the only services they didn't cut back on when everything shut down when COVID-19 struck. The service sends a text to Bill’s customers asking them to rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. If the customer gives 5 stars, it asks if they'll leave a review. If they leave 4 or less the service notifies Bill and his employees so they can try and remedy the situation.

Bill’s goal with this is not to compel the customer to change their rating. He cares that he and his employees sincerely do their best to serve their customers’ needs. He's comfortable with 4 stars or less as long as they delivered on their brand promise. The only time he feels bad is when they don't deliver on their brand promise.

Bill also believes that bad reviews are good for their business. If someone leaves a 1 or 2-star review saying "their pizza is always burnt" that's actually good for Righteous Slice. It is one of the things that makes them special, and the review steers people away that won’t enjoy that. If people complain about things, it lets others know what it is like before they make that purchase decision.

Their original goal was to get a thousand reviews and then they were planning on dropping the service. But now they see greater value in the ability to engage with customers through this service whether they get a review or not. Because of this service, the restaurant doesn’t spend a lot on marketing because reviews heavily influence the buying decision. When someone is trying to decide where they should go to eat, they look for which restaurant has the most reviews that are above 4 1/2 stars. They don't click on the first thing they see, and they often don't click on the paid ad.

4. Empower Employees to Make Happy Customers One thing that Bill does with his employees is let them do what it takes to make an unhappy customer happy again and encourage them to take responsibility when things go wrong. They let anyone who works there do whatever it takes to make the customer feel great about their experience.

One day they had a customer give them four stars, saying, "We were charged full price even though we mentioned the Monday deal, and one of the pizzas was burned.” An employee, who was just out of high school, replied to the review, saying, "Hi [customer's name], this is [employee's name] from Righteous Slice. I'm going to include a free Margherita coupon to hopefully make up for the burnt one. Thank you for giving us the feedback. It's awesome customers like you that make this place righteous." The customer responded with "Wow, thank you."

5. Connecting with Customers through Video Video marketing continues to become more popular; 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. That said, it’s important to make these videos the right way. When we make videos in our marketing, it is crucial to keep the focus on our customers. Don't make videos with an inward focus on what we want our customers to care about. It's not going to work. We should make something funny, interesting, and short. Don’t focus on trying to sell, but focus on being authentic.

One day, Bill made a live video of making pizza as a demo for his students. They shared it on their business channel, and it got more interest than anything they could have made as an ad. It was simply Bill in his home kitchen making pizza dough and showing people how the restaurant does it. It was real, it was authentic, and it was unintentional. But it was more successful, more credible, and more believable than perfectly made videos that corporations create.

When our customers watch a great video, they can emotionally connect. When this happens, it establishes credibility far better than any photo or text ever could.

6. Give Back and Be Generous Bill is a strong advocate for company loyalty, companies being loyal to their customers and treating them well. He loves to give back to his customers. This is the mindset they try to instill in all their employees. This doesn’t mean mass giveaways, those can lead to a lot of unhappy people in the aftermath, but it means thoughtful and deliberate giving back. Here are some examples.

One day some customers came into Bill’s restaurant, and they were dressed up for a special occasion. Bill asked them what the special occasion was, and they said it was for a funeral. Bill gave them his condolences and gave them a free dessert.

There’s another guest that comes in about twice a year. From the way he dresses, Bill can tell that he's not very well off. On this occasion, the customer ordered a lower-priced pizza, and Bill gave him one of their high-end drinks to go with it for free. The customer came back to order dessert and Bill said, "this one's on me." They'd just had a record day, and Bill wanted to give some of that back to someone that would be grateful for it.

The restaurant also does a Christmas promotion. A customer can come in during December and get an envelope with every purchase. If they bring back the unopened envelope in January they win a prize. The company pays about $3,000 for this, which is a lot considering their typical marketing budget is $300-400 a month. They don't get a lot of sales lift out of it, but they keep doing it because it is a chance to be fun and creative and a chance just to be generous. They do it so they can show their gratitude to their most loyal customers.

"You don't earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day by day." -Jeffrey Gitomer, American author, professional speaker, and business trainer

Connect with Bill

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Bill or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-crawford-930aa9 or if you are ever headed to Yellowstone and passing through Rexburg, ID, be sure to stop for some of the best pizza you’ll ever have at Righteous Slice.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Bill for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode to help us build customer loyalty:

Hire friendly employees to connect with our customers and make them feel appreciated.
Train our employees to be able to handle difficult situations with customers.
Seek reviews through reviewing services.
Use reviews to make sure our customers are satisfied. If something went wrong, make it right.
Give all our employees the power to make it up to unhappy customers.
Connect with our customers through authentic videos.
Give back to our customers. Show them we appreciate them.

Share Your Story

What great strategies have you seen for building customer loyalty? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/40-6-ways-to-foster-customer-loyalty-from-a-harvard-mba-and-former-stealth-bomber-pilot/

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Meet Cydni Tetro

Cydni Tetro is a highly successful entrepreneur and digital monetizer. The art of storytelling and how to apply it for business growth and market leadership is woven through her career. She led technology commercialization at Disney and helped build a Facebook App with more than 100 million users. She founded a 3D printing personalization platform named 3DplusMe, founded a simulation platform named ForgeDX, and started a nonprofit, all while contributing to her community and raising children.

Cyndi has been recognized as Woman of the Year, Contributor of the Year, and one of the Top 10 Coolest Entrepreneurs. She received Stevie Awards for Entrepreneur of the Year and Innovator of the Year and has been recognized as a Most Successful Businesswoman to Watch.

Building Skyscrapers

Cydni said in our interview: “If you can’t control your destiny, then it’s hard for you. You have momentary success, but you’re not in control of the outcome.”

In this interview, Cydni discussed four foundations she has implemented in her work to build skyscrapers.

1. Being Consumer Driven: Creating Experiences and Connection

While working for Disney, Cydni became grounded in building relationships with the guests there. “It’s built into their DNA—that customer connection. Their organization is completely built around everything you do with guest satisfaction,” Cydni said. Everything was about the customer. Any time a project showed signs of guest dissatisfaction, it was out.

When Cydni left Disney and started a new venture, 3DplusMe, her customer focus followed. This new company became successful by asking the question: “How can we, for a moment, help someone see themself and immerse themself in their favorite storylines, and then create this experience that truly transforms them?” Sure enough, her organization found a way to do just that.

Cydni and her team created a 3D personalization platform which took 3D images and transformed individuals into their favorite character. What would it be like to be Tony Stark? With this platform, individuals could immerse themself into his character and truly discover what it’s like to be Iron Man!

This product became so successful that it was taken to the Super Bowl, the World Series, Toys “R” Us, Walmart, Target, and more. This accomplishment came from focusing on creating an emotional connection with the customer.

Cydni then built a B2B enterprise called ForgeDX which focused on technology storytelling. This company built visualizations that showed the power of technology tied to business outcomes. “We were working with the Miami Dolphins and their CEO at the time used this term of: ‘You’re trying to create ubiquitous exclusivity in your experiences.’ What you want is to have an exclusive experience, but you want that for everyone,” Cydni said.

It became all about creating “Aha!” moments so that consumers would stay engaged in every part of the journey or keep coming back. These experiences helped to drive customer behavior because the focus was again on the customer and building connections.

2. Growing Ecosystems of Influence: References without Words

“When you build trusted relationships and deliver value, then it becomes a reference that you don’t even have to talk about”—Cydni Tetro

Launching their 3DplusMe program at Comic-Con was a tremendous success, all due to this “Ecosystem of Influence.” A partner of theirs, 3D Systems, let Cydni’s company set up space in the corner, which happened to only be 10’ x 10’. It was their first introduction for this particular product; however, Cydni’s company ended up with an enormous line of individuals waiting to have an immersive experience as a character!

This is how they built and leveraged an ecosystem to have this success:

Their company was partnered up with 3D Systems who helped them get a space at Comic-Con.
Marvel, with who they also had a partnership, participated in the immersive experience.
Marvel then shared the 3D results on their YouTube channel.

“Marvel was endorsing us, I got a deal with Hasbro from it to create a custom toy line, and a deal with Walmart from it. This company was built on relationships and the influence of a bigger pie. This ecosystem of influence allowed us time and time again to monetize,” Cydni said.

When Walmart caught the attention of this program, they reached out to Cydni to do a product launch for Superhero September. Cydni cold-called into Hasbro for help in launching it, and they were able to pull it off in only 60 days after the initial launch at Comic-Con! Marvel approved, Hasbro created the toy line, and then they launched into 20 Walmarts around the country.

Their ecosystem of influence saw the value in what was being created, which became a domino effect with other retailers. Cydni said, “When you can build trusted relationships and someone does a transaction with you, then you get the credibility in building that relationship. So other companies say, ‘well, if you’re working with them, then it’s ok for us to work with you.’”

For example, another company of Cydni’s called ForgeDX built a strong relationship with Adobe. Because Microsoft saw Adobe using this demo platform, Microsoft signed up as well.

3. Conversions without Friction

“Anytime something is complicated or more of a hurdle than the value you’re going to give them, people say: ‘I’m out!’”—Cydni Tetro

Cydni discovered while building demos that consumers like to learn information, but they don’t like friction. Essentially, they don’t want to be tasked with solving a problem or thinking during the conversion process.

In a funnel, customers are going to be looking for the information that they need to move to the next step. It’s important to keep in mind: What information does a customer need to make the next decision or complete the sale?

During the enterprise funnel, let’s say the customer becomes interested. Give them the information to take the next step, but then they need to see something in action that drives their engagement. It needs to be so simple that they could figure it out on their own. No friction. In doing so, they are more likely to make a conversion.

Cydni was working on a demo for a particular company, which they wanted to be high-converting. She and her team helped this company create a product demo focused on the information that a customer needed to understand the unique value provided. They did just that by targeting four things that were unique about the program and the reasons why someone would purchase it.

The demo became so successful that it performed 300% better than anything else the company had previously done. Form fills were even 28% better than anything else on their website. Another huge focus was the design strategy of the demo to make it interactive but not difficult. No friction.

“The moment you have friction with no value, people just leave you or they bounce off of your site. Be really attuned that people understand the value in that next step because every time it gets harder, you lose people. That’s when you lose your conversion funnels.”—Cydni

4. The Success Based Pricing Model: Recurring Revenue

Cydni shared that there are many ways to generate recurring revenue. Here are three examples:

Through a Channel

Companies like Hasbro may have an action figure at Walmart but only sell a few per day. However, 60,000 other retailers are selling that exact action figure on the same day. This is a platform of mass distribution where a product can be accessed from all over or through many channels.

Product Frequency / Subscriptions

When Cydni was a small retailer selling only one character, how could she get customers to return to her? She saw a similar company to hers called Lucrate become successful by creating subscriptions. For a certain price per month, customers would gain access to a comic collection.

Subscriptions create product frequency, but it has to have frequency for value. Cydni and her team could not accomplish this with their business model.

Per Simulation, Not Per User: A Success-Based Model

When building the next company, Cydni said, “While we’re building these product demos, we’re not going to think about them as one-time product demo builds. We’re going to build a platform underneath them that customers can subscribe to which will give everyone access to the demo. Every time we build another demo, it will be on the platform.” Everything was going to be about the platform: how customers access the platform or demo from it, how the demo is embedded from the platform, and how to give access to users internally or externally.

They cracked the code and built a subscription model. This was a little bit different than other companies’ models because they wanted everyone to use the demos. So, they priced per simulation and not per user. Thousands of their employees used the demos so it became a mission-critical application! This is how they became successful. This had become a viral loop. When the employee uses the technology and goes to their next company, or works closely with another company, they share that technology with the next company.

Cydni’s company was able to get about 16 demos to play on the platform with thousands of users every month. This helped them forecast success for the following year. The subscription was built to be modified by creating a baseline price for year one. Then in the second year, the platform fee was based on how successful a given company had been the previous year. This allowed their recurring revenue to have a low-cost entry fee while also capturing value over time as usage and customer value increased.

Having a success-based pricing model instead of a per-user pricing model was a brilliant move. Not doing so would have discouraged the viral loop and the level of Cydni’s company’s success.

“It becomes a natural limiter. In our case, we want everyone to use it. Don’t limit. Don’t make someone think about how they have to pay for a user. Let every person use it. Because if they use it and you did your job, they’ll keep using it.”—Cydni

The success-based pricing model is a great example of thinking of the long-term, lifetime value of the customer, and not just the short-term per-user fee.

With the success-based pricing model, Cydni’s company cracked the code of their monetization success.

Connect with Cydni

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Cydni or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cydnitetro/

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Cydni for sharing your stories and strategies about building your skyscrapers with us today. Here are some key takeaways from today’s episode:

Always be focused on the consumer. How can we give them the best experience possible and create a stronger connection? Work to give “ubiquitous exclusivity” in customer experiences.
When we build trusted relationships and deliver value, it becomes a point of credibility because we can share the fact that another credible organization is using it. That in turn allows us to attain the credibility we need with the next partner.
Ecosystems of influence make it a lot easier for a company to monetize time and time again.
Anytime something is complicated or more of a hurdle than the value you’re going to give to the customer, people say: “I’m out!” We need to make sure to keep things as simple as possible for the user. Eliminate all the friction we can.
Don’t give the customer all of the information at once. Instead, focus on what information a customer needs to make the next decision or take the next step.
Explore a success-based subscription model to start a viral loop and improve the long-term, lifetime value of the customer.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Share Your Story

How have you seen companies position themselves to be masters of their own destinies? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/39-4-foundations-for-building-skyscrapers-and-controlling-destiny-with-cydni-tetro/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. Today, we’ll talk about the 9 Laws of the Harvest for Entrepreneurs, the guaranteed way to have more love and success in our lives.

I live in rural Idaho, surrounded by hundreds of square miles of farm fields, primarily of potatoes and wheat. The laws of the harvest are laws of nature, similar to the law of gravity. When we take an action related to these laws of nature we will almost always experience the natural results of that law. If we follow the laws of the harvest in farming or gardening, we will probably be successful in our efforts to grow and harvest our crops. If we don’t follow the laws of the harvest we will probably fail in those efforts.

The laws of the harvest play a huge role in our local community and in the lives of people we love. For example, a few years back, cold, wet weather came much earlier than expected at the end of the potato season. Because the crops had not been harvested before the cold and moisture hit, much of the crops were lost, and it was devastating to local farmers financially.

I’m not a farmer, but I love to grow fruits and vegetables, as wells as have a large garden and orchard. I’ve learned firsthand many laws of the harvest through a gardening mentor who has helped teach me, through books, and through mistakes I have made and learned the hard way. As I’ve learned these laws of the harvest personally, they have helped me to increase the quality and quantity of what I can grow and avoid mistakes.

These laws of the harvest also teach us some very important lessons about life and business. As we learn and apply the laws of the harvest, they can help us grow more successful lives and businesses. Or, as if we disregard these same natural laws, they do the opposite.

So here are the 9 Laws of the Harvest:

1st Law of the Harvest: Prepare the Soil Before Planting

We need to prepare great soil before we plant so we can have a great harvest.

One year, my wife asked me to plant wildflower seeds in a field by our orchard. So, I researched and purchased the right variety of wildflower seeds for our area, and I spread the seeds throughout the field. However, the wild grasses in that field have dense roots, grow tall, and prevent those wildflowers from growing. I didn’t think to till the ground or prepare the soil of the field before I planted those seeds. As a result, the wildflowers did not grow.

Correctly preparing soil often involves adding organic matter and fertilizer to the soil. This adds nutrients to the soil and helps the soil hold more water. Preparing the soil often involves loosening the soil so that it is easier for the roots to grow deeply. Preparing the soil often involves raking the soil level and removing rocks, twigs, and weeds.

Matthew 13:3-8 shares a parable from Jesus about planting in good soil:

And he spake many things unto them in parables saying, behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up; Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them; But others fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

“Observe that the prominent feature of the story is that of the prepared or unprepared condition of the soil. The seed was the same, whether it fell on good ground or bad, on mellow mold or among stones and thistles. The primitive method of sowing, still followed in many countries, consisted in the sower throwing the grain by handfuls against the wind, thus securing a widespread scattering. Running through the Galilean fields were pathways, hard trodden by feet of men and beasts. Though seed should fall on such tracts, it could not grow; birds would pick up the living kernels lying unrooted and uncovered and some of the grains would be crushed and trodden down…. The seed that falls in good deep soil, free from weeds and prepared for the sowing, strikes root and grows; the sun’s heat scorches it not, but gives it thrift; it matures and yields to the harvester according to the richness of the soil…” (source: James Talmage, Jesus the Christ)

Just like the seeds that are planted in good soil and thrive, the same is true in our business and lives. We can prepare our soil in many ways, such as getting a good education, continually learning our trade, planning, setting goals, developing strategies, gathering the right tools, getting the right people on board, building our following, etc. When we effectively prepare our soil, the seeds we plant in that soil, such as new business endeavors, are usually much more successful.

2nd Law of the Harvest: Plant the Seeds

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” - Chinese proverb

Talking about planting is not enough to ever get a harvest. Buying the seeds and the fertilizer is not enough to ever get a harvest. Watering the ground when it has no seeds in it is not enough to ever get a harvest. We must actually plant the seeds, or all of the other steps in the process will not yield any results.

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” - Walt Disney

In our lives and businesses, we must also start with that first action step of “planting the seeds”. For example, when I decided to compete in my first triathlon, my mentor told me that the first step was to pay to register for a specific triathlon. That step committed me, and then I took the other necessary steps to prepare for that event.

In each of our businesses, what is the first action step we should take to plant the seeds? For example, when I wanted to do the daily Monetization Nation show with a podcast, blog, and YouTube channel, I had to plant some seeds. I first researched how to create a podcast. Then, I reached out to some friends who I wanted to interview. Then, I created some initial episodes to post. Then, I created the accounts I would use to post on the different platforms. Then, I announced my daily show and made a public commitment that I would publish every day for a year, and make a $100 donation to the rival of my favorite college football program, for any day I missed publishing during that year. Then I created morning routines and other patterns in my life so the show would be consistently created, and I hired some people to help me. I planted those seeds, and I have published every day since then.

God can’t multiply what we haven’t planted.

Sometimes the big goal can feel a little overwhelming to us. Instead of trying to accomplish the big goal every day, we should instead focus on what we can do today to bring us one step closer to that goal.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

3rd Law of the Harvest: Consistently Nourish Our Crops

“You gotta nourish to flourish.” - Unknown

One summer I had planted about 14 new fruit trees in my orchard. Then, my family and I left on a 25-day road trip in which we visited 27 states. It was so much fun. At some point, while we were gone, the automatic watering to much of my orchard shut off. And, this was during one of the hottest parts of the summer. When I returned from the trip, I discovered that nearly all of the newly planted trees had died.

If we do a good job planting our crops, but then don’t nourish them consistently until the harvest time, the crops will probably die, or at a minimum, they will not thrive in their growth.

The same is true in life and business. We need to do the small but important things every day so we can nurture those seeds we have planted and eventually achieve the growth we want. Waking early, planning weekly, and scheduling our priorities can be great ways to make time to nourish our crops.

4th Law of the Harvest: Protect Our Crops

We’ve prepared the soil, planted the seeds, and are continuously nurturing them. We also need to protect our crops from threats.

My family and I live near a river, with acres of thick forest between our home and the river. We constantly have wildlife such as deer, elk, and raccoons on our property. As a result, I have a 7-foot fence around both my orchard and garden. If I didn’t have this fence to protect the plants, the animals would eat everything they wanted. Even with the fence, last year a family of raccoons climbed it and ate nearly every ear of corn.

As an example of a time I didn’t protect my plants, a couple of years ago I planted a bunch of strawberries too early in the season. A cold spell hit, and I lost almost all of my strawberry plants in a couple of days. In that situation, I had not protected my crop from the elements.

Weeding is another way we protect our crops. We remove the weeds so they don’t steal the water and sunlight our plants needs.

Just like farmers and gardeners strive to protect their crops, we should also strive to protect the good seeds we have planted in our lives and businesses. We should strive to weed out the distractions and time suckers, the negativity and contention, the addictions and unethical practices that can zap the life out of the great life and business we are trying to grow.

“We must all wage an intense, lifelong battle against the constant downward pull. If we relax, the bugs and weeds of negativity will move into the garden and take away everything of value.” - Jim Rohn

5th Law of the Harvest: We Reap What We Sow

"Life is an echo. What you send out, comes back. What you sow you reap. What you give, you get. What you see in others, exists in you. Remember, life is an echo. It always gets back to you. So give goodness.” - Zig Ziglar

It is very important for us to consciously choose the types of seeds we plant in our lives and businesses because those are the types of fruits and vegetables we will harvest. We cannot plant turnip seeds and harvest tomatoes from those plants. Likewise, we are going to harvest what we have sown in our lives and businesses, whether it be good or bad. Let’s be sure we are planting good seeds daily such as kindness, love, forgiveness, and grace because that’s what we will then harvest.

As another way to say it, if we want more love, joy, and success in our lives, the best way to get it is to help other people have more love, joy, and success in their lives. We will reap what we sow.

6th Law of the Harvest: We Harvest Much More than We Plant

When we follow the laws of the harvest, they have a multiplying effect and we will almost always harvest much more than what we planted. We can plant a handful of seeds and harvest wheelbarrows full of fruits and vegetables. Jesus’s parable of the sower that we quoted earlier talks about harvesting 30, 60, and 100 times more than what was planted. (Mark 4:20).

The same is true of life and business. When we invest to metaphorically prepare the soil, plant the seeds, and nourish and protect the plants, it can produce enormous dividends in our lives and businesses.

7th Law of the Harvest: Don’t Eat Your Seed Corn

My family loves to cook with garlic. So, each November we plant about 100 cloves of garlic in my garden. Then, by about July, we harvest about 100 heads of garlic and we preserve those and have enough garlic for the year. However, before we preserve the garlic, we pull out about 14 of the biggest heads of garlic and put them in a cool place. Those 14 heads have about 110-120 cloves, which we plant the following November.

Sometimes people make the mistake of eating all of their harvests. Then, they don’t have anything to plant the following year. This is called “eating your seed corn”.

It is very important in life and business that we don’t eat our seed corn. This means we don’t consume everything we earn. We should always be setting aside a portion of what we earn and reinvesting it in our future.

8th Law of the Harvest: Plant and Harvest in Different Seasons

Gardeners and farmers must be patient and allow their plants time to mature. There is no seed we can plant one day and then harvest the next. For example, a watermelon takes about 80-90 days from when we plant the seed until it has grown to maturity and we can harvest it. It is important to remember that for most of the plants we love to eat, we plant them one season and then harvest in a different season.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” - Ecclesiastes 3:1

Sometimes people want to “get rich quick…”, and make a lot of money very quickly with very little commitment. They are not willing to sacrifice what it takes to grow a great venture. Those “get-rich-quick” ventures usually don’t turn out very well and usually don’t last.

This law of the harvest is true for life and business. I’ve heard numerous people share a law of 3’s about starting a business. They’ve said something like: “Starting a business takes 3 times as long, costs 3 times as much, and makes about one-third the profit you expect.” So, we need to make a plan for the long game and not expect wild overnight success.

We must invest in new ventures, and be patient as they grow and mature until they are ready to harvest. For almost every great venture, it will take time before we are able to harvest it. That’s part of the natural process.

9th Law of the Harvest: Plant Seeds that Will be Harvested by Others

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” - Greek proverb

I have been blessed over the years to have been mentored by some amazing entrepreneurs who had already had great success in their careers. They planted seeds in my life and my ventures that I am harvesting or am working to harvest in the future. These mentors didn’t plant those seeds in my life because they were hoping to harvest them. They had reached a spot in their career where they wanted to give back. Let’s consistently make time to plant seeds for others to harvest.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode that apply to businesses:

We can prepare our business soil before planting our seeds, such as getting a great education and building relationships.
We can plant our business seeds by taking action and taking the first step that commits us down the path to our desired goal.
We can constantly nurture our business by prioritizing, and making time for the things that matter most.
We can protect our business crops from threats, such as distraction, negativity, and unethical business practices.
We will reap what we sow in business. So, if we want more love, joy, and success in our lives, the best way to get it is to help others have it.
When we follow the laws of the harvest, we will probably harvest far more than we planted.
Don’t eat your seed corn. Be sure to invest in your future.
Be patient when things don’t happen overnight. We will harvest in a different season than we planted.
Let’s give back and plant seeds that will be harvested by others.

Our challenge for today is to plant a few more good seeds for the things we most want to harvest. Let’s all plant more kindness, love, grace, and success in our lives by helping other people to have those things in their lives. I promise that if we each do this, we will have a bountiful harvest of love, kindness, grace, and success in our lives.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive Entrepreneurs of Faith each Sunday.

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Share Your Story

What seeds are you going to plant today? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at:

https://monetizationnation.com/blog/38-9-laws-of-the-harvest-for-entrepreneurs-and-ceos/

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In a previous episode of Monetization Nation, I shared an interview with Mark Morris, a Harvard MBA and highly successful business management consultant. This episode is part 2 of my interview with Mark. In this episode, Mark shares stories and secrets about how entrepreneurs and CEOs can leverage crowdfunding platforms and video to raise necessary capital without having to give up any equity.

Monetization through Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding companies like Kickstarter and GoFundMe help entrepreneurs to raise money and keep more control of their businesses.

Mark tells the story of a crowdfunding solution that had been developed to take advantage of social networks to enable fundraising for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. After Mitt’s campaign ended, there were calls to use this crowdfunding technology to facilitate other types of fundraising. To make the solution more robust, it was integrated with other social media platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube to allow a more visual message to be told and to better facilitate social sharing. That was what started a company named Fundly, one of the first solutions to empower social media fundraising. Mark said that with Fundly, the response rate was 10x higher and the donations were substantially higher.

Mark believes that Fundly illustrated the power of connecting with people who share one of our passions. It also illustrated the power of video to tell a story. When there is a fundraising campaign for a new business product, a family in crisis, or another social cause we care about, video helps capture the emotions and build strong connections that make us want to participate.

Mark feels that these crowdfunding platforms with videos are a tectonic shift in the ability of entrepreneurs to raise funds and test products as entrepreneurs.

Fundly was purchased by GoFundMe.

Crowdfunding Platforms Reduce Risk

Mark believes that crowdfunding platforms reduce the risk for investors and entrepreneurs. When investors look at a company that has gone through Kickstarter and has a lot of support, it is an entirely different value proposition because so much risk has been taken off the table in the deal. One of the biggest risks new ventures face is “Will people buy my product?” When entrepreneurs know there is a high demand for their product, this risk is already overcome. A successful crowdfunding campaign removes risk because it allows entrepreneurs and investors to know that customers are going to be interested in this product.

The Girls Scouts is a great example of this. The Girl Scouts pre-sell their cookies. Then, they know exactly how many cookies to make, and aren’t stuck with unsold inventory.

Crowdfunding Leverages Passionate People

Crowdfunding campaigns can build buzz and momentum for the product or cause, and create a bandwagon effect where people want to buy or donate because they see other people doing so. In some cases, it becomes a herd mentality.

One of the best parts of crowdfunding platforms is that they allow us to harness the power of people who are passionate about our cause, campaign or product, and help those passionate fans share that passion with their connections. This is important because most of our potential customers don’t trust us, and when we reach out to them directly, we are not credible. But, when our passionate fans reach out to their connections for us, it helps the credibility our passionate fans have with their friends and family to flow through to us.

The Power of Video in Crowdfunding

Mark told the story of a student who raised about $100,000 by selling wooden watches. Mark said that the student's success was all about the video. The watches existed prior to this student. The student didn’t manufacture the watches. He bought and resold the watches, but he told a great story. It was the telling of the story, and the lifestyle portrayed by the video that made people interested in buying it.

Mark explains that most things are not brand new. They have usually existed before, but they are new to us. Mark said there is a difference between a customer saying to themselves "I’m aware that exists," and "I need that in my life." That type of awareness is often best achieved through video and not text.

The advantages of video vs. face-to-face sales pitches can include:

(1) allowing the message to scale and reach a much larger audience,

(2) the ability to re-film and get our message right,

(3) editing our pitch to a much more concise and effective message, and

(4) adding emotion-evoking music to our message.

Because of these reasons, I think Mark made a strong point that video is arguably better than face-to-face sales.

Mark talked about videos that go viral because they are funny or strike a chord. He uses the “United Breaks Guitars” video as an example of a video that went viral because it connected with video viewers. Mark believes stories that are funny, emotional, or connect to a common experience are easier to tell with video and song.

Connect with Mark

To connect with Mark and learn more about his consulting services, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-morris-1b711b161/.

Key Takeaways

Thank you Mark for sharing your stories and insights about crowdfunding and video. Here are some of my top takeaways from today’s episode.

Crowdfunding platforms can be used effectively to help social causes and political campaigns monetize through donations.
Crowdfunding platforms can also be used by entrepreneurs to pre-sell products so they don’t have to give away equity in their businesses. These businesses sell products to get the money they need instead of selling stock.
Crowdfunding platforms can lower risks for investors and entrepreneurs.
Almost all of the successful crowdfunding campaigns have a video, which helps better capture emotion and build connections.
Crowdfunding can cause a bandwagon effect where people want to buy our products or support our cause because they see a lot of other people have already done so.
Crowdfunding platforms help bridge the credibility gap by helping our passionate fans share our products and campaigns with their trusted connections, which helps their credibility to flow through to us.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Share Your Story

When have you observed a company use crowdfunding and video effectively to raise money? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/37-how-to-leverage-crowdfunding-platforms-and-video-to-fundraise-without-giving-up-equity/

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Ward Andrews is the founder and CEO of “Drawbackwards,” which is one of the leading design firms in the Phoenix, Arizona area. He and his team work to dissolve complexity and create simplicity for customer experience and software product teams around the globe.

He is a member of the Honors Faculty at Arizona State University. There, he teaches Design Entrepreneurship and helps students form creative disciplines to develop real products and launch real companies.

Ward is my former business partner. He and I were Co-Founders of Families.com. Together, we helped grow site members to 300k in just 18 months. This family-centric social community was then sold in 2007, only two years after launching the company.

Ward has held many other roles such as a Design Director and Internet Strategist at Fisher, and a Creative Director for Rhino Internet. Some of the brands he’s worked with to improve their design, UI (user interface), and UX (user experience) include American Express, Choice Hotels, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Sony, Intel, General Dynamics, Insomniac Games, and GoDaddy. Projects he’s worked on have received Addy, Prisma, and Emmy awards. Through CX and software product work, he has created over $1 billion in value through cost savings and new revenue growth (Source: Drawbackwards).

Here are three strategies Ward shared in our interview for implementing and improving effective user experience design:

1. Start with “Why”

I asked Ward if logos are important for small businesses, and if so, what are some dos and don’ts of creating a logo. Ward said many people get hung up over logos. “You don’t even need a logo!” he said. “In a way, they do matter, but in another way, they don’t.”

Ward shared the Simon Sinek teaching: “Start with the why.” “Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY” (Source: Simon Sinek).

The “why” should be at the center of everything a business or individual does. Then, there are concentric circles around “why” for “how” and “what.” Ward explained that a logo design should come at the end when talking about the “what.” Not that the logo isn’t important, but he said, “all I’m saying is not start with the logo. Start with the why. And the logo will be a result of the why, but it is a what.”

When individuals or businesses have a great why, people connect with it and give credibility or trust to the business or individual. Ward presented a great question, “If people don’t know why a business exists, why buy from them?” If there’s no why, then it can take away from the credibility, trust, or connection that individuals can build with a business.

Now, after the “why” and “how” have been figured out, then it’s ok to start thinking about the “what” and logo, which are actually very important. Because the why has already been figured out, then the logo should tell the story of the why. “Do the why work first before doing the logo work,” Ward said. Once that’s done, the color, fonts, etc. will then be able to carry weight and meaning to people.

This is how to create a powerful logo. Start with the why.

2. Improve User Experience & Interface

Design Mistakes in User Interface

Ward’s daughter was old enough to drive and had to go through the process of getting her learner’s permit. In order to do so, she had to sign up on a particular web interface. She said to Ward, “Dad! You would think that something everyone in the public needs to use would be really well designed and simple.” Unfortunately, it was not, and this is how many interfaces are executed.

“The Experience Success Ladder”

Ward created a framework called “The Experience Success Ladder” to improve experience and interfaces. This ladder includes 5 parts: Functional, Usable, Comfortable, Delightful, and Meaningful, which helps them to better measure a business’s success and credibility. It also allows them to see where products, services, and experiences fall on the ladder一on the higher end or lower end. “We find that people who are loyal to products and brands gravitate to experiences that are on the higher end of the ladder and not the lower end,” Ward said.

Their team did a lot of work with Choice Hotels’ brands such as Sleep Inn, Comfort Inn, Rodeway Inn, and others. They would go in and redesign the booking workflow which was used by each brand. They redesigned the booking so that there was less friction in the buying process.

One Objective

Many companies create funnels that try to do too many things and are too distracting. Instead, Ward helps his clients create simplified sales funnels where the visitor does one thing at a time with a clear objective.

Apple has done so much work over the years to get to where they are today. They have built all the infrastructure to deliver what they have now. “They’re dumping Intel and creating their own chips because they can’t get the performance or the full hardware-software integration that they want with others. They’ve been doing this over many years and decades, but they’ve been taking out third-party stuff and building their own,” Ward said.

Disney has been doing the same thing. For those who haven’t ridden Space Mountain, it’s a custom-built roller coaster inside of a dark space mountain. “It’s all custom tech! If you go to any ride at Disneyland, every console has a custom design with a simple interface that is designed only to do the things that that specific ride needs,” Ward said.

Customer and Employee Experience

Ward likes to teach “Customer Experience” and “Employee Experience” with a 6-square layout. There are three categories relating to the customer’s and employee’s experience, and that is awareness, delivery, and loyalty. “If we can boil down customer [or employee] experience in these categories, we can see where we are credible and where we are not credible. Then, we can up-level each one of them.”

| Awareness | Delivery | Loyalty | | Employee Experience | 8 | 7 | 2 | | Customer Experience | 1 | 10 | 5 |

(part of Ward’s methods in the self-assessment process)

Looking at the “Employee’s Experience,” how can we acquire great employees? What is the culture like? Ward likes to take each category and scale it from 1 to 10, with 10 being high and 0 being low.

Let’s say a business does a self-assessment for employee experience in each of these areas, giving themselves an “8” for awareness, a “7” for delivery, and a “2” for loyalty. Then Ward and his team ask a set of survey questions to the employees and customers to see where the gaps are at. Once that’s finished, it’s so much easier to know what to focus on when improving the employee or customer experience.

“You don’t need to have a billion dollars to pinpoint this,” Ward said. “You just need to have the right framework and a good partner/consultant to work with you to get into it.” This way businesses can turn around, see the current result in each category, and then set a goal of where they’d like the “Customer Experience Loyalty” to be. This framework allows others to pin-point, focus, and prioritize the focus of improvement efforts.

3. Build Credibility

During the early days of Twitter, there was no need to have “verified” accounts. (You know the blue, little dot after someone’s account name? That means it’s verified to add credibility to the person). Well, those didn’t use to be there, but Ward is one of the reasons those were deemed necessary.

Shaquille O’Neal was playing for the Phoenix Suns but had no Twitter account at all. Ward and I are both big fans of the Suns. Ward thought it would be fun to go and create an account for Shaq. So, Ward made an account called @shaquilleoneal, and started tweeting as if he were Shaq! It was an amusing experience for Ward until people began asking Shaq, “Umm, why are you Tweeting from the bench?!” Of course, Shaq hadn’t been tweeting from the bench. That was Ward doing the tweeting.

Sadly, Twitter ended up shutting down the account (you can still read the archive at @NotShaqONeal). Shaq got his own Twitter account, and now there is that blue dot next to specific individual’s names to verify or add credibility that the account belongs to the right person. Don’t worry, though. Ward got a great gift out of it. The Suns sent Ward a Shaquille O’Neal jersey signed by the man himself.

Having this credibility that Ward talks about is so fundamental to attracting and retaining clients. “When you establish credibility, your clients, customers, and peers respect you, vouch for you, and continue to use your business because they feel connected to what you say, do, and stand for.” (Source: Aguilar Public Relations)

Connect with Ward

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ward or connect with him, you can email him at ward@drawbackwards.com or visit his consulting site at https://drawbackwards.com/.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ward for sharing your stories and strategies with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from today’s episode:

Begin with the “why.” What’s your purpose? What’s your story? Once you’ve decided this, everything else should link back to it. The “why” should be at the center of everything.
Not that the logo isn’t important, but don’t start with it. Start with the “why.”
If people are going to be using it, make sure it’s designed well and simple.
When designing, keep Ward’s “Experience Success Ladder” in mind: Functional, Usable, Comfortable, Delightful, and Meaningful.
We want as little friction as possible in the buying process. To achieve this, create one clear objective, not many objectives. This helps build credibility and user experience.
Assess your business’s “Customer Experience” and “Employee Experience” for an inexpensive way to find the gaps for improvement.
Credibility is fundamental when bringing in and retaining clients. Effective design will add to the credibility and success of a business.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

Can you think of examples of good or bad user experience design? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/36-3-strategies-to-implement-effective-user-experience-design/

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Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Michelle Dale. Previously, we discussed how Michelle began an online business while working from home, traveling abroad, meeting her husband, and becoming a mother. We also discussed her business model with the different services and consulting she provides, tips on how to build connections, and suggestions for those starting YouTube videos. Today we will be focusing on the way that Michelle’s digital business has evolved since COVID and the 12 strategies that helped her business to grow from zero revenue to $20,000 in one day. So for those wanting to start an online business with the freedom to live anywhere you want, this episode is for you.

From No Revenue to $20,000 in One Day

When Michelle created her very first online course, she was earning around $20,000 per month just from services. After she launched this brand new program, she made $20,000 in one day! “I was spending the whole month with my team, working, and servicing clients to make $20,000. Then suddenly, I do this one product launch, and I make $20,000 in one day. It was a moment where I knew I had to evolve.”

Many of Michelle’s courses use different types of recurring revenue, beginning with payment plans. It’s more important to her that she has someone sign up for £200 a month recurring for two years than to call it good with one payment. This is a great way to set up courses because first of all, there is stability in knowing how much money will come in every month. Second, it’s convenient for students taking the course because they can spread their payments out. “I think it helps build trust because I know at any time if they feel like they’re not getting a good investment in my business, then they can cancel their payment. But, many people end up completing a full year or two of payments because they’re getting the value from it. So for me, recurring is better,” Michelle said.

I agree with Michelle because this way we’re not locking people into long-term contracts. They can get out any time they want! This forces us to keep the customers’ best interest in mind and strive to keep them happy every month. It also forces us to elevate our services and not rely upon customers having to stay with us, but doing so because they choose to stay.

Here are strategies Michelle has taken to monetize her business, and tips that helped her generate $20,000 in one product launch:

Start with a “why.” She had a purpose to help, support, and walk others through starting or growing an online business. She did this by providing services to consult, mentor, and provide resources through the steps she took alone.
Choose a niche & build an audience. Michelle chose to focus on services for clients involved with digital operations. This allowed her to build an audience of 500 email subscribers in 3 months by doing daily YouTube videos and creating blogs.
Offer a course for individuals to test. With a specific number of individuals, Michelle gave her course for free to accumulate feedback and testimonials.
It’s all about value. If people feel they’re getting the value out of what we’re investing in, they will stay if it’s possible for them.
Charge more for courses. Michelle took Yaro Starak’s advice. Instead of offering her course for free, she saw the value in her products, provided that value, and charged $1,000 for her course.
Revise courses and create more. Michelle has since revised her courses and launched additional courses for others to choose from.
Be impartial. Michelle is very impartial in terms of people who come to her. If individuals go to her, want to work with her, and feel happy with her services, then she of course wants her customers to stay. However, if they’re not happy, she would rather they invest somewhere else.
Don’t build a business around fear. Many individuals can be afraid of losing clients or their competition. That is something we need to let go of. Michelle puts it like this: “If I believe in what I’m doing and I know it gets results for people, I don’t want to cling on to people who don’t feel they’re getting results or a good investment from me.”
Make sure to coach and train the right kind of people. We need to make sure we are best for our clients regarding the niche, style, etc. Understand that we can’t please everybody. “You want to provide a lot of value for the people who are going to derive the most value from you,” Michelle said.
Be our best every day. Show up and make sure that we’re there for our customers. They need to be able to have access to us. Be present, be available, and provide good support so if customers need us, they have a place they can go to with questions or needs.
Be open. Michelle encourages opening our hearts to people so they can trust us and buy more from us. She gets a lot of repeat customers because of the care she provides to others, and this helps in building connections with them.
Go the extra mile. Sometimes Michelle likes to do “one-off workshops,” “one-off coaching sessions,” and more. She has a lot of faithful customers who join or buy her offers because they feel that she cares. “And it’s true, I do. I think a lot of that is missing from the digital world these days,” she said.

COVID: A Virtual Awakening

The individuals Michelle is working with during COVID have had many different experiences working online. “Different people experiencing different situations have had very much to do with their mindset,” Michelle said. She has had virtual assistants who have seen this time as an opportunity, and they’ve been able to grow their business since. However, she’s had other virtual assistants who saw this as the end of days, and their businesses had to shut down. This shows how much attitude actually does shape a business.

Michelle has found that this time has allowed her more opportunities and success. “I specifically had a vision for growing the consulting and program side of my business, and COVID has allowed me to do that,” she said. Many individuals are wanting to learn how to work remotely, so Michelle has begun focusing more on the marketing of her digital products. She has had to take a step back from servicing her clients, which has meant more opportunities for some of her virtual assistants. She said, “For me, it’s not so much how COVID has affected my business, it’s more about how COVID has allowed me to put changes in place which I wanted to do anyway.”

Because Michelle has focused on monetization and building a recurring revenue early on in her career, she can now focus on things that have more meaning in her life. Before she began this switch, many individuals were contacting her with questions such as: How can you do what you do from abroad? How is it working with kids? How are you able to move around? Michelle took so much time answering these questions when she had the realization: “I’ll create a digital program. I'll create a product where I can answer all these questions without having to answer everyone individually,” Michelle said, and she did just that.

Connect with Michelle

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Michelle or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/virtualmissfriday/, email her at any time to support@virtualmissfriday.com, or check out her website www.virtualmissfriday.com.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Michelle for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Attitude can shape a business.
COVID can allow for more opportunities that were not possible before. Evolving and innovating are okay.
Recurring revenue is beneficial for two reasons: First, there is stability in knowing how much money comes in every month. Second, it’s convenient for students taking the course because they can spread their payments out. They can also cancel anytime so they don’t feel locked in.
There are many different types of recurring revenue. Which ones will best work for your business and niche?
Have a certain number of individuals test your course. This will help you make adjustments where needed, and receive feedback and testimonials.
Be impartial. If you can’t best help your clients, don’t cling for them to stay. But if you can, do everything to go the extra mile for them such as providing them with unexpected things.
Don’t build a business around fear of losing clients or the competition. If we believe in what we’re doing and know it will provide a good investment for clients, don’t fear.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business, subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine, or follow the Monetization Blog at MonetizationNation.com. 2. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 4. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What stories can you share of businesses that survived and thrived during COVID? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/35-how-michelle-dale-grew-a-business-from-no-revenue-to-20000-in-a-day-with-an-online-course/

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What would it be like to make a great living while traveling the world? Michelle is a digital nomad who has unlocked the secrets of this lifestyle by balancing work from home and traveling abroad at the same time. She is the founder of Virtual Miss Friday (an online business consultancy), Academy (a built-in virtual assistant service), and the creator of 1inSourcing, which is a service specializing in serving six and seven-figure business owners.

Michelle began her first business at the age of 24, after leaving England and feeling unfulfilled with the typical career ladder. She landed in Egypt and not only found great success working online, but met her husband, became a mother, and pursued dreams she had of experiencing real freedom. She provides online training programs for freelancers and virtual assistants, and she now supports men and women to reach their professional and personal aspirations with the freedom of a digital business.

“I think the biggest thing for anyone if you really want to succeed, is to get very clear on why you must succeed. Build everything from there, and know that there is no such thing as failure unless you give up. So, keep going,” Michelle said. As I spoke with this successful woman, she shared with me her story, the services and programs she provides, how she connects with customers, and tips on how to create successful YouTube videos.

The Start of a New Beginning

Michelle was not happy working long hours, stuck in a typical work-life, and doing it all so young after leaving school at the age of sixteen. After returning home from work one night, she approached her front door that had been torn off the hinges, walked inside her home, and discovered that everything was gone including her birth certificate, utility bills, and more. As if a sign told Michelle that nothing was keeping her in England, she looked down at the ground to find her passport.

“The only thing that I had left was something that would allow me to travel. The next day, I walked into work and told everybody at work what happened. I said, ‘I’m quitting my job!’ I put my house on the market to sell it, and I went to the travel agent to book a one-way ticket to Egypt, which was exactly three months later. I arrived in Egypt and never looked back,” Michelle said.

A Business Model of Services & Consulting

After many changes and at the age of 24, Michelle began her own business. She wanted to provide services to help entrepreneurs, individuals who wanted to work from home, and those starting or growing their own businesses. She also wanted to advise and consult individuals with the same tools that she learned on her own. “I wanted to give others the support they need without the restrictions of having to hire employees. I know what it’s like starting a business, and if you don’t have someone there helping you, giving you advice, or someone to bounce ideas off of, it can be quite stressful. So, I wanted to be somebody that not only understood a client’s business or what they needed, but I wanted to help them grow, evolve, and pivot if they needed to,” said Michelle.

Her business model includes one person, either Michelle or someone she trains, which could be one of her 10-15 virtual assistants on her team, and they work to assist, support, take care of the details, or guide the client through their goals. This model provides the client with the personal service that they need. Michelle’s services are focused entirely on digital operations, so she helps clients with different digital types of businesses or services, such as consulting or coaching, selling digital programs, and more. “I’ve worked completely online, so I know a lot about this kind of environment as well as the challenges that people face working online,” Michelle said.

Digital Courses for Virtual Assistants, Freelancers, & Online Business Startups

Michelle originally set up a free course to help others start their own online business. “It was what I basically did, from start to finish. It was how to put yourself online, start getting clients, working with clients, and getting recurring income,” she said. Initially, she wanted to offer her courses for free, but when she researched Yaro Starak’s methods on his BlogMastermind program, she decided to trust him and take his advice, which has helped lead her to where she is today. She began with a blog and daily YouTube videos, and she received more than 500 subscribers in three months!

Michelle contacted her email subscribers with an invitation to apply to be one of seven people who could receive her course for free. Thirty-five individuals filled out the application. She picked seven individuals to try the course for free. For those who weren’t chosen, she offered the course for $1,000, and she was surprised at how many people purchased the course. That specific course, which was created in 2010, has evolved since then, and Michelle has since released several other courses. Her courses range from a small course for freelancers, 1nSourcing for those starting or growing their own business, workshops, help with marketing and coaching, and support for virtual assistants.

Building Connections with Customers

I asked Michelle if she could share some of her secrets and tips in building connections with customers. Here is what she suggested:

Always over-deliver. We need to do what we say we’re going to do, and then do a little bit more.
Be honest. It is really important from the beginning that our courses, programs, and anything we offer are not just hyped up. Make sure that people are going to get what they pay for, what they see, and what they’re looking to buy.
Be there for customers. We need to give people avenues to us. It doesn’t necessarily have to be to us as an individual, but it has to be something that we’re responsible for, such as a customer support team, personal assistant, a community manager of a Facebook group, etc. People need someone they can rely on in order to get a response.
Always do unexpected things for customers. Throw in unexpected things, specifically when it comes to customer support. For example, if a customer is struggling with something, and Michelle thinks she has a product that will help them, she will give her customer the product and say, “Go through this £47 product. If you feel it helps you and feel like paying for it, then go for it. If not, don’t worry. It’s yours.” Michelle likes to make sure that her customers feel very taken care of. It involves relationship building and a lot of listening.

Using Social Media

“Whenever a new social media platform came out, I would look at it as though it was going to change my business and make things easier for me to connect with more people,” Michelle said. Michelle was one of the first people on Twitter. She now has more than 50,000 followers. She loves the ease and quickness of getting her messages out there, and it’s been one of the primary ways that she markets her business now.

YouTube Videos

Here are some tips that Michelle suggests when creating our own YouTube videos:

Think about topics and become an expert on each. What do you want to work with? Draft out some topics. Know as much as you should as if a friend were going to ask you questions on the topic.
Don’t plan things out too much. Don’t feel as though it’s necessary to script things out. If so, we tend to come across as fake or false. It helps to create bullet points under each topic. Let things flow as though you’re having lunch with those you’re speaking with.
Don’t think: “Oh no! Millions of people are going to see this!” Michelle used to be very camera shy, but she knew what had to be done in creating YouTube videos. “Pretend the camera is your friend. I would look back at questions people sent me from emails, and then I would sit there and talk on video as if they had asked me that question,” Michelle said. Then she would pretend to sit in front of them, explain the answer back, and it became her best strategy.
It doesn’t matter how long the video should be. What matters is getting to the point where you’ve said all that you can say about the topic. Michelle doesn’t like fluff, but she also doesn’t like leaving out too many details. From a marketing perspective, she explained that shorter videos with more punch probably get the most followers and subscribers. People like quick takeaways because life is busy. “But, I think it depends on the topic and what you’re talking about,” she said.

Connect with Michelle

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Michelle for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

It is possible to balance work and traveling by growing and monetizing a digital business.
Be clear with why you must succeed, and then build everything from there. Understand that there is no such thing as failure.
Don’t give your courses away for free. Create value through products.
Always over-deliver for customers. Do what you say you’re going to do, and then do a little bit more.
Be honest with customers and make sure that they get what they pay for.
Always be available to customers in some way, whether that be through customer support, a Facebook group, a personal assistant, etc. Make sure that they always have a way to receive your help.
When doing YouTube videos, become an expert on the topics you talk about. Don’t plan things out too much, but come up with a list of bullet points and let things flow. Imagine talking to a friend and having a conversation with them. The length of each video depends on the topic, don’t add fluff but provide enough detail.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Connect with Nathan Gwilliam on Linkedin. 6. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

Would you ever want to be a digital nomad, traveling the world while making a great living? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/34-how-michelle-dale-built-a-business-that-allows-her-to-travel-the-world-while-making-a-great-living/

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More than a decade ago, I consulted for a company named i.TV where Justin Whittaker served as a top executive. i.TV was the creator of the most downloaded TV guide app in Apple’s App Store. i.TV designed and built second screen and social TV experiences for brands like AOL, Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and Nintendo through a software as a service model. Every month, millions of people used i.TV technology to discover, watch, and engage with television.

Justin Whittaker used unpaid influencer marketing for i.TV more effectively than almost any other company I have ever seen. I was so impressed with Justin’s efforts and success that I’ve used his model as an example over the years when teaching other people about successful influencer marketing.

I’ve seen some businesses use influencer marketing incredibly effectively by offering high commissions to the influencers. With Justin and i.TV, no financial compensation was offered to the influencers. Yet, Justin was still able to secure huge amounts of exposure for i.TV from the influencers.

6 Steps for Successful Influencer Marketing

Here’s how Justin secured so much unpaid exposure for i.TV from influencers:

(1) Find hundreds of targeted influencers and their contact info. Before the initial release of i.TV, Justin identified hundreds of highly targeted influencers. The list of influencers didn’t just include names of media organizations, but also included the list of news writers and bloggers who created content about the types of products and services i.TV created, along with their specific contact information.

Justin researched almost every single reporter or blogger he talked to. He looked at articles they had written on similar topics. i.TV also subscribed to a PR contact database that helped him identify and find contact information for the influencers. Once Justin got in the door with reporters, he asked them for referrals to other reporters who wrote on his topic.

Sometimes we don’t think of news writers as influencers, but if their publication writes about our niche, and the author writes about our niche, then that author is an influencer for our niche.

(2) Build relationships with the influencers by providing value. Justin was not sending bulk spam messages trying to get influencers and reporters to promote his company. Instead, he worked to build individual relationships with those influencers. And, he built the relationship before he ever asked for anything in return. Then, he nurtured the relationships with the influencers over time. This was another big key to Justin’s success is that he didn’t approach the influencers and reporters as a one-time transaction. He invested in long-term relationships.

Content creators love it when we are familiar with their work and the things that they care about and write about. So, Justin invested in getting to know the influencers and their work.

He provided value to the influencers and reports that helped them be successful in their jobs. As Justin reached out to influencers, he often offered them a chance to interview with the CEO of his company.

One great way to build relationships with influencers is to follow, share and comment on their content and social channels. One of Justin’s secrets of success was to treat reporters like influencers (which they are).

(3) Build credibility with the influencers. Justin feels that a one-letter domain really helped i.TV’s credibility working with influencers. He felt that the influencers took i.TV more seriously. I have seen the same benefit of credibility by owning the authoritative Adoption.com domain name. It can be worth it for young companies without credibility to buy a domain name that can give them credibility.

As an aside, I have used this credible domain name strategy over the years. My businesses or my clients have purchased premium domains such as Adoption.com, Law.com, Retirement.com, Advertising.com, Families.com, StockMarket.com, and many others. These types of domain names gave a lot of credibility and made a big difference.

Also, the enormous number of i.TV users and being the leader in their niche helped grow i.TV’s credibility and the willingness of the influencers to write about them. There are many other ways we can grow our credibility with influencers, such as through awards, testimonials, advanced degrees, credible statistics, associating with credible sources, and more.

(4) Make it easy for the influencers. As i.TV released new versions of the mobile app with significant new features, Justin worked with the influencers to get articles written about the release.

Justin was very thorough in what he sent the influencers. He didn’t just send a press release. He also sent content, images, logos, quotes, story ideas, etc. Justin made it as easy as possible for these influencers to write stories about i.TV. Justin says that he almost wrote their stories for them, and often the influencers and reporters just cut and pasted what he sent them into what he published.

This was very valuable because these writers had deadlines to create content, and Justin helped them meet their deadlines by providing them quality content they could publish with reduced effort.

(5) Provide value to the end-user. It is really important that the content we send to influencers provides real value to their customers, instead of being an advertorial for our product or company. For example, the i.TV content wasn't focused on why i.TV is the best TV Guide app. Instead, the content was focused on the new FREE features and benefits that readers could use to have a better experience with their entertainment. The content has to be focused on providing value to the end-user.

(6) Affiliate Marketing - Justin rolled out his i.TV influencer program before influencer marketing became the craze it is today. As such, Justin didn’t need to offer compensation to the influencers. Today, so many businesses are reaching out to the influencers, and many of the influencers are requiring compensation. Some influencers may promote our products and services without compensation, but that is becoming rarer, especially for the larger influencers. Today, many companies are choosing to increase the effectiveness of their affiliate marketing by setting up affiliate programs with tracking links and paying influencers a commission for each person they refer who purchases the company’s product or services. I strongly encourage all of my clients to set up paid affiliate programs to facilitate long-term win-win relationships with influencers.

What should we pay influencers?

My clients regularly ask me something like “What is the lowest amount I have to pay influencers?” I think that is the wrong question. In today’s influencer marketplace, the people who pay influencers the lowest amount possible have a hard time getting the attention of the right influencers, and they leave a lot of money on the table.

I think the right question is, “How much can I afford to pay the influencers in my affiliate program?” Remember, that with an affiliate program, we don’t pay the influencers anything until they generate a sale. So, we really don’t have to pay the influencers anything ourselves. With an affiliate program, payments come from the profit of the business the influencers send us.

Also, remember that with most other advertising sources, we take a big risk by paying for the advertising upfront, because the profits generated from the advertising may not be sufficient to cover the cost of the advertising. With affiliate marketing, that risk is eliminated for the business and transferred to the affiliate partner or influencers, because the affiliate partner only receives a commission after they have generated sales.

What size of influencers should we go after?

Justin organized his influencers in tiers to prioritize their reach. A lot of the big PR firms focus on the larger influencers because if we get a couple of wins with the bigger influencers it will trickle down. However, Justin's strategy was to go after all of the targeted influencers, in almost a “ground-up” strategy. His philosophy was “Why not get them all?”

However, with this “ground-up” model Justin found that he needed to give some preferential treatment to the top influencers, such as giving exclusive information to the top influencers. He also gave the smaller publishers “embargoes” limiting when they could publish the stories, so the larger influencers could break the story first. Justin’s ground-up strategy did not hurt i.TV with the big influencers, and he was able to get covered by the leading influencers.

Huge Success from Justin’s Efforts

Because of Justin’s incredible efforts, i.TV received more than 100 mentions from media and influencers each time i.TV put out a substantial press release while I was there.

I helped i.TV with their monetization and we were able to sign deals with 5 of the top 7 movie studios in a short period of time, which was only possible because of the tremendous influencer marketing efforts and media exposure Justin secured for i.TV.

Then, because of credibility and relationships, i.TV was able to morph into a technology services provider for large entertainment companies, which provided a larger and more stable revenue stream.

Connect with Justin

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Justin or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmwhittaker/

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Justin for sharing your stories and strategies about influencer marketing with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from today’s episode:

Find hundreds of targeted influencers and their contact info through research and subscribing to databases.
Include reporters who write about our niche as influencers, and treat them like influencers.
Build individual relationships with the influencers by providing value in a meaningful way to the influencer. Get familiar with their work. Comment on and share their content.
Build credibility with the influencers.
Make it as easy as we can for the influencers.
Provide value to the end-user by creating content that the users want to read instead of an advertorial.
Try to establish long-term win-win relationships with influencers. One of the best ways to ensure promotion from an influencer lasts long term is to set up an affiliate program and pay influencers a commission based on sales generated from their promotion.
We should try to pay influencers a rate that will motivate them to promote us a lot for a long time, instead of trying to pay as little as we can.
We might find success by working with a “ground up” influencer model, trying to work with all of the targeted influencers, and not just the biggest ones.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

Share Your Story

Can you share an example you’ve seen of effective influencer marketing? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/33-6-steps-for-successful-influencer-marketing/

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Information products can come in many different formats, such as online courses, virtual summits, ebooks, and coaching programs. At their core, information products must provide guidance and value to our consumers.

Bailey Richert is today’s guest. She is a business coach for infopreneurs. She profitably built a 5-figure email list without paid ads, has sold millions of dollars' worth of info-products, and earned a ClickFunnels 2-Comma Club Award, which means she has created a funnel that generated more than $1 million.

In this episode, Bailey is going to share 6 Tips for Adding New Revenue Streams to our businesses with Information Products.

1. Host or Attend Virtual Summits A virtual summit is an online conference, very similar to an in-person conference, but it’s all virtual. The host of a virtual summit reaches out to others in their niche or industry and invites them to be guest speakers at the virtual event.

There are many benefits to virtual summits. One reason you might want to host one is that it’s a great way to generate leads. Bailey feels that the number one benefit of virtual summits is that we will be able to grow our email list. The people invited to speak at the summit have an audience and an email list that are also the host’s ideal audience members. Hopefully, many of the guests will promote the virtual summit to their audience and that audience in exchange for a commission on upgraded tickets the people they refer buy. Many of the people who register will register to our email lists.

Summits can also generate revenue. We can sell all of the tickets to the summit as the Social Media Marketing World does. Or, we can give away a free ticket to a limited portion of the event and then sell upgraded “All-access passes” like Bailey usually does, such as I did with my Adoption Summit. Or, we could have people put in a credit card for payment but not charge their card. We would tell them that if they don’t feel they received sufficient value, they can cancel for any reason within a certain time period after the event ends. But, if they don’t cancel by that date, their card will be charged. Russell Brunson uses this model, and he says the vast majority of people who attended his online summits don’t cancel and allow their credit cards to be run to pay for the event. During the pandemic, I attended one of Russell Brunson’s virtual summits, and I received so much value I did not cancel, and I allowed my credit card to be run. Attendees must subscribe with their email when they register for the summit. We can then pitch products or services related to the summit to them via email. Summits can be a great platform to launch or promote an online course related to the summit’s topic.

The more abstract reasons for doing a virtual summit are growing our networks and finding other opportunities. We can build relationships with people and put ourselves out there. Summits can give us more visibility in our space so that people start to know who we are and respect us. This visibility gives us opportunities. People may ask us to do podcast interviews, to speak at their summits, or be interviewed for their YouTube channel. These can lead to other things such as more sales, clients, collaborations, etc.

An important part of the virtual summit strategy is to select speakers who are willing to help promote the event. Bailey helped plan a summit for a client once where he had 62 speakers. Her client insisted on going after A-level influencers in his field. Bailey had told him many times that getting B-level influencers was a better idea because they will see themselves as partners with him and will be more willing to promote the summit. However, he really wanted to get big names and didn’t listen to her. Out of the 62 speakers only 4 promoted the summit.

2. Online Courses “The size of the eLearning industry was $176 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $398 billion by 2026.” (Source: sellcoursesonline.com)

Many people say online courses are the first information product we should provide. Bailey cautioned against this, saying that it really depends on where we are and what our goals are. If we don’t already have an email list or an audience, it is likely that an online course won’t be highly successful for us. We can first build our audience through something like a virtual summit and then once we have an audience we can launch an information product like a course to that audience.

Bailey also cautioned against hosting online courses on a website that isn’t our own. This is another instance of building a skyscraper on land that isn’t ours. We should strive to create products in a space that we can control.

However, once we have a substantial audience that trusts us, and we build a course on a platform we own, then courses may be the most lucrative way we can leverage information products to add a new revenue stream to our business.

3. Create Challenge Courses that Lead into Other Courses Challenge courses are like online courses, but instead of giving the customer all the content at once and letting them go through it at their leisure, challenge courses are designed to be a step-by-step guide to lead a customer to an end goal that they can accomplish. For example, the course could be something like “7 Steps to Publishing Your First Ebook”. Thus, by the end of the course, customers will have published their first ebook. Challenge courses can be the main product or they can be a great way to lead to something bigger. If someone had a course called “30 Days to Finishing Your eBook Manuscript”, a customer who took that course would receive the help they need to finish their manuscript during the course.

4. Provide a Coaching Package that Has a Lot of Value Coaching packages are another great information product. We typically think of coaching as a service, and it is, but Bailey tells her coaches not to think of it as an hourly gig. Coaches should be putting together a coaching package that has incredibly high value so they can charge more for it and aren’t just trading hours for dollars.

Most coaches can’t tell their customers that they’re going to be charged $1,000 per hour, even if they are worth that much. However, they can put together a $5,000 package for three months that includes our time and services, but it also includes other elements. These packages could include things such as weekly meetings with the coach, unlimited email and message support, a customized action plan that the coach will create just for the customer, lifetime access to the coach’s signature online courses, checklists, etc. These packages give the coaches the ability to build something once and then monetize it with each of their customers. Because of the package’s value, it will then seem like such an irresistible deal that it will be a “no brainer” they have to take. This can be a particularly effective strategy if we have already developed many of the materials we will provide to our coaching clients.

5. Give Customers with Memberships Reasons to Stay Memberships can be a great way to generate recurring revenue; however, we don’t assume they're easy money. According to Marketing General, 57% join associations to network with their peers, while 26% of people want to learn about their industry’s best practices, and 25% want to access specialized information (Source: Member Press).

People only stay in the membership if they are using it and it is providing recurring value to them. If not, they usually leave after about 3 months. We must give them a reason to stay, whether that be through the continuous addition of new materials or something else where they’re getting so much value that it is worth it for them to stay. We should be giving them opportunities to network with their peers, learn about their industry’s best practices, and access specialized information.

6. Give Something a Try Bailey’s final piece of advice is to give something a try. If you’ve never done anything with information products before, now is a great time to delve into it. It will likely be hard at first, as most things are, but down the road, it could lead to something great.

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.” -Neil Gaiman

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Bailey for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Host virtual summits to build our audiences and email lists.
Host virtual summits to provide value and make connections with experts in our community.
Invite influencers to speak at the summit who will be willing to promote the summit to their following.
Building our audiences before starting an online course will allow the online course launch to be much more successful.
Host our online courses on our own websites.
Create challenge courses that lead to our more expensive courses.
Create coaching packages that have an incredibly high value for our customers and bundle value in addition to our time.
In our membership services, keep providing members with recurring value that will make them want to stay each month.
Try something new with information products. It may lead to learning and great success.

Connect with Bailey

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Bailey or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/baileyrichert/ or visit her website at https://baileyrichert.com/.

Share Your Story

What information product could you add to your business to create a new revenue stream from your existing customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/32-6-tips-for-adding-new-revenue-streams-with-information-products-with-bailey-richert/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host.

Forgiving $10 Million in Debt

In November 2020, Dave Ramsey’s company bought $10 million of debt for 8,000 people from two private debt collection companies and completely forgave all of the debt with no strings attached. That’s $10 million of debt completely forgiven. This is an inspiring example of a business giving an enormous amount of grace.

In today’s episode, we’re going to explore how to be more “graceful” and give grace in business.

What is Grace?

Grace is one of my favorite words. Grace is a gift of kindness and mercy we don’t deserve. “Grace is the opposite of karma, which is all about getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve.” - Justin Holcomb

We’re familiar with and grateful for God’s grace for us. “The very center and core of the whole Bible is the doctrine of the grace of God.” –J. Gresham Machen

However, what role does grace play in the business world? Grace is not just something we receive from God, but it is also something He expects us to give to others as we strive to be more like Him.

Colossians 4:6 teaches, “Let your speech be always with grace…”

Matthew 6:14 teaches “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

Grace and French Fries

Here’s an example that happened to me this week. I have a daughter who is 17 years old and will be headed to college in another state in the fall. I want to make the best use possible of the time she is still living in our home, so I’m trying to take her on a 1-on-1 father-daughter date each week. As part of those dates, she gets to choose a treat. She loves the french fries from a restaurant named Freddy’s, and that's the treat she chooses most frequently.

A few nights ago, this daughter and I went on our date and drove to Freddy’s for some fries. We ordered in the drive-through, but as I was pulling up to the pickup window I realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the worker at the drive-through window, expecting him to tell me they would make me fresh fries when I return with my money. However, to my surprise, the Freddy’s worker said he would give us the fries at no cost. Furthermore, he told us that they had made two concretes (their frozen custards with mix-ins) for someone and messed up the order. They asked if we would like to also have the frozen desserts for free.

My daughter quickly figured out how we could pay them through Apple Pay, but Freddy’s still didn’t take our money. That Freddy’s team had extended grace to me in my forgetfulness. How do you think my daughter and I felt about Freddy’s when we left?

As we drove out of the Freddy’s parking lot, we were already leaving them a great review. My daughter and I found a place to park, eat our food, and play a magical unicorn’s card game. What the Freddy’s workers did wasn’t really about french fries. That date with my daughter could have been a dud. However, thanks to the grace of the Freddy’s team in Rexburg, Idaho, they helped turn our father-daughter date into something magical.

Grace When Firing a Team Member

Sometimes companies use unfortunate firing situations as moments to belittle their departing team members. That does not need to be the case. I am aware of one company that had an employee who had a series of financial crises, and the company loaned a substantial amount of money to her to help her get through that situation. Later, it became necessary to let that team member go. At that time, most of the money loaned to the employee had not been repaid. The company had the right to deduct the remaining borrowed amount from the team member’s last payment. However, the company realized the team member would need those funds to survive as she searched for a new job, so the company completely forgave the debt at the time they let her go. This is a great example of grace during a time an employee really needed some help.

Grace When We Deleted My CEOs Presentation

In a previous episode, I told the story of how I sold my Adoption.com business to the Gladney Center for Adoption. In the first board of directors meeting after that sale, we were scheduled to make a presentation about the plan for Adoption.com going forward. My presentation and the presentation of the Gladney CEO were both in one Google Slides file, and somehow, late the night before the board meeting, the file was completely deleted in a non-recoverable way.

I let the Gladney CEO know, and our team worked through the night, and up until the moment of the presentation to try to recreate as much of the presentation as we could from memory. The loss of the file was completely my fault, and it would have been very understandable for the CEO to lecture me about the importance of the board meeting, and how I need to be more responsible about making backups. However, the only things I heard from the CEO and the rest of the Gladney team were supportive. They just wanted to know how they could help. That is an example of amazing grace extended to me when I didn’t deserve it. Their kindness and grace motivate me to want to extend much more grace back to others who also mess up and make mistakes.

Police Officer Gives Grace Instead of a Ticket

Today I saw a Facebook post about a man named LaVonte Dell who was recently pulled over by a Westland, Michigan police officer because of the tint on his windows. LaVaonte posted, “This stop was nothin’ like I thought it would be. He got my s—t and was walking back to the car and seen my daughter wasn’t in a car seat. So he asked me to get out and speak with him. He asked why didn’t she have one and I told him all I been thru this year like I barely making it because of these garnishments and I really don’t like asking people for (stuff). Do you know this white police officer told me to follow him to Walmart on Ford road, and he purchased my daughter a car seat with his own money? If you would have seen us in Walmart u would have thought we were best friends. It was like night and day. U got me hella tats walkin side by side with a white officer Westland at that. I’ve been calling all day trying to get his name because I was so in shock. I didn’t even look at his name tag. Never judge a book by its cover it’s most def is some good guys left. I told him I never met an officer like u. He said I’m just doing my job what good would giving u a ticket do besides putting u further in the hole making it harder on you to come up." (Source: LaVonte Dell on Facebook)

That officer could have easily given a ticket, but instead, he extended grace and helped with the highest priority of making sure that the little girl is safe and the father knows somebody cares about him and his family. Thank you so much LaVonte for sharing your inspirational story on Facebook.

Let’s Be “Graceful”

Our challenge for this week is to try to be a little more “graceful” in our businesses. Let’s be a little more patient, forgive, ask for forgiveness, and be kind. Instead of always telling people what they are doing wrong, when they already know it, maybe we can try to understand and help. When a customer or vendor is in a hard financial situation, maybe we let them out of their annual contract when we don’t have to. When a co-worker drops the ball on something, maybe we express our gratitude for how much they are juggling so well.

Let’s remember that we all have done many things wrong or been in difficult situations where we desperately need grace. How much more likely are we to receive grace if we are striving to extend grace to others? Let’s also remember that everyone is going through challenges in their lives and sometimes we’re the angels that God is trying to send to help them.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive Entrepreneurs of Faith each Sunday.

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One of the Best Investors an Entrepreneur Could Hope to Have In this episode, I interview one of the best investors that any entrepreneur could ever hope to have. His name is Karl Huish, and he was one of the primary investors in Adoption.com before we sold it.

Karl is the managing director of Bela Flor Communities, a real estate development company. As an investor and board member, he participates in venture capital investments in a variety of fields. He was the founder and CEO of a risk management firm, which was sold to a public company. He was the founder and CEO of a turn-key asset management platform for 401(k) and retirement plans, which was also sold to a large private company.

Karl started his career practicing corporate and transaction law. He has a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. (Economics) from Brigham Young University. In addition to a law license (now inactive), Karl has previously held licenses as a CFP (certified financial planner), Series 7, 6, and 63 securities licenses, AIF (accredited investment fiduciary), and general insurance licenses.

Did you know that 97% of consumers read online reviews (Source: Bright Local) and 86% of consumers would pay more for a service provider that has high ratings and good reviews (Source: Software Advice)? In today’s episode, Karl and I are going to discuss secrets to succeed with online reviews in an untrusting world.

Living in an Increasingly Untrusting World Karl Huish and his family used to put together gift baskets and give them away around the holiday season to contribute to the holiday spirit. In previous years, people had been very accepting, receiving the baskets with a lot of gratitude. It was a joyous event for both the Huish family and the recipients. In recent years, Karl and his family have stopped giving them out. They were finding that people were less and less receptive to the generous gift. Since these recipients didn’t know Karl and his family, the recipients did not trust Karl’s family.

In recent years, our society has become far less trusting of people we do not know are credible. We’re wary of unknown people who want to give us a gift. Before buying many products we look through online reviews. Many businesses have found that our potential customers don’t trust what we say about ourselves, and these businesses are striving to find more credible and effective ways to build trusting relationships with potential clients. In this episode, Karl and I talked about online reviews and how they can help us create that trusting relationship.

Four Steps for Using Reviews to Build Trust Here are some of Karl’s thoughts on credibility and reviews:

1. Encourage Customers to Review our Products and Services 95% of people trust recommendations from others over branded content, even if they don’t know them personally. (Source: Josh Hager, Top Influencer).

In order to use reviews to build trust, our companies need online reviews. Unfortunately, most customers only give reviews if they are extremely happy with a company or extremely unhappy, but 97% of consumers read online reviews (Source: Bright Local).

One of the best ways to motivate customers to write reviews is to simply ask them, but what is the best way to do that? Here are a few ideas on how to ask for reviews:

The most common way to ask is in person, right after the customer has received the product or service. If a customer gives a compliment about the company, employees can easily ask them to write what they’ve said on a review platform of their choice. We can also ask questions like “Did you find everything you were looking for?” or “How was your experience in our store today?” to facilitate conversation and provide an opening to ask for a review.

If there isn’t an in-person interaction, we can send an email or make a phone call after customers receive the product or service and are feeling the happiest about the product or service. The company ThriftBooks does a great job of keeping this simple. A few days after the product is delivered, customers will receive an email asking them to rate the produce and service. The email has options for one through five stars and by clicking a rating the customer is taken to a review site where their rating is already in place and there is a space to share more details about their experience.

Another simple way is through SMS. Most people have their phones with them constantly and 56% of all online reviews are posted from mobile devices. Sending a quick text with a link to a review site is an effective method for gaining more reviews because it’s easy for customers to leave them.

Keeping our review requests simple will encourage more customers to leave reviews. If customers have to click through several pages or read a lot of information, many will likely give up before they finish the process.

2. Monitor Online Reviews

“Feedback is a gift. Ideas are the currency of our next success. Let people see you value both feedback and ideas.” -Jim Trinka and Les Wallace, Authors of A Legacy of 21st Century Leadership

When Karl and his wife went on a trip to Italy, they stayed in a hotel where the air conditioning wasn’t working. To help cool the rooms, the staff had opened the windows, letting in a lot of mosquitoes. Within ten minutes of being at the hotel, Karl’s wife was ready to write a negative review. She did, giving the hotel one star, and five minutes later they got a call from the hotel’s management telling them that they saw the review and asking what the hotel could do to help. They brought fans and did the best they could, explaining the situation with the air conditioner. Because the hotel was monitoring their reviews, they were able to see that a customer needed help and respond, resulting in Karl's wife changing her rating to a four-star rating.

"Most people in the world are fair-minded. If you do the best you can, are honest with people and upfront with people, and explain the situation, even if the result is not optimal, people will accept it. People will generally say, ‘I get it, you're doing the best you can.’ They will not be highly critical.” -Karl Huish

3. Give Immediate Customer Service “Be quick with service in a way that's authentic, real, direct, and timely. All those things make a huge difference." -Karl Huish

We can learn another lesson about immediate responses from the experience of Karl and his wife. The hotel had a system in place to quickly identify negative reviews and then immediately take action to resolve the situation. This hotel responded to the review in person within five minutes. That’s really impressive. If they had waited until the next day it would have been too late, and there would have probably been very little chance that the review would have been changed. Immediate responses are much more impressive and have a “wow” factor because most businesses don’t do that.

If you can deal with it quickly and show exceptional customer service in response, you can often completely, or at least to a great extent, remedy that negative review or that negative situation.

4. Give Employees Incentive for Good Reviews The employees who responded to that negative review also seemed personally invested in the situation. Karl speculated that there was money at stake for the individual employees along with the hotel in general. We can incentivize our employees by giving things like spot bonuses for those who were working when the company received five-star reviews. We can also take this in the opposite direction for the employees on staff when the company receives one or two-star reviews. Either way, this type of system will help align our team priorities with our company priority of increasing 5-star reviews. It will ensure our employees have a personal stake in the outcome, and it will drive them to give the very best customer service they can.

What do we do when a customer acts unreasonably? Customers know the power of reviews; especially the power of a bad review. So what do we, or our employees, do when a customer threatens to leave a bad review and demands something unreasonable in return?

Firstly, we want to do everything we can to not create situations where customers could become unreasonable. Be upfront with our customers when there is a problem and don’t make promises that the company can’t keep. Set good expectations.

There are situations that aren’t preventable, however. In these instances, we want to listen to the customer and make sure we understand the problem. This will help the customers to feel heard. Steven Covey taught us to “Seek first to understand before seeking to be understood.” Once we think we understand, it is often good to explain to the customer what you’re understanding is of their problem to check if we are understanding correctly. Feeling understood can help diffuse a lot of the negativity.

Once the customer feels we understand their perspective, we can calmly explain our situation and try to solve the problem. Forbes advises to “ask [the customer] what [he or she] feels should be done or put forward your own fair and realistic answer to the problem. In most cases, that’s all the customer is looking for—and may result in providing some degree of satisfaction.”

Recurring Revenue Streams As part of the real estate business, Karl has seen a shift as developers have started transitioning from buying land, building on it, and selling it to buying land, building on it, and holding onto that property and the revenue stream connected to it. Sometimes the answer is to hold onto what we’ve built. This goes for physical assets as well as digital ventures.

More and more businesses are turning to recurring revenue streams. For example, IDC predicts that by 2022, 53% of all software revenue will be purchased with a subscription model. One business Karl has experience with didn’t create a recurring revenue model. Twenty years later they looked back and regretted it. Another business put all their energy into recurring revenue streams and they were very successful for it. Every business should evaluate whether there are recurring revenue streams that can be built into the business. Recurring revenue streams make it easier to plan, create higher margins and more predictability, and provide a better lifestyle with less stress from an owner’s perspective. Recurring revenue streams often also help companies to sell for a lot more money.

Connect with Karl If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Karl or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-huish-72276a114/

Key Takeaways Thank you Karl for sharing your stories and wisdom. Here are some of my key takeaways from today's episode:

Encourage online reviews to build your credibility.
Monitor online reviews so you can quickly solve problems.
Give immediate customer service to fix problems where possible.
Be honest with our customers when there is a problem.
Give our employees incentive to get good reviews.
Listen to our customers.
Consider if there are recurring revenue streams that could be built into our businesses.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Connect with Nathan Gwilliam on Linkedin. 6. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram or Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story Do you have any tips and tricks about increasing 5-star reviews? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/30-using-reviews-to-build-credibility-in-an-untrusting-world-with-karl-huish/

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Credibility is becoming increasingly important in business. Potential customers don’t trust as easily as they once did, so it is much more important that we do everything we can to build strong relationships of trust, be honest, and be real in those relationships. In today’s episode, Curtis Blair and I discuss how to build stronger credibility in our relationships.

Curtis has led five companies to multimillion-dollar status. His most recent success was leading a marketing company from zero to $12 million in four years. He's directed marketing teams for the international brand Fila. In addition to being an incredible businessperson, he is also an amazing person.

1. The Three Rs of Credibility Marketing: Real, Raw, Relevant Curtis remembers an ad from when Instagram first became popular. A celebrity was walking through the airport, and she was pulling a very beautiful luggage piece, one that could be used for an executive or fashion model. It was a very versatile, nice-looking bag. She described the wheels, the ball bearings, the handle, the three different sizes, the many pockets, and it was supposed to be off the cuff like, “Hey, I just got off the plane, and I love my piece of luggage.” However, it was just so inauthentic. So much so that it was almost done in poor taste. At the time, there were a lot of social influencers being paid big dollars to do advertising, but it didn’t take very long for people to realize that the ad was inauthentic.

Curtis says there are three key ingredients to developing social capital. They are being real, being raw, and being relevant. This means we must be organic, consistent, dynamic, entertaining, thought-provoking, a little vulnerable, and share stories that are compelling. With so much being fake online, it is important for us to be authentic because our customers can tell the difference. It is something that is qualitative, not quantitative.

One way we can be more authentic is to share a backstory from our company. People love to hear what is going on behind the scenes. As we provide that to our audience, whether that is employees, customers, shareholders, or vendors, we can improve our social capital.

“If we don't find ourselves being a little bit more real, a little bit more raw, and a little bit more relevant, we will be left behind.” -Curtis Blair

2. Adding Value in Our Relationships When we are trying to grow meaningful relationships, in business or in our personal lives, one key piece is to add value to the relationship and to reciprocate the value that the other person has added to the relationship. We have to be very careful when approaching relationships that we are adding value to. There are appropriate times to ask for something, but it's important when we receive something like a piece of great advice not only to attribute where that came from but also to pay it forward. We should give value in return. Part of adding social credibility and adding to the credibility capital is taking what we've learned and paying it forward.

Our relationships need to be considered priorities. There can be a shared feeling of trust and belonging in relationships, but those feelings if not constantly nurtured can fade.

Recently, Curtis sold a business. During the transition phase, he was trying to help the new owners figure things out. They were asking Curtis questions that he knew he had answered for them before, but he could tell there was something else going on. He swallowed his pride and helped them go through it again. He did his best to help them, to resolve any fears or concerns they had, and to really truly answer the questions they were asking. He didn’t give any excuses or try to take over by saying this is what I would do. He just let them figure it out and grow from it. Sometimes adding value means that we have to put our egos in our back pockets for a moment and just make sure that we're delivering a relevant and important response or comment.

3. Credibility from Experts and Outside Sources It is much better for someone else with a tremendous amount of credibility and clout to say something good about us than it is for us to say about ourselves. How much more credible is it when Oprah says that someone has a meaningful book or podcast than when they say it themselves? How much more credible would it be if Liam Neeson were to tell me I was a great actor or if Elton John were to say that someone was a great musician?

That credibility is much more powerful than if someone were to say it about themselves. We're witnessing this in politics, entertainment, and business. It’s even prevalent on a smaller scale; most students won’t take a class from a professor unless they’ve heard about them from someone else, which is how websites like RateMyProfessors.com thrive.

“Credibility is a leader's currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it, he or she is bankrupt.” -John C. Maxwell, American author, speaker, and pastor

4. Hard Times Grow Relationships, Build Character, and Encourage Innovation One of the secrets of credibility is being there in the hard times. When you have to take a stand or when you go through something tough with someone, it builds a deeper relationship and deeper credibility in the relationship because they know they can trust us to be there for them when times are tough. We can’t just be there when times are good; we have to be there when it’s hard to be there for them.

In a business sense, we can apply this to when an employee or customer is going through something tough. Perhaps they’re sick with COVID or their spouse is going through cancer. Maybe a customer is facing bankruptcy and we let them out of the contract that we didn't have to let them out of. When we are there for people in times like these, that’s when we can build some of the most loyalty and the most credibility capital. When we do something for somebody when they really need help, that's one of the key secrets to building relationships that last.

As Curtis gets together with his associates and friends that helped him get to where he is, they don't talk about their successes or the great things they’ve done. They talk about the hard things; they talk about the scars and the battle wounds, discussing the lessons they’ve learned. It’s during those times that character really shines, that's when the rubber meets the road. Leadership and character are defined in those dark moments.

Hard times encourage us to innovate in ways that we wouldn’t have if things had stayed the same. Curtis thinks that there will be more creativity, more innovation, and more market segment verticals opened up to us because of this COVID crisis than we would have seen in five years had everything just stayed status quo. He’s seen it in his own marketing businesses, in the campaigns that they’re drawing up, in the customer journeys that they're mapping out for clients. We are becoming much more creative, engaged, and vulnerable. We’ll be able to come out of a crisis like this with our chins up and our heads held high. True character, true innovations, and some of the greatest thought leaders will come out of our communities during these times.

5. Fill Our Networks with People We Want to be Like “The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people.” -Colin Powell, Former United States Secretary of State

When Curtis moved from Connecticut to Colorado, he noticed there was a change in style. His friends in Connecticut had worn black rock T-shirts. In Colorado, 501 button-fly jeans were in style. Curtis realized that location and association matter. Most of your Facebook friends live within a 100-mile radius. Most kids choose colleges within a 30-minute drive from their home.

It's been shown in socioeconomic studies that suicide and obesity are happening in networks and pockets of communities. The same can be true of positive things. So as we think about the concept of belonging, it is important that we respect the law of association. We become like those we surround ourselves with. We become a part of their social network and rub off on each other. Hopefully, we can surround ourselves with the kind of people we want to be like, as well as be the kind of person that other people want to be around. For me, Curtis Blair is definitely one of those people I want to be like.

6. Experts and Thought Leaders When I asked Curtis who is the person who has the most credibility for him in his life and why, he told me that it changes every week. He is reading a new book every week, but it is always the person he is investing time in who’s an expert and who’s a thought leader. This comes back to the same common principle; the person most credible to us is an expert who is giving us great advice. In that relationship, there's trust, respect, thought leadership, speaking from a place of experience, and speaking from a place of vulnerability.

Connect with Curtis

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Curtis or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtisbblair.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Curtis for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

Be real, raw, and relevant in our marketing. Our customers can tell when we’re being inauthentic.
Add value to our relationships and prioritize those relationships.
Sometimes adding value means swallowing our pride and letting the other person figure things out on their own.
When experts, customers, and other credible sources talk about us, it is much more credible than when we talk about ourselves.
Be there for people during the hard times to establish stronger relationships.
Surround ourselves with people we want to be like.
Listen to experts and thought leaders who speak from experience and vulnerability.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

What successful credibility strategies have you seen in your career? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/29-6-credibility-strategies-from-curtis-blair-who-led-5-companies-to-multimillion-dollar-valuations/

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"Startups don’t fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model." -Steve Blank, Entrepreneur

A profitable monetization model is a key aspect of every business. In today’s show, Johnny Hanna discusses some monetization models, and other strategies, that have attracted customers to his companies and helped him generate strong profits.

Johnny Hanna is the CEO and co-founder of Homie, a company that is revolutionizing the home buying experience. Homie’s mission is to simplify home buying and selling with a one-stop-shop experience. Prior to Homie, he was the president and co-founder of Entrata, a real estate software company. Johnny helped Entrata grow to more than $100 million in annual revenue.

The Freemium Model While Johnny ran Entrata, he and his coworkers recognized that if customers were using their platform, they could influence them to buy their other services such as their websites, online payment system, or revenue management system. So, they gave away their accounting software for free and then sold all of the other tools and services connected to that system.

This was a way to get their foot in the door using the highly-successful freemium model, providing one product or service for free, and then charging for something else. This freemium model is one of the most tried, tested, and proven successful digital monetization strategies. The freemium model has been the most successful monetization model in my career. With this freemium model, Entrata has been able to reach more than $100 million in recurring annual revenue.

“The freemium model allows users to experience and get hooked to products by removing initial barriers to adoption. As users realize incremental value over time, they are willing to pay for premium features and capabilities.” (Source: Chargebee.com)

Loss Leader Similar to a freemium model, we can also use a loss leader strategy to attract new customers. A loss leader is when a company provides a huge discount on a product or service to get clients in the door. Homie does this by providing a highly-discounted flat fee for selling a home. This attracts many clients to them because they don’t have to pay Homie a commission based on how much the house sells for. After the client becomes thrilled with their experience with Homie, they often buy the company’s other products or services, which is where Homie generates its profits.

“When customers buy other items in addition to the loss leader, you make a larger profit based on the volume of purchases from customers. By choosing your loss leaders and complementary products, you can actually use loss leaders to encourage purchases of other items in your store.” (Source: smallbiztrends.com)

Homeownership as a Service Homie is rolling out a new model similar to the software as a service model. This “homeownership as a service” model is a new concept that would give Homie a recurring revenue stream. Johnny and Homie realized that with this model, they could take a lot of the headache, risk, and work off their customer’s plate. So, they brainstormed homeownership services that the company could provide as a recurring service. They came up with services such as replacing air filters, trimming trees, mowing lawns, chlorinating the pool, spraying for bugs, or adding salt pellets for a water softener. The customer would pay a monthly fee and choose which services they would like, and the company would automatically send qualified people to perform these tasks. Just like Homie, we can create recurring revenue streams in nearly any niche.

Using the “Kind-of-like” Comparison to Establish Credibility Describing a new product, service, or business can sometimes be hard and requires a long, detailed explanation, but it doesn’t have to. During our conversation, Johnny described Volley, an app that he is excited for and planning to use in his business. Johnny said it is “kind of like Marco Polo for business.” This “kind-of-like…” description strategy is a powerful way to quickly describe a new product or service in a way that adds credibility. I already knew what Marco Polo was, and that it is very successful, so it was immediately easy for me to picture what this new app does. He used the kind-of-like strategy to compare something new to something I already trusted, and as a result, the credibility and understanding flowed through to the new thing he was trying to describe. This is a very effective strategy.

I have been told that when movie scriptwriters are pitching movies they often use a similar strategy, describing their movie as kind-of-like an existing movie, but with a specific difference. For example, the plot of Finding Nemo is kind-of-like Taken with an overprotective single father who gets into dangerous situations while searching for his abducted child, however finding Nemo is animated with fish. This kind-of-like description gets to the heart of what we are trying to describe in a simple way. It easily allows our customers to understand what our product or service is about without a lengthy description. Try it. What well-known and credible product or service is kind of like your product or service?

How Volley Leverages the Tectonic Shift of Video Volley is an app that allows businesses to communicate with their customers through video. It is perfect for a business like Johnny’s. Their realtors can record videos ahead of time to automatically send to new clients. These videos can introduce the agent and company, and then walk the new client through their process. The client can watch it any time and rewind it if they miss anything. Face-to-face interaction is the best way to interact with our customers and clients, but when that isn’t possible, video is the next best thing. Volley is a great example of leveraging a tectonic shift to create a successful business.

Consider Hiring a Firm to Help Create Advertisements One way Johnny has effectively utilized video is by hiring firms to create marketing videos for them. They hired people who had previously worked for the Harmon Brothers (a previous guest on the show, and the creators of advertising campaigns for Poo-Pourri, Purple Mattress, and more). As a result of this strategy, Johnny’s videos have had several million views.

Nearly half of businesses (41%) reported spending at least a half-million dollars on digital marketing each year, and 81% spend at least $50,000 (Arora Project). Every business is going to have to advertise in some way. Experienced advertising firms can be a great way to ensure our advertising budgets are being put to good use.

Seek Testimonial Videos from Customers Homie has also utilized video through testimonial videos from their customers. Many of Homie’s clients are hesitant to share they used Homie on Facebook or social media because they have close realtor friends, and they don't want to hurt their feelings. They especially don’t want to hurt their feelings by going with Homie and then brag about how wonderful their experience with Homie was on Facebook. One way that Homie has been able to work around this is with testimonial videos from their clients. Many of their clients were willing to do testimonial videos and let Homie promote them, instead of the client making the videos and promoting the videos on their social channels that the realtors are following.

According to a 2014 Demand Gen Report, 97% of B2B buyers feel that user-generated content like consumer reviews is more credible than other types of content, and a 2014 study found customers spend 31% more with businesses who have good client testimonials (Source: Spectoos).

Homie’s Video Campaign with Their Realtors Homie is also doing testimonial videos with their own realtors. In response to some campaigns against them, saying that they aren’t realtors or that they aren’t professional, Homie has launched a video campaign with their realtors, saying “I'm a realtor, and I recommend that you go with Homie.” With these videos, they will be able to show potential clients that they are credible in a format that simulates a face-to-face interaction.

Connect with Johnny

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Johnny or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnny-hanna💭-90036 or check out Homie.com.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Johnny for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode to help us improve our monetization models:

If you have not already, consider implementing a freemium model or a loss leader strategy to attract new customers, to whom you can then sell additional products and services.
Try to find the recurring revenue streams we can provide in our niches.
When we are describing our products and services, try to find something well-known and credible to compare them to with a kind-of-like strategy.
Think of how we can implement video into our business to more effectively engage with our customers and clients when in-person interaction isn’t an option.
If we want to increase the effectiveness of our advertising, we might consider hiring a video advertising agency to help us create the best video ads possible.
We absolutely need to seek testimonial videos from customers to promote our businesses.
We can also use testimonial videos from our own employees to show our business’ credibility, especially to others who belong to their tribe, just like Johnny had his realtors share testimonials with other realtors.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story

When have you seen a company effectively use the freemium or loss leader monetization models? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/28-how-to-generate-100-million-in-annual-recurring-revenue-by-giving-away-something-for-free/

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“Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver.” Barbara De Angelis

In this episode, we’re going to explore how to create and maintain a culture of kindness in our organizations. We’re also going to discuss positioning our organizations as quality service providers, and not trying to compete on price. And we’ll talk about strategies that have helped The Gladney Center for Adoption, to survive and thrive for more than 133 years.

Mark Melson is the President and CEO of the Gladney Center for Adoption and an adoptive father. In December 2019, the Adoption.com venture I created decades ago was purchased by the Gladney Center for Adoption. I feel very blessed that an amazing organization like Gladney purchased Adoption.com, and that I am able to continue to run Adoption.com for Gladney.

Gladney was created more than 133 years ago. I believe today Gladney is the premier adoption organization in America. They have helped complete more than 32,000 adoptions and have made a tremendous difference for good in the world for children, adoptive families, and birth parents.

Leading with Kindness

After Gladney had purchased Adoption.com, I traveled to Texas to attend a Gladney Board of Directors meeting. Mark Melson and I had developed a Google presentation for that meeting which had my slides and Mark’s slides together. The night before the morning presentation, I was working late trying to finish some revisions to the presentation. Some team members on the other side of the world were helping me with the revisions, and somehow the presentation was completely deleted. At about 1:30 am we discovered that the file had been lost in an unrecoverable way. Google Drive’s features to recover past versions of a file sadly did not work in this situation.

We frantically worked to recreate the presentation up until the time of the morning meeting. Through all of that fiasco, Mark and his team were never anything except amazingly kind to me. I felt horrible, but they never gave me a hard time.

I believe we pulled it off, and the presentation went ok. What could have been a very stressful situation was mitigated because of the culture of kindness Mark has helped to create at Gladney.

Mark has a leadership style of kindness. People who work for Mark don’t have to be afraid of failure when they are doing their best. Mark inspires us to do our best because we trust that our best is sufficient. Mark treats us right even when we make mistakes, and because of that, he inspires an amazing sense of loyalty and a desire to do our best.

Mark is grateful for the people who didn’t drag him across the coals when he made mistakes. He says that through kindness, caring, and generosity we can overcome so much. Mark realized early in his career that he didn’t need to be a “persecutor,” coming down with an iron fist. In many cases, when people react from an emotional standpoint, they are reacting to their own anxiety. They aren’t reacting to the problem, they are reacting to how the problem makes them feel. People have a choice of how they want to react. When things go wrong, it is often human nature to become a persecutor, saying things like “Why did you…?”, “What’s wrong with you?”, or “You messed up.”

Instead of being a persecutor, we should be responding as a “challenger” saying things like “What can we learn from this mistake?”, “How do we improve upon these challenges that we have?”, and “Let’s be sure we learn from this so we can do better next time.” In these two situations, there is the same outcome. The person realizes they messed up, but when we challenge the person, they feel better about learning from it and moving forward instead of responding like a dog that has been smacked. When things don’t go right, the best strategy is to ask what can we improve.

Mark learned this concept of shifting from persecutor to challenger in the book The Power of TED.

Being a Service Quality Provider Instead Of Competing on Price

Years ago, Gladney made a strategic decision to position the adoption agency as one of the highest quality adoption service providers instead of trying to compete on price. Gladney decided that their highest priority was to do what was in the best interest of children needing adoption. Then, they asked themselves what services they needed to provide to accomplish that, such as training for adoptive parents, counseling for expectant parents, lifetime support for the child, etc. Then, they tried to figure out the monetization so they could afford to provide those services. Because Gladney provides such a high level of quality, they have to charge more for their adoption services, and they also need to fundraise to subsidize a lot of the expenses.

Gladney takes a “knower/learner” approach, constantly trying to understand what the organization can do better. Because of this strategy, the quality of service has continued to grow over the years.

About 6-7 years ago, Gladney initiated a relationship with the Disney Institute, which provided training to the Gladney team about providing quality service. Disney wrote a book titled “Be our Guest.” The book talks about the Disney approach to quality service. When we go to one of the Disney Parks we experience this amazing service, and Gladney wanted to bring this experience and feeling back to Gladney. The Gladney team wants everyone who walks out of the Gladney doors to say “Wow! That was a great experience."

Flat Fee Pricing Model

Some other organizations quote a lower price up front and then add on a lot of other fees. Gladney decided they didn’t want to do that. They felt a bait-and-switch business model destroyed credibility. Instead, Gladney rolled out a flat-fee pricing model that included essentially everything they could include. Gladney received great feedback from their clients, who were happy that there would not be any surprises or guesswork on Gladney’s fees. That set pricing model helped establish credibility and a stronger relationship of trust with Gladney’s adoptive families because they weren’t in a “nickel-and-dime” relationship with their adoption agency.

Sometimes adoptions fall through after Gladney has incurred substantial expenses. Then, new expenses have to be paid to find another adoption situation and cover expenses related to that situation. Gladney does not pass these expenses related to the failed adoption on to the family. Gladney eats those expenses and works to match the family with another adoption situation at no additional cost. Sometimes an adoption will have more expenses and sometimes it will have less expense, and Gladney has figured out the pricing it needs to charge. This flat-fee model helps remove a lot of risk for the families and builds credibility.

How Gladney Has Survived for 133+ Years

During the COVID pandemic, too many adoption agencies have had to go out of business. Gladney has been around for 133+ years. One of Gladney’s secrets to longevity is diversified monetization. Gladney provides a diverse set of adoption services, such as U.S. infant adoption, adoption of children in foster care, and international adoption. This diversity of monetization from services, combined with donations, helps provide Gladney sustainability. Because when adoptions are down in one area, Gladney has the ability to make it up in another area. For example, because of primarily political reasons, international adoptions are very low right now, and adoption agencies that only focus on international adoption are hurting badly.

A second secret to longevity is the generosity of Gladney’s families and others who have donated money. Because Gladney has focused on being a premium quality service provider, they enjoy strong relationships with people who use Gladney’s services. Those people then want to help support Gladney and its mission. As a result of generous donors, Gladney has been able to build a savings account that has helped Gladney ride through hard times, such as the COVID pandemic.

Credibility Makes Everything Easier

Because Gladney has provided adoption services for so many years and has such a great reputation and credibility, many people refer to Gladney. Because those people trust the adoption services are going to be done right, they are willing to pay more than they would pay for a discount adoption agency. And because Gladney is able to charge more, they have the resources to provide a higher quality of adoption services.

Another source of credibility comes from past clients. Gladney often connects potential clients with past clients who have already been through adoption. Then, the past clients can share stories about working with Gladney that are far more credible than what Gladney could say about itself. Gladney has developed a network of past clients who help tell the Gladney story through testimonials. Instead of Gladney trying to tell the world how awesome they are, they let past customers do that.

Does Monetization Strategy Apply to Non-Profit Organizations?

Some people wonder whether the monetization principles apply to charitable causes or non-profits. Absolutely. Monetization is the art of turning assets into cash flow. Almost always, charities or nonprofits need cash flow just like any other organization to accomplish their mission or to help more people. For example, the assets of a non-profit might include relationships with donors who are passionate about the organization’s mission, and monetization could happen through effective fundraising campaigns.

Charities or nonprofits often diversify their monetization in ways that expand their ability to achieve their mission at scale and give them stability to weather bad economies when donations are scarce. For example, the Girl Scouts make about $800 million each year selling cookies to help pay for the programs they offer. Another example is Save the Children which lets people sponsor specific children.

The “Why” Behind Non-Profit Monetization

Gladney worked with a wonderful family that adopted two beautiful boys out of the foster care system. These boys had sadly had a life they should not have had before the adoption. The older boy, who was about 12, was having to take care of the younger boy, who was about 9, and they were living on the street most of the time. Unfortunately, the biological mother was not in a position to be a parent herself.

A family came forward and felt “called” to help these kids.

What Gladney learned from this situation is that a lot of time goes into training and preparing the families to be successful in situations where the kids have come from a really hard place, situations we simply cannot understand.

Gladney saw that because of the love and safety the adoptive family provided the boys, and making sure the boys knew they were not going to leave them, it let the 12-year-old go back to being a kid while allowing the mom and dad to do their job by taking care of them both. As a result, Mark saw the kids blossom.

This is why monetization is so important in a non-profit because it allows the organization to make a greater difference for good, such as changing the lives of these two boys and their family forever.

Contact Gladney

If you want to learn more about Gladney and adoption please call the following number, or visit the following Gladney sites:

1-800-236-7898

https://adoption.org

https://gladney.org

https://adoption.com

Key Takeaways

Thank you Mark for sharing your stories and secrets with us. Here are some of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today’s episode:

We should strive to implement cultures of kindness within our organizations. Kindness can build stronger loyalty and motivate people to do their best.
When things go wrong, it is often human nature to become a persecutor, saying things like “Why did you…?” or “You messed up.”
Instead of being a persecutor, we should be a challenger saying things like “What can we learn from this mistake?”
We should strive to be quality service providers instead of trying to compete on price.
Flat-fee monetization models can remove a nickel-and-dime relationship with the clients, and help establish a stronger relationship of trust. A bait-and-switch business model can destroy credibility.
One of the secrets to organizational longevity is to have diversified revenue streams so we can weather the storms when one revenue stream is not doing well.
Credibility makes everything easier. For example, when we are credible we can get more referrals, the referrals will be more likely to choose us, and we will often be able to charge more.
Instead of trying to tell the world how awesome we are, we should let past customers do that.
Non-profits and other charity causes need monetization so they have the resources to expand their good works.

Implement One Thing This Week

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 2. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 4. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram or Twitter.

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When have you seen kindness used effectively in a business setting? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Can you imagine creating a company so successful that 95% of Fortune 500 companies purchased your product? In today’s episode, I interviewed Robert Tietjen who helped start a company called PolicyTech, which was the leading global provider of online policy and procedure management software. The company was acquired by NAVEX Global, where Rob served as the vice president of product planning and management.

NAVEX Global is now the largest ethics and compliance software and the largest policy and procedure software in the world. It had 95% of the Fortune 500 as clients. More than 350 higher education institutions are NAVEX clients. It has more than 13 thousand customers and more than 70 million employees are protected by NAVEX.

After NAVEX, Rob was president of Bitesize, a company that joins psychology, mentorship, and technology. Then, Rob co-founded and ran Camtiva, which provided hospitals with a safeguard against improper billing. He now teaches entrepreneurial leadership, management, and strategy at BYU-Idaho.

Here are some successful strategies Rob used to grow his organizations:

Inc. 5000 PolicyTech, the company that Rob and his brother started, created a niche software, providing clients with online policy and procedure management. This type of software was not on a lot of people's radar, so it was initially hard to get the word out in a credible way. Rob and his brother decided to go to Inc. 5000 and pay for them to evaluate their software. It was worth it. PolicyTech was able to put the Inc. review on their website, and it helped increase credibility and sales. When our products or services don’t have a natural place for people to review them we can find credible organizations such as Inc. 5000 to review them to give our company credibility.

Case Studies and References from Current Clients One of Rob’s mentors told him to never give away anything. When a customer wants something like a customer discount, always be prepared to do a quid pro quo. Rob and his associates, when faced with a situation like this, would take some time to think about it and talk about it. Then they would come back to the customer and say, “Yes, we can do this if you do this for us.”

Many customers shared case studies with them. They told Rob how their service impacted their organization with new metrics and much more. Rob’s company could then publish those case studies so other clients could see them. Many clients were also willing to be references that potential clients could call or visit and discuss how this service has worked for them.

“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the holy grail of advertising.” -Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook

Video Marketing When one of Rob’s companies was doing their website development, analyzing their SEO, and conversion tracking, they found that most people don't go beyond the first page of the website until after they have decided to purchase the product or service. They discovered that it was best to have a simple video explaining their service and the "free trial" or the "buy now" button on the front page. For them, video was the best way to give a description of the service because theirs was kind of a complex service. Rob found that people will watch a video more willingly than they will read a block of text.

Develop Good Lead Nurturing Strategies Rob’s company nurtured a lot of leads since they had long sales cycles. According to the 2020 Lead Nurturing & Acceleration Benchmark Survey by Demand Gen Report, 49% of respondents stated that their lead nurturing strategies need improvement. Rob’s company nurtured their leads by giving them something of value for free. This kept prospective clients interested. The product or service they gave was always related to the job to be done or the clients’ issues. For example, they created an ebook series on how to manage policies and procedures, and each week they would send a portion of the ebook to potential clients. At the bottom of the email, they'd say, “If you're looking to solve even more problems with policy and procedure management, come look here,” where they’d be directed to the company. Rob feels this tactic is highly effective, especially for companies with longer sales cycles.

Work Hard to Show Clients New Models are Trustworthy Nowadays, using a software as a service (SaaS) business model is fairly common and trusted. 73% of organizations indicated nearly all their apps will be SaaS by this year. When Rob first started PolicyTech, this model wasn’t used a lot, and they had a hard time selling the model.

They had to build trust with their clients and prove that the software would work for them. The company eventually told their clients that they could do this software-as-a-service model for a specific amount on an annual basis and that it would fit in the client’s budget. When the clients came back saying they needed proof that the software was going to always be accessible when they needed it, the company had to prove that the software would be up 99.9% of the time and that it wasn’t going to have issues. It was a costly enterprise, but it was worth it.

Dream Big When Rob was starting PolicyTech, later NAVEX Global, he had some big goals for the company. One goal was to get a large unnamed company as a client. Another was to receive an endorsement from the American Hospital Association. He also had a vision of NAVEX Global being the largest policy and procedure software in the world. The company accomplished all of these goals and more, growing to have 95% of the Fortune 500 as clients.

According to a Goal Setting and Task Performance Study, 90% of people perform better when they have relevant and challenging goals.

Retirement In our conversation, Rob and I spoke about retiring. Society tells us that the ultimate goal is to retire, but Rob feels this is a perpetual lie. Rob has become a college professor and has found a lot of happiness and fulfillment in it.

“There is so much more joy in adding value to other people's lives and building them up, more than puttering around the house and going golfing.” - Rob Tietjan

Rob found out quickly that he didn’t want to retire. He found joy in the stress, the work, and especially in the teaching. If we don’t feel ready to retire, there shouldn’t be any shame in it.

It doesn’t have to be about the money either. A lot of people think that having money is associated with being greedy, but money is the rocket fuel that helps propel us to do the things that God wants us to do in our lives. It helps us take care of the things that really matter, such as our family, our health, and our faith. And for Rob, because he successfully monetized businesses, he’s able to teach and make the social contribution that matters to him.

Key Takeaways Here are a few of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today’s episode:

Use credible organizations to review our products or services to build credibility.
Make it easy for clients to find information and make purchases on our websites.
Establish good lead nurturing strategies.
Work hard to show our clients our companies are trustworthy.
Try out opportunities that you aren't sure you'll love. You may enjoy them or at least learn something from them.
Find good mentors along the way. They’ll help guide you and give you great advice.
Don't be afraid to dream big.
If you don't want to retire yet you don't have to. Use your time to share what you’ve learned with others.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story What strategies can you share for growing a successful business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/26-how-rob-tietjen-reached-95-of-the-fortune-500-as-paying-clients/

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We may be familiar with the term “flagship,” but unaware of what it means. According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, a flagship is “the ship that carries the commander of a fleet or subdivision of a fleet and flies the commander’s flag.” It is also “the finest, largest, or most important one of a group of things…” Launching an online flagship course is very similar in its importance as the creator of a flagship course takes individuals on a unique journey of transformation, and the flagship course is the finest, largest or most important of the courses offered by the creator. Online courses are becoming more and more popular, and it’s projected that by 2023 they will grow to a $240 billion industry (Source: Sette), and creating a flagship course for our audience may be the best way for us to capitalize on this opportunity. In this episode, we’re going to learn about flagship courses, and why a flagship course may be the next step in your digital monetization.

What is a Flagship Course?

“A Flagship Course is not just any standard online course. It’s something you devote yourself to over time, continually promote and improve, and it becomes your statement education experience. It’s a leadership creation tool, as well as a money-making centerpiece for your online business” (Source: Yaro Starak).

These courses are meant to help others with a problem or focus on a main topic, as well as guide them through some kind of transformation. For example, a flagship course could be on “How to Get Out of Debt,” which takes an individual through a process. To be an effective flagship course, individuals must be able to see clear results at the end, which is one reason why people purchase these courses.

Sarah Cordiner, course creation specialist, encourages businesses to create a flagship course and apply their unique experiences in facilitating growth to their business: “One of the fastest and most impactful ways to get your knowledge out to a global marketplace, making a bigger impact and diversifying your income, is to download that knowledge lying dormant in your brain and turn it into a credibility-building, income-generating, impact-making online course.”

Flagship Course Examples

Here are a few success stories from people who have launched flagship courses:

Yaro Starak

Starak is a well-known entrepreneur and an incredible internet marketer who began his success by writing blogs. He has developed a flagship course to help bloggers grow and monetize their blogs.

Starak sold his first flagship course in 2007. It was a learning curve for him as he learned what not to do, and what to do. After restructuring his course, he learned to put deadlines on the course as well as charge more for it. These improvements lowered his cancellation rates by 20% and his revenue increased (Source: Flagship Course).

Starak has implemented steps that have launched not only his career but his courses. In doing so, he has been able to help many others achieve success. He helped a client, Tien Chiu, who launched a course on color weaving and generated over $200,000 in sales (Source: Flagship Course). He has also had successful clients launch courses in making shampoo, recovering from chronic acne, self-publishing a book, and helping trainers grow their practice.

Russell Brunson

Before Russell Brunson ever sold a book, he sold a flagship course, which I purchased, about funnel building for $997.

Bailey Richert

Bailey is an expert at infopreneurship products. She has developed a flagship course called Virtual Summit School, which I have taken, through which she teaches entrepreneurs step-by-step how to plan and execute a successful virtual summit.

Depesh Mandalia

Depesh is one of the world’s leading experts on Facebook advertising. He created a framework for Facebook Ads called the BPM method, as well as a flagship course to teach that framework.

Monetization from a Flagship Course

Russell Brunson has advised members of his premier Inner Circle program to start their monetization efforts by focusing on a $997 flagship course. Yaro Starak has also recommended pricing a Flagship Course at that same price point. Those sound like two credible sources for me on price point. Yaro started the pricing of his Flagship Course at about $500 and then later doubled the price. He found that it gave him room to pay affiliates enough money to interest them in helping market the course. However, if we choose to price our Flagship Course at nearly $1,000, then it is up to us to be sure we are providing a lot more value than $1,000 in the course. We want to be sure to exceed the customer expectations and not burn the relationship by providing insufficient value.

Some experts advise that if we start our monetization efforts with a product with a mid-tier price point, such as the $1,000 range, it can help our ventures to reach profitability much faster. Then, once we achieve success with a product in this range, we can launch another product at a lower or higher price point.

$1,000 is definitely not the ceiling we can charge for flagship courses. As our credibility and content quality grow, the price can grow as well. It is not abnormal for a flagship product to be priced at $10,000 or more.

Marketing a Flagship Course Requires Credibility

Because flagship courses are often mid-priced products, they are often harder to sell to people who do not know us and trust us yet. In other words, it usually takes some credibility to sell a flagship course. This credibility is often achieved by regularly publishing high-quality blogs, podcasts, or videos and building a following of active followers. Or, the credibility may be achieved through a webinar, or through selling a lower-cost course or challenge course. These lower-cost courses require less credibility to sell. Then, if they receive much more value from the course than what they paid, they will have a much higher likelihood of buying a more-expensive flagship course.

The credibility needed to sell a flagship course can also be achieved through influencer marketing. We can identify influencers who our target audience follows, and we can establish an affiliate marketing relationship with affiliates so we pay them a commission for each course they sell. Often, course creators pay publishers 30%-50% for each course they sell to their followers. This works because the influencer is already credible to many of their followers, and when the influencer markets our products, some of the credibility can flow through to our product.

8 Steps to Create a Successful Flagship Course

Here are 8 steps to create a successful flagship course.

We must deeply research, understand and teach our niche topic.
We must find a problem that our target audience is willing to pay to learn how to solve.
We must develop frameworks that help our students to understand and remember what we teach. To understand frameworks, think of Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or even the steps I’m teaching you right now.
We must have great stories that help us teach the key points in compelling and memorable ways.
We need to record these stories, frameworks, and other teaching elements through video.
We need to set up a site on an online course-hosting platform. See our resources page for some online platforms you might consider.
We must provide a huge amount of unique value to the people taking the course. They must feel they have received far more value than what they paid.
We must effectively market the course to our target audience with credibility, such as through an affiliate program with influencers.

Benefits of a Flagship Course: Individuals & Businesses

Here are some of the benefits of a flagship course for both businesses and individuals:

Convenient for Students - One of the most convenient reasons for a flagship course is that they are flexible, meaning the individual can move at their own pace and learn from anywhere in the world with an internet connection, any time of day. An in-person teacher doesn’t have to guide them through it either; usually, the individual chooses how slow or fast they want to take the course, at their convenience.
Easier to Work with Affiliates - Because flagship courses are usually more expensive, it can often be easier to get influencers to sell the product for us because they can earn larger commissions.
Get to Profitability Faster - Many entrepreneurs build their flagship course first because it will help them get to profitability faster than other types of products. For example, If we sold a book for $20, we might sell a lot more of them, but we will probably never sell enough books alone to get to profitability. However, with a $1,000 course, we only have to sell 100 courses to get to $100,000 of revenue, and if or when we can sell 1,000 courses, we generate $1 million. It may be a lot easier to get to profitability quickly with a flagship course than with a book, for example, as our first new product.
Credibility - Flagship courses can be an excellent way for course creators to build credibility. As people take our courses, as long as we provide plenty of value, most students will come to trust us more, and it will be easier to sell our additional products and services to the students. Flagship courses can be a great way to sell high-end products and services.
Diversified Revenue - If we already have a business with customers, flagship courses can provide us with a new way to generate diversified revenue from our existing customers with very little cost of goods sold.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

A flagship course is a leadership creation tool, as well as a money-making strategy for your business.
To be effective, individuals must see clear results at the end of the flagship course. We should build our flagship course around a step-by-step process or a framework that is easy to follow.
Benefits of flagship courses include: they are convenient for students, it can be easier to get affiliates to sell our course, we may get to profitability faster, they increase our credibility, and create diversified revenue streams from our existing customer base with a very high-profit margin.
The online course market is growing! People are turning to these options for education, free time, and making an income.
Put deadlines on your course to create urgency.
Flagship courses usually need credibility to sell well. This can be achieved through influencer marketing, publishing great content and building your own following, webinars, or selling a lower-cost product to customers first and delivering great value.
To achieve success with a flagship course, we must deeply understand the topic, develop our frameworks, tell great stories, solve a problem our customers are willing to pay for, provide much more value than what they paid for, and effectively market to our target audience.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business, subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine, and follow the Monetization Nation Blog at MonetizationNation.com. 2. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 4. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram or Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

What great flagship courses have you taken and loved? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/25-8-steps-to-create-a-successful-flagship-course/

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the movie Chariots of Fire and the role faith can plan in an Entrepreneur’s journey.

Chariots of Fire

When I was young I loved to run. I have great memories of my dad taking me running regularly, and competing in 10k races together. The 2-mile was my track event in high school. I particularly loved running downhills because I felt like I was flying. I dreamed of running in the Olympics someday.

When I was 7 years old, the movie Chariots of Fire was released. This film tells the story of runners from Great Britain competing in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Because of my passion for running, this movie quickly became one of my favorites as a child.

Part of the movie is based on a true story of a sprinter named Eric Liddell, the “Flying Scotsman”, who was a devout Christian. Liddell’s first Olympic final in 1924 was the 200-meter race, in which he won the bronze medal. However, his 100-meter race would be held on a Sunday, which was his Sabbath day. Liddell chose not to run the 100-meter race, even after receiving strong pressure from royalty and the Olympic Committee.

Andrew Lindsey was one of Liddell’s teammates who had already won a silver medal in the 400-meter hurdles. Lindsey offered his spot in the 400-meter race the following Tuesday to Liddell. This was a race Liddell was not prepared to run, but he accepted gratefully. Liddell’s commitment to honor his religious convictions despite fierce pressure made worldwide headlines.

On the Sunday of Liddell’s original 100-meter race, he gave a sermon in a Paris church, and quoted Isaiah 40:31: "

Tuesday morning the American coach said Liddell didn’t have much of a chance at succeeding in the 400-meter race because it was much longer than the races in which Liddell had qualified for the Olympics.

Eric Liddell ran the 400-meter race, beat the runners who had been favored to win, took home the Olympic gold medal, and set a new world record. Here’s the actual footage of Eric Liddell winning the 400-meter race:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYNUxdoIacA&feature=youtu.be

Imagine the impact that the Chariots of Fire movie had on a young Christian runner. Keeping the Sabbath day holy became very important to me.

For what purpose did God make Entrepreneurs?

At one point, Liddell’s sister tells him that his running is a distraction from the work of God, and Liddell says “I believe that God made me for a purpose... But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure." As entrepreneurs, for what purpose did God make us?

God gives gifts to all of His children. The American Founding Fathers had gifts in politics and leadership. The men and women who put the first astronauts on the moon had scientific gifts. What gifts has God given us as entrepreneurs that He wants us to use? When we use those gifts, how can we accomplish God’s work?

I’ve modified Liddell’s quote to apply to Entrepreneurs of Faith. Let me know if this resonates with you. “I believe God made me for a purpose. He made me an entrepreneur, and when I create and grow ventures, I feel His pleasure.” When we find the gifts God has given us and we use those gifts to do God’s work and serve His children, we are doing what God made us to do.

Why am I publishing on Sunday?

I accepted Russell Brunson’s challenge to publish every day for a year during 2021. Knowing how much the Sabbath day means to me, why would I be publishing my blog and show on a Sunday? To me the Sabbath day isn’t just about what I should NOT do; it is even more about what I should do.

Eric Liddell felt he should not participate in sporting events on Sunday so he didn’t do that. However, he also didn’t stay at home the Sunday of the race. Instead, he went to a church, told his story, preached a sermon, and did God’s work. Jesus Christ also did God’s work on the Sabbath, such as teaching and healing. The Sabbath isn’t about doing nothing. Instead, it’s about resting from our labors so we have time to focus on God’s work, which includes serving others.

I don’t feel comfortable publishing the same type of Monetization Nation episodes on Sunday that I’m going to be publishing the other six days of the week, so I’m not going to do that. However, instead of choosing to not publish anything on Sunday, I’m going to publish a different series of blogs and shows called Entrepreneurs of Faith. These episodes will share stories and scriptures of faith that can help entrepreneurs, marketers, CEOs, and other business leaders.

On Sundays, my audience will transform from Digital Monetizers to Entrepreneurs of Faith. During these Sunday episodes, I won’t run any paid external advertisements. And, I will strive to create and schedule the episodes in advance.

Key Takeaways

Here are my key takeaways from today’s episode:

We should stay true to our convictions regardless of the pressure.
We will all go through challenges, but as we learn in Isaiah 40:31, when we “wait upon the LORD,” He has promised to renew our strength, help us metaphorically fly like eagles, and help us to run, and be not weary, and walk, and not faint.
We can use our gifts as entrepreneurs to do what God made us to do. What gifts has God given you and how does He want you to use them?

I realize some entrepreneurs of faith observe the Sabbath on days other than Sunday. That's fine. I want Entrepreneurs of Faith to be inclusive and welcoming regardless of differing doctrines like that. This is not a place to debate whether Saturday or Sunday is the correct Sabbath day. This is a place where all entrepreneurs can come and feel closer to God.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive an Entrepreneurs of Faith each Sunday.

Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Connect with Nathan on Linkedin.
Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram.
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Share Your Story

How has faith played a role in your entrepreneurial journey? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/24-what-role-can-faith-play-in-an-entrepreneurs-journey/

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Introduction

Back in the early days of the Internet, about 22 years ago, I hired a salesperson named Shirlee Davidson to help us generate revenue from Adoption.com. At the time, Adoption.com was very new and very unprofitable. Our expenses were more than three times higher than our revenue. Shirlee Davidson still works for Adoption.com today and has sold more adoption-related advertising than anyone in the world. Shirlee taught me the concept of relationship-driven sales, and Adoption.com used that strategy to keep a month-to-month client advertising with us every month for more than 11 years. In my interview with Shirlee, she shares this story, along with other secrets and strategies she’s gained from more than two decades helping pioneer digital monetization.

Month-to-Month Contracts

Many businesses believe that they will make more money by forcing clients to stay in long-term contracts they don’t want to be in. At Adoption.com, we developed a strategy that was the polar opposite. We offered month-to-month contracts because it lowered the initial barrier of entry for our clients to begin advertising. We didn’t want them to have any fear they were going to be forced to stay in a long-term contract that was not working for them.

More importantly, because of the month-to-month contracts, we were extremely motivated to make sure our customers were happy every single month, or they would leave. One month-to-month advertiser started with Adoption.com at just a couple thousand dollars per month, and as the advertising proved effective, the advertiser continued to increase their advertising through Adoption.com until they reached about $50,000 per month in recurring advertising. This customer advertised with Adoption.com on a month-to-month contract for more than 11 years.

The month-to-month advertising forced Adoption.com to perform better, to have more open communication with customers, understand their needs, and quickly make the changes necessary to keep our customers happy every month. We feel that we made more revenue through month-to-month contracts than by forcing customers into long-term contracts.

How to Figure Out Pricing When We’re Doing Something New

Shortly after Shirlee started with Adoption.com, she was working with a baby products company that wanted to advertise on Adoption.com. Online advertising was very new and Shirlee had no idea what to charge them. Shirlee went to the library and checked out a book about online advertising, but it was not very helpful. So, Shirlee went to her sales mentor and asked him what we should charge. The mentor replied, “Tell them to make you an offer.” Shirlee followed the advice, signed a contract starting with $2,000 per month of recurring advertising, and that organization advertised with Adoption.com every month for years.

Relationship-Driven Sales with Our First Large Customer

In the early days of Adoption.com, within a few months of Shirlee starting, she and I flew to Fort Worth, Texas to visit the Gladney Center for Adoption, one of the premier adoption agencies in the world. That day, we took a tour of their campus, went out with them for food, and were headed back to a meeting with Gladney’s management team.

Before that meeting, I asked Shirlee privately how we should handle this very important meeting. Shirlee responded that we should not mention numbers or pricing, just listen first and build a relationship. Then, we should walk away without making an offer. When we got home, we would send them a proposal customized to their needs.

That became the foundation of how we worked with clients over the years. We listened and got to know them and their needs. We walked away and later came back with a customized proposal. Because we listened first, it allowed us to make a proposal that was tailored to the potential customer’s needs. This low-pressure, relationship-driven sales approach worked well for us over the years. The Gladney Center for Adoption advertised with Adoption.com for the vast majority of two decades.

Relationship-Driven Strategy at Conferences

When we’re trying to make a sale, our first inclination is to try and tell people how great our company or products are. Shirlee taught me that everyone likes to talk about themselves and their passions much more than they want to listen to a salesperson. In other words, people are far more passionate about their lives than they are about our products and services. So, at adoption conferences, instead of trying to tell people why we are great, we focused on getting to know them, their organization, and what was important to them. People were happy to share that information, and it began to establish a relationship of trust and friendship. We connected with them through their passions.

Shirlee uses the analogy of marriage. We must date someone and build a relationship of trust before the relationship can progress to marriage. The same thing is true in relationship-driven sales. We have to focus on building the relationship of trust first and not get ahead of ourselves by asking for the sale before that has happened.

Building Trust by Refusing to Make a Sale

Shirlee tells the story of an advertiser who tried to buy a specific type of advertising, and Shirlee refused to sell it to them because she knew they would not be successful. Because Shirlee was looking out for that client’s best interest, that client trusted Shirlee so much, that later they adjusted their business practices to do a specific type of advertising with Adoption.com. The lesson of this story is to never sell a client a product that we do not feel will help them be successful.

Being There During Crisis

Shirlee helped Adoption.com build some very strong relationships with clients that went outside normal business relationships. For example, with one client we would regularly travel to his state to do activities together, such as playing sports, attending a sporting event, participating in a child’s religious ceremony, or introducing me to sushi for the first time. As a result, when his granddaughter drowned, I received a call saying that the client needed me there with him. So, within two hours I was on a flight and spent days mourning with the client and his family. Building strong relationships in advance can make it possible for clients to reach out when they are in crisis. Being there for others during times of crisis can often result in long-term loyalty and bonds that last many years and are hard to break.

Monetization Through Bundling

At one point Adoption.com had many different types of advertising products that we sold individually, and clients would “cherry-pick” elements of that advertising, and then we were left with a random assortment of unsold and unsaleable advertising. We were leaving a lot of money on the table.

While we were facing this challenge, we were attending a conference, and one of my daughters was with us. One evening my daughter wanted to swim, so Shirlee and I went down to the pool and sat on the pool deck while my daughter swam. While we sat there, we brainstormed how to solve this problem with the unsold inventory.

We knew our advertisers wanted to “own” their state. So, we used that desire to our advantage, and bundled together all of the advertising opportunities in a specific geographic area, and sold them as one exclusive package. It was kind of like Disney bundling all of their shows together and selling access to everything on Disney+ for a monthly subscription, instead of selling each movie individually. With the Adoption.com bundle, customers could own their geographic area, but to do so, they had to buy all the advertising available in that area. We included some new types of promotions that were only available through this package, added some exclusivity and scarcity, and gave them some priority over other advertisers in that state.

We rolled out this featured sponsor bundle of advertising and it radically increased our revenue in a very short period of time. One of the secrets that made this monetization breakthrough possible was that Shirlee and I were able to get out of the office without distractions and brainstorm a solution to a challenge we were facing. It’s important for team members to spend time away from the office together so they can build relationships, have time to work through issues, and find solutions together. We need to create spaces for innovation away from the daily office distractions.

Freemium Model

“One of the best monetization strategies that have worked well in my career is to give something away for free and then to make money selling something else.” - Nathan Gwilliam

In the freemium model, a business gives something away for free to build trust, credibility and reach, and then the business makes money by selling something else to that customer. Shirlee explains how the freemium model was one of the most successful monetization strategies at Adoption.com. Shirlee would give away a free advertising banner design along with a free month of advertising to hook the client and show them the results they can achieve. After Shirlee did this, a large percentage of the freemium clients converted into paying customers. This type of freemium model can help break down initial barriers to entry and help new customers who otherwise would not test our products and services to do so.

The 4-Step Evolutionary Involvement with an Industry Association

In the adoption community, the leading association is the National Council for Adoption (NCFA). In Shirlee’s interview, we talk about how over the years Adoption.com evolved through 4 different evolutionary types of interaction with this association.

No Credibility - In the early days of Adoption.com, Adoption.com was not allowed to attend the NCFA conference because we were untrusted outsiders with no credibility.
Sponsor - Then, Shirlee worked with NCFA to allow Adoption.com to help sponsor the conference and have a table, but we had to plead with people to come talk to us. At this point, our only real value to this organization was that we were providing funds to support the event.
Thought Leader - Then, NCFA invited me to speak at their event, and we instantly began to be perceived as trusted thought leaders. At this point, people started coming to us and asking for our help to solve their problems.
Leader - Then, years later NCFA invited me to serve on the Board of Directors (and later the Executive Committee) of the association, and I was able to serve in a leadership role to help the members and assist in fighting some legal and regulatory battles. Helping someone fighting their battles is one of the greatest ways to build trust and credibility. This helped build a much deeper level of credibility with adoption organizations. At this point, we were no longer outsiders. Instead, we became part of their community, a member of their tribe.

Credibility from Speaking at a Conference

We normally didn’t attend local adoption events because there weren’t enough people for us to see a return on our investment. However, one year they needed a featured sponsor in Florida, so we accepted an invitation to attend and for me to speak at the Florida Adoption Conference. We had not sold that Florida advertising package prior to the event, but while I was speaking, a customer left my speech and went to our booth to secure the advertising. By speaking at the credible event, that credibility flowed through to me, and I was perceived as a credible expert. Speaking at an association event is a tremendous way to establish credibility with members of that association.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from Shirlee’s interview:

Month-to-month contracts might generate more money than long-term contracts because we are forced to keep customers happy every month.
When we’re selling something new and don’t know what to charge, one option is to ask the other person to make an offer so we at least have a starting point.
In business-to-business sales, focus on relationship-driven sales instead of high-pressure sales. Shirlee and I tried to meet the potential customer, listen to them, and build a relationship of trust with them first. Then walk away and send them a proposal later. When we focused on relationships first, the sales happened as a natural result.
Relationship-driven sales tend to lead to longer-term revenue streams.
Start the relationship by asking questions about the potential customer and their interests. We should listen, and build a relationship of trust before we try to talk about our business, products, or services.
Don’t sell customers a product or service we don’t believe will work for them. Find the right fit.
Being there for customers during hard times is a powerful way to build loyal relationships.
Consider bundling a group of products and services together to accelerate monetization and avoid leaving money on the table.
The freemium model is one of the most successful digital monetization strategies. Give something away for free, and then make money selling something else to those customers.
Find the best association(s) in our industry and work to evolve in our engagement and credibility with the members of that organization.
Speaking at association events is a powerful way to increase our credibility with members of those organizations.

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

When have you seen really good relationship-driven sales? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/23-how-adoption-com-used-month-to-month-contracts-to-keep-an-advertiser-for-11-years/

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Today someone asked me why I’m doing this Monetization Nation show and how I can help the readers, listeners, and viewers. I figured the answer to those two questions would make a great blog post.

Trauma that Results from “Not Getting” Digital Monetization

Early in my career, I did not understand tectonic shifts or digital monetization, and it resulted in some traumatic experiences for me, my family, my employees, and my investors. For example, in the first Monetization Nation episode, I told the story of losing a publicly-traded company I had created because I didn’t reach monetization fast enough.

Soon after we lost that company, some friends of a family member were at our home for a social gathering. The guests asked where I worked, and I told them the name of my business. The guests didn’t realize I was the CEO of that business. I was very young at the time and they assumed I was an employee. When they realized where I worked, they proceeded to tell me how my business was awful because we had laid off their friends, a husband and wife who both worked for us, less than a month before Christmas. Ouch. It was a really awkward moment when I explained I was the one who had laid off their friends.

I agree with them. That layoff so close to Christmas was something pretty awful I did to that great family because I didn’t understand how to get my business to monetization fast enough. The trauma that family went through was my fault. That’s what happens when entrepreneurs don’t understand how to leverage tectonic shifts and generate digital monetization.

Azul’s Success

Thankfully, that was decades ago and I’ve been able to learn a lot to help my businesses and other companies be much more effective at digital monetization. I am doing this show so that hopefully thousands of other entrepreneurs, their families, their employees, and their investors don’t have to go through what the people around my failed company had to go through.

Let me contrast the tragedy of that failed company with the joy I felt about 18 years later, on April 11, 2017, when Azul, the Brazilian airline, began trading on the New York Stock exchange. In the early days of Azul, for more than a year, I spent about half of my time in Brazil helping Azul develop and implement a digital strategy. I would fly to Brazil and work there for a week or two and then fly home and spend a week or two with my family. I don’t recommend that. It was very hard on my family and me. But we do what we have to do to provide for our families, right?

My role at Azul was only a small part of the effort contributed by many talented people. However, the day I watched the video of Azul’s IPO (initial public offering) I had chills and was so grateful I was able to be a small part of a company that had been so successful leveraging tectonic shifts and digital monetization.

The day it went public, Azul raised $645 million in a dual initial public offering in Sao Paulo and New York. That day David Neeleman, the Azul founder, told CNBC “We are an airline today that does 26% of all the domestic air revenue in Brazil. That’s from zero to 26 in eight years.” Today’s stock trading price values Azul at more than $2.3 billion.

Why I Do Monetization Nation

So, why am I doing Monetization Nation? As a result of David Neeleman being so successful in his entrepreneurial endeavors, he has been able to make a massive contribution for good in the world in many ways. I’ve witnessed this first hand because David asked me to serve as the President of his non-profit foundation, which I did for a year.

I feel that one of the best ways I can do good in the world, and pay it forward for all the people who have helped me, is to share the digital monetization secrets I’ve learned to help entrepreneurs become masters at leveraging tectonic shifts and digital monetization. My goal is that because of Monetization Nation, thousands of entrepreneurs and the people around them won’t have to go through the type of traumatic experiences we did decades ago, and that those people will instead have the expanded resources they need to make a much greater difference for good for millions of people.

I feel that because I know some things, which can help many entrepreneurs and the people around them avoid pain and achieve their desired success, I have a moral obligation to share it.

Digital Monetization Strategies

Now, let’s talk about the second question. How can I help you to avoid more of the pain and achieve more success in your entrepreneurial journey?

I’ve consulted for a lot of companies over the past two decades. This has been a great learning experience for me because I’ve been able to learn from the successes and failures of many companies more successful than my own, and from many entrepreneurs much smarter than me.

Nearly all of these other companies have started working with me by hiring me to help them research and develop their digital strategy or their monetization strategy. When I started helping the other companies do this, I called them digital strategies, and over time, they have evolved to become digital monetization strategies. We do extensive research before creating one of these strategies. Then, we customize the presentations to help the business leverage the level-10 passion of their target audience, the assets that many of them didn’t even consider to be assets, and the tectonic shifts most relevant to them, along with numerous other recommendations to better achieve their monetization goals. I love creating these presentations and helping businesses clearly see the strategy to most effectively achieve their desired outcome. Based on feedback from my clients, I believe that the greatest value I have provided to other companies has been through those digital monetization strategies.

Then, after delivering this presentation, the clients own it and can do whatever they want. They can implement any portion of it they want themselves, or hire my team and me to execute part or all of the plan. However, in nearly all of the cases, after delivering the strategy presentation, the clients have hired my team and me to help them execute the recommended digital monetization strategy.

Monetization Assessment

I’ve consulted for a lot of companies over the years. As part of the research to create these digital monetization strategies, I ask a lot of questions, and I’ve refined the questions over the years to get better results. I have taken a bunch of the questions and turned them into a Monetization Assessment, which you can take for free. Then, after you complete the assessment, we will review it and prepare customized feedback for your business.

Would you like Monetization Nation to give you customized feedback about how your business can leverage tectonic shifts and accelerate your digital monetization? Or would you like to work with me to help you develop and execute your digital monetization strategy? Then, fill out the free assessment today. It doesn’t answer all of the questions I would have for you, but it’s a great start.

Completing this Monetization Assessment is an important next step in your monetization journey because it will help you identify areas where you’re already doing well and areas where it might be important to focus more resources.

I would love to help you reach your monetization goals, so you have more time and resources for the things that really matter to you.

Take the Free Monetization Assessment.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today’s episode.

When we don’t get tectonic shifts and digital monetization, it can cause trauma for entrepreneurs and the people around them.
Monetization Nation exists to help entrepreneurs effectively leverage tectonic shifts and digital monetization, so we can avoid a lot of the pain and achieve more of the success we are seeking.
Take the free Monetization Assessment and get customized feedback for your business.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story What stories do you have with monetizing a digital business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/22-why-i-do-monetization-nation-and-how-i-can-help-you/

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As of September 2020, Facebook has 2.74 billion active users monthly (Facebook). That’s about a third of the world’s population and Facebook advertising has exploded.

Depesh Mandalia is one of the world's most prominent Facebook marketers and the best Facebook marketer that I know. He grew one venture from $800k to $26 million in revenue in just 18 months. He's invested well over thirty million dollars in profitable global ad spend over the last five years. He is responsible for driving more than $100 million in revenue for himself and his clients. He runs a Facebook ad agency that helps six-figure and seven-figure companies scale past ten million dollars and provides training courses that help entrepreneurs and marketers of all levels scale up faster in their Facebook advertising. In this episode, Depesh Madalia is going to share stories and secrets about Facebook advertising.

$26 Million Case Study While Depesh and his wife were both working other jobs, they started doing affiliate marketing on the side. They began making enough money doing affiliate marketing that they didn’t need their other jobs. But it was very fragile, although they didn’t realize that at the time. They came to realize their success depended on Google, so when Google changed their search algorithm, Depesh lost almost all of his traffic. His sites were getting millions of visitors a year, and that traffic was reduced to zero almost overnight. This is a great example of building skyscrapers on land we own.

This pushed him to look into paid search advertising, but it was just so expensive. That was when he started looking into Facebook. He tested it and failed again and again. In 2014, a company that was looking for a digital marketer reached out to him. He was in between projects at the time so he joined them for six weeks.

The company already had some advertising on Facebook, and Depesh was able to look at their data. He realized that their website could use some redesigning; it wasn't as free-flowing in terms of conversion as it should have been. He spent a couple of weeks working on their website, simplifying it and making it easier to use. After that was done, he went back to advertising through Facebook. Within two weeks, he saw that it was working, and they were able to spend more money and make more profit.

The first month they did this, they spent about five thousand dollars and made ten thousand dollars back. It was eye-opening for them, realizing that this channel could be profitable. The next month they spent ten thousand and made fifty thousand back. After that, they started to scale up from there. With every month they increased how much they were spending, and as a result, how much they were making. When he'd joined, they had been making $800,000, and they ended that year with $8 million in revenue. After that they went international, pushing their spending untilーa year and a half from when Depesh had startedーthey had reached $26 million in annual revenue.

Depesh’s Thoughts on Why Facebook Advertising is a Tectonic Shift

With Facebook ads, everything is faster and cheaper. We're able to turn on ads quickly. We're able to reach people at a point where they're more receptive. The CPM (cost per thousand views) is often a dollar or two, which is super inexpensive. The average price for an ad decreased by 9% in Q3 of 2020. We can bring customers into our funnels in a way we can't do as cheaply or at the same scale on any other platform.

One example of how easily Facebook advertising can speed up the advertising process is when Depesh was working for a company that wanted to go international but didn't know what countries to go into. Ten years before this, they would have had to do paid search, affiliate marketing, or physically go sell in that country's market. With Facebook marketing, they were able to turn ads on in the same day, run ads in multiple countries, and see what the reaction was like. So by the end of that day, they could tell which countries they should advertise in next and quickly make a plan for that.

Brand-driven Performance Marketing (BPM) Back when Depesh had failed at Facebook advertising, he'd been trying to get a click at any cost. He saw the newsfeed as his opportunity to sell. He didn't understand that Facebook and Google were very different mediums. He had to think about buyer intent. When someone does a Google search for a TV, their intent is to find a TV to buy, and they have layers of intent; they can search the brand or the size, so we know exactly what their intent is.

With Facebook, we don't actually know what the potential customer's intent is. Users don't see Facebook as a place to find things to buy like on Google or Amazon. Facebook is actually closer to TV advertising. These ads come to potential customers when they're in a relaxed state. An ad break comes, and they're forced to watch it, even if they don't want to. The same thing happens on Facebook. When Depesh realized that, he changed his approach to Facebook advertising. He realized he should be building a relationship with the user so he can get the right click at the right time.

Facebook is a lead generator. That lead can be a click, a call, or an email, but it is just a lead, not a sale. It is our job to convert that lead into a sale using things like our landing pages, sales teams, or drip email marketing.

Success in Hard Times Depesh had a client that was on the edge of profitability and sustainability for their business. They'd been working on ways to increase that profitability while growing at the same time. In 2019 they had a really good end of the year, but when COVID-19 hit, it really impacted their logistics. They were concerned about their profitability levels and online sales, and they weren't sure how COVID would affect that. Depesh helped transition them to making their founder the face of the brand because people buy from people. He got them to start doing Facebook Live events and to become a bigger part of their Facebook community, along with running their own podcast, YouTube channel, and more. Because of this, they were able to have their first million-dollar month in August 2020.

When we have these tectonic shifts that happen, they can be disasters or they can be these wonderful opportunities for growth. We just have to find that opportunity.

Connect With Depesh To learn more about or connect with Depesh and his services, please visit https://depeshmandalia.com/.

Key Takeaways Thank you Depesh for sharing your stories and secrets. Here are some of the key takeaways from today’s episode that stood out to me.

Facebook is the world’s third-most visited website, surpassed only by Google and YouTube. If we can utilize it for our marketing, we can reach huge numbers of our potential customers.
Marketing on Facebook is often faster and less expensive than other platforms. At least it is today. Let’s take advantage of this while we can.
Treat Facebook ads like TV ads. Build relationships with our customers and follow up on the leads Facebook provides.
Focus on your product, audience, offer, and funnel to optimize sales and satisfaction from Facebook Ads.
Find the opportunities to achieve growth during hard times.
The most fulfilling monetization streams are often the ones that help people the most.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story What has helped you be successful with Facebook advertising? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/21-facebook-advertising-tips-from-the-ceo-who-grew-a-companys-revenue-from-800k-to-26-million-in-18-months/

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“In our increasingly low-trust world, trust has literally become the new currency of our global economy.” – Joel Peterson, Author of The 10 Laws of Trust

Credibility is “the quality of being trusted and believed in,” (Source: Dictionary.com). In every business interaction, there is a level of trust involved. Our customers are trusting that in exchange for their investment, be it time or money, we will provide them with something of value that surpasses their investment. When we break that trust, meaning we wasted their time or didn’t reach their level of expectation, we stop being credible and they stop doing business with us. However, when we exceed their expectations, it creates more credibility, and our customers are willing to invest more time and money into us.

Becoming a credible business is so important because in today’s skeptical world we don’t start out as credible. Businesses are often viewed as biased and noncredible. Imagine we’re out looking for a new SUV, and we want to be sure we get the best one. Would we go to a Toyota salesman to ask him to tell us which SUV on the market is the best? No, we know that he would only tell us all the great things about Toyota’s SUV and all the negative things about his competitors. To find our answers, we want to turn to unbiased, credible sources.

“People don’t really trust advertisements, they trust people.” – Bernard Kelvin Clive, Author of Rebranding These days, research has found that 96% of consumers don’t trust advertisements (Source: Inc). Consumers are getting more and more skeptical. They’ve been fooled by flashy advertisements too many times. Only 1% of millennials say that a compelling advertisement would make them trust a brand more (Source: Forbes). That’s why traditional advertising methods are no longer working.

Not only do our customers not trust ads, but they’re also actively avoiding them. Almost half of all internet users have installed an ad-blocker (Digital Information World). Credibility marketing can help us create advertising that doesn't feel like advertising. More importantly, it can help us create messaging that is more trusted by consumers.

When we break our customer’s trust, we’ve not only lost their trust but also their business. Lack of trust is costing U.S. businesses $756 billion and 41% of their clients (Source: Accenture). These customers are not only switching their business over to our competitors but oftentimes they’re also telling others to switch over to our competitors.

Achieving our monetization goals will require that we are effectively leveraging credibility marketing. We need to be providing superior products and services to our customers so that they trust us and stay loyal to our companies.

Customers are Seeking Information from Credible Sources “What you say isn’t nearly as important as what others say about you.” – Seth Godin, Marketing expert and author One experience I had early on in my business career showcased the importance of credibility to me. I was blessed to win a business plan competition, the US West Seed Money competition. Because I had won, reporters came to my office building to interview me about it. My landlord saw the reporters, learned about the competition, and immediately wanted to invest with us. He had never shown any interest in our business before that day, but the credibility of the competition win and reporters was enough to convince him that we were going to be a successful business.

Just because our customers aren’t trusting us doesn’t mean they don’t trust others. Consumers are seeking after reviews and recommendations from their friends and family, influencers they respect, credible industry experts, and authoritative voices. Nine out of ten consumers trust what a customer has to say about a business more than what that business says about themselves (Source: Wyzowl).

Part of credibility marketing is recognizing this trend and finding ways to get these credible, trusted sources to talk and write about us. When the benefits and features of our products and services are shared by unbiased, credible sources, consumers trust what they hear and feel confident giving us their business.

Roads to Credibility

There are some paths we can take to help us bridge the credibility gap to help convince our potential customers that we’re credible and trustworthy. Although I do want to add a quick but important note: none of these strategies will work if we are not credible businesses. Credibility marketing is not about tricking or manipulating customers. It’s about creating happy customers with our superior products and services and then sharing their stories with others.

1. Influencer Marketing

Influencers are seen as credible and trustworthy sources of information. In fact, 92% of consumers put more trust in influencers than they do in advertisements or celebrity endorsements (Source: Question Pro). When we team up with influencers to promote our products and services, the credibility that influencers hold can flow through to us.

2. Reviews

Consumers really are interested in reviews and place a lot of trust in them. 97% of consumers read online reviews (Source: Bright Local). Additionally, 88% trust an online review at the same level as a personal recommendation (Source: Source Engine Land). On average a consumer will read 10 reviews before they feel they can trust the company (Source: Bright Local). Plus, 86% of consumers would pay more for a service provider that has high ratings and good reviews (Source: ReviewInc).

When Airbnb first started trying to get investors, they were consistently told “A business requiring this much trust between strangers will never work,” (Source: Forbes). The company had to find a way to create enough trust between strangers that they would be willing to open their homes to each other. The method they chose: reviews.

Airbnb can’t check up on each and every home listed on their site. They have no way of guaranteeing cleanliness, facilities, number of beds, etc. Instead, they rely on a review system. Guests are asked to give between a 1-5 star rating on cleanliness, communication with the host, ease of check-in, accuracy of the post, how great the location is, and the overall value of the stay for the price. Most guests will also include a written review of their stay.

Airbnb has 2.9 million hosts and is valued at $18 billion (Source: Business Insider). Ultimately, Airbnb’s entire success is based on trust and that trust has been built through reviews. If reviews are capable of creating enough trust to get strangers in each other’s homes, they’re probably capable of instilling enough trust in your consumers to give you their business.

When a product gains reviews, a study shows that companies gain on average a 108% traffic increase, 92% sales lift, and a 65% conversion lift (Source: Power Reviews). It’s definitely worth our time to look into how we can gain more reviews for our products and services.

3. Success Stories

Would you trust someone to give you entrepreneurial advice when they’re driving a $500 beater car with a handwritten sign in the back stating “I can teach you how to make $10k a month!” Would you believe that sign? Probably not. The person doesn’t appear to be generating $10,000 a month themselves, so how can I trust them to teach me how to make that kind of money?

The power of “been there, done that” is when we can demonstrate to our customers that we truly have the experience or expertise needed to handle their business. If we can show them that we’ve been where they are, gone through the journey they want to go through, and achieved the results they want to achieve, then they will trust us to help them do the same.

Client success stories can be amazingly powerful in creating credibility. They're ultimately the “been there, done that” story from our clients. A great success story will share details of that customer's problem and how our company was able to provide the solution they needed. Details will add to the credibility of the story and help other customers relate to the problem. In addition to details, a great success story will add in emotion. Emotional stories are memorable and powerful.

In my own career, I’ve seen how much a good customer success story can do. After my work with Deseret Digital Media, where I was able to help grow their online reach, my boss, Russell Banz, was kind enough to share his success story with me. His video is placed right at the top of my consulting site, MonetizationPartners.com. Watching that success story does a better job convincing potential customers I’m credible and capable than anything I can say about myself.

4. Credible Website Design

“As aesthetically oriented humans, we’re psychologically hardwired to trust beautiful people, and the same goes for websites. Our offline behaviour and inclinations translate to our online existence.” - Dr. Brent Coker, Consumer Psychologist Design affects your company’s credibility with 75% of consumers admitting to making judgments on a company’s credibility based on the company’s website design (Source: Kinesis Inc). People are constantly making snap judgments about your business and 94% of first impressions are design-based (Source: Sweor). The same study also found that 94% of negative website feedback was design-related (Source: Sweor). Good design will help communicate to our potential customers that we are credible and effective.

One company learned firsthand how much user experience can improve conversion rates and revenue. Century Hearing Aids was struggling with low conversion rates. Their webpage was cluttered and unattractive. It only showcased pictures of products that didn’t help customers relate to them. The products were all shown without any kind of organization into different categories.

The CEO, John Stoddard, turned to a consulting company for help. The first thing they did was add an image of a smiling grandfather with his family. This connects to the company’s older clientele who want to be able to hear their family when they speak. The next change was combining the different hearing aids under the categories in the ear, behind the ear, and open fit. This helped customers find the specific design they were looking for more quickly because they weren’t wasting time looking at every hearing aid the company could offer.

Stoddard explained to me that the changes ultimately came down to a “gut-feel for how to move a customer from this to that.” These small changes had a huge impact on Century Hearing Aids revenue. After a period of four months, these changes had improved conversions by 220%, revenue by 300%, and profits by 3,000% (Source: Neil Patel).

Key Takeaways

Here are some of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today’s episode:

Sufficient trust must be established before any successful business dealing. Credibility marketing helps us establish that trust.
9 out of 10 consumers trust what a customer has to say about a business, more than what that business says about themselves.
Nearly all consumers put more trust in influencers than they do in advertisements.
The vast majority of negative website feedback is design-related.
Customers don’t trust what companies say about themselves. They trust what credible sources say about us instead.
In order to succeed at credibility marketing, the first and foremost thing we must do is BE credible businesses.
Influencer marketing, gaining positive reviews, sharing success stories, and designing a credible website are all great avenues for achieving credibility marketing.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

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Luke Hale is a managing video producer at one of the largest, most trusted, and most admired companies in the world, but I’m not allowed to say the name of that company on this show because Luke is not authorized to speak for that company in the media. Luke also created and runs Masters of Engagement, which provides video strategy consulting and education.

There is one pitfall related to video marketing and corporate storytelling that almost every marketer falls into. If we can avoid this one pitfall, we are going to make it further than 90% of our competitors. By avoiding this pitfall we will be able to earn much more attention and follow-through from our story.

Engagement Loop in Super Mario Brothers

If a potential customer sees a video thumbnail image and wants to know what’s in that video, they are usually going to click play. When that person pushes play on one of our videos, an engagement loop is opened.

When Mario begins the first level of Super Mario Brothers, or any Mario game, the first thing he learns is that Bowser has taken the princess. That becomes one engagement loop Mario has to complete if the player wants to complete the game.

This also happens when someone clicks to watch our videos. They’ve opened an engagement loop for some reason, and they are there to close it.

Then there are other engagement loops within Super Mario Brothers. Mario also has to get to the flag at the end of each level and raise it up the pole before he can eventually get the princess back. In Mario Brothers, when Mario finishes one engagement loop on the first level, the second level (or engagement loop) immediately begins. Likewise, our videos can have multiple engagement loops. When we close one loop in our videos we need to immediately open the next engagement loop.

If our viewers see something interesting on a thumbnail and they click to watch the video, but discover we’ve misled them or we’ve resolved that conflict immediately, then there’s no reason to watch the rest of the video. The engagement loop is already closed.

As a result when we put our plot together, we have to figure out how to open engagement loops. And, we have to reward the audience by closing those loops, but if we close a loop and haven’t opened a new loop, there’s no reason for the viewer to continue.

Without Conflict, We Don’t Have a Story

Within storytelling, we usually use conflict as an engagement loop. So, when a viewer comes into our video, he or she needs to hear about the conflict, and that’s what 90% of corporate storytellers avoid completely. They say, “I want to represent my brand in the most positive way possible. We’re not going to talk about conflict.”

But, without conflict, we don’t have a story.

We have to have the courage to keep the conflict in the story because we cannot have a heroic Luke Skywalker if we’ve removed Darth Vader from the video.

Luke Hale has lost some big corporate deals by leading with conflict too early when the company was not ready. Businesses don’t always call back if they think you want to focus on conflict. Instead, what we need to do is start by understanding the client’s business, understanding what their audience needs help with, and set their brand up for success as the mentor.

Video Abandonment

When we have access to engagement level analytics, we can identify and analyze the points of abandonment in the video, the times when viewers stopped watching the video. Then, we can go watch that abandonment point in the video to see if we have closed engagement loops without opening a new engagement loop. When we find places we have closed a loop without opening a new one, that is often where we see abandonment.

4 Steps to Discover and Leverage the Conflict

Here are the four steps to discover the conflict for your video, and to leverage that conflict to tell an engaging story:

Find the Shared Enemy - We need to ask ourselves, “What is the shared enemy of my audience?” The answer to that question identifies the conflict. Conflict is critical for storytelling. If you don’t have conflict, you really don’t have a story.
Tell the Story of Overcoming - We then have to figure out how we can show someone overcoming that challenge.
Create a Hero - We then make that person who overcame the challenge be the hero (or the Luke Skywalker) of our story. Many companies want to put their brand as the hero. When we watch great movies, we have empathy for the hero. We don’t want people to have empathy for our brand. Instead, we want to make our customers the heroes of our stories. We do this by showing customers using our services to overcome their challenges. The hero doesn’t make the transition at the beginning. Instead, they are going through conflict. Then, at the end when the journey makes that transformation, the audience wants to make the transformation with them.
Be the Mentor - Position the business as Obi-wan Kenobi, the mentor to guide the hero through their journey. We want potential customers to feel that we can effectively guide them through their challenges and help them make the transformation to become the hero.

Aligning our Videos with Problems the Viewers Want to Solve

Video storytelling should focus on conflict and resolution. For example, if our business is selling servers, our first inclination is mistakenly to give the viewers all the specs and features of the servers. However, our audience really doesn’t care. They want to know about the problems we are going to solve for them.

So, we should use the first 2/3 of our timeline to focus on the conflict and people trying to overcome that problem. This shows our audience that we are aligned with the problems they are battling against.

Then, we can show the resolution, or solution, and how the product solves the problem. But, unfortunately, most video marketers will lead with the solution without first developing the conflict. That is an engagement nightmare. That’s how we lose an audience.

Jenga Storytelling

This framework is not the only way to solve this engagement loop problem. Another strategy is “Jenga Storytelling," which is successfully used in some YouTube storytelling. With this strategy, the video storytellers show the viewers a quick peek of the end result of the video process at the beginning of the video. This could be the craft project completed or the pool filled with jello. This way, the viewer knows the amazing end result of the video to open the engagement loop, and then they are motivated to watch the video through to the completion to see how it was accomplished.

How to Not Fall on Your Face With Video Production

Luke was producing a piece of media for a major brand with an essentially unlimited budget. The video ended up being the cornerstone of the brand’s marketing efforts for a prolonged period of time. The video production was all shot at the highest level one would expect if they were representing a top brand of this size with an unlimited budget.

When we have an unlimited budget, we feel like we want to make an unlimited impact. It’s devastating when that project gets released into the wild and we realize it’s a complete dud. Luke feels this is the most devastating thing ever. The client didn’t get a return on their investment because the media was brand-centric instead of audience-centric.

We always have to think about how we can have empathy for our audience. We should ask, “Why are they coming to our brand?” and “What is the benefit they want to receive?” We should not ask what message we want to share with our audience, but instead, we should ask what message our audience wants us to share with them.

The easiest way to solve this problem is to start with content that has low production cost and create a ton of it. Then, find out what content resonates best with the audience. This way we will have the information we need to decide where to put our production resources. That will lead to much better results for the brand.

The Hidden Advantage of Live Video

As a video producer, live video can be very frustrating. It’s hard to make a live video of the same quality as one we have time to edit well. But, there is a hidden advantage of live video. Because it is live, we are forced into authenticity. This authenticity and the chance it gives viewers to see us unfiltered or polished is what draws them in. Live video also creates urgency. People show up and stick around to watch live video because their opportunity to consume the content is disappearing moment by moment. To really harness the power of live video, we’ve got to put it out there live. Live video with chats or polls can allow the presenter to get live feedback and close that engagement loop immediately, giving the audience what they are asking for.

The Power of Vulnerability

In Luke’s Master’s of Engagement course, one of the lessons involves dancing on camera. The emotion that we all feel when we’re about to dance on camera needs to be incorporated into our productions. It creates a powerful feeling of vulnerability and authenticity, which then results in credibility and audience enjoyment. Vulnerability creates authenticity, which people crave.

Calls to Action

Calls to action are too easy to make nebulous, and we have to simplify them. Too often in video, we rely on metaphors. We need to not hide the call to action in a metaphor. If you want your audience to clearly take an action, then you need to clearly articulate what that is. Simplicity goes a long way when making a powerful call to action. Some people are afraid of clear calls to action because they feel they are too “salesy.” But instead of being salesy, clear calls to action can be an opportunity for clarity.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Luke for sharing your video marketing stories and secrets with us. Here are some of the key takeaways that stood out to me:

We need to open engagement loops in our storytelling and then reward the audience by closing those loops.
When we close a loop, we need to immediately open the next loop to keep our audience engaged and reduce abandonment. (Post-production note: Luke let me know that we need to actually open a new engagement loop before we close an engagement loop.)
Without conflict, we don’t have a story.
The four steps to discover and leverage conflict in a story are: (1) Find the shared enemy, (2) Tell the story of overcoming, (3) Create a hero, and (4) Be the mentor.
Our video marketing should be aligned with the problems our ideal customers want to solve.
We should not ask what message we want to share with our audience, but instead, we should ask what message our audience wants us to share with them.
The best way to avoid making expensive videos that don’t resonate with our customers is to create a ton of low-cost content, and then focus on creating more of the content that does the best.
There is a hidden advantage of live video. Because it is live, we are forced into authenticity and urgency.
Vulnerability creates authenticity, which people crave.
Simplicity and clarity go a long way when making a powerful call to action.

Connect with Luke Hale

To learn more about Luke and his video strategy consulting and education, please visit:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-hale/

http://www.mastersofengagement.com

Here’s a link where you can get a great discount on Luke’s Masters of Engagement online workshop for an insanely low price:

https://www.mastersofengagement.com/offers/qsPyfdV7

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

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Imagine being a real estate developer and building a skyscraper on land someone else owns, and that the landowner has the right to change the price, the rules, and the terms of the land use at any time. That’s insanity. Why would any sane developer invest so much time and money building that skyscraper when the landowner will eventually change the terms and destroy the investment? Yet, that’s what nearly always happens when we build our businesses to be dependent on digital platforms other people own. In this episode, I’m going to share a story of how Harry’s, the men’s grooming company, built an email list with more than 100,000 subscribers in a week prior to their launch. They did this as part of their strategy to build their skyscraper on land they own, along with other great stories and secrets about platform strategy.

How Harry’s Built a 100K Email List in a Week

Jeff Raider & Andy Katz-Mayfield, co-founders of Harry’s, a men’s grooming company, wanted to make a splash when their website launched. That’s why they began a strong campaign to grow their email list before they even had much information about their new company out.

Harry’s used a strong referral campaign to grow their email list. Instead of launching their company’s website, they had a simple two funnel. The landing page invited the visitor to sign up for their emails with the words “Be the first to know” above the box and “step inside” instead of the usual “confirm” or “submit” button. These word choices created a sense of urgency and intrigue.

Once the visitor signed up to receive emails, they were brought to the second page of the website, which was all about their referral program. This page contained a unique URL that the visitor could share with their friends and family. Then it had a tracker to show many people you had shared with. Harry’s gamified the referral process by setting up nice prizes for how many referrals a visitor made.

Referring 5 friends earned you a free shaving cream.

Referring 10 friends earned you a free razor.

Referring 25 friends earned you a free premium razor.

Referring 50 friends earned you free shaving for a year.

These incremental prizes were a great method for convincing visitors to share their referral codes with their friends and family. Plus, it built excitement over the company finally opening its doors.

This campaign led to Harry’s receiving 100,000 email sign-ups in just one week. Raider shared that 77% of the collected emails were referrals (Source: Viral Loops). This massive email list allowed Harry’s to ensure that when they finally opened, they weren’t just making their opening to crickets. They had an engaged and excited audience for when their products were finally available, which helped them become highly successful.

Harry’s successfully built their skyscraper on land they owned, their email list, instead of on land someone else owned, such as shelf space at big box stores. They now own the relationships and can contact their customers at any time, something that would be nearly impossible to do with a big-box distribution strategy.

Platforms Can Give and Platforms Can Take

Years ago I worked as the Chief Revenue Officer for a company called Family Link. Family Link had created a Facebook app called We’re Related that allowed users to connect with family members and show those connections on Facebook. During my first 12 months with the company, the app was wildly successful and we were able to add $5 million in revenue. The app became the 4th most popular on Facebook and had 90 million installs.

Facebook saw how popular our app was and decided to create much of that functionality into the core Facebook offering. And not only that, they removed our app from the user's main profile pages who had already installed it. Essentially, Facebook decided to compete and then made it extremely difficult for us to compete. It was kind of like the landowner changing the terms of the deal after we had built the skyscraper, and it was perfectly legal because our app was built on their platform. We had built a metaphorical skyscraper on land they owned, and they could do just about anything they wanted. It is unwise to build businesses under these types of circumstances where we are not the masters of our own destinies.

Facebook isn’t the only platform that does this. As another example, Amazon encourages third-party vendors to sell on their platform. However, in many cases when they see a highly profitable product, they create their own version of the same product and compete.

"Facebook and other social media platforms seem like a shortcut because they make it appear easy to reach new people. But the trade-off is that you're a sharecropper. It's not your land. You don't have permission to contact people; they do. You don't own an asset; they do." - Seth Godin, Best-Selling Marketing Author

Building a List We Own

This doesn’t mean using social media sites is a bad idea. The lesson I learned from the Facebook experience was the importance of building our own lists. An email list full of customers and potential customers that have already shown interest in our products or services is one of the most valuable assets a business can own.

Joe Pulizzi, the founder of Content Marketing Institute, explained it perfectly when he said: “An email list is critical because you can’t build your content on rented land. So many brands and companies build their audiences on Facebook and Google+, which is fine, but we don’t own those names – Facebook and Google do. If we are thinking like real media companies, the asset is in the audience.”

That quote was obviously from back when Google+ was a viable platform, but it illustrates that building our businesses to be reliant on other platforms can also go out of business, and we lose all of the investment we put into building our presence on that platform.

Does this mean we should avoid using social media platforms or other company’s websites? Of course not. They are still a great source for growing our reach. The point I’m trying to make here is that the end goal of our platform strategy must land outside of these platforms. We need to control the relationships and communication we have with our customers and potential customers. That means we’re building our email lists, gathering phone numbers and mailing addresses, and doing anything that will allow us to contact people off of the platform we found them on.

“The most effective tactic is the use of email marketing to drive a real return. The reason it is effective is that people may engage and share on social, but they will buy from a sequence of emails that educate first and sell second.” - Jeff Bullas, Social Media Marketing Strategist

LivingSocial Collects the Email of Every Website Visitor

Here’s another example:

LivingSocial is a coupon company that recognizes the importance of capturing the contact information of prospective customers. They recognize that consumers who love coupons are usually willing to give up their contact information in exchange for coupons. That’s why LivingSocial requires the email address of any of their website visitors.

That’s right. Every single visitor, if they want to see what coupons LivingSocial has to offer, must exchange their contact information to see the company’s website. This is an aggressive campaign that wouldn’t work for all audiences. After all, most visitors need to experience some value before they’re willing to give up their email addresses. LivingSocial has found that it works for their unique customers though.

One of the keys to LivingSocial’s success is that the emails they send have great value to their ideal customers. For example, one of the emails the company sends out is called Instant Deals. The idea behind this is to help people find a spot to eat lunch. Right when their customers are beginning to think about what they’ll eat for lunch, they receive an email with instant deals that can save them money on their meal and give them ideas for where they might like to eat.

I love this example because it shows how well LivingSocial knows their customers. Both the manner in which they collect contact information and the information they send in their emails demonstrates that they know their ideal customers well.

Each business has its own unique audience with its own unique desires and preferences. We need to build our platform on that. The better we know our audience, the better we’ll know what kind of email capturing will work best for them and what kind of plan we should implement. Then we’ll be able to provide them with effective emails that will transition them through the buyer's journey.

Becoming an Influencer

Authority occurs when someone takes the right steps to combine standout, trustworthy expertise in his or her field with the kind of high visibility you might often associate with a celebrity. When that happens, the expert’s name becomes synonymous with the field he or she works in - Adam Witty and Rusty Shelton, Authors of Authority Marketing

Most business leaders have the expertise, passion, and knowledge that we can share with others. When we share that expertise, passion, and knowledge on our own platforms we can often become an influencer in our niches.

We can become an influencer and thought-leader by writing a book, speaking at events, hosting a podcast, creating YouTube videos, writing blog posts, sending an email newsletter, and more. As we provide our followers with useful and engaging content, they’ll want more and more from us and we’ll begin to build a true relationship. One of the reasons this works so well is because we’re providing value before we ask for anything in return. Once we’ve established our expertise and created a loyal following, we’ll be able to market our products and services in a way that is authentic and credible.

Again, it’s important to recognize that as we’re building our followings on social media, we need to find ways to build a list of our followers we own and can contact off social media platforms. The more we can encourage our followers to visit our sites and sign up for our email lists, the stronger our foundation will be. Then we’ll be building our skyscraper on land we own.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of the top takeaways that stood out to me from this episode:

We need to build our metaphorical skyscrapers on land we own. This means growing a huge email list, membership site, or other platforms where we own the customer contact information and permission to contact customers and potential customers directly.
Our social media efforts, when we’re using someone else’s platform, should focus on getting our customers to come to our platform, gathering their contact information, and gaining permission to market to them.
The asset is the audience. In other words, the lists we build will become one of the greatest assets of our companies.
We can leverage our platforms to become influencers when we share our knowledge and expertise. Becoming an influencer can give us more control over our destinies because we cannot get de-platformed. A platform then cannot block us from contacting our own followers.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

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This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode we’re going to discuss the common misconception that money is evil, and share some great stories of entrepreneurs who generated wealth, and used that wealth to do some amazing things.

Jim Edwards Using Wealth to Save Lives

Jim Edwards is the author of Copywriting Secrets and the creator of a highly successful software product called Funnel Scripts, which my company has used. When Jim graduated from college with a history degree, he had no idea what he was planning on doing next. He quit or was fired from 7 different jobs in his first 18 months out of school. Through some turbulent years of many ups and downs, Jim eventually learned to publish books, create DVD courses, and sell coaching programs. Thanks to these programs and his entrepreneurial spirit, he went from being bankrupt and living in a trailer park to making $400,000 in just three months and paying off his house in 18 months. His Copywriting Secrets book and Funnel Scripts software generated more than $10 million within the first year of launch.

Jim’s son-in-law was part of the military and was deployed to Iraq. When his son-in-law was deployed, Jim went to the commanding officer and asked “what does your unit need?” Jim wanted to do anything he could to make sure this young man made it home safely.

The commander gave Jim a wishlist of all the equipment that he’d like to have to help keep his unit safe. Jim replied that he would take care of it. The commander asked Jim which of the equipment on the list he’d be able to supply, and Jim responded “all of it.” Because Jim had been so successful at monetizing his business, Jim was able to purchase and provide everything on the commander’s wishlist for the entire unit.

One dark night in Iraq, Jim’s son-in-law was driving with his unit in their Humvees when an IED exploded beneath his Humvee and destroyed the vehicle. In the pitch black and confusion of the wreck, the unit drug themselves out of the Humvee while they were bombarded by enemy fire.

As the soldiers fought for their lives, the medic on the squad flipped on his headlamp to check on the soldier who was fighting next to him. With that light, the medic quickly saw that the soldier was bleeding out badly. The medic quickly patched up the soldier and the soldiers were eventually rescued.

When they were back at their base, the medic approached his commanding officer and asked him to thank whoever had provided the headlamps. He told the commanding officer that without that headlamp, the soldier next to him would have died because he wouldn’t have been able to see well enough to know he was bleeding out. The commanding officer then told him that the headlamps had been provided by the injured soldier’s father-in-law. Jim had been blessed with wealth by God. He had chosen to use that wealth to do good, and as a result, he saved the life of someone he loved… the life of his daughter’s husband… the life of the father of his grandchildren.

Money vs. Love of Money

Some people may question, or even criticize me, for investing my time and other resources into building a business that focuses on helping business leaders make more money because they feel “money is the root of all evil.”

I believe the bible verse these people are referring to is 1 Timothy 6:10. This is actually one of the commonly misquoted and misunderstood verses of scripture. It is so commonly misunderstood that many people feel guilty about generating profits and wealth. Some people believe that profits and wealth are a sin and that poverty is a virtue. Here is the actual scripture:

“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith...." (1 Timothy 6:10, KJV)

This verse does not say “money is the root of all evil.” It says “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Huge difference.

Money itself is not evil. We all need money to provide for ourselves and the people we love. Orphanages need money to care for children without families. Charities need money to accomplish their charitable causes. Money builds churches, schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters.

So, what is the “love of money”? The love of money is putting the pursuit of money or materialistic things before God. The love of money is greed, and not using the money with which God has blessed us to help others and do His work.

Parable of the Talents

Matthew 25 records a parable Christ taught about talents. In this parable, a Lord was leaving for a faraway country. Before he left, the Lord gave his first servant five talents, his second servant two talents, and his third servant one talent. Talents were a unit of money used at the time of Christ.

When the Lord returned, he had a reckoning with the three servants. The first servant reported that he had traded with the five talents and doubled them to be ten talents. The second servant reported he had invested the two talents and doubled them to be four talents. To the first two servants, the Lord said, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

However, the third servant reported that because he had been afraid, he had buried that one talent and not done anything good with it. The Lord called the third servant wicked and slothful and said that he should have invested the talent wisely. The Lord then rewarded the first two servants abundantly. But, he took the talent from the third servant and gave it to the first servant, and cast out the third servant.

What can we as entrepreneurs learn from this parable of the talents? God gives talents to all of us, and he expects us to use those wisely to multiply our talents and do good things with them. As entrepreneurs, we have talents to create businesses, products, services, jobs, and wealth. God wants entrepreneurs to create successful businesses that can provide well for themselves and the people they love. He wants us to create quality, ethical products and services. He wants us to create good jobs so our employees can provide well for themselves and the people they love. He wants us to use our wealth to help other people.

I’m going to share some examples of successful entrepreneurs who have been wise stewards with their entrepreneurial talents, have generated great wealth, and have then used that wealth to do God’s work and help a lot of people.

Tony Robbins, Motivational Speaker and Coach

Tony Robbins is one of the most successful motivational speakers and coaches in the world. According to Inc, Tony Robbins is involved in 31 companies--12 of which he actively manages--to the tune of a reported $5 billion in annual revenue. His family grew up in impoverished financial circumstances. They often didn’t have food to put on the table. However, one Thanksgiving, a generous person provided Thanksgiving for Tony’s family. As a result of that kind act, last year alone, Tony’s charity Feeding America provided meals for more than 100 million people that couldn’t afford a meal.

David Health, Co-Founder of Bombas

Davide Heath is a co-founder and CEO of Bombas, a company that makes high-quality socks. Because socks are the most-requested clothing item in U.S. homeless shelters, for every pair of socks they sell, Bombas donates a pair of socks to someone in need. Each day a new employee joins Bombas and before they are allowed to do anything else, they are given 10 pairs of socks and are asked to walk around the city to hand them out, while interacting with the people on the streets. Bombas is just about to hit their millionth pair of socks donated, in their third year of operation.

Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft

Bill Gates famously made his initial fortune as a co-founder of Microsoft. Bill and his wife Melinda have given away more than $45 billion to charities over the years (source: CNBC), including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That foundation and its partners are credited with saving more than 122 million lives through their childhood vaccination programs, and nearly eradicating several tropical diseases (source: The National News).

Paying for My Honeymoon

When my wife and I were engaged, we planned to travel to a tropical island for our honeymoon. However, as the date of the wedding came near, the financial situation of my young business did not make it possible for us to have the funds to go on that honeymoon. Instead, one of our generous investors made it possible for us to stay in a cabin for our honeymoon the week after we were married. My wife and I have been forever grateful to this man and his generosity, and we like to pay it forward for other newlywed couples.

Charitable Causes Need Monetization

Nearly any charitable cause requires funds to operate, which often originate from people who have been successful at monetizing a business, whether it be from the owner of the business or the people who received compensation from that business. Without these funds from business monetization, most charities would be unable to do the good they’re trying to accomplish. Most of the things that really matter in our lives, such as health, family, relationships, service, and faith, require money and time that we can only give if we have enough to share.

Helping Orphans Find Homes

Here’s an example from my Adoption.com business. Some people think you shouldn’t talk about making money in the adoption community. At Adoption.com, we make money in certain areas of the business, such as selling advertising sponsorships because it then gives us the resources we need to do other projects that help many children and families. For example, we have a photolisting with thousands of children waiting to be adopted but we don’t charge anything for the foster children to be listed in this photolisting. We’re able to provide this free community service and help children find loving, forever families thanks to monetization in other areas of our business.

Monetization Can Help Us Accomplish the Things that Really Matter Money itself is not inherently evil. However, the love of money, or greed, can defocus and distract us from the things that really matter. Money can provide the means for us to take care of ourselves, the people we love, to serve others, and to make a difference for good in the world.

The goal of Monetization Nation is to help us earn more money so we can be good stewards and have the resources to take care of the things that really matter.

Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
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How have you seen money used to make a difference for good? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Customers are increasingly wary of companies and brands they aren’t sure they can trust. According to research by Edelman, 67% of people surveyed agree that “a good reputation may get [them] to try a product, but unless [they] come to trust the company behind the product, [they] will soon stop buying it.”

Carla Meine is an entrepreneur with an amazing track record. Her company was one of the Top 100 fastest-growing companies in Utah for five years. She ran one of Utah’s top 10 women-owned businesses for nine years and won Utah’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.

In 2007, Carla Meine and her husband began running a small weight loss company named IdealShape. She implemented innovative credibility marketing strategies that helped transform the business to $60 million in annual revenue.

4 IdealShape Credibility Marketing Strategies Here are some strategies Carla used to create and market through trust:

1. Great Customer Service “One-third of Americans have used social media to complain about a brand or its customer service.” - Microsoft

While Carla owned IdealShape, they put a strong emphasis on customer service. They strived to get their products to customers within two or three days. They quickly replied to comments and posts in their Facebook groups and monitored comments, making sure things never got ugly. When a customer was dissatisfied with their products, they provided refunds and did everything they could to make their customers happy.

Doing all of these things produced a loyal group of customers who felt that the company really cared about them. It made them feel listened to and appreciated. IdealShape built up their loyalty with these customers to the point where the customers started defending them against anyone who complained in the Facebook groups.

When their company sold, the new owners didn’t put as much emphasis on customer service. They let go of employees who worked in customer service and/or managed the Facebook groups. As a result, they couldn’t foster that community in the same way and sales declined.

"You really don't get credibility marketing if you don't do a great job with customer service." -Carla Meine

2. Use Facebook Groups to Create a Space Where Customers Feel Comfortable Sharing their Experiences While at IdealShape, Carla helped create the Ship Shape Challenge, a competition that leveraged Facebook. Customers would post their “before and after” weight loss pictures and stories, showing off the results of IdealShape’s products. Then the person who received the most votes could win a cruise.

This contest got people to share their posts on social media in hopes that more of their friends and family would vote for them. It resulted in a lot of exposure for the company. Eventually, the customers asked for a private Facebook group, which the company promptly created.

Carla and the company recognized the value of these private Facebook groups as customers felt more comfortable posting in this community where people had similar experiences. The group members were connecting with members of their tribe. Because of this, IdealShape started promoting their general Facebook page to everyone who bought their product. After they befriended customers there, they invited them to the private group. In the private group, customers could see positive reviews of different IdealShape products from group members, which helped give credibility to those products.

3. Utilize Influencers to Accelerate Reach and Credibility Some people try to get influencers to give them promotions for free. This can sometimes give a one-time increase in revenue, but it is not a sustainable strategy. Influencers today generally don’t work for free, and they will especially not continue to do so. When we pay influencers fairly, it can help us establish long-term win-win relationships with the influencers.

After IdealShape started their private Facebook groups, they needed people to help manage them. So, the company reached out to influencers and hired them to do exercise videos while managing a private group.

The people who watched the exercise videos created by the influencers would join the Facebook groups, and from there they were encouraged not only to join in the community but to buy more of the products shared in the Facebook groups. The use of influencers doubled the company’s revenue from $20 million to $40 million. Then, they added another $20 million the next year, reaching $60 million in annual income.

4. Create an Environment Where Employees Feel Trusted and Accountable, but Not Controlled Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, said, “I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers, and that people flourish when they are praised.”

In the 1990s Carla was the CEO of one of the first large remote call centers. Back then, working from home was almost unheard of in the call center industry. Now especially, working from home is often necessary, but many companies are struggling to effectively manage their teams remotely. Carla’s business systematized accountability, through which employees could receive much more freedom.

IdealShape told their employees that as long as their stats stayed the same or went up, they could work from home. If their stats went down, supervisors would call the employee and tell them to come work in the office so the supervisor could help them get their stats up. This resulted in natural accountability, and the employee could have the freedom to work from home as long as they met their metrics.

Employees followed their metrics closely and knew when their metrics were down before the supervisor called. Because the ground rules were laid out from the beginning, the employees knew what would happen. The employees felt trusted that the company allowed them to work from home. Thanks to this systematized accountability, the call center team was able to have the freedom of working from home. Furthermore, with this system of accountability, the team was more effective from home than they had been in the office with all of the distractions.

"Because you trusted your employees, you got more productivity out of them. Because you created a trusting environment instead of a controlling environment, you actually had much greater success." - Nathan Gwilliam

Recurring Revenue Streams Through her experience, Carla has also realized that it is easier to build a trusting relationship with an existing customer than to market to find a new customer. At IdealShape, they realized they needed to do some type of automatic shipping program to generate more recurring revenue. So after a customer would purchase the first package, the company would follow-up with them when they were close to running out of the product. In the follow-up email, they would offer them a really good deal, such as 20% off their next purchase and free shipping. The company was then extremely flexible with all future orders, making sure to treat their customers right. The average customer would accept the deal and stay for eight to nine months.

Diversifying Revenue Streams Another monetization strategy Carla used with IdealShape’s customers was diversifying their revenue streams. A customer typically came to them because they heard about how great their shakes were. The company kept these customers coming back by constantly releasing new products such as new shake flavors, new supplements, and new flavors for meal replacement bars. Carla noticed their sales would go up every time they released a new product or flavor, so the company made a goal to release four or five new products a month.

Connect with Carla If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Carla or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmeine/

Key Takeaways Thank you Carla for sharing your stories and experiences. Here are some of my key takeaways from today’s episode:

Find the right motivation for your customers to share their experiences with other customers like them, such as IdealShape’s cruise for the winner of the Ship Shape Challenge.
Use influencers to bring in a lot more customers and help build credibility.
Be willing to pay influencers. This will help turn one-time influencer deals into long-term influencer deals.
Customer service is one of the most important ways to build credibility. Take care of customers with every interaction to keep them coming back.
Create a trusting environment rather than a controlling environment for employees.
Systematize accountability so that employees can enjoy more freedom.
Create recurring revenue streams. It is easier to keep current customers than advertise to find new ones.
Diversify revenue streams by giving customers add-ons and new products to improve customer lifetime value.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

Share Your Story What are the best credibility marketing strategies you’ve seen? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/16-4-credibility-marketing-strategies-that-helped-idealshape-reach-60-million-in-annual-revenue/

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“If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” - Bruce Lee

I’ve observed many incredibly successful entrepreneurs and CEOs who make many more decisions based on time than on money, and I’ve seen the same trend in my career. In this episode, we’re going to discuss how to more effectively invest time, our most precious commodity.

Going Back to College After a Decade to Get My Degrees

After my junior year in college, I dropped out of school to focus on growing Adoption.com full-time. After running Adoption.com for more than a decade, I felt stagnated and paralyzed in my entrepreneurship. It felt like others were putting limits on me because I didn’t have a college degree, and that I was hitting glass ceilings. I wanted to be a better entrepreneur, and I didn’t want to be a limiting factor in the growth of my businesses.

As one solution to be a better entrepreneur, I wanted to go back to finish my degree. My wife and my business partner were both supportive, so I hired a good friend to manage the day-to-day operations of the business under my direction and immediately enrolled in school in another state.

Soon after restarting school, my wife suggested I try to simultaneously enroll in the MBA (Masters of Business Administration) program, which was about to start, while I was finishing my undergraduate degree. This MBA program was something she knew I really wanted to do, but I believed I had to finish my undergraduate degree first and then apply for the MBA program the following school year. I didn’t think there was any chance the MBA program would ever let me simultaneously enroll while I was still finishing my undergraduate degree, or that they would let me apply to start in just a few weeks. But, because of my wife’s encouragement, I asked and I was shocked when the university agreed to let me do both programs at once.

I gratefully did that MBA program and I loved it. I know some entrepreneurs feel college isn’t worth it, but I disagree, at least for my situation. I loved my professors, classmates, and classes in the BYU MBA program. Through that program, I was amazed at how much I learned that I didn’t know I didn’t know through my first decade of entrepreneurship. Doors opened to me, such as the Deseret Digital Media position, or university classes I’ve taught, that would not have been possible without that master’s degree.

Finding the Best Mentors

As a second solution to becoming a better entrepreneur, I went looking for mentors. Since I had started my first business as a college student and had always been the CEO since then, I had never had the experience of being mentored by highly successful entrepreneurs who I worked for. I wanted to be mentored by and learn from highly successful entrepreneurs.

So I started doing digital strategy, marketing, and execution work for other entrepreneurs. Over the next few years, I approached four incredibly successful entrepreneurs from whom I wanted to be mentored, and I was very blessed that all four of them allowed me to work for them. These four men weren’t just successful entrepreneurs, but they were also striving to nurture family and faith at the core of their lives, which I wanted in my life as well.

Those four entrepreneurial mentors for me were:

David Neeleman who founded 4 airlines such as JetBlue and Azul;
Carlos Martins, a billionaire entrepreneur from Brazil who created the world’s largest network of language learning schools;
Paul Allen, who started Ancestry.com (not the Microsoft Paul Allen); and
Clark Gilbert, who was a former Harvard Entrepreneurship professor and the CEO of Deseret Digital Media.

I was able to absorb strategies and insights from those amazing entrepreneurs by helping grow their ventures. My treasured time working for these four men felt like an apprenticeship stage of my entrepreneurial journey. It is very important for every entrepreneur to create mentoring opportunities where they can learn from entrepreneurs who have been-there-done-that and have already achieved the kinds of success we want to achieve, in the areas that matter most to us.

Time is Our Most Precious Commodity

One of the most important lessons I learned from these great men was that time seemed to be their most precious commodity. I saw them make many decisions based more upon time than upon money. For example, I vividly remember the first time I traveled to Brazil to meet with Carlos Martins and his team, and how he had a helicopter pick me up at the airport in Sao Paulo and fly me to his home to save me hours of driving in traffic to his home. Time was so precious to him.

Then, later that night I remember playing soccer (or football as we call it in Brazil) in Carlos’ backyard with him and his family. I played soccer as a child and in high school and I love it. I think Carolos was surprised that an American knew how to play soccer. For Brazilians, soccer is just a part of life. For many Brazilians, it is more prestigious to be on the Brazilian national soccer team than to be the President of Brazil. No joke.

Anyway, the helicopter ride had saved hours of driving, which allowed us time to make some fun memories together. I was blessed to help Carlos create several businesses, and that soccer game was a great way to start off the business relationship. He had traded the cost of the helicopter ride in part for the time to make that connection.

Each of my four mentors had to be incredibly diligent about managing their time so they could accomplish the amazing things they did, and still have plenty of time for the other things that mattered most, such as their faith and their families. They each had to consciously remove many less-important things from their lives so they had time for the things that were more important. It’s kind of like they were constantly working to maximize their ROT (Return on Time). I believe that because these men learned how to leverage time as their most precious commodity they were able to find much more success in all of those areas.

Reinvesting Time in Things That Matter Most

I have not had anywhere near the success of those four men, but time has also become my most precious commodity. I find myself wanting more time to do the things that matter most to me, such as spending time with the people I love, my faith, my health, and the causes I care about. I strive to outsource and delegate tasks I can so I can get time back.

More than two decades ago, when my wife and I were newlyweds, she had an OBGYN whose daughter was attending college. His daughter’s college was 1 hour 45 minutes away, but he had a scheduled lunch appointment with her every Friday. That meant he invested about 5 hours each Friday to have lunch with his daughter. He was a doctor, whose time was very valuable, yet he chose to invest his precious time with someone who was even more precious to him.

I was so impressed with his recurring father-daughter dates, that I am trying to follow his example and do a date with each of my daughters every week I’m in town.

Coaches and Consultants Can Help Us Get Time Back

The National Academy of Science survey respondents reported: “...greater happiness after spending money on a time-saving purchase than on a material purchase.” Coaches and consultants can help save us the time of having to learn and execute everything new on our own.

Almost every entrepreneur I consult for has lamented that they and their teams are maxed out and don’t have enough time to implement everything they want to do in their businesses. Some entrepreneurs identify top priority projects, and outsource those projects to qualified people they know will complete the projects well. Most of my consulting clients have contracted with me as a way to buy more time. They were capable of figuring out and doing their own digital monetization, but they were very busy and didn’t have the time to wait to learn and implement it on their own. They wanted someone they could trust to quickly do things well for them, so they could save that time.

If you are looking to get more of your time back for what matters most, and if you want some help developing and implementing a revolutionary monetization strategy that leverages tectonic shifts, please visit my consulting site at MonetizationPartners.com to schedule a free consultation.

Tectonic Shifts Can Give Us Time Back

Tectonic shifts can be another very effective way for busy entrepreneurs to make more powerful use of their most precious commodity of time. As I mentioned in a previous episode, tectonic shifts can be kind of like catching a wave surfing. If we ride the wave, the momentum of the wave can get us to shore in a fraction of the time. Similarly, as we effectively leverage tectonic shifts, the momentum of that tectonic shift may help get us to our desired business goals faster.

For example, passion-driven marketing can help us connect with our potential customers faster, diversifying revenue with information products can help us grow our revenue faster, credibility marketing can help us increase trust faster, and funnels can help us improve our conversions faster, etc.

Key Takeaways

Here are a few of the key takeaways from today’s episode to help us get a better ROT (Return on Time):

Continuously invest in our entrepreneurial education, as I did going back to school. Online courses, live conferences, podcasts, and blogs are other great ways to do this.
If we really want to do something, it often doesn’t hurt to ask, instead of assuming the other person will say “no.” They might surprise us and say “yes” as the MBA program did with my simultaneous enrollment request.
Create mentoring opportunities where we can learn from entrepreneurs who have achieved the success we want to achieve in the areas that matter most to us, and not just financial.
As we find ways to save time, we should be careful to re-invest that time in the things that matter most to us, as my wife’s doctor did with his daughter.
We should consciously remove the less-important things from our lives so we have more room for the things that matter most.
We may consider outsourcing some of our most important projects to someone we can trust will get them done well.
We might consider hiring coaches who can accelerate our learning curve, and save us the time having to learn everything on our own.
We should leverage tectonic shifts to accelerate the growth of our businesses.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

Share Your Story

How have you been able to save time and reinvest it into something that matters most to you? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/15-how-to-more-effectively-invest-time/

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Meet Mark Morris

Mark Morris has had a storied business consulting career. In this episode, Mark will share how captivating storytelling helped save the 2002 Olympic games, along with his insider story of helping create Burger King’s viral Subservient Chicken campaign, which some believe is one of the top-10 marketing campaigns of all time.

Mark Morris has a Harvard MBA, is a University professor of business management, worked as a consultant for Bain and Company and Deloitte, and has consulted for more than 100 companies.

He was also in New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks with a CEO client. The day before that, the Olympic committee had been in New York looking for a place for the Olympic flame to rest during the Christmas holidays.

Scandal Surrounding the 2002 Olympics

Mark had the opportunity to assist with the marketing and communications for the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Games. It was projected to be the worst Olympic games because of a bribery scandal. This scandal was having a huge effect on the credibility and monetization of the games, and sponsors were not wanting to be associated with the scandal.

Mark feels that the Olympics is one of the most passion-filled events. It is filled with people who have dedicated their lives to being elite athletes.

As Mark met with the team trying to move the focus away from the scandal, they decided to focus on telling the stories of the Olympic athletes and what they had overcome to arrive at this event. They felt that the focus should be on helping people connect with the athletes and their stories. Instead of trying to focus on defending the scandal, they moved on and focused on creating connections with the athletes. As the team behind the 2002 Olympics was able to successfully focus on telling these athlete stories, the focus did shift away from the scandal and sponsorships did come back.

These Olympic games had been projected to lose a huge sum of money greatly due to the scandal. However, in great part because of this storytelling strategy and the connections with the athletes, the games became profitable. Some even said the 2002 Salt Lake City Games were the best-run Olympic games ever.

Subservient Chicken

Mark worked with Burger King to launch a new chicken sandwich. Before that, Burger King had a "chewed and glued" chicken sandwich that wasn’t whole-breast chicken. Mark was helping them launch a higher-quality chicken sandwich that could be customized.

With this launch, they rolled out the "Have it your way" campaign. To do this, they hired a person to dress up in a chicken suit and recorded him doing about 400 different actions. Then, they put it online so people could type in commands to have the chicken do things "your way." This became the "Subservient Chicken" phenomenon, and it went viral. Many of the people thought that the chicken was doing their commands live and didn’t realize it was all pre-recorded.

Here’s a quote about the Subservient Chicken campaign from Adweek:

“The ‘Subservient Chicken’ instantly struck a nerve with bloggers, in part because the site’s technology allowed users to type in nearly anything and get a response from the chicken. He could do jumping jacks, dance, do push-ups and even watch television. He seemed impossible to stump. Within a day after being released, the site had a million hits. Within a week, it had received 20 million hits. Who was behind this strange Web phenomenon? Many visitors to the site were surprised to see it was Burger King.”

Mark remembers taking the Subservient Chicken to Fox News in New York so that the newscasters could "have it their way." Later that night, Mark took the Subservient Chicken clubbing in a stretch SUV.

Some people rank the Subservient Chicken as one of the top 10 marketing campaigns of all time.

Hard Times are an Opportunity to Create Connections

Hard times are sometimes the best times to connect with people. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were the worst terrorist attacks in history, but they created a more unified "tribe" of Americans. Another example is when a group of students go through the challenge of business school together and become very bonded.

Mark believes that when we focus on the hard times it can cause us to feel crushed, defeated, and hopeless. But as we work to get through the hard times together, it can become binding to an amazing degree.

Mark went into business because of a hard time he experienced. Mark’s dad was an entrepreneur who went through an economic downturn. He went from having lots of business and opportunity to having very little.

Mark tells the story of sitting in a college economics class and the teacher being able to predict the past and the future because he understood the laws or tectonic shifts of economics. Mark felt like he was observing magic tricks. He wanted to go into business because of what he learned, and because of his desire to help others learn these things.

The power of being there for our customers during hard times and the opportunity this provides to build long-term loyal relationships isn’t about being opportunistic. It’s about valuing our customers beyond the dollar, especially during hard times. For example, Mark was with two executives in New York during 9/11, one from California and the other from Utah. Both executives rented cars and drove home, and the car companies waived all the charges.

Recurring Revenue

The New York Times was able to use its credibility to build one of the most profitable, if not the most profitable, paywall/subscription recurring revenue stream of any news organization. Mark thinks recurring revenue is similar to utilities. Many businesses today have reconsidered how they can add recurring revenue streams to their business models. Mark explains that the software industry has done a great job of shifting from one-time sales of software to software as a service with a recurring revenue stream.

Connect with Mark

To connect with Mark and learn more about his consulting services, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-morris-1b711b161/.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Mark for sharing your stories and secrets with us. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

When we face a scandal or other crises, using great storytelling to build connections can be a powerful tool to shift the focus away from the scandal to something much more positive.
When we are in the midst of something negative, it is often difficult to just remove the negative. That leaves a void and something has to fill the void. Often it is much easier to make the negativity go away by focusing on replacing the negativity with something positive.
When we can create marketing campaigns that our target audience feel are personalized (like the Subservient Chicken), it can greatly increase our ability to connect with that target audience.
We should look at hard times as an opportunity to build deeper connections. When we are there for others through their dark times, it can build loyalty that lasts forever.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

Who do we know that is going through a hard time right now, and how can we be there for them during that hard time? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/14-how-storytelling-helped-save-the-2002-olympics/

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“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” - Archimedes

A lever is one of the most basic tools and yet it can be incredibly powerful. Levers allow us to lift items that we don’t have the strength to lift on our own. Using a lever is called leverage, which according to dictionary.com means to “use to maximum advantage.” That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode; how we can leverage our assets to metaphorically lift more than we would have the strength to lift on our own.

Leveraging Our Time

Time is a precious resource and we want to be sure we are using it to the maximum advantage, or in other words, leveraging it. That means we need to spend our time doing the things that will reward us with the returns that matter most. One way we can do that is through delegation. If there are tasks we can delegate to someone else, we should do it. This will require us to have other assets like effective team members and money to pay them.

Another way to leverage our time is to leverage unexpected extra time. On Salesgravy, Jason Eatmon shares a story of when the soccer team he was coaching played a very difficult opponent. At one point in the game, one of Jason’s players was injured. As Jason jogged out to the field to check on him, he was surprised to see what the other team was doing. Instead of standing around, they ran quickly to their coach on the sideline and started stretching and discussing the game. This team realized the importance of unexpected timeouts and leveraged that time to improve and prepare themselves for the rest of the game.

Time Audit

If we’re not sure if we’re leveraging our time effectively, we should do a time audit on ourselves. A time audit works very similarly to the budget planning process, in which we record how we are spending our money, then group together similar transactions, analyze that data, and then make a plan for how we would like to spend our money in the future. Finally, at the end of future months, we repeat this process and compare our actual spending to our plan and make changes as necessary to accomplish what matters most with our money.

Here are the steps of a time audit:

Record - We carefully record everything we do with our time for a week. It’s important to not deviate from how we normally spend our time during this week.
Categorize - We group together the time spent on similar tasks in categories.
Analyze - We analyze how we spent our time.
Decide - We decide how we want to change our time allocation to best invest in what matters most.
Schedule - We develop a schedule for how we are going to use our time according to our plan going forward. We put this schedule in our phones with reminders.
Assess - Finally, we schedule a time regularly to assess how we are doing implementing our plan and make any changes necessary to achieve what matters most to us with our time.

Leveraging Our Customers

Next, we need to leverage our customers. I’m not suggesting we take advantage of anyone. What I mean here is instead of focusing on one and done sales, we should be striving to create long-lasting relationships with our customers by continually providing them with value.

Acquiring a new customer can be 5X more expensive than holding onto our existing customers. In fact, increasing our customer retention by as little as 5% can yield an increase in profits anywhere from 25-95% (Source: Outbound Engine). Plus, hopefully, most of our existing customers already like us. That means it should be much easier to convince them to do more business with us. Statistics show that selling to a repeat customer has a 60-70% success rate while selling to a potential customer is only 5-10% (Source: Outbound Engine). That’s why it’s important to see our existing customers as an asset that we can leverage.

Leveraging our existing customers is about recognizing what other offerings they would benefit from. A great example of this is DBDPet. This company is a one-stop-shop for exotic animals but it didn’t begin that way. It began with just one bearded dragon in a garage and expanded into more exotic animal breeding from there. That was when the company began to recognize how difficult it was for their customers to obtain all the tools and food they needed to meet their pets’ needs. DBDPet decided to fill that need and began selling everything needed to take care of the animals their customers were buying.

DBDPet didn’t stop there in offering their customers value. They realized that there wasn’t a lot of information on how to care for the pets they were selling. They became experts on the care of many different animals, and they share their information for free on their social media channels. This free offering provides great value to their customers and attracts potential customers to their brand. Ultimately, DBDPet has done a great job leveraging their customers to increase the company’s offerings and improve customer loyalty.

Another way we can leverage our customers is by sharing their success stories, testimonials, and incentivizing them to refer us to their friends and family. Short videos are usually the most effective way to leverage these success stories and testimonials. Consumers are turning more and more to trusted sources for advice on where to buy. Past customers are some of the most trusted sources for new customers. This is why leveraging our customers can be invaluable in gaining new customers.

Leveraging Our Successes

When we experience great successes and achievements, we should be leveraging those experiences to gain more business opportunities. Potential customers are more likely to trust that we can give them what they want if we can show them we’ve done it before. For example, my first successful business was Adoption.com. Once I had that success, I leveraged it to gain my first consulting client. The success I helped that client achieve added to my Adoption.com leverage and helped me gain more clients and investors.

Here’s another example of leverage related to my consulting work in Brazil. I know Brazil and the Portuguese language well thanks to my two-year mission there. When I went back to finish my college degree, one of the deans of the business school recruited me to serve as the President of a non-profit foundation started by David Neeleman. David is the founder of Azul, a Brazilian airline. David got to know my work through that non-profit. My knowledge of Brazil and the Portuguese language from my mission, alongside David Neeleman watching my work as I ran his foundation during my schooling, gave me leverage. That’s why when David started Azul, he recruited me to help develop and implement digital strategy. I was told Azul became the fastest-growing airline while I was there.

Carlos Martins is a billionaire in Brazil. He saw the success we had at Azul (more leverage) which resulted in him hiring me to help him grow three of his ventures in Brazil. Notice how the success at each level gives leverage that helps us advance to the next level. We can leverage our successes by sharing testimonials and success stories.

Another way to leverage our successes is by sharing awards from credible sources. Here’s an example. Years ago, the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship gave me their “Best of the Decade” award. I can think of many people who deserve that award more than me, and I don’t know why they gave it to me. However, that sounds like a very impressive award, and I’ve been able to leverage that to help secure contracts with numerous other graduates of that school. We just have to be careful to not share the stories in ways that sound arrogant, just like I probably sound really arrogant sharing that story. Sorry. Just trying to give an example of a principle.

Leveraging Tectonic Shifts

“When we leverage, we aggregate and organize existing resources to achieve success.” - Richie Norton, Author of The Power of Starting Something Stupid

As I’ve shared before, there are tectonic shifts occurring all over the business world, and they’re going to run their course and change things up whether we leverage them or not. The businesses that are quickly and effectively leveraging tectonic shifts are likely the ones that are going to jump ahead of their competitors and come out on top.

Leveraging tectonic shifts is all about being willing to change the way we do business to match the changing opportunities. It doesn’t matter how big, well established, or dominant we are. If we keep doing the same things we’ve always done, our competitors will leverage the tectonic shifts, and the tectonic shifts will have the power to bury us. We will become stagnant and stale without them. Instead, we need to recognize the tectonic shifts occurring and leverage them by changing the way we do business.

A good example of this is the Wine Library, run by Gary Vaynerchuk. In the late 90’s Gary recognized the tectonic shift the internet was creating. His father owned a simple, local liquor store, Shoppers Discount Liquors. Gary moved his father’s liquor store onto the internet, making it one of the first online stores for alcohol. They renamed the company Wine Library and went from making 3 million to 60 million (Source: Gary Vaynerchuk).

Gary didn’t stop there either. He saw how popular videos were and how easy it was becoming to upload your own videos and he decided to create Wine Library tv. In his show, Gary teaches viewers about different wines. This idea wasn’t something many were doing at the time and his show became very popular. It was highly effective because it was a form of advertising that consumers were actively seeking because of the entertainment and knowledge it provided. The online tv show added greatly to the success of Wine Library.

At Monetization Nation, we are coming together as fellow entrepreneurs to identify tectonic shifts and find ways to leverage them together to our advantage. If you’d like to join us in this quest, visit our Facebook page to find fellow digital monetizers who are striving to achieve monetization goals they’ve never achieved before. Or, follow our podcast to hear from real business leaders as they share with us the lessons they’ve learned from successes and failures.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today’s episode:

We should leverage our time by performing a time audit, helping to ensure we’re maximizing the precious time we have.
We should leverage our customers by offering products and services that will result in repeat customers, incentivizing referrals, and sharing customer success stories and testimonials.
We should leverage our successes by sharing our stories of success or our awards won, hopefully in a manner that doesn’t feel arrogant.
We should leverage tectonic shifts by changing the way we do business to fit the new shifts occurring.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow the following channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

Share Your Story

What assets do you leverage or hope to leverage in the future? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/13-with-enough-leverage-we-can-move-the-earth/

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I recently interviewed John Pestana and he told me an amazing story of how a game of paper, scissors, rock helped grow his business which sold to Adobe for more than $1.8 billion.

John was in a class with me during my junior year in college. Since then, John has been a phenomenally successful entrepreneur. He was a co-founder of MyComputer.com, which he sold as his first exit. He then co-founded Omniture, an enterprise analytics company, which he sold to Adobe for $1.8 billion. He is currently the founder and CEO of ObservePoint, a data analytics company.

Here are a few of the monetization secrets from my interview with John.

Creating “Wow” Engagement

While John was working at Omniture, they sponsored a lunch at a large software conference. Normally whoever sponsors the lunch has a chance during the meal to stand in front of everyone and speak about their company. John and his team noticed that nobody ever seemed to pay attention during these little speeches, and they wanted to find a way to change that.

Instead of standing up and speaking about their company, they decided to hold a paper, scissors, rock competition for the attendees. The winner would receive a hummer. As you can imagine, attendees were absolutely thrilled to participate. Participants collected business cards from everyone who participated and had them chant “Om-Ni-Ture” instead of “paper, scissors, rock.”

This “wow” moment was unforgettable and created amazing brand awareness and lead generation for Omniture. As we try to engage with potential customers, we should try to think outside the box and create “wow” engagement. Some ideas may fall flat, but when we succeed we have a chance to become legendary.

Agility and Grit

"The people who become really successful have agility and grit. They just keep going no matter what. When you fall flat on your face, you just pick yourself up and keep moving.” - John Pestana

Embracing Data, Good or Bad

"I’m not afraid of data. I actually want to know if something is bad. There are so many people who don’t want to know the bad things. I want to know the bad things because the only way I can fix the bad things is if I know about them.” - John Pestana

Connecting With Every Employee 1-on-1

Within 3 days of becoming the new CEO of ObservePoint, John had done 1-on-1 interviews with every employee. Now, every 6 months John does an interview with every employee (100 people), even the part-time interns. These interviews build John’s credibility with his team and show that he cares about them and their thoughts and opinions. If there is anyone a CEO should be talking to, it is the front-line customer service reps who are working with the customers.

Obsess About Customer Happiness

We should obsess about customer happiness. Live and breathe it and instill it throughout our company.

To be credible, we must know our industry well enough that we are a credible source of information. We also must know our customers well enough that we know what is going to help them or not.

When we do a good job helping solve problems for our customers, they start coming to us and asking us to help them solve other problems in their business. It is tempting to want to take that additional work, but we have to ask ourselves if that is a business we want to be in. We don’t want to destroy our credibility in the things where we are experts because we took on additional projects where we were not experts and performed poorly.

Most salespeople just spew out information when they are trying to make a sale. That doesn’t work well. We should never start off that way. The first thing we do is ask potential customers about themselves and their problems. Then, we know how we can make them happy. We can then focus on solving their problem instead of selling our product. When we listen first, we are more credible because we are giving people what they need.

The Power of Saying “No” and Setting Good Expectations

There is a power in saying “no.” By saying yes too much, we can destroy our credibility. We don’t have to be everything to everybody. We need to understand what we are.

Credibility is doing what we say we are going to do. That is a two-sided stick. We obviously need to do what we say we are going to do, but just as importantly, we need to set proper expectations upfront about what we are going to do.

The Results Pyramid

When we want to see new results in our companies, we tend to focus on giving out many new orders and action items. However, in order to receive the results we truly want, we need our team members to understand why there are new actions and to believe that we can achieve the results we’re reaching after. So the first thing we need to do is create experiences that can change beliefs. Those changed beliefs will lead to changed actions, which will ultimately reward us with the results we’re seeking.

When John started as CEO at ObservePoint, customer retention was only in the high 70’s. He told his employees that the company goal was to bring it up to 95% retention. When his employees heard this, they rolled their eyes. They needed to have experiences that would help change their beliefs that it was possible to achieve that result.

So John started giving them those experiences. One example he shares is that in the past when they needed to have a team meeting to solve a service problem, the team would look at their calendars and schedule something 2 weeks in the future. Under John’s leadership, he stated that they needed to have an emergency meeting at 5 p.m. that day to solve the problem.

After six months of having experiences like that, John asked his team who believed him when he first said that they would have a 95% retention rate. Only two members raised their hands. He then asked who now believed that they could achieve a 95% retention rate and every employee raised their hand.

Leveraging Associations & Tradeshows

When we serve in industry associations it is a way for us to give back, and it is also a way to give credibility to our companies.

We should carefully track the return on investment from every trade show so we know which ones convert and which ones do not.

Trade shows aren’t just about finding new customers. They are also about being in touch with our current customers. Trade shows can be effective ways to meet everyone in person, as opposed to having to fly out and meet everyone individually.

It’s important to know the metrics that we will use to measure the success of a trade show before the trade show. Otherwise, it’s too easy to come up with statistics to justify an ineffective decision after the fact.

Using Zoom Effectively

Meeting someone in person helps build credibility. During COVID, we need to figure out ways to do that virtually. We must treat Zoom professionally so it helps to build and not detract from our credibility. When we are using Zoom, we need to have a professional Zoom photo, get ready for the day, and have good lighting. If you don’t have professional lighting, at least face a window instead of having a window behind you.

When we are using Zoom, we should try to create as close to an in-person experience as we can. For example, when John does company meetings over Zoom, he calls out people who are not sharing their videos, because it is important that we see each other, even if we are not the ones presenting. As John is presenting, he will engage people and make it feel more human and not too produced or fake.

The Power of Extending Trust First

One of the most important things about trust and credibility is not being afraid to extend it. If in every interaction we force people to gain our trust, we are never going to gain the trust of anybody. We should give our full trust in every relationship upfront and take the risk that we might be hurt. When we put full trust in others first, they will generally extend trust much faster to us. Then, we need to do everything we can to be sure we don’t break that trust.

As we work hard for others, give to others, and strive to help and make others happy, we will see it come back to us tenfold.

Connect with John and His Company

If you want to learn more about John Pestana and his company:

John Pestana’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpestana/

ObservePoint - https://www.observepoint.com/

Monetization Secrets

Thank you John for sharing those stories and secrets. Here are some of the top monetization secrets that stood out to me from today’s episode:

We should try to create “wow” engagement moments with potential customers to be unforgettable and maybe even legendary like Omniture did with their paper, scissors rock competition.
We should embrace data, whether it’s good or bad, and make data-driven decisions.
We’re all going to stumble and fall. We will be defined by the moments we have picked ourselves up and kept going.
We should obsess about customer happiness and use the power of “no” to set great expectations.
We must extend trust first if we want to gain credibility.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

Share Your Story

When have you observed businesses create “wow” moments of engagement with their potential customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Reat at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/12-how-a-game-of-paper-scissors-rock-helped-build-a-company-that-sold-for-1-8-billion/

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In April 1982, President Ronald Regan gave a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Congress saying:

“Entrepreneurs are heroes of modern times. They rarely receive the credit they deserve. Treasury Secretary Don Regan recently reminded the student body of Bucknell University that it was under capitalism that mankind brought ‘light where before there was darkness, heat where once there was only cold, medicines where there was sickness and disease, food where there was scarcity, and wealth where humanity was living in squalor.’ And much of what he was talking about came into being in the lifetime of many of us here in this room. But the societies which achieve the most spectacular progress in the shortest period of time are not the most tightly controlled, the biggest in size, or the wealthiest in material resources. They are societies that reward initiative and believe in the magic of the marketplace…” (Source: Small Business Trends)

As we take this day to remember our presidents, we want to also recognize and learn from those presidents who made entrepreneurial ventures, took risks, and helped add to the prosperity of this country. Although each of them was not successful, there is something to be learned from their stories. Today we will be recognizing 11 entrepreneur U.S. Presidents along with their challenges, resilience, and successes.

These 11 entrepreneur Presidents are from both major U.S. political parties, and I understand that some of these Presidents are controversial to some people. By including them in this article, I’m not endorsing their political views. Instead, I’m trying to learn and teach what I can from their experiences as entrepreneurs.

1. George Washington (1789-1797): 1st President

“The harder the conflict, the greater the triumph.”- President Washington

While most presidents were entrepreneurs before they took office, President Washington didn’t become an entrepreneur until after his final term as president. For much of his childhood, Washington lived on a farm in Mount Vernon, Virginia, which was later inherited by his half-brother, Lawrence. When Lawrence passed away, Washington leased it from Lawrence’s wife and inherited it in 1761 (Source: History.com). He later renovated the estate into a mansion, gardens, a place to lay family tombs, shops, barns, and various living quarters. Washington even turned a large portion into farms as wheat being his main harvest. He then packaged the wheat and created GW Flour, one of the very first branded food products (Source: GoodReads review of “George Washington, Entrepreneur”), which was then exported throughout the US and Europe.

President Washington’s farm manager, James Anderson, later encouraged Washington to open up a distillery on the grounds of Mount Vernon, Virginia, and “with just a boiler and five copper stills, the 2,250 square-foot distillery became profitable almost instantly.” (Source: Ondeck) By the year 1799, Washington had one of the largest distilleries in the country making 11,000 gallons per year (Source: Business News Daily).

2. Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865): 16th President

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”- President Lincoln

In 1833 and at the age of 23, President Lincoln and his friend, William Berry, opened up a general store called Lincoln-Berry in New Salem, Illinois. Many sources say that they were not very successful as they purchased inventory from other stores on credit and then made a profit by reselling the items. Although the economy was doing very well at the time, the location of their store wasn’t ideal as the town stopped growing. Lincoln had to sell his share of the store as a result, and after Berry died, Lincoln received his $1,000 debt (Source: Business News Daily), which resulted in Lincoln’s bankruptcy. Over 17 years, soon to be President Lincoln was required to pay his creditors back (Source: Legal Zoom).

“Despite it all, Lincoln was known to rise triumphantly out of failure. He went on to launch a successful law practice in 1837, and became the only president to receive a patent in 1849” (Source: OnDeck), which was for a device to lift riverboats over sandbars.

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”- President Lincoln

3. Andrew Johnson (1865-1869): 17th President

“I realized, there are people out there who can beat me, want to beat me. And unless I continue to innovate and evolve, I am going to learn a painful lesson from someone who has.”- President Johnson

Before becoming President of the United States and running political campaigns, President Johnson was a very successful tailor and real estate owner. His mother was also a very talented seamstress who helped Andrew find an apprenticeship in Greeneville, Tennessee when he was only 18-years-old (Source: OnDeck). His talents with tailoring flourished, he opened up a shop in 1826, which became very successful, and he started investing in real estate from there. A fun fact about President Johnson is that while working at his tailor shop, “it eventually became a gathering place for political debate, and Johnson held his first meetings as an alderman (an elected member of a municipal council) in 1829.” (Source: OnDeck)

4. Warren Harding (1921-1923): 29th President

“America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.”- President Harding

President Harding was raised in a family that found interest in the newspaper. He eventually attended school at Ohio Central College, and there, according to an article by Business News Daily, “he studied the newspaper trade in college after dabbling in teaching, insurance, and law,” and graduated at the age of seventeen. Two years later, he and several partners purchased the Ohio newspaper, The Marion Star, for $300 (Source: OnDeck) while it was near bankruptcy. Their biggest challenge was owning a Republican newspaper in a Democratic area (Source: OnDeck), but Harding completely turned things around with his wife's help in managing the newspaper. The Marion Star eventually became “the city’s official daily newspaper.” (Source: CheatSheet)

After receiving full ownership of the paper at the age of 21, Harding became worn down and had to spend time at a local sanitarium (Source: Business News Daily). He eventually recovered, found favor in his writing from local politicians, and earned revenue to run his political campaigns (Source: FreedomVoice Blog). He was a very successful businessman and after being in the newspaper business for 39 years (Source: TIME), he was able to sell the newspaper before dying in 1923 for $550,000, which is equivalent to $7 Million today (Source: Business News Daily). “Today, the business (from the newspaper in Ohio called the Marion Star) is still alive and owned by the Gannett Company, a publicly-traded media holding company.” (Source: NextShark)

5. Herbert Hoover (1929-1933): 31st President

“Competition is not only the basis of protection to the customer, but is the incentive to progress.” - President Hoover

At the age of 40, Herbert Hoover became a millionaire (Source: FreedomVoice Blog), but he found success from his labors by being diligent and resilient. When Herbert was 9-years-old, he became an orphan along with his two siblings. His uncle eventually took them in, but according to an article by Miller Center, “the young Hoover was shy, sensitive, introverted, and somewhat suspicious, characteristics that developed, at least in part, in reaction to the loss of his parents at such a young age.” Although he had average to failing grades except for math (Source: Miller Center), Hoover was determined and attended Stanford University. According to the same source, he worked in the clerk’s registration office to pay for tuition and began using his entrepreneurial skills by creating a student laundry service.

After graduating college with a geology degree, he got a job with Bewick, Moreing & Co working 70 hours/week in a gold mine pushing carts. Hoover then left to start his own mining consulting business called Burmese silver mines, which focused on reorganizing failing companies and finding investors to pay for developing new mines. His company quickly employed 175,000 employees (Source: Entrepreneur), and the success that he built with his company earned him the title of “Doctor of sick mines.” (Source: OnDeck) By the time that he was forty, his wealth had grown not only from his company but from publishing a leading textbook on mining engineering. Other entrepreneurial successes he had included inventing a new process to extract zinc that had been lost and starting up in the Zinc Corporation, which later became part of a larger corporation (Source: Business News Daily).

6. Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945): 32nd President

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”- President Roosevelt

At the age of 39, Franklin Roosevelt became ill with many symptoms, including paralysis of his legs. Although he was first diagnosed with paralytic poliomyelitis, his symptoms were shown to be more consistent with Guillain-Barre syndrome (Source: Pubmed). Despite his physical circumstances, he refused to accept that he would be permanently paralyzed. He became president in 1933, but before his political endeavors, he founded a hydrotherapy center in 1926 for the treatment of his disease, according to the FreedomVoice Blog. It became known as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation and still operates, serving about 4,000 people each year with all types of disabilities (Source: Entrepreneur).

8. Harry Truman (1945-1953): 33rd President

“I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.”- President Truman

Due to medical issues, President Truman is the only president elected after 1897 who did not earn a college degree (Source: Business News Daily). He then served in France during WWI and upon returning home, Truman and his wartime friend, Eddie Jacobson, opened up a men’s clothing store in Kansas City, Missouri, which was successful for three years before failing, due to the postwar recession. “After his shop went bankrupt, it took him 15 years to pay off his share of the firm’s debts. Nevertheless, the store established Truman’s reputation as a respected businessman, which in turn set him on the path to civic engagement.” (Source: OnDeck) This new path paved the way for greater success in other offices. According to the same article by OnDeck, he even joined the Triangle Club, which is an association of businessmen committed to improving the city, and became involved in activities with the American Legion.

9. Jimmy Carter (1977-1981): 39th President

“It’s not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.”- President Carter

When President Carter was 10-years-old, he stocked his family’s peanut farm with produce and took it to town to be sold. He continued to save the money he made, and by the age of 13, “he bought five houses around the plains which the Great Depression put on the market at rock-bottom prices. He then rented the homes to families in the area.” (Source: Abby Connect)

The risk of losing the 2,500-acre peanut farm became very high when his father died of cancer in 1953. According to an article by Entrepreneur, Carter then returned home from the Navy to manage the struggling peanut farm. “Carter reportedly threw himself into farming the way he had with his naval duties, and hard work and effective management made the Carter farm prosperous by 1959.” (Source: Entrepreneur)

In 1971, a sudden drought hit, bringing another risk to the farm, so Carter bought local farmers’ peanuts and sold them in bulk to big processors. “This led Carter Warehouse to gross $800,000 annually by 1971, up from a mere $184 when Carter started.” (Source: TIME)

9. George H.W. Bush (1989-1993): 41st President

"No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy, and the untiring hope of the human spirit."- President George H.W. Bush

President George H.W. Bush found much entrepreneurial success from the oil industry, after graduating from Yale with an economics degree. He first started in oil as a salesperson for Dresser (Source: Time), then later formed a partnership with his neighbor, John Overby, and created the Bush-Overby Oil Development Co. in 1951. Due to family connections, the company was financed with nearly half a million dollars from Bush’s uncle (Source: Entrepreneur).

The success of the company grew, and in 1954, Bush-Overby Oil controlled 71 wells, which produced 1,250 barrels of oil per day (Source: LegalZoom). By 1953, their company then merged with another independent oil company to create Zapata Petroleum, of which Bush became president (Source: Entrepreneur). After years of growth and in 1966, Bush was able to sell his holding and made about $1 Million doing so (Source: TIME).

"Be bold in your caring, be bold in your dreaming and above all else, always do your best."- President George H.W. Bush

10. George W. Bush (2001-2009): 43rd President

“Prosperity results from entrepreneurship and ingenuity.”- President George W. Bush

George W. Bush earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale and then became the first US president to earn his MBA, which he received from Harvard. After school, he followed in his father’s footsteps in the oil industry, but took a different approach as he “searched mineral-rights titles in county courthouses around West Texas and then would see if the owners would lease those rights to oil companies.” (Source: Time) In 1977, he then founded his own company called Arbusto (Spanish for Bush), which focused on low-risk, low-return wells, and found a relatively low gas field (Source: Abby Connect). Eventually, the price of oil dropped, and their company became very high-risk. Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation jumped in and rescued their company, merging the two in 1984 with Bush as the CEO, according to an article by LegalZoom. “After losing $400,000, it was purchased by Harken Energy Corporation, and Bush served as a consultant to Harken,” (Source: LegalZoom)

After working in the oil industry for many years, Bush decided to move into sports and invested in the Texas Rangers MLB team with $600,000 (Source: Entrepreneur). According to the same article by Entrepreneur, he then sold his stakes for the team in 1998 for $15 Million, a 2,400% ROI.

11. Donald Trump (2017-2021): 45th President

“As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, think big.”- President Donald Trump

Donald Trump is a real estate guru. He studied real estate at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and invested in Philadelphia real estate while studying there. He took over his family’s company to develop it into an international brand and according to Abby Connect, in the 1970s he began branching into Manhattan skyscrapers and renamed the company Trump Organization. He’s built luxurious hotels such as the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Plaza, Trump’s Tower on Fifth Avenue, as well as the Trump headquarters. In the 1980s, he started placing casinos in Atlantic City, adding to Trump Plaza, and Trump Castle. In 1990, he even opened up his own Trump Taj Mahal, known as his own “eighth wonder of the world.” (Source: Abby Connect)

According to Time, Trump appears to own or control more than 500 businesses in some two-dozen countries around the world! He has been very successful, but not without several bankruptcies, according to Abby Connect. Amidst his many businesses all over the world, he has also published books, opened up golf and hotel resorts, owned beauty pageants, and created his own branded products such as Trump steaks, Trump University, Trump shuttle, and Trump Success Eau De Toilette (Source: Business News Daily).

“Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you'll love it up here.”- President Donald Trump

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

President Washington the greater the conflict, the better the triumph. We savor the hard-won victories even more.
President Lincoln taught us to not let failure stop us. Perseverance is a key attribute of successful entrepreneurs.
President Johnson taught us that unless we continue to innovate and evolve, we’re going to learn a painful lesson from someone who has. This is so true with tectonic shifts.
Don’t be afraid to take risks. Be determined, don’t get caught up in the circumstances, and press forward as President Harding did.
Current circumstances will not remain forever. Diligence and resilience go on a long way as President Hoover has proven.
President Roosevelt encouraged us to be bold and persistently experiment. Try something. If it fails, pivot or move onto another.
President Truman taught that those who made it to the top were those who did the work, with enthusiasm and everything they had. Whatever we do, we should do our best and give it all we have.
President Carter taught us that we don’t need to be afraid of failure, we just have to be determined no to fail.
President George H.W. Bush taught us to be bold in our caring and dreaming.
President George W. Bush taught us that prosperity comes from entrepreneurship and ingenuity.
President Trump taught us to move forward, aim high, and create a plan. We shouldn’t wait around for others to do the work for us or to make things happen.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. 3. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

Share Your Story

Do you know of any other entrepreneurial presidents or stories of president entrepreneurs that we missed? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/11-11-u-s-presidents-who-were-entrepreneurs-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them/

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Happy Valentine's Day! This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host.

Creating and running businesses isn’t easy. However, being the spouse of an entrepreneur or CEO isn’t easy either. One of the primary reasons we are creating our businesses is so we can have the time and resources for the people and things that matter most. This especially includes our spouse, the person who should matter most to us. We need to be sure we don’t let the stress and business at work be an excuse for not sharing our love and being there with our loved one this Valentine’s Day and the rest of the year. There is nothing we’re working on at work that is more important than the people we love. But, unfortunately, approximately 50% of marriages end in divorce.

So, in today’s episode, we’re going to discuss some of the most successful strategies entrepreneurs and CEOs use to destroy their marriages and some alternative strategies for those of us who are trying to nurture more loving and connected marriages.

Strategy 1 - Don’t invest time to re-connect daily.

| “Every successful marriage is the result of two people working diligently and skillfully to cultivate their love.” - Henry Beecher, Minister |

Sometimes entrepreneurs and CEOs don’t prioritize daily connection with their spouse. Instead of making this mistake, maybe we can schedule opportunities for daily connection. Some ideas might be a regular date night, regular walks together, or lunch dates together. If we’re traveling or away from home we can schedule reminders to send regular texts or to make regular video calls. Marriage is a daily decision that we must invest in every day.

Sometimes couples quit dating each other. Don’t ever quit dating. Dating and regular connection are probably how you and your spouse fell in love initially, and something we need to keep doing to continue nurturing a loving marriage.

One of the business tectonic shifts we talk about a lot at Monetization Nation is “Connecting through Passion.” This doesn’t just work in business, but it can also be very effective in our relationships. We should try to identify our spouse’s level-10 passions and strive to connect with our spouse through what he or she is crazy-passionate about.

As an example, a study found that couples who watch romantic movies and discussed the relationships in them afterward had a 50% lower divorce rate. Sorry guys. Just watch the romantic movies with her.

Strategy 2 - “Outsource” sacred parts of the marriage.

As entrepreneurs, we often learn the importance of outsourcing in order to get everything done. However, some of us make the mistake of outsourcing parts of our marriage. Sometimes couples outsource sacred elements of the marriage, such as emotional connection, companionship, and sometimes even sex, to people other than their spouse. Sometimes people outsource to porn and romance novels. When this happens, the spouse is escaping and finding fulfillment with other people and things.

A study at the University of Oklahoma found that the chances of divorce double when pornography is viewed (Source: Marripedia). Dr. John Gottman, a world-renowned therapist who has 40 years of experience studying relationships, explains in an open and honest letter that pornography should never be viewed because of the unrealistic expectations it creates. Men and women who find fulfillment through explicit images and videos almost always find they have trouble finding fulfillment with an actual partner. Dr. Gottman states that “even non-compulsive use of [pornographic] images can damage a committed relationship.”

In a similar manner, romance novels can have a similar effect. These books are full of unrealistic people, relationships, and sexual experiences. When a spouse gets too caught up in romance novels, they begin to believe that their partner should be more like the character in their novel. They can also begin to turn to these novels for feelings of romance, love, and desire instead of to their spouse, which decreases their connection.

We should be committed to nurturing those sacred parts of our marriages only with our spouse. This commitment will help ensure that we keep our marriages strong and our intimate, sacred moments special and wonderful.

Strategy 3 - Focus on digital devices and entertainment instead of your spouse.

When was the last time we checked our phone while our spouses were trying to talk to us? A recent study found that mobile phones can have a negative impact on closeness, connection, and quality of conversation in human relationships (Source: University of Essex).

Do we neglect our spouse because we spend too much time glued to digital entertainment, such as TV, social media, or video games? I recently spoke with a church leader who told me video game addiction is one of the top reasons couples in his congregation are getting divorced.

Instead, maybe we commit to ourselves to put our phones away when we’re having meals with or talking to our spouse. If the phone rings or we receive a text, and our spouse encourages us to take the call or check the text, maybe we can say, “I’m sure it’s not as important as you.” Instead of watching too much TV or playing too many video games, maybe we make a commitment to ourselves that we only consume digital entertainment after we have made a meaningful connection that day with our spouse. This habit might help us to put first things first, as Steven Covey taught.

Strategy 4 - Don’t be responsible with money.

Fights about money are the second leading cause of divorce, right behind infidelity (Source: Ramsey Solutions). Many couples don’t have a budget or don’t stick to it if they do. My wife is so much better at this than I am. Some couples buy the biggest house the bank will let them buy and drive the nicest cars they can. One study from researchers at Brigham Young University found that married individuals with higher levels of materialism had less satisfying marriages. Some couples keep their finances separate and don’t communicate with their spouses about financial issues. Money issues are cited as a cause of 36% of divorces.

If you haven’t before, I would highly recommend taking a financial course with your spouse. My wife and I took the Dave Ramsey course and it helped a lot. A good financial course forces spouses to talk through and come to a consensus on important financial decisions. For example, do you and your spouse both know what your next big purchase will be and how fast you’re saving to earn it? What do you picture for your future retirement and how much money do you need to be putting away now to achieve that? Are you both comfortable with how much money is being spent every month versus how much is being put away for future plans? Having these discussions and learning about financials together can help avoid money problems and create open and honest communication about our financials.

Strategy 5 - Don’t make intimacy a priority.

| “When couples stop having sex, their relationships become vulnerable to anger, detachment, infidelity and, ultimately, divorce.” - Dr. Ian Kerner, Counselor |

Sometimes spouses don’t make regular sex and intimacy a priority. Sometimes touch is eliminated outside of sex. Regular sex and other intimacy can be a powerful glue that binds together spouses with a stronger connection. For many people, touch is their primary love language. For most couples, touch and sex can be a powerful way to reconnect and communicate love.

Relationship expert Dr. Lurve believes that one of the most essential ingredients to any long-lasting marriage is daily hugs. She prescribes a 10-second hug every day to her clients who are struggling to reconnect with their spouses. This daily hug releases oxytocin, promotes sexual desire, helps us resolve issues more quickly, and can alleviate stress (Source: Body and Soul).

Strategy 6 - Have Intimate, opposite-sex friendships.

| “Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.” - Franz Schubert, Composer |

Sometimes we don’t recognize that emotional relationships with someone of the opposite sex can be deadly to our marriages. These relationships often start innocently, as just lunch, advice, or lending a listening ear. These relationships can sometimes lead to emotional intimacy. Our spouses should be the first person to which we turn to share our joys and our sorrows.

When we have our own safeguards in place and don’t make justifications to break them, we’re much less likely to find ourselves in inappropriate relationships. Keep in mind that most affairs don’t begin because someone wanted to cheat. Actually, 80% of affairs began as “just friends” (Source: Shirley Glass). "The new infidelity is between people who unwittingly form deep, passionate connections before realizing that they've crossed the line from platonic friendship into romantic love," explains Shirley Glass, Author of Not “Just Friends.”

Strategy 7 - Don’t help out.

| Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash. – Joyce Brothers, Psychologist and Author |

Our spouses are probably carrying heavy loads, and so are most entrepreneurs. It’s very common for us to focus on our own heavy loads we are carrying and to be resentful or put out when our spouse asks us to help. Doesn’t our spouse realize how busy we are?

Instead, maybe we identify a job that our spouse most dislikes doing. Maybe it’s cleaning toilets, doing dishes, or cleaning up dog poop. If we don’t know which tasks our spouse dislikes the most, ask. Then, maybe we proactively start doing that task every day without being asked or saying anything about it.

Early in my marriage, a counselor taught me that when my wife asks me to do something, I should look at it as a gift because she is telling me what she needs. This way I know what I can best do to help her.

Strategy 8 - Point out all your spouse’s weaknesses.

| “Instead of nagging about your spouse, try bragging about your spouse.” - Dave Willis, Pastor and Author |

When you were dating, how often did you point out the faults in the person you were dating? How often do you do it now? Maybe, instead of focusing on his or her faults, we should strive to find everything we love about our spouse and everything we’re grateful for, and strive to build him or her up with love and gratitude every day.

It’s especially important that we don’t speak badly about our spouses to others. Media is filled with spouses making jokes about each other such as: “I have four kids. Three, if you don’t count my husband.” TV shows and movies can make these lines seem innocent enough but in reality, speaking about our spouses in any kind of derogatory manner will only hurt our marriages.

Just as we’re aware of our own weaknesses, our spouses are aware of theirs. We’re not here to point them out, or even worse shout them out to our friends and family. We’re there to love and support them as they strive to change for the better, just as we’ll be doing. Leslie Vernick, a well-known author and speaker shared that “regularly thinking negatively about your [spouse] increases your dissatisfaction with [them] and your marriage.” The more we focus on the things we love about our spouses, the more in love we’ll be with them and our marriage.

Strategy 9 - Make other people a priority over your spouse.

Often parents prioritize their children above their spouse. A relationship expert named David Pisarra said, “... the most frequent issue I hear from men I represent is that the focus of the wife turned to the child, and never returned to the relationship with the man.”

Sometimes we allow parents, friends, or a boss to be a higher priority. Instead, maybe we need to listen when our spouse says he or she is having issues with our parents and set better boundaries. Maybe we need to plan scheduled alone time each day, a scheduled date night each week, and quarterly getaways with only our spouse.

Maybe we commit that whenever our spouse calls or texts we do everything we can to immediately take the call or respond to the text so that our spouse can feel they are our priority. We need to make sure that our spouse always comes first.

Strategy 10 - Be harsh or abusive to your spouse.

| “Family is supposed to be our safe haven. Very often, it’s the place where we find the deepest heartache.” - Iyanla Vanzant |

It doesn’t matter how bad of a day we’re having. There is never an excuse for being harsh with or yelling at our spouse, calling him or her names, or abusing our spouse in any way that can take a long time to heal. Abusing our spouse is never ok. Yelling at our spouse is never ok (unless maybe the house is on fire). Calling our spouse names is never ok.

Our spouse should know without a doubt that we will be loyal and never speak badly about them in front of another person. Jonathan Bennett, a relationship expert said, “If you’re having a fight or [are] annoyed by your partner, the appropriate course of action is to address it directly. By airing your dirty laundry for everyone to see, you’re showing a lack of respect for your partner and the relationship.”

Strategy 11 - Threaten divorce.

| “In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.” - Robert Anderson, Playwright |

Some people threaten divorce to get leverage so that their spouse will make the desired change. However, this threat can often have the opposite effect and create long-lasting rifts and disconnection in the marriage. When we threaten divorce that could be the nuclear bomb that destroys everything else around it.

In 1519, a Spanish conquistador named Hernán Cortés arrived in the new world with six hundred men. Soon after arrival, he burned all his ships, sending the message to his men that there would be no turning back. Within two years he had conquered the Aztec empire. I realize there are situations, such as serious abuse, where divorce may be the right decision. However, if we are not in one of those situations, we should probably burn our ships, commit to improving the marriage, and not threaten divorce as the backup. We should let our spouse know that this may be a really hard situation, but we love them so much that we’re committed to doing everything we can to work through this.

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Hello Monetization Nation. I recently interviewed John Rampton, who is one of the top digital marketing influencers. He is a regular contributor to leading business sites, such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. John is a serial entrepreneur, and currently operates digital ventures such as Due.com and Calendar.com. In this interview, John tells the story about a business he grew to $110 million of annual revenue. $92 million of that revenue was from sales on Amazon. Amazon essentially shut down that business after they launched a competing product. John and I discuss why it is so important to build a “skyscraper” on “land” we own, along with other monetization stories and secrets.

Building a Skyscraper on Land You Own

John and I first met when we both worked for a company named FamilyLink. Family Link created the We’re Related Facebook app, which became the 4th largest Facebook app with more than 60 million app installs. As a part-time Chief Revenue Officer, we went from almost no revenue to more than $5 million of revenue in 12 months.

Unfortunately, Facebook saw how many people wanted this functionality and built similar functionality into their core offering. Then, Facebook made it extremely difficult for the We’re Related app to continue to operate. The reality is that publicly-traded platforms are going to ultimately make decisions that are in the best interest of their shareholders, which includes making decisions that better monetize their platforms.

Family Link truly built a skyscraper on leased land that Facebook owned, and Facebook had the right to take the land away any time they wanted. As a result, FamilyLink lost most of its business value.

Amazon Competing with 3rd-Party Vendors

Amazon used a similar strategy in which they allowed 3rd-party vendors to sell on their platform. Many of these 3rd-party vendors made a lot of money from their relationship with Amazon. Unfortunately, this is another example of building a skyscraper on leased land. When Amazon learned which products sold the best, Amazon decided to go directly to manufacturers and cut many of the 3rd-party vendors out of the loop. The 3rd-party vendors were essentially doing market research for Amazon so Amazon knew the most profitable products to sell directly. Amazon owned the land, so as soon as they had their own product, it was easy to preference their products on the Amazon platform.

The Rise and Fall of Organize

John purchased and grew a company named Organize. He sold a “scrap trap” that hangs on the end of kitchen counters. As you cut, you can scrape your scraps into it. He used Amazon and other platforms to grow his business. He estimates that more than 30% of the kitchens in America have this scrap trap. He went from “smaller 7 figures” to “8 figures a month.” Annual revenue exceeded $110 million.

John says that “Whatever a platform can give, they can take it away.” This is what happened to John and his company. One day the Organize team noticed a competing product that showed up higher in Amazon search results than his product. He tried bidding much higher amounts per click but was unable to get his listing above this new product. Amazon also undercut John on price.

After they launched a competing product, Amazon turned off John’s product listing and would not turn it back on. As a result in a very short period of time, John lost a $92 million per year revenue stream from selling products through Amazon. John had to lay off 76 people in one day. He liquidated his inventory and the business went under.

How Should We Work with Platforms

It’s ok to work with other platforms such as Facebook and Amazon. This can help to radically accelerate our growth, especially before we’ve built our own large platforms. However, it is important to realize that our relationships with those platforms will most likely change over time to their benefit and our detriment. So, we must build platforms of our own, such as our own blogs and email lists, where we have direct relationships with our customers and can contact them when we choose. Then, as we use other platforms such as Facebook and Amazon, we are focused on driving the traffic to our platform, so we can own the relationships, and are not dependent on other platforms.

Diversification

John encourages entrepreneurs and business leaders to diversify, to sell through other channels such as affiliate partners, so we are not dependent upon a handful of platforms, such as Amazon. John says about 85% of his revenue was from one source, and when Amazon chose to compete and shut down John’s business, he lost the entire company. John recommends that no more than 40% of a business’s revenue be from one source so they can weather the storm when they lose any one revenue stream. If a revenue stream becomes more than 40% of revenue, John pushes really hard to grow revenue through other sources, even less-profitable sources.

Here are four effective ways to diversify our revenue if one source grows too large:

Create new products and services so we aren’t too dependent on one product.
Develop new marketing channels so we aren’t too dependent on one channel.
Try to drive customers from other platforms to our platforms, such as your email list so you can build direct relationships with customers, and contact them directly when a platform shuts us down. John advises us to focus everything we can on driving every sale through our websites, so people learn that is where they go to buy from our companies.
Work with a diverse group of influencers through an affiliate program. Pay the influencers for sales that result from them sending visitors directly to your site. Platforms will probably not be able to take away these influencer relationships.

Liquidating Inventory

John tells a great story about how he learned to liquidate huge amounts of inventory quickly. He grew his liquidation revenue from about $5,000 per day to more than $150,000 per day just by hiring people to dance with signs on the sidewalk. He used this strategy to liquidate $500,000+ in three days.

Due.com Invoicing System

John purchased an invoicing company, then he required hundreds of people to send him invoices to use that system. He logged in one day and the invoicing system had ballooned to 32,000 registered users and almost 200,000 invoices sent in the last 30 days. He was excited by this huge growth, so he purchased the Due.com domain name and added an upgraded subscription for people who wanted to send a larger number of invoices. Due.com now has more than 500,000 active users.

Calendar.com

John has created a new business, Calendar.com, that brings all of our calendars together into one place, allowing us to merge our personal and business calendars, but not allowing the personal events to be seen by business colleagues. Business managers can sign their teams up for Calendar.com, and see how their team members are allocating their time. With Calendar.com we can easily book meetings and publish our calendar online if we want to. Calendar.com already has hundreds of thousands of customers.

Freemium Business Model

John has very successfully used the freemium business model to monetize both Due.com and Calendar.com. John allowed customers to use the core software for free so that the services could get some traction and momentum. Then, once a lot of people were hooked on the software, he started selling upgraded versions of the services.

The freemium model also allows businesses to launch quick (MVPs) minimum viable products that can be rolled out to the market quickly to see if we have something the market really wants. Furthermore, as initial customers used the service, John was able to see what they were actually doing, and once he knew the most valuable features, he used that information to develop the premium subscription service. John also emailed all of the free customers and asked them what they would be willing to pay for. Then, he found the most common responses and turned those into features of the premium subscription service.

Recurring Revenue from SAAS Companies

John transitioned from being an e-commerce entrepreneur to being SAAS (software as a service) entrepreneur. He loves the SAAS model because it provides consistent, recurring revenue. He’s able to avoid huge revenue swing months and able to easily calculate the lifetime value of a customer.

High-Level PR Engagement to Grow SEO

One of John’s secrets to digital marketing success is using high-level PR engagement to grow SEO. John starts this process by writing for high-level publications such as Forbes, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Inc, Mashable, TechCrunch, and New York Times. He is not paid for these articles, but he is allowed to add links from those articles to his sites. Those links from high-quality sites provide tremendous value to John’s ventures and help them to rank much higher in search engine results.

Become the Very Best at Something

John advises that we should pick something and learn everything we can about it, and become #1 in the world at it. So many people think that to succeed in business you have to be the best at a million different things. Instead, he suggests that we should focus on becoming the best at one thing, and then expand over time into other things.

How to Become a Writer for Leading Publications

John gives advice on how to become an effective writer for leading publications.

Start writing for your own blog and start to build your following.
Then, approach smaller publications to help you build your reputation and following. As your following and reputation grow, you can start writing for larger and larger publications.
Then, network to an editor at a leading publication you want to write for. Work on nurturing a relationship with that editor, such as by commenting on and sharing content from that publication.
Focus your articles on providing actual value to the readers. Don’t be promotional at all, but it is ok to add links.
Be really authentic in what you write.
Build a large personal social following and share what you write with that following. It will take time, but be consistent.

Genuinely Help People Without Expecting Anything in Return

John says, “If you can build up trust with someone, they will follow you for life.”

John has a motto in life. He likes to genuinely help others without wanting or needing anything in return. John finds that 1 in every 10 people he helps will help him back. 1 in every 100 people he helps will turn into a financial relationship where John makes money. And, 1 in every 1,000 people he helps turns into a multi-million dollar relationship. So, John tries to genuinely help 3 people every day. The people that John helps are his tribe.

John shares a story of someone he started helping, and that person helped John in return. This relationship of reciprocity continued for years, and now they are making millions of dollars together as business partners.

Connect with John and His Companies

If you want to learn more about John Rampton and his companies:

Due.com - https://due.com/

Calendar.com - https://www.calendar.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrampton/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/johnrampton

Monetization Secrets

Thank you John for sharing your monetization stories and secrets with us. Here are some of the top secrets that stood out to me from today’s episode:

We can use a platform strategy to quickly grow our business. However, we need to build a skyscraper on land we own. This means we should focus on driving as many people as we can to our site and email list so we have direct relationships with customers that cannot be shut off by a platform.
We should diversify, so no more than 40% of our business is coming from one source.
The SAAS (software as a service) business model is very attractive because it can provide consistent, recurring revenue.
We can effectively grow our credibility and search engine backlinks by writing for leading publications. However, we should remember that when we do this we are building on land that someone else owns. For example, John put a lot of time into writing for Inc. One day he received a call that they were done working with him, and all of the effort he invested there was gone. So, we have to focus on bringing people back to something we own, such as an email list when we are doing a platform strategy.
We should genuinely help people with no expectation of anything in return. However, because of the law of reciprocity, many of those people will want to help us as well.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

Share Your Story

What ideas do you have about how we can leverage platforms to build a skyscraper on land we own? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read more at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/how-john-rampton-lost-92-million-of-annual-revenue-by-building-a-skyscraper-on-land-he-didnt-own/

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On September 11, 2001, I was in New York City during that horrible terrorist attack. I had a flight scheduled to leave JFK that morning. In this episode I’m going to share my story, and what I learned that has changed how I see the world and run my business.

I Was There

I was in New York City that day and I’m going to share my story, and the secrets I learned about normalcy bias. This will help us understand how normalcy bias can paralyze businesses. It will also help us understand why many businesses do not seize the opportunities at tectonic shifts.

The Days Leading Up to 9/11

On Friday, September 7, 2001, my wife and I, with our daughter who was less than 1-year old, walked up to 1 World Trade Center in New York City. This taller of the Twin Towers had been the tallest building in the world when it was first constructed, standing more than 1,350 feet and 110 stories high. I was in New York City on business and was blessed that my little family could join me.

That Friday afternoon we were doing some sightseeing, and as we reached the revolving door of the tallest tower of the World Trade Center I wanted to go to the top. I’m always up for an adventure. However, my wife didn’t feel comfortable with that. She felt there was no way to get down if something bad happened. She said I was welcome to go up, but she and our daughter would be staying outside the building. So, we moved on and found another part of New York City to explore together. The streets were packed bumper to bumper with cars and the sidewalks were filled with people scurrying like ants in an ant farm.

The next day, Saturday, September 8, 2001, my wife and daughter flew back to our home in Arizona, where we lived at that time. I was scheduled to go home with them but extended my trip a few days to take care of some additional business. I rescheduled my flight for the morning of Tuesday, September 11.

I remember lying in the bed in my highrise hotel room on Monday night September 10, hearing an airplane fly by, and thinking to myself, “What would prevent an airplane from crashing into one of these buildings?”

September 11, 2001

The next morning, Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I woke up in Midtown Manhattan, about 4.4 miles away from the World Trade Center. As I got ready, American Airlines Flight 11 departed from Logan Airport in Boston at 7:59 a.m. At 8:14 a.m. that flight was hijacked over central Massachusetts. As I was preparing to leave my hotel room, that flight crashed into the north side of 1 World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. Only a few minutes later I was down in the lobby, asking the front desk to help me hail a taxi to go to the airport. It was only then that I learned that a plane had hit a building in New York City. I hurried back to my room to turn on the news. As soon as I realized that America had been attacked by terrorists, I quickly called my wife in Arizona to tell her I was safe.

While on the phone, my wife turned on the same news channel, and we watched together in horror as a second airplane crashed into the other Twin Tower at 9:03 a.m. Within 1 hour and 42 minutes of the first plane crashing, we had watched both of the Twin Towers collapse, just a few miles from where I was sitting in my hotel room.

At 9:25 a.m. the FAA closed all U.S. airspace to all civilian aircrafts, and flights had to make emergency landings around the country. For two unprecedented days, no civilian flights flew in America. The skies went quiet. Commercial flights did not resume until Thursday, September 13 but commercial flights to and from New York City were delayed even longer. For at least a full day after the attacks, even bridges and tunnels to and from Manhattan were closed to non-emergency traffic. Rental cars in the city became an incredibly scarce commodity.

I stayed in my hotel room in Manhattan for hours watching the worst terrorist attack in the history of humanity unfold with 2,997 fatalities, more than 25,000 injuries, and more than $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.

Later that afternoon I went outside and walked the streets. I walked up the middle of one of the previously packed streets, without a single car or person around me. It was like a scene from the Twilight Zone. Eventually, I found a taxi and convinced him to take me as close to Ground Zero as he could go. My most vivid memory from that ride is of a fire truck covered with white ash.

In the early hours of September 12th, the train I needed resumed service. I was able to get out of New York City and go to New Jersey where my cousin Drexden Davis and his wife lived. I am so grateful for their hospitality during that crisis. My cousin had been on the tarmac of a New York City airport when the first plane hit. He and the other passengers were evacuated, and he rented a car and drove home. It was very lucky for me that he’d gotten one and was able to transfer it to me. The next day I started my drive to Chicago, which was the departure city for the second leg of my original flight home.

I remember thinking as I drove to Chicago that all I wanted was to get home to my family. Nothing else mattered. I am always amazed and embarrassed at how often crises are blessings that help us put our lives in perspective and focus on the things that truly matter. I was able to book a flight home in Chicago and finally make it to my family on Saturday, September 15.

Other Disasters I Have Witnessed

The September 11 terrorist attacks were not the only disasters or crises to which I have had a direct connection.

As I wrote about in a previous blog post, I was the CEO of a publicly-traded dotcom company when the dotcom bubble burst.
In 2014, I was in Thailand when the military launched a coup d'état, dissolved the government and the Senate, repealed parts of the constitution, took control of the media, declared martial law, and implemented a curfew.
My family and I were stuck in a horrible snowstorm that closed the highway during a road trip. All the hotels were full, and we were sheltered in a very generous church for the night.
In July 2019 I stayed in the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel for a conference. During that same week, there was an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the hotel. At least 1 person died, 11 cases were confirmed, and there were 63 probable cases.
We are all now in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic that is wreaking havoc on many lives and organizations. More than 1 million people have already lost their lives to this coronavirus globally, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs, and unknown thousands of businesses have closed their doors permanently.

Those are just a few examples of the disasters, crises, and tectonic shifts I have seen. Maybe you shouldn’t hang around me. :)

9/11 and various other crisis situations I have been through have resulted in me seeing the world and business differently. I have tried to learn from these situations so that I can prevent or mitigate the negative effects of similar crises in the future.

Understanding Normalcy Bias in Business

Normalcy bias is a common situation that is experienced during or related to disasters and crises. It is sometimes called “analysis paralysis” or the “Ostrich Effect.” As a result of normalcy bias, people underestimate the risk of a disaster or crisis because it has never happened to them or their organization before. The assumption is that if a specific disaster or crisis has not happened to me up to now, then it will not happen to me in the future. Or, when we are in the middle of a disaster or crisis, we refuse to admit it is happening and underestimate the effects of the disaster or crisis. This is a very common way of thinking for most humans and business leaders.

I often travel with a “get home bag” so that I have the basic supplies I need to get home if I get stranded somewhere. To someone who has never been stranded, their normalcy bias might tell them my “get home bag” is unreasonable. However, because I have been stranded on multiple occasions, my normalcy bias is different and this “get home bag” is a wise and responsible risk-mitigation strategy for me.

As a business example, when I went back to school to get my MBA, a teacher taught us how business leaders should leverage debt to fuel growth. In that lesson, I don’t remember the teacher exploring the risk of leverage that the debt would add to the company. However, a leveraged company becomes a huge risk during an economic crisis such as the 2008 crash or our current global pandemic. When I lost a leveraged company during an economic crisis I learned the hard lesson that there is a huge risk to taking on debt.

I’m not saying we should never take debt. There are plenty of times when debt is the right choice. But we have to factor in that risk. Is the risk associated with that debt worth the benefit?

To someone who has only seen a growth economy and never seen a company lost to debt leverage, their normalcy bias might tell them that my concern about debt leverage is unreasonable. However, because I have lost a leveraged company, my normalcy bias is different, and carefully weighing the risk of debt leverage is a wise and responsible risk-mitigation strategy for me.

When businesses face tectonic shifts in the business landscape it is very normal for us to ignore or underestimate the severity of that tectonic shift, and its effect on our businesses. We often hear of businesses “doubling down” on a business strategy. Doubling down can be a great thing if we are doubling down on a tectonic shift opportunity that is proving successful right now. However, if we are doubling down on an old and ineffective strategy that used to work, but is being disrupted by a tectonic shift, that can be an almost certain recipe for disaster and a doubling of the crisis.

Sticking with the old, ineffective strategy and ignoring a tectonic shift is a great example of normalcy bias. Business history is littered with thousands of businesses that ignored tectonic shifts and lost market share or completely went out of business.

Normalcy Bias Causes Paralysis

70% of people have normalcy bias during a disaster. Normalcy bias commonly paralyzes people in the middle of the disaster or crisis. Here are a few examples:

When the Vesuvius volcano erupted the residents of Pompei watched for hours without evacuating.
As Hurricane Katrina approached, and the government pleaded with people to evacuate, thousands of people refused to leave their homes.
70% of the 9/11 survivors stopped to talk to others after the plane hit but before they evacuated the building.
As the Titanic was sinking, people refused to evacuate because they underestimated the odds of the worst-case scenario. (source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias)

Preventing Normalcy Bias

Our businesses do not have to be victims of our normalcy biases.

During the September 11 terrorist attacks, not all of the hijacked planes caused the damage intended by the terrorists. On Flight 93, 46 minutes after the takeoff, 4 al-Quaeda terrorists stormed the cockpit. They intended to crash the plane into the U.S. Capitol Building. Some of the passengers and flight attendants learned from phone calls that other airplanes had been hijacked that morning and flown into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As the passengers then sought to retake control of the plane from the hijackers, the hijackers crashed the plane into a field in Pennsylvania, rather than give up control of the plane. They were only 20 minutes’ flight time away from Washington. In that crash, 7 crew members and 33 passengers tragically lost their lives.

During the hijacking, the passengers and crew members realized quickly that they were in the middle of a crisis situation. They acted rapidly and decisively to mitigate the damage, made the best of a very difficult situation, and saved many lives.

In my business career, I’ve been blessed to hit some home runs. However, the strategies used for each of these home runs were different. I did not use the same strategy twice to hit different home runs. The common denominator is that we found a tectonic shift that was changing the business landscape for that business, and we quickly leveraged that tectonic shift to accelerate growth and leapfrog over established competitors.

In the book I am writing, I talk about tectonic shifts that are happening right now and how to leverage those tectonic shifts to leapfrog competitors. It is critical that entrepreneurs and business leaders leverage these tectonic shifts today to drive growth and protect their businesses. However, tectonic shifts this year will likely become common business practices in future years. Then, new tectonic shifts will happen, and we will have to adjust to those as well. Furthermore, specific industries, geographic locations, and individual businesses will face their own unique tectonic shifts. The main point of the book is to teach us how to identify, leverage, and protect ourselves from tectonic shifts today and in the future. Great companies will even be able to create their own tectonic shifts.

We Must Innovate to Survive

Tectonic shifts are inevitable. They have happened, they are happening, and they will continue to happen. This means as businesses we need to be constantly adapting our strategies to survive. Just because something worked well for us in the past does not mean it will continue to work well for us. Finding the tectonic shifts affecting our businesses and industry today and leveraging them is one of the most effective ways to innovate.

“If you don't innovate, you die”

Gary Vaynerchuk, New York Times Bestselling Author

Fortune 500 companies are the largest corporations in the United States based on their revenue. When you compare the Fortune 500 companies of 1955 to the Fortune 500 companies of 2019 only 10.4% of the companies have stayed on that list (Source: AEI https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/only-52-us-companies-have-been-on-the-fortune-500-since-1955-thanks-to-the-creative-destruction-that-fuels-economic-prosperity/#:~:text=31%2C%202019).,started%20(see%20graphic%20above). Staying stagnant is not an option. These tectonic shifts will cause either growth or destruction. Innovation with tectonic shifts is one of the keys to ensuring our businesses continue to experiences growth.

Monetization Secrets

Here are some of the top monetization secrets that stood out to me from today’s episode:

When crises strike, as they will, instead of wallowing in our plight, we should focus on what matters most, such as our families and the monetization of our businesses (because revenue helps solve many of the business crises).
We shouldn’t wait for crises and disasters to strike and remind us to focus on the things that really matter in our lives and businesses. We should be doing that every day.
During a business disaster or crisis, we need to quickly identify what is happening, and immediately take action to create the best outcomes possible instead of sticking our heads in the sand and just hoping things get better.
We need to learn vicariously from the normalcy biases of others who have already “been-there-done-that” so we don’t have to learn the same tragic lessons for ourselves the hard way.
We must prepare so we are ready to respond to tectonic shifts. What is in our metaphorical “get home bags” that we can use to keep our businesses safe when we go through a crisis? Do we have a cash reserve, a stable recurring revenue stream, education about the newest trends in our industry, low expenses and leverage, a huge list of loyal customers who trust us, etc.?
Tectonic shifts are all around us, and they will continue to happen. These tectonic shifts will cause destruction or growth. In many cases, it is our choice based on how we prepare and respond. The difference between companies that fail and companies that thrive is often how we prepare for and respond to tectonic shifts.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

Share Your Story

Have you observed a company with normalcy bias that did not prepare for or respond to a crisis effectively? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read more at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/8-6-business-secrets-i-learned-from-being-in-new-york-city-during-the-september-11-terrorist-attacks/

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It used to be that only big companies with big budgets and professional videographers could use video for advertising. Now nearly anyone with a smartphone can make great videos, and nearly everyone has access to a high-speed internet connection and a device where they can watch videos any time. Furthermore, video is usually much more engaging than long pages of text. Because of this democratization of video, we’ve seen a huge tectonic shift towards video marketing.

There is no other form of communication that trumps in person, face-to-face communication, but that kind of communication isn't always possible. Video is the next best option. It allows us to closely replicate face-to-face communication in many ways. We can see facial expressions and body language and bring those elements into the conversation in a scalable way. According to HubSpot, 78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% view online videos every day. Some would even say that video is better than face-to-face communication because videos can be recorded once, uploaded to the Internet, and then be available nearly any time anywhere. This can give video communication much more reach than face-to-face communication, which is limited by our location and our time. Because of this reach and engagement of video, it is a force multiplier.

In this episode, I interviewed Benton Crane, who is the CEO of Harmon Brothers, the ad agency behind the most viral ads in internet history. In 2011, he was hired by Deloitte where he served as a consultant with various clients across the national intelligence community. He was the co-founder of VidAngel. In 2013, Benton joined the newly formed Harmon Brothers for a campaign to promote Poo-Pourri, an amazing ad that transformed the way products are marketed. Harmon Brothers went on to produce the most viral ads in internet history including Squatty Potty, FiberFix, Orabrush, Purple, and Poo-Pourri.

Success with Poo-Pourri The founder of Poo-Pourri saw what Jeff Harmon, a friend of Benton’s and the future co-founder of Harmon Brothers, had done with Orabrush and reached out to him. He didn't take her seriously at the time, and she ended up sending samples to Jeff, and he really liked the samples. He called Benton, telling him that he was thinking about leaving Orabrush to do the Poo-Pourri campaign. Benton wanted to be a part of it because he had seen what they were doing at Orabrush and knew they were pioneering the future of advertising. He told Jeff to let him join up and he'd bring the data analytics side of the venture.

Benton left his stable job and moved his family across the country to work on this ad campaign. When the ad was ready, the first people he showed it to were his in-laws. They were appalled. They didn't laugh, and they didn't crack a smile. So Benton turned it off two minutes into the video, knowing that they weren't going to find it funny if they hadn’t already. Luckily, the public reception was the exact opposite of how his in-laws had reacted. They ate it up and it took off like wildfire. Poo-Pourri’s videos have now been viewed more than 350 million times collectively.

Use Video to Tell a Story in a Unique and Approachable Way Squatty Potty was already a successful business when Harmon Brothers started doing their ad campaign; they were earning around $4 million per year. However, a large portion of their customers were women around 55 or older who had often embarrassing medical conditions. They were ashamed to talk about the Squatty Potty as a solution to their problems, and they would hide it away in the master bathroom. So Benton and his coworkers were faced with the question of how to make this taboo thing into something safe, something that could be talked about and laughed about.

They realized that in order to talk about this product they couldn't use anything real for the ad otherwise it would be seen as disgusting. So they came up with ice cream and the mythical unicorn and set it in a medieval land with a prince to further remove it from reality. They designed the unicorn to be cute and cuddly to make it approachable. In doing all these things, they took the taboo and grossness out of the subject and turned it into something funny.

After the ad went viral, their customers no longer had to hide the Squatty Potty in the master bathroom; they could put it in their guest bathroom and it would turn into a funny topic of conversation. Harmon Brothers used video to tell the story in a unique and funny way that made it safe and approachable. It massively expanded the audience of customers to whom Squatty Potty could sell these stools, and it fundamentally changed the business and the owners’ lives while making customers' lives better.

Pioneer the Video Ad Skip Button with YouTube More than 1.9 billion people, one-third of the internet, use YouTube (YouTube). Before Google bought YouTube, no one saw it as an advertising platform. It was just a place where people could share things like funny cat videos. Google bought it and turned it into a place for advertising. Now we can use this platform where people are finding joy to reach more customers through the ads before videos.

Around the same time Google bought YouTube, Benton's business partner, Jeff Harmon, created an ad that was about two and a half minutes long, but ads back then were either thirty-second TV ads or thirty-minute infomercials. Everyone was telling him this ad was too long, but he had an idea. He went to YouTube and said, "I want to try something out. Can you give me a skip button for this ad, so that people who want to watch the ad can and those that don't want to don't have to?" YouTube agreed to test this out, and they built in a skip button. This idea completely revolutionized the way we do ads.

Don’t Rely on Virality The Harmon Brothers are known as the viral video guys, but really only a handful of their videos have gone viral. If you look at all the different variations of the Squatty Potty video, it has been viewed about 300 million times. However, it probably would have reached only ten to fifteen million views if they had just put it out there and relied on the virality of it.

The Harmon Brothers rely on a formula that says if their clients spend a dollar to drive advertising to this video, they should get back two dollars in revenue. It becomes a machine: money in, revenue out, at the same time generating awareness for the company. They can use that machine for weeks, months, or years to drive business results and awareness. This advertising model is how the Purple mattress video has been viewed over 500 million times, while never going viral.

If we can get our ROAS (return on ad spend) to be double or triple what our advertising cost is, then we really don't have an advertising budget. We can have an almost unlimited advertising budget because we know that for each dollar we spend we get our money back and make a profit.

Building an Effective Video Script An effective script will have all the elements of a great sale: a hook, problem, solution, and call to action. It will build credibility, overcome concerns, and finish with another call to action. The hook is very important; 33% of viewers will stop watching a video after 30 seconds, 45% by one minute, and 60% by two minutes (Ad Age).

The Harmon Brothers teach how to do research and behind the scenes work to make sure the right pieces end up in the script. The way to make sure the script is really effective is through research. We can ask ourselves, “What part of my message is it that really resonates with my audience?” Once we know the answer we must make sure the script focuses on the parts that resonate.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” -Peter Drucker, management consultant, educator, and author

Focus Our Time on Things We Love One day when Benton was in high school, he was venting to his dad about how he wasn't finding school fulfilling. He felt like he was wasting his time and that high school was just daycare for teenagers. He wanted to be doing something more, something that he cared about. Benton expected his dad to say, "Stick it out. School is important," but his dad didn't. He said, "If you've got a problem with it, do something about it. If you don't like school, leave. Go do something better."

His dad's answer was like a slap across his face that woke him up. He started questioning what he wanted to be doing with his life, and the answer he came to was cars; working on cars was the thing in his life that he was most passionate about. He was always buying old cars, fixing them up, and selling them. He read every issue of Motor Trend magazine from cover to cover because he loved cars.

So Benton dropped out of high school and enrolled in the automotive repair courses at a local college. He absolutely loved it there. A professor saw his passion and urged him to compete. Benton did, winning at the school level, then the state level, and eventually they sent him to Kansas City where he took second place at the national level.

From an outside viewpoint dropping out of high school seemed like throwing away a great opportunity and promising future and pursuing a dead-end career in repairing cars. In reality, though, instead of just going through the motions, he was pursuing his passion that was lighting a fire in him and causing him to excel.

Key Takeaways Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode.

Video marketing is a massive tectonic shift, and a huge opportunity for our businesses if we leverage it effectively.
We may consider using video to tell the ad’s story in a unique and funny way that makes the product or service safe, fun, and approachable.
Try to create a viral ad, but don't rely just on virality. Instead, try to create an advertising money machine that earns you a profit on each dollar you spend, and gives you an almost unlimited advertising budget.
Ask “What part of my message is it that really resonates with my audience?” Make sure the script focuses on the parts that resonate.
Focus your time on the things you love, and your chance of excelling will increase.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 3. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story Do you have any tips and tricks about successful video marketing? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read more at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/7-video-marketing-secrets-from-one-of-the-creators-of-an-ad-with-300-million-views/

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Sometimes, we as entrepreneurs and CEOs implement “normal” or traditional strategies that we learned in our business schools. These may be the strategies that are supposed to work or the strategies that many other companies are using, yet we don’t see the results we were expecting. In this episode, we’re going to talk about one of the most common reasons this happens, and we’ll discuss a more effective way to accomplish what matters most.

Doing Things The Same Way as Everyone Else

Years ago I began working with a company that had a very talented, successful, and intelligent executive. This executive (who was not the CEO) had graduated from a great business school where he had been taught strategies and models that have been widely used to run many successful businesses in the past.

The problem was, these were the same strategies and models that were being implemented by a huge number of businesses around the world. If most business leaders are following the same business strategies and models, then the business with the best resources is often going to win. This could spell disaster for the entrepreneur starting out with fewer resources and brand recognition than the larger companies.

This is one of the reasons why close to half of all small businesses fail within the first five years and only 1 in 3 stay in business for 10 years (Source: Forbes). They simply don’t have the resources to compete head-on with the larger, more established companies.

Finding a More Effective Way

When I started working with this company, they gave me a very ambitious goal. To achieve this goal we decided to go into a niche that had two Fortune 100 competitors already dominating it. These companies were well-established in this space and had far more resources than we could ever have. I knew we could not compete with these companies head-on with the “normal” or traditional strategies they were already using. Instead, we needed to do something different and compete in a smarter way.

So, we asked ourselves: “What is the most important thing we need to do?” Once we figured out the answer to that question, we went on to ask ourselves: “What is the most effective way to get that done?”

Why can’t you just do anything the normal way?

The strategy I created based on the answers to these two questions was new and very different from what this executive had been taught at his business school. Over time, my strategy of doing things in a non-traditional way very understandably started to be a little frustrating for this executive. I completely understand where this successful executive was coming from, and I may have felt the same way if I had been in his shoes. He was taught strategies from professors much smarter than I am.

To read the rest of the article, visit:

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During the last 23+ years of my business career I’ve experienced various tectonic shifts in the business landscape firsthand. For businesses that did not adapt to those tectonic shifts, those shifts were very destructive. The businesses that seized the opportunities of those shifts often had the power to rise above their much stronger competitors. During this episode, we’ll take a look at three of these tectonic shifts and the effects they’ve had on transforming businesses, right after this intro.

1. The Tectonic Shift from Brick and Mortar to the Internet “The tectonic, technology-driven shifts that characterize the Internet Century have rendered some of the commonly accepted strategic fundamentals we learned … on the job incorrect.”

- Eric Schmidt, Former Google CEO

I remember arriving at college my freshman year in 1992 and having no idea what the internet was. And yet, by 1996 I was creating Adoption.com.

Blockbuster vs. Netflix

The story of Blockbuster and Netflix is a great example of the tectonic shift from bricks and mortar business to internet business.

Blockbuster was the king of video rentals in the late 90’s. They owned more than 9,000 stores in the United States, had 84,000 employees around the world, and had 65 million registered customers. The company received $800 million in late fees alone in one year and at its peak was valued at $3 billion (Source: Business Insider). They must have felt invincible in their industry.

Netflix was created in 1997. It wasn’t the streaming giant it is today. Back then it was simply an online video rental company. It’s main differentiators were that it shipped the DVDs to customers and it didn’t have late fees. The founders of Netflix, Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, believed that the internet was the future but weren’t having much success competing with a giant like Blockbuster.

“While Blockbuster… focused on brick-and-mortar video stores, technological innovations meant that competition was on the rise.”

- Irene Kim, Business Insider

In 2000, Randolph and Hastings met with the Blockbuster CEO. They came with the offer of selling Netflix for $50 million. Owning Netflix would allow Blockbuster to be the king of both physical and online video rentals. But the CEO laughed at the deal, considering Netflix to be a niche business.

When Randolph and Hastings went into that meeting, Randolph describes feeling like “a country mouse in a big city” standing in his shorts and t-shirt when Blockbuster’s CEO came in with his “beautiful Italian shoes” (Source: GQ). However, the Netflix co-founders understood the powerful tectonic shift taking place while the Blockbuster CEO did not.

Ten years after that ill-fated meeting, Netflix was posting earnings of $116 million while Blockbuster was declaring bankruptcy. Blockbuster had the resources, reach, and reputation. If they had effectively leveraged the shift to the Internet, they would have catapulted their growth. Instead, the Netflix small startup was able to surpass the giant industry leader greatly because they took advantage of the tectonic shift.

2. The Tectonic Shift from Printed Yellow Pages to Search Engines Do you remember that giant phone book that used to get dropped off at your house every year? The yellow pages were filled with different size advertisements of businesses to help people find whatever they were looking for. Advertising in the Yellow Pages was so popular because its audience was ready to spend when they opened the pages. In fact, 9 in 10 customers who saw Yellow Page ads made a purchase (Source: Simmons Market Research Bureau). Many industries enjoyed great returns from their Yellow Page advertisements, such as attorneys who gained $17 per dollar spent, restaurants that earned about $3.50 per dollar spent, and car dealers that earned around $280 per dollar spent (Source: CRM Associates).

“The Yellow Pages have offered advertisers and businesses an extremely strong and steady return on investment in a medium they can count on — providing a direct, measurable, cost-efficient vehicle for their marketing expenditures.”

John Greco, President and CEO of the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association

The Yellow Pages were slow to adapt to the internet. In 1995 Elon Musk approached the Yellow Pages with an offer to partner with them and get the Yellow Pages online. As Musk tells it the executive “picked up the Yellow Pages – this book, this big thick book full of ads, this multibillion-dollar risk industry – and threw it at me and said, ‘You ever think you’re going to replace this?’” (Source: CNBC).

By the 2000’s, internet search engines were already beginning to cut into the Yellow Pages’ profits with 1 in 3 consumers using internet over Yellow Pages (Source: AdAge). Yellow Page publishers slowly began putting their content online as well as in print around this time but search engines were continuing to change the game.

Google introduced targeted, pay-per-click advertising that was changing the world of advertising. As Larry Page, Google’s Co-Founder and CEO described the new product, “AdWords offers the most technologically advanced features available, enabling any advertiser to quickly design a flexible program that best fits its online marketing goals and budget.”

“Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.”

Bill Gates, said in 2007 (Source: Seattle Times)

Over the years, consumers turned more and more to internet searches. By 2014, more than half of the United States had replaced their phone books with online searches (Source: comScore). Marketers turned to internet advertising because of the returns and flexibility it offered while Yellow Pages has a 1 out of 5 rating in overall satisfaction (Source: Rhino Digital).

The yellow pages already had the relationships with the advertisers, the reputation and loyal subscribers. They could have been unstoppable in transforming to a business search engine. However, they were slow to take advantage of the tectonic shift occurring and because of that they’ve practically been buried by search engine startups. Google took full advantage of this shift and has experienced massive growth thanks to it. In 2019 Google had $29.9 billion in just ad revenue while the yellow pages announced their last printing of their physical phonebook (Source: Owler).

The Tectonic Shift from Desktop and Dumb Phones to Smartphones Thanks to the immense capabilities of smartphones, we are able to do almost anything on them. Mobile has become the most popular platform for gaming, social networking, and now shopping, with about four out of five Americans making purchases on their mobile devices (Source: Pew Research Center). In fact, 52% of global website traffic comes from mobile devices (Source: GS Stat Counter).

The tectonic shift from dumbphones and desktop computers to smartphones became very apparent to me when I was sending my oldest daughter to college. I offered to buy her a laptop and her response to me was that she didn’t need one. She believed she could do everything she needed from her smartphone. Although she eventually agreed to the laptop, it amazed me to realize how much people are shifting away from desktop computers and even laptops.

The invention of mobile apps has led to the creation of many startup companies that are able to surpass their larger internet rivals thanks to the ease-of-use smartphones offer. Let’s take a look at how Uber was able to break up the near monopoly taxis held for decades.

Taxis had been a necessary headache in the world of travel for a long time. The first problem of taxis was getting one. Hailing a taxi from the side of the road during busy traffic required riders to wave their arms and hope that a taxi would come driving by and stop just when they needed it. It was also a problem for taxi drivers who would often waste fuel and money driving around searching for passengers.

I can remember my own very frustrating experience trying to hail a taxi in London during rush hour to get to one of the most important business meetings of my life. I stood on the corner trying to hail a taxi as literally hundreds of them drove past me. Each minute that passed made me worry more that I was going to miss my meeting. It took me more than half an hour to get a taxi to stop and take me.

The solution to this hailing problem was to call and order a cab. However, when you did that, it often took a very long time for the taxi to arrive. There was no guarantee that your cab would actually arrive when you needed it. It may come early, late, or never at all. And of course, as you stood there waiting for your ride, you had no idea if the taxi was just around the corner or in the completely wrong part of town.

Once you got a taxi, you had to hope that your driver understood where you wanted to go. Airports were easy enough but almost any other location, even major hotels, could cause confusion and have you end up somewhere you never wanted to be.

And then there’s the cost of the trip, which your driver could change on you at any moment. Regularly in my travels the taxi payment screen would tell me my cost was a certain amount but the driver told me the cost was actually more expensive because of special circumstances or fees.

And, you never knew if the taxi driver in an unknown city was taking the shortest route, or driving a longer route to increase the mileage fee.

Based on how much difficulty and frustration surrounded using taxis, it’s not surprising that a company like Uber came along to improve things using the tectonic shift of mobile. It’s only surprising just how much of an improvement they were able to create. Uber’s ride-sharing app ultimately erased almost every challenge related to getting a ride.

“[Uber] is the perfect illustration of how the ubiquity of smartphones enabled clever entrepreneurs to take friction out of a process that, until Uber came along, seemed set in stone.”

- Roger Dooley, Author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing

As you know, with Uber, riders are able to secure a ride almost always exactly when they need it, put their address into the GPS and share it with the driver so there is no confusion about the destination. The driver and rider can see the route and how much the ride will cost them even before the ride starts. Uber is so fast that I have had to stop requesting an Uber from my hotel room, because I usually cannot even walk from my hotel room to the hotel entrance before the Uber arrives. Riders are even able to see how close their driver is to them so they don’t have to stress about why their ride is a few minutes late.

In 2019, Uber’s annual revenue was $65 billion (Source: Uber) with 110 million monthly active users (source: Wikipedia).

Taxis had been the industry leader for so many years. Buying a taxi medallion was one of the surest investments someone could make. As the New York Times reported, “Taxi ownership once seemed a guaranteed route to financial security, something that was more tangible and reliable than the stock market since people hailed cabs in good times and bad (Source: New York Times). However, by April 2020, 94% of taxi trips in New York City were from ride sharing companies, with Uber accounting for 67% of all those trips. In Chicago, traditional taxis have seen trip numbers drop 96% from April 2019 to April 2020.

The taxi industry had the resources it needed to create an app and make the other necessary changes to take advantage of this tectonic shift. But because they did not effectively adapt to the shift, along with other consumer needs, Uber has achieved dominance in their industry.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today’s episode:

We need to quickly and effectively identify, leverage, and protect our businesses from the tectonic shifts that are constantly happening.
Just because our business is a powerful industry leader does not mean that a tectonic shift cannot disrupt our business. It will happen. Count on it.
Don’t underestimate the upstart business in our industry that is successfully leveraging the tectonic shift. Find a way to acquire or work with them, or leverage the same tectonic shift before they leapfrog us.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow the following channels to receive free digital monetization content: 1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business 2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. 3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. 4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. 5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. 6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

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Share Your Story

What business tectonic shifts have you seen? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

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Where the Story Begins

Moviegoers tend to love great origin stories. We want to know how beloved or hated characters became the hero or villain. We want details and stories to help us make sense of their decisions and motivations. Some great movies telling origin stories include Batman Begins, Guardians of the Galaxy, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Iron Man, Monsters University, and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

My much less exciting origin story begins as an entrepreneurship student at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. I was 18 years old, a freshman in college, and I knew nothing about the internet.

Mission in Brazil

After my first year in college, I left to go on a 2-year mission to Brazil where I helped people transform their lives and families by coming to Jesus Christ. While I was in Brazil I fell in love with the children on the streets in the northern part of Brazil where I served. These children were very poor. As these children approached me and asked for money, I would give them change from my pocket, but because I was a volunteer missionary, and did not receive any salary, that money quickly ran out. I vowed to do something to make a lasting difference for these children when I returned to the United States.

The Internet was the Wild West

Before I left for Brazil, I had not even heard of the internet. While I was in Brazil the internet took off. When I returned home, the internet felt like the days of the Wild West, where you could stake your claim on a piece of land, and if you worked the land for a period of time, the people became the owners of that homestead. It was a new frontier where people could pick which area they wanted, and if they worked it well, become the "owner” or category king of that niche.

Brazilian Adoption Program and the Pivot

During my sophomore year in college, I tried to start a Brazilian adoption program with my father, who was an adoption attorney. However, thanks to some very strict and ridiculous Brazilian adoption laws that are not in the best interest of children (I’m very passionate about this topic if you can’t tell…) we were not able to make it work. Some entrepreneurs would look at that as a failure, but I don’t see it that way. It was a necessary stepping stone or pivot to discover the Adoption.com business model.

I have learned that essentially every successful entrepreneur has had to learn what didn’t work and then pivot to a business model that was much more successful. Pivoting is almost a rite of passage of successful entrepreneurs. Consider as an example Instagram, which began as a location-based check-in service, and then turned into the social media giant it is today thanks to a great pivot.

The Fateful Phone Call

During the first week of school my junior year, I answered a call from someone who wanted to speak with one of my roommates. The caller left a message about a new HTML class for creating internet sites. The caller wanted my roommate to take the class with him. Neither the caller nor my roommate ended up taking the class, but I did. Before I even signed up for the second class, I was hooked on the idea of creating internet businesses.

To read the rest of the blog post visit: https://www.monetizationnation.com/4-5-secrets-from-my-entrepreneurial-origin-story/

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My name is Nathan Gwilliam, the host of Monetization Nation. I will be your guide through your journey to become a better digital monetizer. Let’s imagine that you and I were going on a safari to observe African wild animals together (I’ve always wanted to do that). If we were choosing between different safari guides, would we rather hire one who has never done it before or one with a lot of experience? We would probably want a guide with many years of experience successfully helping tourists quickly navigate to the best wildlife while keeping them safe from the dangerous animals. This is similar to my role with this show; to help you navigate the most effective digital monetization strategies that can transform your profitability while helping keep you safe.

I feel so arrogant when I talk about myself, but I need to start off by telling you a little bit about me and my story so you can trust me as your guide to becoming a better digital monetizer.

I am a Creator

I am an incurable creator. For some reason, I always have to be creating and growing something. For example, I have a 5,000 square foot garden where I grow plants vertically, plus an orchard with 3 dozen trees. I have more than a dozen fruit trees growing inside my house.

I am also a serial entrepreneur and I am passionate about creating my own businesses. I have been building digital ventures for 24 years, ever since I won the university business plan competition my junior year in college and started my first business, Adoption.com, in a college computer lab. With a talented team, we grew Adoption.com to be the world’s most-used adoption site. I’ve created and sold three digital ventures, including two that the Walt Disney Internet Group tried to buy.

I’m also passionate about helping grow other businesses, and over the years, I’ve helped many other companies grow. For example, I worked as a part-time consultant Chief Revenue Officer for one digital company and helped them add $5 million of new revenue in 12 months. The Walt Disney Internet group also tried to buy that company. As another example, I helped a local media company in a small market to grow their social follows from less than 100,000 to more than 110 million. According to Unmetric, that local media company reached more than 40 million monthly comments, likes, and shares, which I have been told made them the most engaging social channels of any publisher for a period of time. I also created a network of sites in multiple languages which reached more 280 million monthly uniques.

Not everything I’ve done has been successful. For example, in my first episode, I shared the story of being a 25-year-old CEO of a publicly-traded software company in the year 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst and losing $11 million in a day.

What is the show about?

This Monetization Nation show is about digital monetization, which is the process of converting assets into revenue and profit. Many entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other business leaders already have great assets, such as website traffic, social following, great products, technology, a book they’ve written, customer lists, data, expertise, a talented team, capital, and/or content. In this show, we will explore how to identify and more effectively monetize these assets.

Through the Monetization Nation blog, podcast, YouTube channel, eMagazine, and social channels I will be posting stories and secrets I’ve learned from my successes and failures over decades on my journey to become a digital monetizer. My goal is to help accelerate your success as a digital monetizer.

I will also be posting interviews with highly successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, marketers, and other digital monetizers who will share their monetization stories and secrets. I’ve already filmed 35 of these interviews. The interviews were originally about an hour each, but we’re editing them down to about 30 minutes with the best parts of the interviews to save you time.

Read the rest of the article at https://www.monetizationnation.com/want-to-be-a-better-digital-monetizer/

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A few years ago Russell Brunson was mentoring a group of entrepreneurs and he promised them that if they published something every day for a year on their blog, YouTube channel or podcast, they would become financially free. Some of those entrepreneurs took Russell up on that challenge, began publishing every day, and became incredibly successful. One of those amazingly successful entrepreneurs was Stephen J. Larsen.

Stephen tells his story of attending Russell Brunson’s Funnel Hacking Live event in San Diego. Stephen couldn’t afford a taxi. So, when his flight arrived he rented a bicycle, held his luggage over his shoulder, and peddled to Funnel Hacking Live through downtown San Diego. Stephen didn’t have enough money for a hotel room, so he slept on a couch in the hotel.

I have heard Stephen tell the story of when Russell challenged him to publish every day, the challenge that changed everything for him. Before the event, Stephen had told his wife that was the one thing Russell might ask him to do that he wasn’t going to do. However, there at the event, Stephen chose to trust Russell and accept the challenge and begin to publish every day.

As a result, Stephen has become one of the leading experts in the world on digital offer creation. In 2018 Stephen left his job to start his business from scratch, with no revenue or product. He reached $1 million in revenue in only 13 months. I attended Stephen’s packed Offer Mind event before COVID-19 hit. I have paid Stephen to teach me how to create effective digital offers and I’ve witnessed firsthand some of the success Stephen has had because he accepted this daily publishing challenge.

365-Everyday Music Tour

I recently listened to a podcast from Russell Brunson talking about a newlywed couple named Jim and Sam who had been unsuccessfully trying to break into the music industry for almost 10 years. This couple decided on a whim that they were going to do a concert every day for a year, and to create a documentary of their journey. At the beginning, the couple was performing for anyone who would listen, such as a group of tree trimmers. By the end, the couple was performing to tens of thousands of people.

The documentary is called After So Many Days, and it was named the winner of the Best Music Documentary Feature at the Nashville Film Festival 2020. It has been an official selection at more than 30 film festivals.

In the trailer, Jim says: “So here we go, making something happen every single day.” This is profound. There is a power in doing something small every single day, and the cumulative effect of that consistency creates amazing transformation.

Read the rest of this blog at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/2-how-to-gamify-goals-to-radically-increase-our-chance-of-success/.

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How much money have you lost in a day? In this episode, I’m going to tell you how I lost $11 million in one day, and some secrets that I learned that helped me become a digital monetizer.

How I Lost $11 Million in 1 Day

In the spring of 2000 I was a 25-year-old CEO of a publicly-traded SAAS (software as a service) company. My beautiful wife Crystal and I had been married for about 16 months, we had bought our first home, and she was pregnant with our first daughter.

In just 5 years between 1995 and 2000 the Nasdaq had skyrocketed more than 500% from under 1,000 to more than 5,000. The Nasdaq peaked at 5,048 on March 10, 2000, and by October 4, 2002, had plummeted by 76% to only 1,139. By the end of 2001, most dotcom stocks had gone bust.

The Collateral Damage

When the dotcom bubble burst my company had not yet reached profitability and was dependent on investors who were funding our software development and marketing. I painfully remember losing $11 million in a single day on the stock market, all from my ownership in my company. When the dotcom bubble burst, investors stopped almost all of their investments in Internet companies. After all of our investment dried up, our investors and I lost the company. I feel horrible for the investors who trusted me and lost their investments, the great team members who lost their jobs, and the hardships that resulted for their families.

The next year, as I focused on growing a horribly unprofitable Internet business, I only earned about $11,000 total for the entire year, or about 1% of what I had lost in a single day the previous year. My family survived in part because of the generosity of others, such as my sweet mother-in-law, Laree Ullery, who regularly brought us groceries and diapers for our new baby girl.

When our daughter was only a couple of weeks old, a key employee quit. This was understandable because of our tenuous financial situation, but we didn’t have the funds to hire a replacement. My wife Crystal stepped into that role and then another, and did an amazing job at everything she touched. She worked more than 2 years, bringing our daughter with her to work each day, without being paid anything, to help us get back up on our feet.

Our oldest daughter spent the first two years of her life coming into the office. As soon as she learned to walk she began going from office to office, pushing the “off” buttons on everyone’s tower computers. She was delighted at how quickly this got our attention. We finally got smart and started taping business cards over the buttons.

Heat Seeking Missile Aimed at Monetization

The first secret that I learned from this catastrophic experience was to be insanely focused on monetization. During the time leading up to the dotcom bubble I was doing a lot of “good” things that an entrepreneur should do, such as working with press releases and the media, raising money and managing relationships with investors, finding and operating an office space, dealing with HR issues, etc. These are all important things. However, our unprofitable business was like an airplane on a runway. We were trying to get the acceleration we needed to take off but the sudden dotcom bubble burst instantly shortened our runway. I had been so focused on “good” things, that I didn’t spend enough time focused on the most important thing: Monetization… getting us to profitability as fast as humanly possible.

This experience seared into my soul the lesson that as an entrepreneur my top priority is to be a heat-seeking missile aimed at monetization. When a business reaches sustainable profitability it is no longer dependent on investors and to a great degree becomes the master of its own destiny. When my business was not profitable I did not have the luxury of being distracted by anything other than the top priority of monetization. If I had it to do over again, I would have locked myself in a room with my developers and would not have come out until we had a software product that was completed, working great and that our customers loved.

This doesn’t mean that other things like HR issues are not important. However, the best thing that entrepreneurs can do to provide stability for their team members is to focus on monetization and get their business to sustainable profitability.

Read the rest of the blog post at https://www.monetizationnation.com/3-secrets-i-learned-from-losing-11-million-in-a-day/.

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Nathan Gwilliam

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