Marketing Shortcuts Podcast

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Wilco de Kreij is an entrepreneur from the Netherlands, mostly focused on online businesses. He started his first business in 2002 and started many different ventures since that time. He also successfully founded Connect.io along with Upviral. Upviral is a Facebook Marketing Tool that is now giving thousands of small businesses the marketing power of “giants”.

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Thanks for listening! For more tips, you can subscribe to my YT Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/wdekreij

Follow me on my social media accounts!

IG
https://www.instagram.com/wilcodekreij/

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https://www.tiktok.com/@wilcodekreij

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https://www.facebook.com/emarky

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Thanks for listening!
For more tips, you can subscribe to my YT Channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/wdekreij ______________________________________________________
Wilco de Kreij is an entrepreneur from the Netherlands, mostly focused on online businesses. He started his first business in 2002 and started many different ventures since that time. He also successfully founded Connect.io along with Upviral. Upviral is a Facebook Marketing Tool that is now giving thousands of small businesses the marketing power of “giants”.

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Thanks for listening!
For more tips, you can subscribe to my YT Channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/wdekreij ______________________________________________________ Wilco de Kreij is an entrepreneur from the Netherlands, mostly focused on online businesses. He started his first business in 2002 and started many different ventures since that time. He also successfully founded Connect.io along with Upviral. Upviral is a Facebook Marketing Tool that is now giving thousands of small businesses the marketing power of “giants”.

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As an Entrepreneur, I make a lot of mistakes. I love trying out new things in my business. Because I love to experiment, I end up making errors along the way. And that’s okay! There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. We are all human after all. For more videos and tips, visit my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/wdekreij

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One of the key factors of a successful business is to consistently grow your business. Growing your business with a team will help you build a stable foundation for future growth. I hope that this advice on how to grow your business helps you. For more videos and tips, visit my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/wdekreij

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If you want to learn how to deliver value to customers, you must first know your target audience or customer base.

For more videos and tips, visit my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/wdekreij

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For fun, I figured to record what a day is like while running UpViral.com. Hope you like it!    Make sure you hit subscribe if you haven’t already. And, if you’d like to check out my YouTube channel, – you can check it out at https://www.youtube.com/wdekreij

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In episode #31, Wilco talks what you should do in 2019.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:00: If you can set big goals and the 1st of January, you can do the same thing on the 16th of July, right?

01:28: I just checked, and the last time I recorded that podcast episode was one year ago.

02:24: People usually listen to a podcast while they have some alone time.

03:55: Because the more people I see downloading this episode, the higher the chances that I'll keep on doing the podcasts.

07:00: But because in the end, entrepreneurs are problem solvers.

07:33: So the best thing you can do, this is really like the best thing you can do this year is really dial in to what's working so far.

07:45: But whatever it is that's working for you so far, go all in on that.

08:00: Do more of what actually works.

09:39: Last a week I had a call with one of the previous head of growth of Kissmetrics.

10:17: Go deeper in what's already working.

Transcription:

Speaker 1: 2019, it's yet another new year with a lot of new chances and things that we can do in our business to grow our business, and usually I see two different types of people.

There's the kind of people that are like, Ah, this is going to be the best year ever, and setting high goals, and do all that stuff. And the people who are just, you know, they just keep on moving forward day in, day out. I personally, I'm a bit in between. I do usually use a new year, like the end of a year to sort of like really set new goals and map out the year. But at the same time I realized that, New Year's just like any other day, I mean, if you can set big goals and the 1st of January or you can do the same thing on the 16th of July, right?

But anyway, it is a new year and it is a moment that I usually do plan things ahead. And that's why I wanted to share with all of you, sort of my thoughts are what you should be focusing on in 2019 if you want to have a rapid growth in your business.

And first of all, I want to sort of address the elephant in the room. Where have you been? I mean, I just checked, and the last time I recorded that podcast episode was one year ago.

It was actually in January, 2018, which is insane. Time has flew by super, super fast, and actually, there's a reason obviously why I haven't been podcasting. And it's actually, it's, it has to do a lot with what I'm going to talk about in today's podcast because obviously you can only do so much, and you sort of have to, like, you have to sort of measure what's working and what's not working to see where you put your time.

I mean, for sure running a podcast can be very, not just lucrative, but it's a really good way to build an audience with people because, if you post stuff on Facebook or if you post stuff on YouTube, people will watch your content or go through your content while they are distracted because they're seeing other videos and other posts and all that.

But if people listen to your podcasts like you probably are right now, people usually listen to a podcast while they have some alone time. What are during a car or whether they're walking or on a bicycle. I mean, I'm Dutch, so obviously I listen to podcasts a lot when I'm on my bicycle. But, but it's really you and you and me time set up. So it's a real great way to build an audience. A, but if I looked at my statistics for my outcast, I never really promoted it very much.

I did, when we launched it, I obviously did a campaign using a viral, which went really well, that really kicked it off. And after that I never really promoted after that. And that's also why, if you're listening, your one of the few followers. Like, we got, I'm not sure how many downloads we have. I think we got like 25,000 downloads ish, something like that. But in the grand scheme of things, that's not a lot.

And that's also why I'm actually recording this podcast because I want to sort of measure how many people are still subscribed. So I'm, we're going to put out this podcast with good stuff. I'll get to that in a second. But the reason my, my self is recent for this podcast, is also to see like, Hey, is, is the podcast something I put I should put back on track for 2019? So, if you're listening, please do let me know. Should I do the podcast? Like should you send me a message on Facebook for example, like should I keep doing the podcast or should it, should it just be it just one podcast and then it's done again and hopefully share this with your friends as well. Because the more people I see downloading this episode, the higher the chances that I'll keep on doing the podcasts.

Now, with that having said, as I mentioned it, it's time and the beginning of the year to make a plan what to focus on and the same goes for you, like as an entrepreneur, as a marketer, there's no way you can follow through, follow up on all the potentials. There are, I mean, these days there's so much you can do and you can, you can obviously run paid ads. You can do that on, on Facebook and on YouTube and Google, Google Ads.

You can do affiliate marketing, you can do content marketing, you can be blogging, you can do videos, you can, you can be great at social media. You can be an expert on, on Instagram. You can do PR, you can do, you can work with influencers. There's like the options are pretty much limitless. I mean, if, if people are saying that they don't know how to get traffic, it's really because they haven't tried hard enough in my honest opinion.

I'm not saying like initially it can be hard, right? It sure can be. But there are a lot of opportunities. And the problem with that is that it actually becomes overwhelming and people do everything a little bit. And then it's hard because all of these things, it only works really well if you put a lot of time and energy into it because obviously, there is a lot of competition out there, right?

So, while I was making my plans, one of the things I was asking myself, like, like in, in my business, to, you know, a viral and connectio.io, we obviously have various ways how we get customers into our business, right? So, for example, we're running viral campaigns. For example, we are running Facebook ads.

For example, we, well not so much last year, but like previously we've worked a lot with affiliates and like, we're doing some content marketing. And what I ask myself is like, what's the best way to grow our business? Is it to, to do, to add more channels? Right? So besides the Beta, it's, besides to content marketing, should I add another channel? Like an auto traffic strategy? Should I be doing more with influencers? Or should I do more PR, or should I go all in on affiliates and add that in?

And what I realized is that, that I'm guilty of this as well, and I see a lot of entrepreneurs do the exact same thing, is that we are doing everything we can to figure out what's working, right? So we're trying to, you know, to get some traffic from somewhere. We're trying to grow our business and at some point, something is working and we're like, this is awesome. You know, for example, your, your, your Facebook ads, they're starting to come forward and you started to spend a bit more on Facebook ads, and every single time you spend a dollar you get two or $3 out, and it's awesome, and you get better at it and better and better. And over time, it actually turns into a business. And you've got this awesome thing where you're running Facebook ads and you're spending x amount of dollars and you're like, you're making way more and it's good, and everything is awesome.

So what do you do after? Well what a lot of people do, what I've been doing as well. It was like, awesome, we figured this out, right? But now I want to have a new challenge, so I want to figure something else out.

And I sort of drop what I did, start something new, right? And then I started figuring that out. But because in the end, entrepreneurs are problem solvers, and we're sort of thrive on the kick of like solving puzzles, solving, at least that's for me, solving puzzles, coming up with awesome solutions and, and sort of beating the game, right?

Figuring out what's working and what's not. So for a long time I've been doing that, right? I, I've been doing initially years and years ago, I was doing SEO. I sort of figured that out, and I was like, Oh, let's do the next thing, right?

And then I started doing Google Ads and figured that out. And then I went back to zero, started doing something else, started doing affiliate marketing, like work a lot with affiliates. Figured that I'd worked really well. Stop doing that. went to paid ads.

So I kept on going from one thing to the next, which is looking backwards the dumbest thing you can do, right? So the best thing you can do, this is really like the best thing you can do this year is really dial in to what's working so far. And I cannot tell you what that is for you. I mean, every business is different. There's businesses who thrive on Facebook Ads. There's businesses who go all in on content marketing, and that's what's working for them. But whatever it is that's working for you so far, go all in on that. And that's really my realization.

Do more of what actually works instead of going with the, like, sometimes I just go with a good feeling and like, Oh this is cool or this is nice, but like look at the numbers and see a measure what's actually working. And that doesn't just go and like, this doesn't just apply in like what actual traffic source but even inside a specific traffic or a specific marketing strategy.

So I'll give you an example. Right now I'm reconsidering or replanning my email marketing strategy, right? So what kind of emails are we going to send, and how are we going to engage with their audience? And like, to what extent are we doing offers or special or special promotions? To what extent do we just go in on content? To what extent do we use email to send people into different mediums? Like for example, YouTube or Facebook, et cetera, like all these kinds of things.

So I'm, I'm, I'm figuring out a new plan. And initially I was working on that plan, and I was just going with my gut, like, why do I think is it working? And I'm like, wait a second, once again, do more what works.

So I went into wicked reports. That's my analytic tool to measure a lot of, lot of this stuff to literally see over the last year what specific email campaigns worked and what emails worked and what, which ones didn't work. And when I say worked, I mean which ones actually brought in revenue, right?

So, based on that, I'm now able to see like all right this part, it looked really cool, and it was awesome, but actually didn't tell like did not convert at all. People were not interested in it. So just didn't work. Right. So now I know like I am able to see exactly what's working, and this year I'm going to do more of what actually works.

And I'm actually, it's funny, last, last a week I had a call with one of the previous head of growth of Kissmetrics. Kissmetrics is a big software as a service company. You may have heard of him. It's right now owned by Neil Patel, or at least he bought the blog. He actually started the, founded that company. Anyway, it's quite a big company.

And I was speaking to the head of growth, previous head of growth for that company. I asked him the same thing, like, like, this is the situation where I'm currently at. I'm like paid ads are working well and I'm like, oh, all these kinds of things. What do you think I should do if I want to double my business this year? And he said, he didn't say like, Oh, you add another channel. No. He said, go deeper in what's already working.

Right? So for example, if your paid ads are working, go deeper. Figure out if there's a way you can maximize it more. Figure out if there's another platform that's sort of similar as what you're currently doing. But you can, you know, push ads there. I mean, if you're already running ads on, for example, Google, they may be, you want to go for like other search engines as well, even though they're not as big, but still it can add up to it, right?

So, it's really all about going all in. And that's really what my message for today, for all of you today is, is like when you're trying to figure out where you're headed this year to grow your business, don't just go for the latest hype. Don't just do because other people say it's cool to do or because you know, it's, you know, it feels good.

But really look at your business, and ask yourself like, what's been working so far? And do more of that, right? Really go all in. If something is already working for you, don't just try to divert your attention to something else and try to add something altered because it's often way easier to double something that you're already good at than to start a brand-new skill and figure that out.

I mean, I'm, I'm currently trying that as well. I'm not sure if it's the best decision yet. I'll let you know later on. But for example, paid ads, working well. Content marketing, I'm like, I'm not good at like, I know a lot of marketing stuff, I've got a lot to share, but it's not like I'm a good content marketer, so, where, unlike some people who get hundreds of thousands of followers and all that, I'm not that person, right?

So I'm not sure if if this is, if this is is, you know, we're, I should spend my attention basically because obviously it takes a lot of time to figure it out. While, if I would put all that same time and do stuff I already know, for example, we're running viral campaigns or running paid ads using connectio.io, and I think all that stuff, it's probably a better ROI.

So in that sense, I should probably listen to this episode myself once again, because it's really all about doing more what's working for you right now and up to this point. And that's really my message for all of you today. So, once again, it's been a year since I did a podcast episode. So, I'd love to hear from you if I should do more of these and if so, why or what did you want to listen and, yeah, if you want to share this with any of your friends, I'd appreciate that a lot. And with that having said, I hope you all have an amazing day. Cheers.

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In episode #30, Wilco talks how you can 10X your marketing and growth without some clever hack.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:53: I want to dive into how you can 10X your marketing or 10X your growth without some clever hack.
00:59: Something that's going to keep them working today, tomorrow, next year and over the next ten years as well.
03:13: The way I look at it, in order to 10X your marketing is really just to get yourself out of it.
03:27: You need to find a way to tap into a certain traffic source, which doesn't take you too much time.
03:37: In 2018, I want to publish more and better content for our audience and for our customers.
05:09: The three steps are to systemize something, automate it and delegate it.
05:25: The first thing when I think of content marketing, I need to make it more concrete.
07:07: What I recommend you to do in various of your tasks is that you really try to break down what exact steps you're doing.
08:10: Because as sexy as delegating is, automating is always better.
08:12: If you can automate it, it's cheaper, it's more reliable, it's always good.
10:36: At the end of the day, what's even more important is that you understand common business practices.

Transcription:

Hey, what's up. It's me, Wilco de Kreij here back with you again in the very first podcast episode of 2018. We're actually already two weeks into the year, so it's been a while since I recorded the last episode, and I would say with good reason. I feel that over the last couple of episodes, I always start out like, oh it's been a while, so I should probably be more consistent with my podcast, which is actually kind of what this episode is about as well. So in this podcast, I want to dive into how you can ten X your marketing or ten X your growth without some clever hack. We're not going to talk about some clunky hack that may only work today or this week or this month, but something that's going to keep them working today, tomorrow, next year and over the next ten years as well. And I think that's really important if you grow a business. If you're running your business, you don't want to rely on things that are just working for a little while, you want to focus on things that keep on working day in, day out, for a long period of time, because that is how you reach true momentum in your business, and that's how you truly reach your goals.

It's actually been an exciting time for me. It's 2018 like I said, I'm having very big plans for this year for both UpViral and for Connectio. I couldn't be more excited. And on a personal level, it's going well as well. In a couple days from now, I actually get the keys for my new dream home, which is pretty fantastic. I'm really excited about it. We've been looking forward to this moment, me and my wife, for a long time, so it's good.

But let's not bore you with my personal stuff. So how do we actually ten X your marketing without clever hacks? Well I'll tell you. Basically there are so many things you can do in business or in marketing that you know will get you results. You can do, for example, content marketing. You see all these kind of people who are bragging about content marketing and it's the best thing ever. And then others, they're focusing on paid ads, on Facebook ads, or YouTube ads, and it's the best thing ever for them. And others, they're focusing on the affiliate model. They're having affiliates promoting their product and they say it's the best thing ever.

No matter what state at your business you're currently at, you'll have to admit that a lot of these things, they work, but the problem is, you need to put in the work to make them work. It's not like you're going to give it a try on content marketing, publish a couple of blog posts, and all of a sudden, you are at the top of everyone's mind, you're getting leads in, you're getting customers. It's not that simple, and it doesn't matter which channel you're using, every channel or every traffic source will have its challenges and basically you'll have to learn about it to see how it works. The way I look at it, in order to ten X your marketing is really just to get yourself out of it and it may seem simpler than it is. What I mean with get yourself out of it is that you need to find a way to tap into a certain traffic source, which doesn't take you too much time.

I'll give you an example. Currently, I am rethinking my content marketing strategy. So I want to, in 2018, publish more and better content for our audience and for our customers as a way to basically create momentum and drive more traffic, reach new audiences. So it's a marketing tool. Now there's multiple things I could do. Let's say I'm like, cool, I'm going to do content marketing so I'm going to create videos, I'm going to create blog posts, I'm going to do a lot of social media posting, I'm going to do a Facebook and LinkedIn, maybe not Twitter, that's not as big as it used to be, but I'm going to do all these things. Let's say if I would do all these things, it would take me a ton of time. Like seriously a lot. There's a direct correlation. I only have X amount of days in the week or in the day, and if I start doing all these things myself, then obviously it's not going to work out. I would not be able to keep working, growing, I would not be able to work on new features or come up with new tools for connecting or whatever.

Even though I want to create that content machine, that content marketing machine, there's no way I can do it all myself. The easy way to think is like, all right, just hire someone to do it. I've been at that spot as well where I start outsourcing and then I figured all right, I'm just going to find someone who can already do it, and that's it. Easy Peasy, they will do it, and I don't have to do anything. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. What I learned is actually I need to implement a three step process if you want to get it done right, and that's how I currently do it.

The three steps are to systemize something, automate it and delegate it. I'll just keep on talking about the content marketing plan that I'm currently working on. Like I said, systemize, automate and delegate. The first thing when I think of content marketing, I need to make it more concrete. I need to know exactly what parts I'm going to do. Let's say if we're writing a blog post, you could say, well we're going to write a blog post. No, that's not enough. I'm actually dialing in, and I'm thinking about the process, like how do we make sure to go from nothing to a fully published blog post that is promoted at various places.

Now if we break it down in small steps, and this is what I call systemizing it, the very first step is idea creation. We need to come up with the idea, what we're going to write about. And then research, like are we going to use some articles, what's going to be in there. And then usually we go for like a bullet point section where there basically is a synopsis of what the blog post is going to be about, then the blog post will actually be written, then there will be editing as well to make sure it's all good, images will be added.

There's a checklist of things that basically checks if everything is in order, like are the subtitles in order, like any kind of things that we need to check before being published, then we publish it, and then we go into promotion. And of course promotion in turn is like a certain systemized way. Perhaps we want to say all right, we want to post it on Facebook three times over the next three weeks, and we want to post it on LinkedIn, and we want to rewrite the article to post on LinkedIn, or maybe we want to create a video out of it as well, and we want to publish that on YouTube.

There's certain steps involved. What I'm trying to say is instead of just going at something, instead of just seeing how it goes and every single time you're sort of reinventing the wheel, what I recommend you to do in various of your tasks is that you really try to break down what exact steps you're doing. Because once you know what exact steps you're taking, then you're able to see the full process, and then you create something that can be repeated. If something can be repeated, it can be repeated by someone else as well. It's really important to basically create whatever you're working on. Whatever marketing channel you're working, whatever it is you're working on, try to break it down in small steps and see if there's a one pattern that every single time you're doing that task, all these steps have to be taken.

Because once you ... Sometimes it can take a little practice, but once you're able to identify it, and once you're able to create all these small steps, then it already becomes easier to start outsourcing it later on. But before I start outsourcing, right after I sort of systemize it and I actually have in my mind or on paper, what exact steps need to be taken, then I go to the automate section and I ask myself what can be automated. Because as sexy as delegating is, automating is always better. If you can automate it, it's cheaper, it's more reliable, it's always good.

Often times, there are parts in that list of tasks that can be automated. For example, with content marketing, I could automate, set up, set an automation that once something is published and work for us, it would immediately be added into a buffer so that automatically there will be something going out to some social media networks for example. There's always things you could automate or I could automate on Trello, if a certain Trello or management system where we basically, a project management system in our business that we use to maintain tasks and see who's doing what, et cetera, so I could automate it. If a certain blog post is done, it's published, then automatically it will add a to do to the person who's doing our promotion to make sure that they know exactly what this article needs to be promoted to here, here, here and here. That's also a part of the automation.

I ask myself which part can be automated. And only after that, I look at it and like which part can be delegated. Because obviously there's things that you may need to do, and there's other things that perhaps you could easily delegate. If you look at the whole picture, if you look at, all right I want to outsource, for example my content marketing, or I want to outsource for example Facebook ads, or I want to outsource like this whole big thing. It's going to be really hard to find the right person who's doing it in a way that you want him to do. It's really hard. However, once you start breaking it up, you start to systemizing whatever you're working on, then all of a sudden, it's suddenly a lot easier, because there's usually smaller tasks that require a specific skill. Maybe you as the entrepreneur, you have like 1,000 hats and you know all these skills, you have all these skills and you know how to learn it, but someone else may be really good at copywriting, but they may not be good at designing, for example, just as an example. Then you know, all right, I need to find someone who can write a good copy and also someone who is able to create good images, for example.

That's really it. We can all thing about all these sexy tricks and hacks and whatever could rank us number one on Google or get us more social reach on Facebook or whatever, and all these things, it's true, it matters, and I like to experiment with new things as well, I do that a lot, actually, however at the end of the day, what's even more important is that you understand common business practices and one of them is definitely this three step process to whatever you're doing. Systemize, automate and delegate. It's incredibly, incredibly important and once you're a master at that, everything becomes so much easier because you can take on so, so much more ideas and work and projects, et cetera, et cetera because you create a system for it first, you automate part of it, you delegate the rest and you are there only at the beginning part.

We'll talk about our content marketing. What my idea is, in a nutshell, is really like I prefer to create videos. I'm not a very good writer, so my idea is, and we're going to see how this works out. My idea is I'm going to create a lot of video content, and then I create various processes to turn that video content into various articles for different places. I'll have someone to create, to turn that video into a blog post, to that what I'm saying on camera will be used on text as well. Then if it's relevant, we may be able to create an infographic from it. Also just with a clear process, a step by step plan. Not all of these things will be ready right away, but my goal is throughout this year, I'm going to build a repeatable process and basically a content marketing machine where I can just put in my input, share my ideas and thoughts and knowledge, and then my team will be able to either automate and delegate, to make sure we produce all this content on all kinds of places online.

That's it for all of you who don't have enough time in the day. Systemize, automate and delegate. It's incredibly effective. If you're not a master at it, become a master at it, because it's going to change your life and your business. That's it for now, and I will see you all in the next episode.

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In episode #29, Wilco talks about the most important question that you can ask yourself, and that is, "What is your why?"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:39: Why are you doing what you're doing?
00:51: What is your why, and why it is important?
02:40: You need to know your why for internal motivation.
02:55: Simon Sinek: 'How great leaders inspire action'
03:44: Start with the why. They start with, "We want to change the world."
04:40: if you don't know your why, it's really hard to really influence people.
04:50: If you know your true why, you can convince people to believe in that same thing as you do.
06:02: What I always loved doing most, is to do things in a way that make me feel smarter than someone else.
07:10: Do things as the top couple percent.
08:15: ConnectRetarget that allows you to only retarget those for example, who spend more than x time on your site or who scrolled to at least 50% of your page.
09:00: The real point of this podcast is that by knowing your why, you'll, it will be easier motivate yourself, it will be easier to motivate your team, and it will also be way easier to influence your potential customers.

Transcription:

Hey everyone, it's me, Wilco de Kreij, here, and today I want to talk about the most important question that you can ask yourself, and that is, "What is your why?" What I mean with that is like, why are you doing what you're doing, and that, "Ah to make money," or whatever.

Making money, or getting more sales, or getting more customers, that's a result of the work that you do, but that's not you're true why.

So today, I want to talk about what is your why, and why it is important, because for a long time, I thought that the only reason to knowing your why is important, is basically to find internal motivation. And obviously, that's partially true, that's definitely true, but it's, that only grabs, that's only a small part of why it is so important. That's why I want to talk, dive into this today.

So, if I look back over the years as an online entrepreneur, there's definitely been up and downs. There's periods where I'm super focused, and I can just move mountains. There's so much stuff happening, I feel I'm in the zone, and everything's going exactly as I planned, yada, yada, yada.

But then, at other periods, I sort of plateau. Business is going flat, or at least it feel like that. I'm not as motivated, and I'm really searching for that motivation. At these periods, knowing my why is incredibly important. I mean, when my business was smaller, I was able to get enough motivation out of, for example, monetary results. I was like, "If I can do x,y,z," in terms of revenue or profit, or whatever, that motivated me, because it was going to have a substantial impact on my life. If I would double the amount of money I would make, it would have a substantial difference on my life.

Well today, monetary goals don't drive me anymore. It's like, maybe you can, or maybe you cannot relate, but at some point it's just like, that doesn't really matter. And at that point, the why becomes even more important, because if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, how do you get out of bed in the morning? Just as an example.

So, you need to know your why for internal motivation. But what I discovered is actually, that's just, the why is not just for your own motivation, but if you know your why, everything will move along. In fact, I just watched a presentation by Simon Sinek, it's actually on TED, TED.com, you probably know You would search for, 'How great leaders inspire action.' I repeat, 'How great leaders inspire action.' You'll find his presentation. I highly recommend it, it's awesome.

What he basically, what that presentation is basically about is that, as a company, a lot people they ... basically he draws a circle on the board. In the middle he has why, and then how, and then what, on the outside. Most companies, they talk about the what first. Like, "This computer, it has all these features." How; "It's really well designed, it works well." And then maybe the why, why they do their thing.

But they focus on the what first. Well, some companies, they start with the why. They start with, "We want to change the world."

Like, for example, Apple, "We want to change the status quo. We want to change the world. We're doing that by redesigning modern computing," and how, with all the products that they have.

If you watch that presentation, it's going to make a lot more sense compared to how I'm explaining it, but basically where it comes down to is that those that start with they with, that's, basically you need to start with the why if you want to truly impact. If you truly want to follow ... get a group of people to follow you, if you truly want to be a leader, whether it is as a company, whether it is as a politician, or whatever it is. You need to start with your why, and if you don't know your why, it's really hard to really influence people, because people don't, they are not influenced by just the specs. They're not influenced by the what, only influenced by the true why.

Now, this may sound super vague, right now, I apologize for that. My point here is that, if you know your true why, you can convince people to believe in that same thing as you do. That goes for your customers, or potential customers, but also in your team. If everyone in your team is just focused on like, "Oh, let's do this, because we need to make it happen," they're just doing their job to get paid, basically.

However, if they truly believe in what you believe in as well, if you explain them the why you are doing things, and they believe that as well, that's when they go all in. That's when they will, you're like, "Let's do this together."

It's not just about the money. Obviously they need to make a living, but they do it because they believe in it. They believe in the why. They believe in the reasoning behind it.

For a long time, I haven't personally been super clear on this. Actually started to formulate this more and more in the recent period, so probably still changing as we go along, but I'm more than happy to just, you know, let you know what I think my why is. Because if I truly look at myself, and even as a young kid, what I always loved doing most, is to do things in a way that make me feel smarter than someone else. Not like smarter, I don't want to, no, that's probably the wrong wat of saying it, right. I don't feel smarter, because ... I actually don't, but I want to do things that are smarter than other people. I want to do things that are more efficient.

For example, even in high school, when all the people would, for example, study three weeks for a test, I would challenge myself to do in like, two days, max. Why? Because it gave me a kick to just do it in a more clever way than someone else did. Like in the exact same thing these days; other people might just throw something online hoping for people to share with their friends. I love it when I can use, for example, UpViral and have system or a trick, or a strategy in place, that makes sure I'm in the advantage, that I can actually do things better, or smarter, or more efficient than someone else.

And right now, this, once again, may sound super vague. I'm still sort of exploring, but that's really, in the real core of me, I love being, doing things that are basically more efficient, and more effective than the average. Do things as the top couple percent, basically, just of things a little bit more clever. Like clever tricks, clever strategies, clever, just tiny tweaks that make all the difference.

That's what I love doing most, and I noticed that's also what I love teaching most all this, as well. Instead of just following the crowd, and do the same thing as everyone else is doing, yada, yada, I love it when I can just share a little trick, and like something that other people just haven't seen it, and those who do, they immediately have a competitive advantage over their competitors. That's what I love doing. And that's really what is the basis of both UpViral and Connectio. I connect all the tools. I just do the things a little bit trickier, a little bit smarter, a little bit better than everyone else.

I give you an example. So for example, if you're advertising on Facebook, a lot of people, they're just retargeting, and they're retargeting everyone who visited their site, right. So I came up with ConnectRetarget that allows you to only retarget those for example, who spend more than x time on your site. Or who scrolled to at least 50% of your page.

I like all these kind of things. I just doing it smarter than everyone else, and we're getting such a big improvement of ROI, but for me, personally, it's not even about the ROI itself, it's really about doing things smarter, doing things in a more clever way compared to the others, and to compared to my competitors.

So, that's really what drives me. That's what I love, and right now I'm really going through that process of finding my true why, and finding the right word for it, because obviously I'm not a native English speaker. So in Dutch it's easier for me to formulate, and over time, when I talk about people, when I talk about this with other people, it will start to formulate better, and that's actually also why I'm sharing it here on the podcast with all of you, so you can all ... I'm just trying to formulate my why.

The real point of this podcast is that by knowing your why, you'll, it will be easier motivate yourself, it will be easier to motivate your team, and it will also be way easier to influence your potential customers. Because if they believe in your why, regardless of what the actual product of you does, that you deliver, but if they believe in your why, they are so much more inclined to become a customer compared to a competitive product that actually may do the exact same thing, may have, may look the same, may smell the same, maybe the exact same, but if they believe in your mission, if they believe in your why, they're going to take your product. They're going to buy your product, because they believe in your why, and by buying it, they are basically voting for that as well.

So that's why it's so important. So once again, I would highly recommend you to look up the video called, 'How great leaders inspire action.' It's in TED.com, and it's presented by Simon Sinek. I'm not sure if I pronounce it right, but I just watched it this morning, and I absolutely love ... and actually just noticed that it got over 35 million views, so there's a good chance that you've already watched, that you've already seen it. So, if not, go check it out, and with that having said, I will talk to you all soon.

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In episode #28, Wilco shares about his experience about selling a business.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:40: I wanted to talk about selling your business.
02:05: You may know me from WordPress for Facebook.
02:20: That was a WordPress plug-in that allowed you to create Facebook welcome pages.
04:30: FE International, they have a bid network of people who basically are interested in more higher ticket size or online businesses that are worth more.
06:45: If you are ever planning on some kind of an exit or like selling your website or selling your business, it makes a lot of sense to have recurring in your business.
07:00: Another thing I learned is that I was too involved in the business.
08:49: If you are ever trying to or thinking of selling your business, make sure you are not working in the business by the time that you're going to list it for sale.
10:10: It's always good to do brainstorm with an expert beforehand to make sure that your merchant account can be easily moved over.
14:19: Don't try to do it all on your own.
14:25: Get a good broker involved.
14:28: Make sure you add a recurring element.
14:45: Make sure that from the beginning, you have separate merchant accounts set up.
14:58: Make sure to vet your buyer.
15:00 Make sure to put it in writing what exactly you expect from them.
15:05: Communicate that clearly to your customers so that the customers are aware of everything as well.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, hey, everyone. It's me, Wilco de Kreij here, and I am back for yet another episode. It's been a while sine I recorded the last one, so it's about time that you and I hang out. Today, I wanted to talk about selling your business, and more specifically, about my experience about selling a business because not everything went as smooth as it should have gone. There's quite a few lessons I learnt along the way, and that is what I wanted to talk about today with all of you.

For those who are wondering, no, I did not recently sell my business or anything like that. The last time I sold a business is actually quite a few years ago. I think it was around 2012, so around five years ago already. It's been a long time. Before that time, I sold various smaller projects like when I was still a kid, more than 10 years ago, when I sold smaller sites, I would say. I wouldn't even call it a business, but more like I sold smaller sites for four or five-figure deals. Sometimes, I sold it for 4, 5,000 euros, and sometimes for 11, 12, but that's the ballpark figure. Now, when I sold my business five years ago, it wasn't actually super big as well. It was six figures in euros, but unfortunately, I cannot really disclose the exact amount. It wasn't something super big, but for me at the time, it was obviously super big, right? It was like wow, that amount of money.

I wanted to guide you and let you in on the behind-the-scenes of selling that business because it actually did not go as smooth as I thought it should go. Basically, for those of you who are following me for a while, you may know me from WordPress for Facebook. That was a WordPress plug-in that allowed you to create Facebook welcome pages, basically. That was a thing back in the days. That was a WordPress plug-in that allowed you to do that quite easily. Initially, I launched it. We had a free version. Then, we had a pro version. Then, we had a 2.0 version, but at some point, I wasn't really excited about it anymore, which is like I was doing all. Most of the support, I was doing myself. I wasn't really growing anywhere. We weren't moving forward, and because I was spending so much time on just maintaining it, either the support but also the development side of things because WordPress kept on changing their platform, blah, blah, blah. I just wasn't excited. Then, I felt that it had a lot of potential, so it will be a waste if i would just let it die.

At some point, I decided, "You know what? I'm going to put it on Flippa. For those who don't know, flippa.com, it's like a ... Excuse me. It's like a website where you can list sites for sale. I put it up there, and I tried to ... I was hoping that people would actually go on a bidding war, and they would try to sell it. Unfortunately, that did not work out. I actually realized that. I remember that I actually did this while I was traveling. I was traveling through Australia and Asia at the time for four months period with my then girlfriend, now wife. We were traveling around, and that's actually when I realized I really, really didn't enjoy it anymore because at that time, I got to think about what do you enjoy? Where do you want to go? This was not the business I wanted to be in.

I remember at a coffee shop somewhere in Thailand, I actually put it up online and said, "All right, so we're going to sell it. I'm going to list it on Flippa." We did get quite a few bids in, but I think if I remember it correctly, we did less than a quarter of what it's actually sold for. In other words, the max bid that I got on Flippa, it was not a lot. A quarter of what I eventually would sell it for. Just to be clear, I did not sell it on Flippa. I wasn't happy with the bid. I was like, "For that amount of money, I'll just keep it myself." That's when I got a broker involved. In this case, I went with FE International. If you Google for them, FE International, you'll find them. They have a bid network of people who basically are interested in more higher ticket size or online businesses that are worth more. I think back then, this was average right now. I'm not sure if they would sell for something this small. They're mostly working on even bigger projects, but it's always good to get in touch with them.

I think that was my first lesson learned. Don't try to just ... If you're selling something for a couple thousands or maybe 10,000 or 20,000, then sure, you can just do it by yourself on Flippa. If you're trying to sell something fairly bigger, then, I would highly recommend you to get a broker involved because they just ... It's not just about the legal expertise that they bring in, but also the network they have in place. That's, I think, the biggest value it had for me, because like I said, on Flippa where everyone could see, and I actually did advertise quite a bit on Flippa to make sure people actually saw it. The highest bid we got was like a quarter, 25% compared to the bid we got through FE International. That's my first lesson I learned. It would have saved me quite a few months if I would have done that right away. Anyway, I did not.

Second lesson that I learned is I thought it was worth a lot. I was like, "Ah, but it's going well. We're getting a lot of sales in." The problem was that when we were selling that plug in, we were selling it for a one-time fee. In other words, people would buy it once, and they can keep on using that plug in forever. We'll have to be the ones maintaining it. Because of that, the evaluation, what I thought it would be worth for just what it was actually worth was under ... Let's just say there was a big difference. It was not worth as much as I thought or as I had hoped because we weren't doing anything recurring. In other words, there's no consistency in the business. We were selling relatively consistent, but if for example, traffic source would dry up. You only needed one thing to go wrong, and all the revenue will be gone.

The more risk there is for a potential buyer, then obviously, the lower the evaluation's going to be. If you are ever planning on some kind of an exit or like selling your website or selling your business, it makes a lot of sense to have recurring in your business. It's going to boost your evaluation way, way up.

Another thing I learned is that I was too involved in the business, right? If someone is going to take over, I was thinking like, "Oh, so someone else is going to buy this website, who's going to buy my business, and they're going to do what I do." Well, guess what? People who have money like potential buyers, they don't want to do what you do. They just want to buy and invest, basically. The moment that they're trying to buy something, and if it actually requires work, they're not going to do that themselves. All they think is like, "All right, so all of the work that you as the owner is doing, could we train someone to do that? How much would that person cost?" Also, there's once again, a bit of a risk there because can they actually train someone to take over their work, right? That's going to be the question.

The moment that you already get yourself out of the business, and what I mean is you're not doing any of the active work. You're just working on the business from the sidelines. That's it, but all the ongoing work is being done by a team. Then, once again, it's going to be, first of all, way easier to sell. Secondly also, they're going to be willing to spend more because they don't have to hire. They don't have the risk of like, "Hey, can we actually find someone to do all of these?" You can just say like, "All right. I don't have to put a lot of work in this. I check the stats and that's it. Other than that, the team is taking care of it. The team will be helping you out instead of me," so you will be once again, selling a business. It's not just a site, but you are actually handing over the team. Obviously, you want to get your team involved in that process as well.

Yes, you want to get yourself out of the business. That's definitely another lesson I learned. I should have done that before I went into all of these. That would have helped me a lot. Yes, if you are ever trying to or thinking of selling your business, make sure you are not working in the business by the time that you're going to list it for sale. Also, another thing is that I never really thought about, and that is to have different merchant accounts. Obviously, you're gathering payments, you're collecting payments through some kind of an account, whether that is Stripe or PayPal or ClickBank or whatever it is, it's going to be good to have things divided between multiple accounts. Let's say you have multiple projects or multiple business, and you're thinking that maybe in the future, you're going to sell one of them separately. Then, don't have them all on the same merchant account because if you do, it's going to be really, really hard to let go of that, actually.

I actually recently learned this next thing. I haven't verified yet, but I recently learned that if you are ... Let's say you have subscriptions on your PayPal account, then, your PayPal account can actually not be moved to another country. Let's say I'm, for example, from the Netherlands. If I have payment subscriptions, people are paying me here in the Netherlands through PayPal, then even if someone would buy ... I'll base it in the future. I'm not saying that, that's one of my plans, but if that would happen, then it's only possible if that business would be here in the Netherlands, which is crazy, right? If you would really be thinking about selling your business in the future, it's always good to do brainstorm with an expert beforehand to make sure that your merchant account can be easily moved over to whoever is going to buy your business. That's definitely a lesson I learned.

I didn't have it in separate, in a separate account, which means that I had to get, I had to basically hand over my ... At the time, I was using ClickBank. I had to hand over my whole ClickBank account, which includes revenue streams from other projects as well. We just made a deal for that, and they got that as well. It would have been way easier if I would have set up different merchant accounts.

The last thing, and this is, I think, the most crucial thing. That is actually the biggest mistake that I actually made. This is actually why I started recording this episode, because this is the lesson that I gave for you. I was young. Basically, this is a year of mine. I was young. It was five years ago. I didn't want to continue each project, and I got offered a decent amount of money. I was like, "Heck, yes. Let's do this." I was literally at the same period. I was buying a new house. Obviously, all the money that I could get at the time was good for me, right? What was the biggest mistake I made? I did not vet the actual buyer. They said like, "Oh, we're going to take this over. We're going to keep on working on it. We're going to take good case of your customers."

You know what I did? I believed them on their blue eyes. I did not have that in writing. We didn't have something like, "Oh, you're going to at least have the support on this." We didn't have ... I believed that they would do that, and that's been my rookie mistake because after they bought it, and actually, my developer who built the whole plug in, he joined their team as well. He signed, I believe, a couple years contract to make sure he would be providing all data and what not. All of that happened, but after I sold the whole business, I got quite a few people complaining, coming back to me like, "Dude, you may not be the owner of WordPress for Facebook anymore, but we're trying to get good support, and we're not getting it. We're not getting our questions answered." That's been a major headache, right? This company that promised they would, but they did not hold that promise. We didn't have it in writing, and that's been my biggest mistake.

Yes, I got the money, but it's been actually a real bad experience, not just for our customers but for me personally as well because obviously, I care a lot about our customers, and regardless of whether I was still the owner or not, it all reflected bad on me. I lost a lot of good faith from customers who used to be loyalty to me. Because they were not getting the support they deserve, and the support that they should get, obviously, they were like, "Wilco, screw you."

I'm sorry for cursing here.

Obviously, they should have, right? I'd be pissed as well if I'm a customer of a certain business, and they sell their whole business. The next owner doesn't take care of them. That's also the responsibility from whoever sold their business, right? That was my responsibility as well, and I didn't even think about that. I just believed them, and I know I shouldn't have had. I think that has been my biggest lesson I learned along the way, or maybe I learned it afterwards, but what I would do completely different. If I would ever, ever, ever, ever sell something in the future, I would go nuts on this part. I would be happy to get less money for it, but I would go nuts on this part just to make sure that whatever I'm selling is going to be maintained at a high level for years to come. They're going to actively grow the business. They're going o actively do whatever it takes to make everyone happy and to keep it all going and do all of that, all the things that are required to run a business in a proper way, not just let it go, right?

I think that's my biggest lesson I learned. Just to summarize, if you were ever trying to sell your business, obviously for the right reasons, then, don't try to do it all on your own. Get a good broker involved. Make sure you add a recurring element. Not even if you were going to sell your business, by the way, but just in general, have a recurring element in your business. It reduces a lot of stress. It's, I think, the best thing since life's breath. Also, make sure to get yourself out of the business, so you are not the one having to do all the work because that's going to make it way easier to sell.

Also, make sure that from the beginning, you have separate merchant accounts set up. It's easy to let things go, and very, very, very important, if you were ever in the process of selling your business, make sure to vet your buyer. Make sure to check what they are, what have they done with previous assets? Make sure to put it in writing what exactly you expect from them. Communicate that clearly to your customers so that the customers are aware of everything as well.

That's my experience of selling my business. Once again, this was five years ago, and obviously, this was a low six-figure sum, so it's obviously if you're trying to sell something for, I don't know, 10,000, it's going to be different. If you're trying to sell something for 10 million, it's going to be way different as well, but I can only tell you what's been my experience and what my experience is what you just heard. I hope you enjoyed, and I will talk to you all on the next episode. Talk to you soon.

View Details

In episode #27, Wilco will share his split-test geekiness with all of you.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:25: You better get ready for some marketing geekiness.
00:55: Converted 83% better than my original version of that page.
02:55: Now, the first tip I want to give you is that you should not start running a split-test.
03:22: First, I’m just throwing something out, see if something even has potential.
04:16: My point here is that I only start split-testing once I know if something kind of works.
04:47: Now, the second thing that you need to do is to aim for big differences.
05:37: The main headline is like what really draws people into it.
07:00: You want to make sure that you have enough traffic.
10:30: My point here is that when you are doing a split-test, you need to know what you’re optimizing for, what your end goal is because sometimes, you’re looking at the wrong goals.
11:20My point here is that you need to make sure that you have the right goal in mind.
11:40 You need to have patience
13:00 Keep track of all of your results.

Transcription:

You better get ready for some marketing geekiness because today, I’m actually sharing my split-test geekiness with all of you. Hey, it’s Wilco de Kreij here. Just this morning, I wrapped up a split-test that I actually had forgotten about, so this split-test has been running for a while. I didn’t even look at the stats until this morning, and when I checked the stats, I noticed that the winning one, the variation that I was trying out actually converted 83% better than my original version of that page. This is on a money page, right? This was a page where I’m actually selling something, so 83% higher conversions, that’s actually insane. It’s almost twice the amount of sales for the exact amount of traffic, right?

Obviously, I figured like, “Hey, I need to record something about split-testing to my audience because it is so, so important. It can be the best thing in your business. For those who already know me, I’m a bit of a marketing nerd. I actually like doing split-test, so I’m running split-tests on a lot of things, right? It all starts, obviously, with like things like the ads that I’m running, but also on like opt-in pages that I’m running. If I’m using UpViral, for example, I always split-test the opt-in the page. I split-test all my sales pages. Like you have no idea how much I split-test. I just do it because … not just because I like doing split-test, but also because it is the best way to learn, right?

It’s one thing to learn from others to see like, “Hey, what are they doing?” but it’s another thing to actually try different things out yourself and actually knowing like, “All right, so I tried out these three things, and from these three things, number three actually works best. Now, why is that? Why is that?” So then, I’m diving in. I’m going to break it down, and that’s actually … like that’s been probably my main way of learning things, just by seeing what works instead of guessing, right?

For that reason, I wanted to talk about split-testing because there are some things you need to do while doing a split-test, but more … Perhaps, even more important is there are some things you should absolutely not do because if you do these things, it’s wrong. Then, you’re basically doing … Like instead of like improve a conversion, you might actually be breaking them or you might not even get any results because of it. For that reason, I wanted to talk about five tips that I think you should be doing or should not be doing when going to run a split-test.

Now, the first tip I want to give you is that you should not start running a split-test and like that sounds right, right? I’m just saying that split-test is the best thing ever since … the best thing since sliced bread, and now I’m saying you should not be running a split-test. That’s right. You should not. You should not start out running a split-test. Like on most of my campaigns that I run, I don’t immediately start creating a lot of different split-tests, right?

First, I’m just throwing something out, see if something even has potential, right, because like if you’re going to split-test everything that you create right from the start, it’s going to slow the whole process down. Let’s say you have a new product in mind or you have a new service in mind and you want to bring that out to the market. You could either create multiple sales pages, multiple opt-in page. You could make everything perfect, perfect, perfect, and plan it all out, and after a couple months, release it, or you can just … right away like start a webinar. For example, get people to sign up. Introduce your product that you have even if you don’t even have a sales page yet. Like just get the word out as soon as possible and see if people even respond to your product or service.

That is just an example, but my point here is that I only start split-testing once I know if something kind of works, and from there, I start improving, but I don’t start out running a split-test usually because it just slows the whole process down, and I prefer to move fast. If something isn’t even remotely working, then why would I split-test that? Like if something is not working at all, then the best case scenario of a split-test is finding something that doesn’t work at all and almost doesn’t work at all. I hope that makes sense, so don’t start split-testing right from the start, but wait until you have something that you feel that is going to work. From there, you can actually find and improve your winning variation, for example.

Now, the second thing that you need to do is to aim for big differences. Don’t go split-test to see what color of your button would be best, whether it’s yellow, green, or blue. At some point, it will make sense, right, to split-test that, but initially, you’ll always want to go for the biggest differences, so look at your page. Whatever you’re split-testing, whether it’s an opt-in page, whether it’s a sales page, but what would be the biggest … like what could have the biggest impact, the biggest different change, right?

For me, like I have a certain process. I always start with like the biggest change first. For example, if I’m split-testing an opt-in page, like the biggest change is going to be the hook, right? What is it even about? In my design, it’s usually the headline, for example. The main headline is like what really draws people into it, right, so I first do a split-test between that, and I don’t test out anything else and only after I find the right hook.

Like if one of those titles is actually the winner, then I go and tweak other things like maybe the sub-headline, or maybe the text on the call-to-action, or maybe if the design is a big part of the landing page, then maybe a completely different design. I’m not going to make small tweaks. I do it like completely different, and the reason why is because I want to have big changes, right, because if something is … If you’re just going to change the color of your button, like that’s going to maybe improve your conversion rate by 2%, and not just that like it’s not just the small difference. That’s not even the problem, right?

If I can get a 1% or 2% improvement every single day, I’d sign for that, but the problem is that because the difference is so small, it’s going to take a long time before you actually know for sure whether it’s converting because up until that point, you just … like it could be up and down like there’s too much variation. You’re just not going to know which significant certainty whether something is working best. The bigger the difference between various things you’re testing out, the faster you will get results, and that’s really what I’m after, right? I want to make fast changes. The bigger the differences, the faster you will have a significant data to know which conversion … which variation actually converts best.

Thirdly is also you want to make sure that you have enough traffic. It isn’t always easy. I know. If you don’t have enough traffic, then it might be difficult, but like especially if you do not have a lot of traffic, then do not start a split-test where you’re testing out six different things. Then, in that case, you just have two variations, right? You can test out multiple things, but in order to do that, you will need to have a lot of traffic in order to make it worthwhile. Obviously, I could go into the map, but I think for now, I just want to keep things simple.

It really comes down to like the more traffic you have, the faster you will know with a significant certainty whether something is actually converting better or not. If you do not have a lot of traffic, then that’s a problem. Like if you only have like … I don’t know, 50 visitors a day, then that’s going to be a problem, right? It’s going to be so much faster if you have more data, and that’s also one of the reasons why I spend a lot of money on Facebook ads, for example, because basically, I’m buying data. I’m buying to see what works and doesn’t work instead of waiting around. Once I know what works, then I can tweak that and send more traffic into that with auto-traffic streams like UpViral and content marketing. All those other kinds of things. I hope that explains this well. Make sure you have enough traffic before you start split-testing.

Number four is going to be maybe the most important one actually because … and actually, the case study, the results that I just shared with you that I figured out this morning is actually super, super, super relevant for that. With that split-test, a while ago, when I set it up, I actually set up multiple goals for that split-test, and this particular split-test, I’m using … I’m running it using Visual Website Optimizer, VWO.com.

What that tool allows me to do is I can actually set up multiple goals, so I can, for example, set up a goal saying like, “Hey. If they click on a button on that page, if they visit my thank-you page, so that I actually know that they made a purchase,” and the third goal of like how many revenue it would actually generate, so it also takes into account which package someone actually bought, whether someone bought a monthly package, a yearly package, et cetera.

Now, what I’ve done for this particular campaign is I’ve created multiple goals. One-half was the main goal that I was tracking, but I added multiple goals. I remember when I started this out, I didn’t have enough data. It didn’t have enough data, right? After the first couple days the test was running, I didn’t have a lot of data, so the easiest thing to look at was the click-out, right, the click rate because basically, it was a replay page for a webinar, and I looked at the stats saying like basically, “Which of these two variations triggered people to click on to the checkout page?” Right?

There was one variation out of these two that was the clear winner. Everyone … like not everyone obviously, but almost twice as many people … at least one and a half. Initially, it was twice. Later on, one and a half times the people clicked on the button to the checkout page. If I was looking at that data, then I would have picked that as the winner right away. It was clearly performing better in terms of click-throughs to the checkout page, but after I let the campaign run, after I let the campaign run, I actually noticed that the other page converted way better in sales, right?

My point here is that when you are doing a split-test, you need to know what you’re optimizing for, what your end goal is because sometimes, you’re looking at the wrong goals. Like if I would have looked at the amount of click-outs to my checkout page, to my page where people could actually make the purchase, then I would have picked the wrong one because the page that actually get people … Sorry. The page where people did not click as much as often to the actual checkout page, that one ended up converting better overall, right?

Even though a lot of people didn’t actually click on the link, those people that actually did click, they converted way better, right? My point here is that you need to make sure that you have the right goal in mind, and if you don’t have the right goal and you’re going to focus on, for example, click-outs while that’s not your end goal, then a winner which may seem like a winner could actually be your loser. If I would have went with that, I would have just lost the 83% conversion improvement that I just found this morning, right? It’s really important to pick the right goal, and that actually brings me to tip number five. Actually, I’m going to share six tips because I just remembered a very important one as well.

Number five is that you need to have patience. Like if you’re getting initial data, and you’re just having a couple sales, and it’s not significant yet, then do not stop the test because sometimes, initially, you might see like, “Oh, this is actually converting 40% better,” while it’s actually not like … There’s no way you can actually say something about the test because you haven’t had enough patience. You need to be patient in order to let the split-test run for a while.

For those of you who were asking how long should the test run, that totally depends on how much traffic you have, what the difference is in terms of the conversion between the two variations, how many … about the conversion rate is like, “Is it 2% to 3%, or is it 20 to 30%?” Think like that. Once again, I’m probably not going to go into the math right now, but let’s just say that you need to be patient. Obviously, I encourage everyone to … If you really want to dive into the stats, you can probably google for that, or if you ask me, maybe I’ll shoot another episode later on, but for now, I think I want to cover the basics.

So far, I’ve covered five, and that is to do not start split-testing right away. Aim for big differences. Have enough traffic, obviously, right? Test the right conversion. Make sure that you’re testing the right conversion. Number five, make sure you have patience, right? Number six is actually an important one as well, and I recently started doing that in a more detailed way is to keep track of all of your results, right?

I’ve been doing split-tests for years, and years, and years. A lot of the split-tests that I’ve been running like three, four years ago, I didn’t actually stored that data in a good format, so I don’t have access to all of my split-tests from like three, four years ago, which is weird because it’s actually the best learning material you can have, right?

All we’ve been doing for the last year or so is we’re actually documenting every split-test that we’re doing so we can actually draw conclusions like, “What do we expect to get out of a test? When did this start? How much traffic did it get? What are all the variations with like screen tilt and all that, and what’s the conclusion? Like what conclusion can we draw?” Based on that, we can learn, and learn, and learn. No, not just me, but the whole business as well because my team has access to that as well, so that’s my sixth tip.

If you are doing split-test, create a Google Doc. Create something. It doesn’t really matter what it is, but create something where you’re keeping track of all of the split-tests that you are running. I just wanted to share that with all of you. I hope you appreciate that. Let me know if you are running split-tests as well so I know I’m not the only one geeking out on this kind of stuff, and I hope you have an awesome day.

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In episode #26, Wilco shares how to stay focus especially for entrepreneurs just like him.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:25: How do you stay focused?
01:00: Wilco de Kreij, I've been an online entrepreneur for, I don't know, 15 years or so.
01:38: Do what excites you.
02:10: I want to create products and build things that people actually use that they're happy with and they thank me for it.
02:38: I saw one of our customers raving about UpViral and how he got thousands of lead in the first 15 hours.
03:00: My "idea quarantine".
03:28: I write it down in Evernote. I'm not allowed to touch that idea for two weeks.
03:59: The third tip is to surround yourself with people who run a similar business.
04:40: I got some friends who are doing a lot of e-commerce.
06:00: Keep planning your plan.
07:04: I actually have a schedule right here on the wall where I map everything out.
07:26: You can change within your focus and that might seem a weird thing to do.
08:00: We just had a two year anniversary for UpViral, which is awesome.
08:35: I've been doing a lot of affiliates. I've been doing a lot of Facebook ads.
08:45: Now I'm bringing more people into the team.
10:59: Pick something that excites you.
11:00: Implement the two week idea quarantine.
11:02: Surround your people with people who have a similar business as you have.
11:04: Keep planning your plan.
11:06: Allow yourself to change what you were doing within your focus.

Transcription:

How do you stay focused? There's so many distractions. I love what I do, but even then, I see so many opportunities and sometimes I just get distracted, right? Especially as an entrepreneur, we see things. We see opportunities that others don't. Even though it's a good thing, it's sort of like a blessing and a curse kind of thing.

Today I want to talk about how do you actually stay focused. How do you make sure that that thing, the path that you're on, you're gonna stay on it? You're not gonna distract yourself by all the things that you kind of know you shouldn't.

Just in case we haven't met before, my name is Wilco de Kreij. I've been an online entrepreneur for, I don't know, 15 years or so.

Even for me the fact that I see opportunities has been a blessing and a curse. Because of that I've been able to build quite a few businesses and I've been able to sell a few. It's good, but at the same time, oh my God, you would not believe how often I go distracted, which sort of lets me off course. Over time there is a couple of things I've learned to make it easier to stay focused.

The first step I want to give you is overtly this is gonna be an open door, but I want to mention it anyway, is, do what excites you. What really excites you is different for everyone. For me, for example, there's been times my business were focused on how do I make more money or whatever. I learned that that does not motivate me at all. It's the worst thing to have as a goal, because once I have that as a goal it was so easy to get distracted. It wasn't really passionate by it. I realized that for me ... Once again it's different for everyone, but for me what really excites me is that I want to create products and build things that people actually use that they're happy with and they thank me for it. The moment that I realize that the moment that I had something that people were actually using and leveraging and thanking me for it, that gave me the energy and I make it so much easier to stay focused on that thing.

For example, I was on Facebook actually, a couple of hours ago, and I saw one of our customers raving about a viral and how he got thousands of lead in the first 15 hours. I was like, "What?" That really gives me the energy to stay focused. It reminds me that what I'm doing is the right thing to do. That's the first. Make sure to pick something, run a business that honestly excites you.

Secondly, it's more of a tactical tip, which helped me a lot over the years and that is what I call my idea quarantine. Even though you're focused, even though you're excited about what you do, you're gonna see other opportunities. You're gonna see other things that you think, "Oh, this will be good to add," or "Oh, this is such a major opportunity." Before you realize, you realize you wasted a couple of days on it. What I do nowadays is that whenever I have an idea ... because we still have ideas, right? I write it down in Evernote. I'm not allowed to touch that idea for two weeks.

That's my two week idea quarantine and if after two weeks I still think it's genuinely good I need to go after it, then maybe, maybe I would. Usually after two weeks I already came to my senses and it's not something that I should pursue. Do that. That is definitely a tip that I really encourage everyone to do. Add this into your routine. Whenever you have an idea, write it down and you're not allowed to touch it for two weeks.

The third tip is to surround yourself with people who run a similar ish business. People always say that you should surround yourself with people who are a couple of steps further than you. Yes, I agree with that, but not just a few steps ahead of you. They should also be in the same kind of business that you are. Obviously it's good to mingle with people who have a completely different business than you have. That's fine. That's totally fine, but what I've noticed for me personally is that when I mingle myself with people who I think have an awesome business, but is not similar kind of business I tend to think, for example, I got some friends who are doing a lot of e-commerce. They have e-commerce shops and are selling to consumer, which is different from what I do. I run a couple of software companies in UpViral. That's a different kind of business. Because I see them, they're shipping thousands of T-shirts and all kinds of products every single day, I'm like, "Wow, that's pretty awesome." It sort of gets me of course, because they're doing something different.

I'm not saying you cannot mingle with people who have different kind of business because I still do. What I notice is that I need to have a couple of people around me who run a similar kind of business. Whom I can brainstorm with, but also that inspire me to do new things within my focus basically, instead of surrounding myself with people who are all doing something completely different.

As an entrepreneur it's sometimes lonely. It's an awesome job if you want to call it a job, but it's awesome, I love it. I absolutely love it, but it can be lonely and if you don't surround yourself with people who have a similar kind of business ... What happened to me is that I felt like maybe I should run a business like they're doing, because no one around me was having a similar kind of business. You can mingle with everyone that you want, but I highly, highly recommend to mingle also with at least a couple of people that you look up to that are a couple of steps ahead of you that run a similar kind of business. That's my third tip to you to stay focused.

Number four is to keep planning your plan. Personally I write down my plan. What we're gonna do over the next couple of months. I write it down pretty. It's not something I do like I said it now and that's what I'm gonna do for next six months. What I actually do, I write it down for maybe three, four, five months or so. Every couple of weeks I go through the plan again and see what excites me. Sometimes ideas change and that's fine.

Personally I would not be able to set a plan for this is what I'm gonna do for the next couple of months and stick with it because I know that over time I'm gonna be excited about different kind of things. I know if I decide right now that I'm gonna focus on something in four months from now and if I'm not ... It could be that in four months from now I'm not as excited about that idea anymore and that's risky because once I'm working on something that is not as exciting to me it's easier to get distracted by all the things that are more exciting. Because of that I always keep planning the plan.

I actually have a schedule right here on the wall where I map everything out. This is what I'm gonna do next month, and the month after and the month after. I'm not doing it just once and that's it. I'm actually readjusting the plan every couple of weeks or so to make sure that everything that I'm doing over the next couple of months isn't just what I should be doing, but also something that excites me.

Number five, the fifth step to stay focused on what you're working on is that you can change within your focus and that might seem a weird thing to do. For example, personally for years I've been working on various projects. I went from one thing to another, to another. That's not the way to build a scale business. Usually the scaling, the big part when you want to do big may have a bigger impact. That doesn't happen overnight. You want to build something continuously. Stay focused on the same business like what I've been doing UpViral right now while I'm shooting this video. We just had a two year anniversary, which is awesome.

Before I started the UpViral I didn't even know I could be focused on the same thing for multiple years. Right now I've learned that I can do this for years. The reason why I can do that is not because I settled for doing the same thing, but because I'm actually changing what I'm doing within that focus. I'm still focusing on the same business. I'm still focusing on the same product. Meanwhile, I do different things.

I've been doing a lot of affiliates. I've been doing a lot of Facebook ads. Over time, I sort of realized that initially I was doing a lot of things myself. Now I'm bringing more people into the team. More people are doing the things that I used to be doing. Right now my role has changed into doing everything myself into managing everything. Now I'm sort of going to the phase where I have people in my team who are managing everything and now I'm changing what I'm doing to more a strategic role and a creative part.

The point here is that even if you're focusing on the same thing doesn't mean that you have to do the same thing. As long as the company, if you have multiple people on your team or maybe you can bring people in, you can do different things whilst still be focused on the same thing. I know this can be totally vague for some people. That's fine. That's something I've learned. I wanted to share that because sometimes people think, "I need to focus and I just cannot change direction because I need to focus." It's always going to be a fine line, because you should stay focused, but at the same time it's not a set plan. That's also why I have the two week quarantine that I just mentioned is that sometimes it's okay to shift because that should be your focus. It's really a fine line and I get that.

Basically what I'm thinking of I can change direction. That should not delete everything I've been doing over the last couple of years. As long as that's still valid. If I suddenly start a completely new tool or completely new business, everything I've worked on for the last two years, it's gone. However, if for example, I would believe that a viral could go in a slightly better different direction. A more, I don't know, instead of focusing on context it's more about ... I don't know ... As long as everything I've done to this point still adds up to that thing. As long as everything is moving in that direction. I'm probably super, super vague right now. I apologize for that. That's what's happening for me.

Let's wrap this up. How do you stay focused on whatever you need to be focusing on? Number one, pick something that excites you. Number two, implement the two week idea quarantine. Number three, surround your people with people who have a similar business as you have. Number four, keep planning your plan. Keep on readjusting, keep working on it. Don't do it once and forget about it. Keep working on the plan, where you're going. And number five, allow yourself to change what you were doing within your focus.

That's it for today. I hope you all enjoyed this. If you do, let me know in the comments below. Talk to you all soon.

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In episode #25, Wilco talks about the most important of every sale which is what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

�00:30: Today's episode is going be relevant for you and you specifically.
01:15: The most important aspect is actually, what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours.
01:48: You need to put in the work to get the customers in.
01:59: It's so much cheaper to get someone who's already a customer to buy another product of yours over and over again.
02:48: Now, the most important part is often to get your customers to consume your product.
04:10: The moment that they start consuming your course, the moment they actually go through your course, that's when things change.
04:51: He had a genius idea for this, in his course, he's basically adding incentives for people to go through it.
06:40: Connectio.io, it's a platform where we sell various tools for Facebook advertising.
06:43: ConnectLeads, it's a tool to collect Facebook lead ads and add them into your auto spinner.
06:45: Connect Audience which automatically synchronizes any of your email lists.
06:50: ConnectRetarget, you can run behavioral target audiences.
07:35: I bundled them all together, we call that ConnectSuite.
09:10: As I said, I'm in a software as a service, so we are depending on recurring revenue.
09:55: I'm actually thinking of creating a course which basically takes them by the hand, and then going through every step by step, how do you basically from zero to creating a profitable Facebook ad campaign.
11:35: On top of that, I'm currently setting up various email automations that basically will check that they consumed the content.
12:35: We know that once people actually go through and consume everything, they're going to be way more likely to actually stick around.
13:53: Don't just sell them the idea of that, make sure to actually go through after the sale.
14:09 If you even add more value to the product than you initially promise them, then they're going to be a loyal customer for life.
15:06: It's going to be a customer for life if you treat them well right and with respect.00:30: Today's episode is going be relevant for you and you specifically.
01:15: The most important aspect is actually, what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours.
01:48: You need to put in the work to get the customers in.
01:59: It's so much cheaper to get someone who's already a customer to buy another product of yours over and over again.
02:48: Now, the most important part is often to get your customers to consume your product.
04:10: The moment that they start consuming your course, the moment they actually go through your course, that's when things change.
04:51: He had a genius idea for this, in his course, he's basically adding incentives for people to go through it.
06:40: Connectio.io, it's a platform where we sell various tools for Facebook advertising.
06:43: ConnectLeads, it's a tool to collect Facebook lead ads and add them into your auto spinner.
06:45: Connect Audience which automatically synchronizes any of your email lists.
06:50: ConnectRetarget, you can run behavioral target audiences.
07:35: I bundled them all together, we call that ConnectSuite.
09:10: As I said, I'm in a software as a service, so we are depending on recurring revenue.
09:55: I'm actually thinking of creating a course which basically takes them by the hand, and then going through every step by step, how do you basically from zero to creating a profitable Facebook ad campaign.
11:35: On top of that, I'm currently setting up various email automations that basically will check that they consumed the content.
12:35: We know that once people actually go through and consume everything, they're going to be way more likely to actually stick around.
13:53: Don't just sell them the idea of that, make sure to actually go through after the sale.
14:09 If you even add more value to the product than you initially promise them, then they're going to be a loyal customer for life.
15:06: It's going to be a customer for life if you treat them well right and with respect.
00:30: Today's episode is going be relevant for you and you specifically.
01:15: The most important aspect is actually, what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours.
01:48: You need to put in the work to get the customers in.
01:59: It's so much cheaper to get someone who's already a customer to buy another product of yours over and over again.
02:48: Now, the most important part is often to get your customers to consume your product.
04:10: The moment that they start consuming your course, the moment they actually go through your course, that's when things change.
04:51: He had a genius idea for this, in his course, he's basically adding incentives for people to go through it.
06:40: Connectio.io, it's a platform where we sell various tools for Facebook advertising.
06:43: ConnectLeads, it's a tool to collect Facebook lead ads and add them into your auto spinner.
06:45: Connect Audience which automatically synchronizes any of your email lists.
06:50: ConnectRetarget, you can run behavioral target audiences.
07:35: I bundled them all together, we call that ConnectSuite.
09:10: As I said, I'm in a software as a service, so we are depending on recurring revenue.
09:55: I'm actually thinking of creating a course which basically takes them by the hand, and then going through every step by step, how do you basically from zero to creating a profitable Facebook ad campaign.
11:35: On top of that, I'm currently setting up various email automations that basically will check that they consumed the content.
12:35: We know that once people actually go through and consume everything, they're going to be way more likely to actually stick around.
13:53: Don't just sell them the idea of that, make sure to actually go through after the sale.
14:09 If you even add more value to the product than you initially promise them, then they're going to be a loyal customer for life.
15:06: It's going to be a customer for life if you treat them well right and with respect.

Transcription:

Hey hey. It's Wilco de Kreij here back for another episode. Today's episode is going be relevant for you and you specifically. The reason why I know that is because this is going to be very relevant for pretty much everyone who runs a business, everyone who's selling something, whether it's online or offline actually. It doesn't really matter. Today I'm going to talk about, what is essentially the most important aspect of every sale. Whenever you sell something to a customer, like I said, it doesn't matter whether it's online or offline, whether you're in B to B, B to C, or if you're running a set of servers like I do, or it really does not matter. The most important thing isn't what you do up to that point, isn't the kind of adds that you're running, isn't the kind of landing page you get, isn't the kind of emails that you're sending out. It isn't all that stuff. The most important aspect is actually, what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours.

The thing is that a lot of people are like a lot of the times, really focused on getting new customers through the door. A lot of the time as a marketer, it's focused on that aspect, but the reason why we're focusing so much time on that is because it's hard to get customers to the door. Right? Obviously I love it. I'm a marketer. It's not like you just put one message online, and you'll get 1,000 customers. You need to put in the work. You need to put in the work to get the customers in. Here's the thing. Here's the thing.

Once someone is a customer, it's so much cheaper, so much easier to get them to become repeat customers. It's so much cheaper to get someone who's already a customer to buy another product of yours over and over again, compared to going for someone new who's never heard of you before. This goes for every kind of market. Personally, I am as a service, which means that I'm very much focused on recurring. I'm charging a monthly or yearly. Obviously, I want them to actually start using our platforms. I want them to get results that they desire because once they get the results they desire using our platforms, they're never going to leave. Right? They're going to stick around. They're going to pay us monthly, month after month after month, year after year after year. That is our goal. That is our win win. They are getting the value that they want, and in return they're paying us a monthly fee. Right?

Now, the most important part is often to get your customers to consume your product. Right? Let's take for example digital products, digital courses. There's a ton of people who sell digital courses but as you may know, most people who buy an online course, they don't go through the course. They don't. I'm going to assume that let's say you have an online course, and you create something of value. You create a course that I'm going to assume that you're proud of it, right? You created the course. You put all your heart and soul into it and you're proud of it, and you know that if someone is going through that course, it will help them. You know what else will happen once they go through that course? They will thank you for it. They will love you for it. They will respect you. They will see you as the authority.

If someone just sees and ad on Facebook and they see your ad and maybe they go through your sales page, your webinar and then they purchase your course. They don't consume the product, they just made an impulse decision to purchase your product but there's a good chance that next week or so, they don't even know who you are, or a month later or so. You haven't really built a connection. You haven't really helped them. The moment that they start consuming your course, the moment they actually go through your course, that's when things change. Now, obviously you can think, I'm doing every thing I can to sell them. I'm going to get them excited and assuming that they're excited enough to purchase my course, then they're going to consume the thing as well.

Well, that's where you're wrong. Even after they open their wallet, even after they took the credit card and made a purchase, then you sort of need to sell them again into going through your product. You need to do everything you can. I say a wile ago I was at a mastermind, and there was this guy. His name was Dean Harland. He had a genius idea for this. In his course, he's basically adding incentives for people to go through it. He basically he raised the price of the product a little but, but because of that, basically I'm just going to give you an example number. These are not real numbers. Let's say his original course was $50. What he would actually do is he would say, "Hey it's not 50. It's actually $60." Let's say it's 10 modules and then once people bought it, he would say, "Alright cool. You know what? Every single time you finish a module, I'll give you a dollar. Every single time, I'll give you a dollar." Obviously, they'll be paid at the end, because they don't want to send over a dollar every single time, because of the hassle.

Because of that, people got instant gratification. I'm not saying you need to pay people to go through your course. Definitely not. What he did is genius because it made people, even more excited not just to purchase the course, because often people just get excited to buy it because the idea of getting the results, but actually going through the course, that's another thing. He got people excited go through the course, to actually go and consume all the content and because of that, he immediately turned into the guy who helped him, and the actual authority, and the expert in his market. Because of that, it was no so much easier to then say, "I've got all these other kind of products," because now they already knew, this course was insanely good, especially for the kind of money I paid. The next kind of course is probably good as well.

His uptake on his follow up courses, they went through the roof using this method. The reason why I'm bringing this up right here is actually because we're actually going through something in our business as well. As you probably know, or may or may not know actually, one of my businesses is called Connectio.io. It's a platform where we sell various tools for Facebook advertising. For example, we have ConnectLeads. It's a tool to collect Facebook lead ads and add them into your auto spinner. We have Connect Audience which automatically synchronizes any of your email lists. For example, if you're using Active Campaign, you can create a custom audience on Facebook saying everyone who opens a certain email or everyone who did not open. We have ConnectRetarget. You can run behavioral target audiences. You can actually read target people based on for example, if they scroll to a certain section on your page, or based on how many seconds or how many minutes they spend on your site, and all kinds of behavioral things.

We got a bunch of Facebook tools and what I recently did as a test, is I bundled them all together. I sold them as a package all together. We call that ConnectSuite and based on that, they've got all these tools together. Here's the problem. Basically we said, here's ConnectSuite, and you get all these different tools. Then people log in and they saw all these different tools and they we didn't notice but as we started talking to our customers, they were sort of overwhelmed. They didn't know where to start. They didn't even, they were literally overwhelmed. They were literally like, alright, where do I start? Do I start with ConnectExplore, ConnectLeads, ConnectRetarget, ConnectAudience? What do I do first?

We thought, this is an amazing value for Facebook advertising, and it is. We see that people who are already using Facebook ads, they immediately see the value because the get it. They get what all these tools do and they get the amount of value. They get what kind of impact it has on their results. We also get customers in, who are just starting out with Facebook ads, and they're sort of overwhelmed. Because of that, they're not actually going through everything and they want to be taken by the hand and show them what is what.

Because of that, because people were not actually going through everything, because people were not really consuming it, the actual cancellation rate was way too high. As I said, I'm in a software as a service, so we are depending on recurring revenue. We need to decrease our turn out rate. We need to make sure that most people are going to want to stick with us. They don't want to cancel. If people are canceling because they don't even know what we do, then we have something to work on.

I'll give you an example. Here's something we're currently working on to fix this. I still want to sell all of these products as a package because I think it's an amazing value and I know it's going to help a lot of Facebook advertisers, but because I don't want to overwhelm them, I'm actually thinking. This is right now just something that's in my mind. If you want a bit of a back story, you might actually see this later on in a webinar or somewhere in a special offer anything like that, when I'm testing it out. Here's the idea.

Instead of basically selling ConnectSuite, I'm actually thinking of creating a course which basically takes them by the hand, and then going through every step by step, how do you basically from zero to creating a profitable Facebook ad campaign. Not just using our tools, but leveraging our tools but also leveraging all the regular things that are inside the Facebook ads, all the regular strategies and how do you write your ads and things like that. By doing that, we can actually if we sell that course to potential customers, and along with that, we actually say, "On top of that you'll actually get a trail to ConnectSuite." They'll still be able to use all these tools, but now instead of buying all the tools, and in their minds they should be getting value out of all of these tools, now they are actually purchasing that course. That course has a single entry point. They have a single entry point like this is what I should actually go through. Lesson one, module one, module two, module three, module four, module five, module six, et cetera, et cetera.

Because of that, it's going to be easier for them to go through everything without being overwhelmed because it's going to be short videos one by one, and instead of confusing them with like five different options. Where do you get started. You get the point. My idea is that that's going to help a lot. On top of that, still I don't just want to assume that people are going to go through the content. On top of that, I'm currently setting up various email automations that basically will check. This is something more advanced. I'm not sure what other easy tools for this to create. I'm using ActiveCampaign so I'm a bit of a nerd. I would say so. Actually doing some checks and sending custom bags over to see if someone went through a module or not. Basically, what we're going to do is basically create a photo sequence that will depend based on what people have already been through.

If they purchased but they haven't been through the course, they're going to get certain emails. If they already went through certain parts of the course, then they're going to get emails about the parts they have not yet been going through. We're not just going to say, go through the course. No. We're actually getting them excited. We're still kind of selling them on the idea. We're showing for example case studies and what people have done using that system, or we're sending out small triggers or curiosity gaps or anything we can do to try to get people excited about the next step they should take. We know that once people actually go through and consume everything, they're going to be way more likely to actually stick around. By the end of the course, they might just have a profitable Facebook ad campaign, which is awesome. They'll also be doing that, leveraging our tools inside of Connectio.io.

Because of that, because they are not sort of dependent on it. Now they're used to it, they're not as likely to cancel because they already know if they will cancel on Connectio.io, then for example, their retargeting ads are not going to perform as well, because they don't have ConnectRetarget anymore. They will have to find another solution for their Facebook lead ads. They will have to manually create and update their custom audiences instead of ConnectAudience doing that automatically for them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

My point here is that whatever you are selling, whatever it is. It could be a service, could be B to B, could even be B to C, doesn't really matter. Make sure to get your customers to consume your product. Make sure to get them, whatever you're selling them on, whatever your product is solving for them, don't just sell them the idea of that. Make sure to actually go through after the sale. Make sure you follow them. Make sure you over deliver with even more value than you delivered upfront. If you make sure that they will go through your product, they will consume your product. If you even add more value to the product than you initially promise them, then they're going to be a loyal customer for life.

The most important thing, what you can do, when every sale happens is what you do after the sale. I'm going to be completely honest here, I haven't done that in every part of my online career. Initially I just had a couple of email campaigns and when I started out, what I was basically doing is just pitching them in the next product, next product, next product. Even though short term that kind of works. It's okay to have an upsell, but initially I was thinking, I need to sell them more. Now, I know that it's even more important to get them to consume the product, to get them to build that connection and forge that connection and then, later when the time is right, then of course, yeah, you can make them another offer if that is relevant for them, if that actually helps them. That's fine.

At that point, you already have established yourself as being a real relationship. You already have a good relationship with them. It's going to be a customer for life if you treat them well right and with respect. That's my tip for all of you today, to make sure that every single time you get a customer though the door, do whatever you can do to make them feel special, make them go through your content, make them consume your product, and just make sure you're doing whatever they want you to do and be awesome.

With that having said, I'll see you all on the next episode. Talk to you soon.

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In episode #24, Wilco shares his experiences on hanging out with guys who run 8 figure businesses.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:50: We went to the southern part of Italy.
01:12: I've got roughly 20 people on our team, we've got tens of thousands of customers.
02:00: Helped me to sort of zoom out and basically get my helicopter view of the business back.
02:19: Working in your business, versus, on your business.
02:55: I just need people who are ahead of me, people who have a business that's bigger than me, bigger than mine.
03:15: I need to see others achieve something, because then when I see other people achieve it, then I know I can do it as well.
04:08: Over time it became harder to find people that are ahead of me.
04:20: I've run into, for example, Russell Brunson's mastermind.
05:38: I also notice is that the more I hang out with people who are ahead of me, the more I sort of assume that whatever I know isn't that special.
06:20: The point is that, the more I hang out with people who are doing better than me, the more I think I don't have the right to talk about anything I know.
06:35: We opened a Facebook group for one of our businesses, for all the customers for Connectio.io
07:00: "You don't have to know everything to be an expert in a sort of niche, you just have to know more than your audience."
07:55: Last week I had a small get together with some local entrepreneurs here in the Netherlands.
08:20: I would highly recommend you to try to hang out with people who are ahead of you, because you can learn from them, you can prevent mistakes that they've already made.
09:15: Hang out with people who are ahead of you.
09:24: Never ever forget that you know more than you actually think you do.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, hey. It's me, Wilco de Kreij, and I am back for a new episode. I'm actually excited, a lot has happened since last time. I want to apologize in advance first, because I'm actually sick, but I didn't want to use that as an excuse not to record this episode. If I sound like a mess, if I sound terrible, I apologize. Anyway, so last week or the week before my wife and I we went away for a week, a holiday. We went to the southern part of Italy, which was awesome. Mainly because we went away for one week. Normally we take trips for three or four weeks at a time, so do a couple of one month trips every single year, but when you're away for three or four weeks, as you can imagine, it's not easy to be away for that long if you have an online business, right? I've got roughly 20 people on our team, we've got tens of thousands of customers, so it's literally impossible to be offline for three or four weeks. It's just not possible, right?

What usually ends up happening is that I spend a lot of time working while I'm on holiday and this time around we just went away for one week. It's just so much easier. There's not a lot of things to prepare for that and you can just be pretty much offline for a week. I did some checking on my phone and I answered a couple of questions to my team, but most of the things were just, they could just say, "Well, if we're not able to handle it, we'll be back in just a few days." That's totally fine. People understand that, right? It's been a blast and it really helped me to sort of zoom out and basically get my helicopter view of the business back, so see where we're headed, where we currently stand, what's the longterm vision, and things like that. Because to be completely honest, sometimes it's not easy. I actually recorded another episode about this not too long ago actually where I talked about working in your business, versus, on your business.

Sometimes I get trapped by work in my business and that's just not the most effective use of my time. I need to work on my business and sometimes you just need to step back for a little bit in order to realize that you've actually started working in your business without evening noticing it. Right now I got full clarity again. I'm really excited about it. One of the things I realized is that it's so incredibly important to hang out with people who are ahead of me, right? This might be different for everyone else, but I just need people who are ahead of me, people who have a business that's bigger than me, bigger than mine, people who are doing ... Who have a bigger team, who think ... Who I actually look up to and those are the kind of people that I need to hang out with, because if I don't I tend to ... It tends to result in a limiting belief, basically. I need to see others achieve something, because then when I see other people achieve it, then I know I can do it as well, right?

When I started in the online marketing world, I mean, I was already running a business, but when I started doing in the online marketing world, I saw a lot of people who were quite a few steps ahead of me. I was able to learn a lot, I was able to be inspired by them, and think, "Wow, they're doing some amazing numbers and they're doing this and that." It was awesome, but to be completely honest, a lot of those people they sort of plateaued, right? They didn't really grow, they sort of ... They have minor ... They sort of grew their business but not to the amount of a level that I want to grow, so over time all those people that I used to look up to, now are ... There's nothing I can learn from them anymore. Over time ... I don't want to sound like a dick or anything like that, but over time it became harder to find people that are ahead of me, right?

Fortunately, I've been lucky enough to run into various people. I've run into, for example, Russell Brunson's mastermind and that helped me to connect with a lot of people who are still quite a few steps ahead of me. Also, outside that space I've been able to find people who are doing eight or sometimes even nine figure businesses, which is insane, right? They're so many steps ahead of me and it's been awesome. It's been so great, because it really helped me to believe bigger things, basically. I know from my past experience, every single time I set a certain goal and I believe that it can be achieved, then it's easy, right? The hardest part for me personally is to start believing that something is possible, right? I mean, it's easy to believe that I've worked all these years and this year I for example, 10% growth. I mean, that's not hard. If I worked all these years to get to where I am today, and then being able to triple my business this year, I mean, that's something that is hard to believe.

Then, in addition to that, next year triple it again. I mean, that is something that's insanely hard to believe. I need to see other people who've done the exact same thing or even bigger to actually say, "All right. If they can do it and frankly, they're not smarter than me. If they can do it, then I can do it as well," right? There is a downside. There's definitely a downside, because one thing I also notice is that the more I hang out with people who are ahead of me, the more I sort of assume that whatever I know isn't that special, right? I'll give you an example. For example, I haven't emailed ... I mean, you might be on our email list as well, but I haven't sent out that many emails to my email list, because quite frankly, I sort of feel like, "What do I know about what they're interested in? Everything I know, they know as well," right? I sort of forget that where I started out and where a lot of our audience is still at, right? Most of our audience they don't have, for example, a seven figure business, or they don't have 20 people on their team, or they don't have ...

That's totally fine, that's not the point. The point is that, the more I hang out with people who are doing better than me, the more I think I don't have the right to talk about anything I know, right? Actually, yesterday, I'm not sure, you might have seen this or not. Yesterday we opened a Facebook group for one of our businesses, for all the customers for Connectio. For a long time I didn't do that because I literally thought, "What do I know? Why would I listen to me? I mean, I'm just this guy and I don't know that much," because I was always comparing myself to guys who were ahead of me, right? Last week I was actually reading, rereading the book of Russell Brunson and he said something in the line of like, "You don't have to know everything to be an expert in a sort of niche, you just have to know more than your audience." That's actually true.

I mean, if you look at the movie, Catch Me If You Can, it's actually based on a true story. That guy, he was actually giving classes on a university, and he wasn't ... Nobody saw that he was just tricking the system. He was basically a student and he pretended to be the teacher. All he did was every single time, he just read the next chapter in advance. It was always just one chapter in advance, he was reading it. That's the classic example of like, he just knew more than the rest of them. That's really the downside, that you might believe or might think that you don't know as much as you actually do. Actually, last week I had a small get together with some local entrepreneurs here in the Netherlands and as I was talking, I'm like, "Wow, so much stuff that I think is logic and so much stuff that I think actually makes sense and everybody knows it. All of them, they don't have a clue." That's totally fine, right?

Once again, I'm not judging them or anything like that, but my here is that even if ... I would highly recommend you to try to hang out with people who are ahead of you, because you can learn from them, you can prevent mistakes that they've already made. At the same time, never ever forget where you came from. Never ever forget that you know more than you actually think you do, right? I mean, it's just so easy to just think that everything that you do and everything that you learn it's common sense. Because for you, it is common sense. Because for you, it is actually easy. For you, all these things do come naturally. That doesn't mean that for other people that comes naturally as well and that other people know what you know, right?

Even I ... I just have to continuously remind myself and I'm still feeling sort of awkward about teaching all this, because sometimes I just feel like, "Why would they listen to me?" It's only after I actually get people to say, "Ah yeah, I had no clue," and then I'm like, "Huh? I thought it was obvious," right? Then I sort of start talking more. Yeah, that's also one of my limiting beliefs I assume. Anyway, I just wanted to share that. For all of you who want to grow your business, do two things. Make sure, first of all, to hang out with people who are ahead of you. That's been my biggest lesson over the last year or so. It's helped me to grow my business a ton. Secondly, never ever forget where you came from. Never ever forget that you know more than you actually think you do and you're more valuable than you think you are. With that said, I will talk to you all soon.

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In episode #23, Wilco talks about a cool strategy that he use often in order to get more customers through the door.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:28: Do you want to improve your conversions?
01:03: This is what I call the power of simplification.
01:55: You want to explain a concept of what a product actually does but in a couple of seconds.
02:40: You want to improve your retargeting on Facebook, you can do it by using ConnectRetarget.
02:55: It's behavioral retargeting, it's awesome and you'll get better retargeting results.
04:30: I try to tell them a story, try to get them, instead of being an obvious sales page or being an obvious sales video, I tell them a story about that.
05:30: This exact same principle, I've used it multiple times and every single time it works, it plain works.
07:00: ConnectExplore, allows you to find more and better interest on Facebook.
08:42: I know that often because we're so excited about our own products, it's so easy to over complicate things.
09:13: For those of you who might be a little bit confused by your explanation, you make sure that they'll understand more and better of your product compared to without doing this simplification process.
10:18: I just write things down in my notebook and usually it takes a while to really get to a good analogy that is really simple and easy to explain.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, it's Wilco de Kreij here, and let me ask you a quick question. Do you want to improve your conversions? Do you want to sell more stuff? If that's you, then yes, then this episode is specifically for you. If you don't want to improve your conversion, if you don't want to sell more, then no need to listen, then you probably hate money and you hate to grow your business, but if you do, then please keep on listening. This is all about a cool strategy that I use as often as I can in order to get more customers through the door. It doesn't really matter whether you're selling something online or offline, whether you're selling a product or a service or whatever you are selling, this pretty much works on everything.

This is what I call the power of simplification, right? If you have been following me, or if you've seen for example, the sales videos that I put out, the sales pages that I put out, then you've probably already seen it in action. Basically what this is all about is that the problem as being an entrepreneur, or the problem as being the product creator, or the problem as being the marketer, like sometimes we tend to go overboard when people would ask us like hey, what does this product do? I mean, if someone asks me hey, what does a Upviral do, then I could be talking for hours, because I'm such a nerd.

I'm like talking about yeah, does this, it does that, it does that, but the problem is that when someone comes to your page that never heard of you before or they come across you, maybe not even on your site, maybe in person, but you want to explain a concept of what a product actually does but in a couple of seconds, right? Usually as soon as you go into the technical stuff, you lost them already. You don't want to bore them with like the technical stuff because they don't even know why they should be listening. Something I've been doing is I've sort of been trying to create an analogy to simplify the whole thing.

I'm going to give you a couple of examples too to make that more clear, but basically I'm trying to find something in the real world that makes whatever the product does more relatable or more easy to understand. For example, I'm not sure if you know about ConnectorRetarget, it's one of the tools that we sell. I could be, like if someone would go to the sales pitch of ConnectRetarget, I could right out of the gate start saying like hey, you want to improve your retargeting on Facebook, you can do it by using ConnectRetarget, it's behavioral retargeting and then you can retarget based on how long they stayed in your sites or how far they scrolled down.

You can do all these amazing things, it's behavioral retargeting, it's awesome and you'll get better retargeting results. I could do that, right? I could do that, but I also know that part of my audience isn't even up to speed yet, right? Part of my audience, they don't even know what, at the moment they land on my page, they don't even know what to expect, right? What I was thinking about when I was putting together the sales video for that one, I was like all right, so how do I explain this in simple terms? What I used is, and you also see this if you go to this, I actually recommend you check out the sales video for ConnectRetarget, you'll see, it will make more sense.

Basically how I start the video is something like this, hey imagine you're in a shop and in this shop there's ten people and from those ten people there's nine people who immediately leave the shop without buying but there's one person who, he's walking around the shop and he's checking all your products out and then eventually he also leaves the shop without making a purchase. Imagine you have one shot, you can convince one of those ten people, to try to convince them to become a customer, right? You could give them a discount or you could do something to bribe them and to get them to come back and make a purchase. Who would you go after?

Those nine people who clearly weren't even remotely interested or that one person was clearly interested but for some reason they didn't actually pull the trigger. By making it, by explaining it in like a story base, because I'm doing it based on a story and on the video I actually visualize, I'm not just saying that, I'm not just on my screen talking about it, I actually, you see some people walk in the shop and things like that. I try to tell them a story, try to get them, instead of being an obvious sales page or being an obvious sales video, I tell them a story about that.

By the end of this one minute story, they'll understand, every prospect will understand like the difference between just approaching everyone the same way or the fact that some customers or some potential customers, I have to say, some visitors, are going to be more valuable than others. Then right after, I basically introduce the problem, because now they understand this part. By simplifying the process, by giving them a real world example and right after I tell them, all right cool, the problem is that when using Facebook there's no way to make a distinction between these two people.

Facebook just thinks that every visitor is the same way. There's no way you can actually retarget based on how long people stay in your site or how far they actually scroll down on your site, things like that, but you know what? Here's the solution, ConnectRetarget can do that. That's basically what the pitch is in a nutshell. This exact same principle, I've used it multiple times and every single time it works, it plain works because as soon as I start talking right away about the technical things, it's so much harder to convince them of the point that I'm trying to make.

While if I would actually, now what I'm here doing is like just by using a real world example, makes it easier to understand, makes it less techy and vague and all of that. After I'm sure that they understand that initial concept that I wanted to know, then I can actually, then the pain point is going to be way more effective. That's what I say, like the pain point I mean is that the problem that people have. If I would just say hey, you need to run behavioral retargeting, people are like why would I need that? I don't really need that, but by simplifying it and making it relatable to a real world story or a real world example, it makes it so much easier.

I do this in various of my products actually. For example, I'll give you another example actually, so we also have a tool called ConnectExplore. If you go to the sales page you'll be able to find that sales video as well. One of the things it does, it does quite a few things but obviously we cannot mention everything right in the sales video right away. I mean that's also the power of simplification, right, you don't want to throw everything that your product does, you want to focus on some key things that you think are going to convince your customers. That's also an important lesson.

Basically what it does, it allows you to find more and better interest on Facebook. Instead, once again, instead of saying hey, we have this tool and it will help you to find more interest or maybe even start off hey, you know what? You want to target the interest that your competitors won't be able to find and here's how you do it. Even that way, it wouldn't work as good as what I think as what we currently did and that is that I make a simple analogy saying something like hey, you know, imagine you're going fishing and you have two options.

You can either go to the local fishing point, which is like crowded with fishermen and everyone is going for the same fish or you can actually go to a hidden pond which is actually filled with trout, like there's loads of fish but nobody's there to fish. Which would you go for? In their mind it's going to be like of course I want to go for the hidden pond. That's obvious. That's where you want to be. Then I tell them like, all right, it's the exact same thing on Facebook. It's the exact same thing, people are always going for the same interests, like it's the crowded pond, everyone is going for the same interests but you know what?

There's actually interest that your competitors won't be able to find and that is where ConnectExplore comes in. Once again, I'm just simplifying it. I'm making an analogy in the real world, which might not seem as related right away, I mean, a local fishing point has nothing to do with Facebook obviously, but it's the exact same concept. It's the exact same thing. By using these kind of examples in the beginning of my sales video, it just helped me a lot to explain the more technical solutions. I'm not sure about you, I'm not sure about what kind of product or service you are selling in your business but I know that often because we're so excited about our own products, it's so easy to over complicate things.

It's so easy to confuse our prospects and because of that, we already lost them and of course part of your audience, they're going to understand. Part of your audience will actually get it, but by making this simple analogy, like you're not excluding those people. People who are smart enough to instantly get it, they will still follow using the simple analogy but for those of you who might be a little bit confused by your explanation, you make sure that they'll understand more and better of your product compared to without doing this simplification process.

What I highly recommend you to do, for everyone who's selling something online or offline, it doesn't really matter, try to think of like a real world example or a real world analogy that you can leverage or use to simplify what your product does, or maybe not even what your product does but maybe even the point that you're trying to make. Just like I did with ConnectRetarget, I'm not even showing, I'm even talking about retargeting, I'm just giving them, I'm making clear, making the point clear that not every visitor is equal. Some visitors, if they engage with your shop they are more valuable basically and only after that I make the point, right?

On Facebook that's not possible, it's only possible using our tool, ConnectRetarget. Yeah, I hope that helps for everyone. It's definitely some food for thought. What I usually do is whenever I, I just write things down in my notebook and usually it takes a while to really get to a good analogy that is really simple and easy to explain. You can even do a test run on your friends or people around you, your family, like hey, if I do it like this, does that make sense or not? That usually helps me a lot as well. I hope it helps and I will talk to you all soon.

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In episode #22, Wilco shares a chat he recently had with someone who asked him some of the right questions to basically get himself focused.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:28: I just bought myself a new toy.
00:50: It's actually a whiteboard with a year planner on it.
01:11: I just need it to be something more visual where I plan out all the projects so I could see exactly.
02:27: As an entrepreneur, it's not always easy to stay focused on the right things.
02:37: Would your business be around in 300 years from now?
03:00: What should happen in order for that business to be around in 100 years?
04:46: If you look at all the businesses that have been around for more than 100 years, none of them solely rely on its founder.
05:35: If you look at UpViral, a lot of the dashboard and interface and how certain features work, I've all created it myself.
07:39: Is it actually something longterm?
07:46: Connectio is 100% focused on Facebook ads and UpViral is 100% focused on getting people to share the message.
08:00: UpViral will be way, way, way much more longterm compared to Connectio
08:15: Connectio makes Facebook ads more effective.
08:50: I would say it's only a matter of time that Facebook will be not cool anymore.
09:34: With UpViral, it's not depending on any network at all.
10:20: I've also seen a lot of people who are creating things that are really just focused on a certain trick.
11:36: Everything I do since that time has been longterm and I can still use that in my business today.

Transcription:

Hey, it's Wilco de Kreij here and I just bought myself a new toy. I'm really excited about it, but I'm going to guess that once you hear what it actually is, you're like, "Huh. Boring." Yeah, it might actually be boring, but I'm actually geeking out and it's actually crazy that I never bought it earlier. It's not a tech toy or an iPad or anything like that, but it's actually a whiteboard with a year planner on it. I already have a whiteboard in my office. It just helps me to write things up and brainstorm a little bit, but I never really had a good year planner in the office. I always write it on checklist or a notes or in a.

Basically, it's in my mind, right, but I just need it to be something more visual where I plan out all the projects so I could see exactly, right. All right, next month, we're doing this. This week, we're doing that. Then the month after, we're doing that because what I sometimes realize is that in our business, we're working on so many things at the same time and at some point, we launch something or we create something or finish a certain project or a deadline and then right after, I'm like, "Wait, a second, the next whatever should be happening next. It should've been done already, right. It should at least be halfway."

Then, there's a bit of a delay because then I start on that project even though it should've started a month before and just get all the pieces and puzzles moving because obviously, a lot of the projects that we get out are depending on the various people, right. You'll need, for example, if we're launching a project, you'll need designers, video editors, copywriters, support training, developers, obviously, UX interface. There's so many things, so many pieces of the puzzle that are needed to get everything in motion. In other words, planning is a big part of running a business, right.

Now with that, I recently had a chat with someone who asked me some of the right questions to basically get myself focused because as you might know, as an entrepreneur, it's not always easy to stay focused on the right things and he asked me a really good question. He asked me, "Would your business be around in 300 years from now?" I'm like, Three hundred years? No way. That's way too far ahead, right." Then he was like, "All right, would your business be around 100 years from now?" I'm like, "A hundred years? The internet might not even exist at that point, right. A hundred years is way, way, way too far off." Then he asked me like, "All right, what should happen in order for that business to be around in 100 years?"

It's funny because I never really looked at it like that. I try to plan ahead, but 100 years, that's a long time, right. That's an insanely long time. I'm only 30 years old myself so that's like more than three times as my age, right, which is insane, but even though I wasn't able to answer that question because to be honest, I don't know yet at least what I should be doing to create something that would last an eternity or at least last 100 years and would still be around, right.

Because I was thinking about that question, it did help me to basically make my own planning more longterm, right, because I'm not sure about you, but I usually have a hard time to really see the future in five years from now. I can see it for the next month, three months from now, six months from now as well and maybe even a year, but that's about as long as it goes, right. I sort of know where the business and everything should be going like multiple years from now, but there's a difference between knowing and knowing, right. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I sort of know it, but I don't feel it. I don't really know it, right.

When I was thinking about, all right, what should I do to make sure my business is around 100 years, then I suddenly started to realize that I should be focusing on completely different things, right. If you look at all the businesses that have been around for more than 100 years, none of them solely rely on its founder, right. As soon as a business is just relying on the founder, in this case on myself, that's not a good longterm strategy because quite frankly, I don't think I'm going to survive 100 years, right. Now if you look at the five-year perspective, you would say you can easily rely on just the founder because I'm hoping I'm going to be alive in five years still, right. Let's count on that.

At the same time because I was thinking about that 100-year plan, I was like wait a second, why should it always rely on me? It doesn't mean I would always be involved, but I didn't realize that in order to really grow and really to go to the next level, I need to hand off certain things that I'm not the best at, right. I'll give you an example. If you look at UpViral, a lot of the dashboard and interface and how certain features work, I've all created it myself, right. I didn't code it. I didn't develop the actual technical part, but I did put it all on paper. Basically, I drew it all out and I decided how should things work and how should things not work, right. If you look at the grand scheme of things, if you look at certain massive SaaS companies, massive software as a service companies, the level of detail and the level of ... Basically, the speed of development is just so much faster than ... There's always room for improvement, right.

That made me realize, wait a second. Now I'm currently doing all of that, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the best at this. There are people out there, a lot actually that this is what they do. They design the interface. They decide on what should be in there, what not. There's people who are way better at that and see all the logic and can focus on that full time while I should actually divide all my time to all different kind of things, right, not just a product, but also the marketing and affiliates and managing the team. There's a lot of things that I need to do.

Long story short, by asking myself the question like what should we do in order to still be around in 100 years, even though that might be a silly question for many businesses these days, like many businesses if you're focusing online, it might not be as relevant, but it does change your way of thinking if you're really thinking about it this way and it will make you realize things that maybe you should just hand things off. Another thing that's really important right away, and I cannot stress this enough and this is actually something that might be relevant, it's actually relevant for everyone who's starting a business as well as those who are already running a business, and that is also to really think about whatever your thing is, is it actually something longterm?

I'll give you an example. As you probably know, I have two businesses, UpViral and Connectio. Connectiois 100% focused on Facebook ads and UpViral is 100% focused on getting people to share the message, right. If I'm going to be completely honest, UpViral will be way, way, way much more longterm compared to Connectio. Now does that mean I'm going to quit Connect IO? No, definitely not. That's completely opposite of what I'm trying to say. The point is that Connect IO is 100% depending on Facebook ads. It makes Facebook ads more effective. In other words, as soon as advertisers stop using Facebook, then Connect IO will not be of much use.

In other words, if Facebook for some reason will magically disappear or, for example, the same thing will happen as what happened with MySpace, for example ... At some point, MySpace was the place to be, right. Look at it right now. I don't know anyone who's using MySpace. Twitter was huge. Twitter is still big, but not what it was before, right. I would say it's only a matter of time that Facebook will be not cool anymore, right. Because it's a social thing, it doesn't last forever.

Just like every local restaurant, it's cool for a while and then all the non-cool people go there and all the cool people go somewhere else. With Facebook, I expect the exact same thing to happen, which means that once people start to move over to another platform, advertisers are going to shift towards the new platform as well and then, connectio will not be as useful as it currently is. That's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen in the next two years, but if you look at it, for example, 10 years ahead, then I'm pretty sure that Facebook will not be around, at least not in the current form, right. That's my take on it.

However, with UpViral, it's not depending on any network at all, right. It doesn't matter if people are using Facebook, doesn't matter if people are using Twitter, doesn't matter if people are using Yip, Yap, Yung which doesn't even exist, right. It doesn't matter which social network or which interaction they use between people because it's based on an invite link basis. People can share it wherever and people will always be talking to other people. People will always be in contact with other people because it's all based on word of mouth, right. For that reason, I see UpViral as something way more longterm because it's not depending on anything that is temporary. It's not depending on anything that could just cease to exist from one day or another or one year to another. These are two examples.

I've also seen a lot of people who are creating things that are really just focused on a certain trick or a certain hack or something that is currently working or something that is, for example, not really according to the rules of a certain platform, right. They're having some cool tricks on Facebook or on Twitter or whatever and they created products around it. You just know before even starting a project like that, you just know that whatever that thing is, it's not going to be around for like six months, right. That's super, super, super short term. If you have something like that, then please stop, please, you should stop.

You want to make sure even though 100 years is way too long for most people even for myself, but at least you want to aim yourself at least like a three-year plan, a four-year plan. Even though plans will change and even though yes, I know it's going to be hard to create a plan that far ahead, I even still struggle with that sometimes because there's so many opportunities and so much stuff and there's so much that could happen, but at least you want to be clear on what could happen and what you are planning to happen in those couple of years because that way, you can actually start focusing on things right now.

Just yesterday, I was working on some funnels and I actually realized that I was actually using a lot of my work from 2015, right. I was using certain sales pages, certain copy because everything I do since that time has been longterm and I can still use that in my business today. Because of that, everything grows much faster because I don't have to start over every six months or every year or so.

The takeaway for today is to whatever you are doing, stop for a second and ask yourself a question what should you do to make sure that my business is going to be around for another 100 years, even though that might seem crazy, but focus on that and then, you will realize that at least you should have something that will be around for five years. Anyway, I hope this helps and I will talk to you all soon.

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In episode #21, Wilco shares his thoughts on what’s a good time to cut your losses if you’re working on something.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:08: I’m actually fairly happy, especially considering the fact that I just pulled the plug on a project that we’ve been working on for over a year.
01:40: The beauty of doing that offline is that you can really do a deep dive into your mind.
02:07: It just helps me a lot to sometimes just go offline, and just do nothing there, and write in my notebook.
03:44: As you probably know, we create various software products that we had a piece of software pretty much fully ready to market.
04:41: When we released UpViral, there was nothing of the kind where it’s like, “What?
04:54: For ConnectLeads, first time you were able to connect your Facebook lead ads into your auto-responder.
05:00: ConnectRetarget, you can do behavior re-targeting on Facebook.
05:29: I don’t mind competition, but I just want to be first, and then people can try to compete with me.
05:44: My point being is that I’ve pulled the plug on various tools even though we spent months, and months, and months of work.
06:46: At every point in time, you need to look at it like, What’s the biggest opportunity that I have right now?
07:33: All that matters is what actions you take from today onwards.
09:17: If you haven’t seen any project through, if you haven’t had any success in line, then I would actually encourage you to keep on focusing on what you’re focusing on.
10:08: I highly recommend you to just go offline, take a notebook, write down all the pros and cons, write down all your ideas.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, you entrepreneurs and marketers. It’s Wilco here, and today, I’m actually fairly happy, especially considering the fact that I just pulled the plug on a project that we’ve been working on for over a year. Boom. We’ve been working on it for over a year, and I stopped … I canceled … I deleted the whole project pretty much, which is not something that you usually do, right, especially after a year’s worth of work.

Now, it’s not something that we’ve been working on like every now and then, and been dragging on for a year. No. This is actually a project that I had a full-time developer on for over a year full-time, day in, day out, and besides the developer, obviously, various other people were involved as well like a designer, an architect. Like there’s various people involved with a project like that. Yeah. I decided to stop the project, to remove it from our business future, and it was actually not an easy decision to do, but I do think is the best thing to do.

Last weekend, my wife is away on Sunday, and usually, I don’t work on Sundays, right? I usually hardly work on the weekends. I try to keep that work-private balance in shape, but last Sunday, my wife was away, so I figured to carve in some time to really just rethink every decision that I made recently. Basically, I took a notebook and just sat outside for I think like four, five hours. Something like that where I just wrote out everything that we’re working on like new projects, old projects, like goals. Everything, right?

The beauty of doing that offline is that you can really do a deep dive into your mind. That’s what I like to call it because always, when I’m online, I’m like, “Ah, I have some kind of a cool idea,” and I start doing research, and I start reading. All of a sudden, I’m distracted by something, and like I don’t really do a deep dive because I’m always distracted by outside influence, by outside factors like things that I read or whatever, right?

It just helps me a lot to sometimes just go offline, and just do nothing there, and write in my notebook, right? If you see my notebook, in like four, five hours, I probably write like seven to, I don’t know, 10-ish pages full, which isn’t even that much because most of the time, it’s actually thinking of what to do. Anyway, I was thinking like, “All right. One of these projects, and what do we do with it?” I realized, like I said before, that we needed to pull the plug.

Now, when do you cut your loss? Like what’s a good time to cut your losses if you’re working on something. We’re all working on something, right? It could be a new project that you’re working on. It could be a customer that you’re trying to close a deal on. It could be, I don’t know, a new funnel that you’re creating, a new sales page you’re creating, a new offer. It could be anything, right? Whatever you do, you are doing something.

Assuming that most of your tasks aren’t done in one day, you’re working on that for a long period of time, right? You’re working on that for multiple days, multiple weeks, multiple months, or even multiple years for some, right? Usually, when you get started, especially when people spend money on a day, half of the … There’s a tendency to keep on working on whatever, right, because they were already invested in that idea. They’re already invested in the thing that they’re working on, so they can’t really back out.

I would actually say that that’s not a wasted case. There’s quite a few scenarios that it’s actually the best decision to actually pull out even though you have been working on it for a long time and even though you spent a lot of money in it, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, actually, I remember multiple times that we had a piece of software. As you probably know, we create various software products that we had a piece of software pretty much fully ready to market, right, and we still pulled the plug.

One of the examples was actually a … It was a push notification tool, so you can actually create various kinds of push notifications. This was back in the day. We started working on it back in the day before there were any other like platforms like PushCrew and all the other push notification platforms. Back then, we were the first when we started building it.

However, by the time that we actually got to market it before … by the time it was actually finished, there were already various competitors out there. Like I don’t mind competition. Not at all, but I like to create things that no one else does, right? I like to create things that are so unique that it’s like a new opportunity in the market, and it makes it so much easier to sell.

When we released UpViral, there was nothing of the kind where it’s like, “What? You can create viral campaigns and add them into your sites? What? This is awesome.” Everybody jumped in it, right? It was the same for ConnectLeads, for example. First time you were able to connect your Facebook lead ads into your auto-responder. What? ConnectAudience, same thing. ConnectRetarget. You can do behavior re-targeting on Facebook. What?

Like whenever we release something, I want to make sure I’m the first doing that because it makes the marketing so much easier, right? It makes the marketing so, so, so much easier. Whenever I create something, and it’s already out there, and like the second or the third one, I’m like, “Mm,” like I don’t want to do that, right? I don’t want to be competing anyone else. I don’t mind competition, but I just want to be first, and then people can try to compete with me, but I’ve already positioned myself as the number one tool or the number one leader in that certain thing that it does, right?

My point being is that I’ve pulled the plug on various tools even though we spent months, and months, and months of work, of time on development and design on those kind of tools. Like I said, just yesterday, I pulled the plug on a project that we’ve been working on for over a year.

Now, in this case, I’m hoping we might be able to use, let’s say, 20% of that in like a different twist or different angle or something like that. At this point, I cannot really share what this specific tool actually did, but the point I’m trying to make is that at some point, it’s good to cut your losses and not look at whatever you put into it.

What I see people do is they continue … Like I said, they continue because of what they invested in it because they feel they need to do that, right, because … Let’s say, yeah, I’ve already spent $10,000 in this, so I feel that I’m wasting $10,000. That’s not the way to look at it, right? At every point in time, you need to look at it like, “What’s the biggest advantage that I could … What’s the biggest opportunity that I have right now?”

Often times, it is to continue whatever you’re doing with that because whatever you built so far is actually … If you would switch to something else, you would have to start over, and it would actually take … It would actually be a slower path to wherever you want to go, right? Usually, the reason why you need to continue what you’re working on is because the thing that you built so far, the thing that you’ve been working on so far up to today, that makes it the easiest and the best possibility, the best advantage that you have at that point, but it doesn’t mean … like you don’t have to look at what you invested in. You don’t have to look at how much time you spent time in it because that’s all irrelevant. All that matters is what actions you take from today onwards.

If you realized that whatever you’ve been working on, you’ve been working on it for a year or whatever and it’s actually … like it’s outdated already. It’s not going to get you to the level where you want to go regardless of what you do with it. You can be flogged … They would basically be flogging it that harsh, right? I’m not sure if that’s a good saying in English as well, but that’s how we say it in the Netherlands.

Like if the project is not … it doesn’t have any potential, then you can just keep on working and finalizing it, but it’s not going to do you any good. If that’s the case, you might actually be better off to just delete it regardless of what you did so far and just start something else which will be better.

Now, I’m not sure if it’s going to make sense for all of you. I hope it does for some. At some point, it actually does make sense, like I said, to just pull the plug even though it might hurt, your bank account might hurt, your ego as well, which is not a nice thing, but that’s okay because as long as you believe in your long-term goal and you know like the easiest route to go from here, where I am today at this very point, to whatever your goal is, if the easiest route is to do that, using your tool, or your thing, or your project, or whatever it is that you’re creating, do it. Go for it, but if not, then stop and go the other direction.

That’s one thing that’s important to add. There’s always an exception because I also see a lot of people who are trying to create something online who are trying to build a business, and if that’s the case, then it would actually be worthwhile to just stick with your idea because I see so many people that they’re switching too easily from one project to another without having … see any project through.

If you haven’t seen any project through, if you haven’t had any success in line, then I would actually encourage you to keep on focusing on what you’re focusing on. But if you already know what you’re doing and you already had success in the past, then you are … you should … okay to make that decision to either switch to a different one and just let whatever you were working on slide and just pull the plug.

Sometimes, you can even repurpose parts of it, right? It doesn’t mean that you have to throw away everything, which I’ve had to do multiple times, because I did have to throw away a thing, but sometimes, you can repurpose anything. Now, I’m not sure if this is making sense for anyone out here, but I just wanted to throw this out there because if you are working on something that you feel is not the right thing to be working on, but you’re just working on it because you are … you’ve already invested so much time into it, then I highly recommend you to just go offline, take a notebook, write down all the pros and cons, write down all your ideas. Just stand still for a couple hours and really ask yourself whether continuing is actually the best decision or not. I hope this helps, and I hope you all have an awesome day.

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In episode #20, Wilco shares what he's doing to get his day back and to prevent being overwhelmed.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:31: Just realized that a lot of the times that I'm recording an episode, actually, is because I'm feeling a certain way.
01:50: Last week, I went to the U.S., United States, for a mastermind together with Russell Brunson.
03:25: Do not let others control your to-do list.
03:33: Do not check your email.
04:40: Cut down your distractions.
06:38: You can also just disconnect or turn off your Wi-Fi.
06:55: I plan my hours day by day.
08:06: So every single time I start a new task, I write it down.
08:35: So I write down all these things and I'm asking myself like, "Is this something that I should be doing, or is this something that I could hand off to someone else?"
10:12: I want to be the voice and the sort of person of the business.
10:21: I'm flying out to Liverpool for a couple days of basically brainstorming with like-minded entrepreneurs.

Transcription:

Hey, hey. It's Wilco de Kreij here, back for yet another episode, and it's funny. I actually just realized that a lot of the times that I'm recording an episode, just like this one, actually, is because I'm feeling a certain way, and today, I am feeling overwhelmed, and I figured to just share that with all of you. Not just letting you know that I'm feeling overwhelmed, but letting you know that it's okay, and how I actually resolve it, because obviously, as an entrepreneur, I mean, a lot of you might recognize it as well, there's a lot of things coming at your plate, and there are so many things you can do, but just like anyone else, we only have 24 hours in a day.

And for me, personally, I basically have one of two problems. Either my days are not long enough, I need more than 24 hours in a day, or my to-do list is too long. In any case, there's ways to resolve that, and I've figured to jump on this call or call, jump on this episode with all of you to share sort of what I'm doing to get my day back. Because like I said, right now, I don't know what I'm doing, but the day is passing by way too fast, and there's just no way I can get everything done that I want to get done or sort of need to get done in time. The reason why I'm currently more overwhelmed than usual is because last week, I went to the U.S., United States, for a mastermind together with Russell Brunson, and because of all the time difference and all of that, I was away for the first four days.

The week's Monday through Thursday, which meant I only had one day, and then this week, because of Easter, we also celebrate that on Monday, and then tomorrow, which, I'm currently recording this on Thursday. I'm not sure when it goes live, but I'm recording this on a Thursday, and tomorrow morning, I'm flying out to Liverpool for another marketing event, so that means that this week, I only have three days, so that's four working days in two weeks' time, which, for me, is insanely ... I usually work a lot, I work a lot more. Let's just say I'm a bit of a workaholic, and also my team depends on that, right? My team depends on that. Right now, we're like 17 or 18 people, and a lot of the things, I'm still in control. I still want to be in control of what exact features we're building.

I want to be in control of any exception that we have with one of our customers. There are so many things I want to be in control of, and right now, I just realized that there's just, it's just too much, right? It's just too much, and I think a lot of people can sort of relate with that, and even if you don't have a team, it doesn't really matter whether you have a team or not. Just as an entrepreneur in general, there's just so much stuff that needs to be done, and at times, it can be overwhelming, I think. So what I wanted to do on this call is, or in this episode, is to sort of go through the things that I'm doing to prevent being overwhelmed, even though today, I am feeling overwhelmed, but what I usually do to prevent being overwhelmed, right?

So there's a couple things I do on a daily, day-to-day basis, or at least I try to do on a day-to-day basis, and one of ... First one is to do not let others control your to-do list. So the easiest way to fix that is to, when you wake up in the morning, is do not, I repeat, do not check your email. A lot of the times, an email is basically someone else's to-do list, right? So people are going to ask, "Hey, do this. Hey, do that," so if you start your day by checking your email, you're by definition starting off with someone else's to-do list, right? So what I recommend you to do is, do not check it until, for example, I don't know, afternoon, or whatever works for you.

I try to check my email only twice a day. I do not always succeed, and the periods where I check my email more often are directly the times that I'm less productive, less efficient, because I'm just being distracted by my emails. Right? All of a ... Sometimes, I read my emails, but I don't really reply, and then later on the day, I read them again, because that's when I actually go into my email box, and I realize that I actually read a lot of the emails twice, just because of the fact that I read them first, didn't want to reply, and then do the same thing over. So that's super inefficient already, there, so first thing I highly recommend you do is, do not let someone else control your to-do list.

Cut back on your email time. Just have like two, one or two set schedules, and also just, in general, cut down your distractions, so cut down Facebook. Cut down anything else that you find distracting, and I found a pretty useful tool. There's actually two tools that I use. I'm on a Mac. I'm not sure if there's something similar for Windows as well, but one of the tools is called Focus. I believe it is Hey Focus, like hey, like, "Hey." Heyfocus.com. It's a real cool tool where you can set basically a schedule in focus times, and during those times that you're focused, you cannot reach any of the distracting sites, so you can add a list of things like facebook.com, Gmail, maybe your statistics, or whatever like new sites, anything that is basically distracting and keeping you off-course, you can add this to your blacklist.

And whenever you are scheduled, like whenever you're focused, all those sites will be automatically blocked, even if you restart your computer or do whatever. You literally cannot get access to those sites, right? So what I do is, I actually set up a schedule so in certain time blocks, no matter what I do, I just cannot access those sites, and that helps me a lot. Right? A second app that I use a lot is called Offline Time, and it really, all it does is basically make sure that I'm offline, like I cannot access my internet, so whenever I am writing or doing something that I don't really need internet for, I turn on that app. And when you do that, it's funny that as soon as I open that app when I'm sort of stuck on the task that I'm working on, I realize that I quickly check my stats or quickly want to check Facebook, quickly want to do this, I quickly want to do that.

And when that app is on, you'll get a message like, "All right, you're currently offline. You cannot access it." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, sure, of course." Sometimes you even do it without noticing, so these kind of apps, they help me to basically prevent that I'm going through all kinds of distractions, so I use heyfocus.com as well as Offline Time. You can also just disconnect or turn off your Wi-Fi, just to make sure that ... It helps if you're offline, no one else can sort of reach you, and you are sort of in the zone, so cut down on your email, cut down on your distractions.

What else I do is, I plan my hours day by day, so instead of just saying, "Hey, I'm going to do this, this, and this," I'm actually thinking like, "All right, how much time is every task going to cost me?" And I sort of plan it in like, "From 9 to 10 I'm doing this. From 10 to 11 I'm doing that," and that makes sure that when it's like a certain task is from 9 to 10, and it's 9:40 and I'm still not done, I'm like, "Oh, damn, I only have 20 minutes left. I need to rush instead of just spending countless, wasting hours on a certain task that should just cost me an hour, of course." Now, obviously, that's not always working as well as I make it sound right now, but that's usually the goal.

And once again, I notice that every single time I do it like that, every single time I sort of set up my day on a day-per-day, hour-by-hour basis, and I plan my day, every task over the whole day in advance, and do that the evening before, it just helps me to be so much more productive. So those are just some things that I try to do on a day-to-day basis, but there's also some things that I do on a more irregular basis, so that would be, for example, right now, so right now I am feeling overwhelmed. There's not enough time for all the things that I wanted to do, so these are the times that I'm sort of just starting to realize, "All right, so what are all the things that I'm currently doing? What are all the things that I'm writing on?" So every single time I start a new task, I write it down.

I write down, "All right, I'm answering support. I'm answering this," or, "I'm communicating with the designer how a certain feature should look," or, "I am doing research for a new feature for viral, for a new tool for Connectio," or whatever it is, right? So I write down all these things, and then at the end, like after a couple days or a week, I have like a list of things, of all the things that I'm spending my time on, and then one by one, I'm asking myself like, "Is this something that I should be doing, or is this something that I could hand off to someone else, or maybe I could even automate, especially if you don't have a team yet?"

And a lot of the tasks that I'm doing, a lot of the tasks that I'm spending time on I realize that I should actually not be the one doing. Some things I want to keep in control, like deciding what features we're adding and things like that. I'm a bit of a control freak, so I think it will be best if I would still do that, but some things, I just do not need to do them. But I just, once time passes by, I sort of take these things on my to-do list, and I just do them, right? So it's only when I actually, I'm overwhelmed, as I am right now, that's when I start to realize like, "All right, do I really, really need to do these things?" And if I don't, I try to offload them to my team, which is going to be on my to-do list for next week, so now I've just written down all the things that I'm doing for this week.

And then next week, I'm going to try to offload quite a few of those tasks, again, to my team, to basically win back my day. I'm going to also be more strict to myself in terms of the email and distractions and my day-to-day and hour-by-hour planning, which is going to be good. So next week, I'm hoping to have all my days back. I'm hoping to be in control of how I plan my days. I have not been in control this week, so it should be better next week. So that's pretty much it. I just wanted to share this with all of you real quick, because I know for a fact that a lot of entrepreneurs, they have similar challenges, I would say. So right now, I'm going to go offline. I've got a webinar to prepare for, which is one of the things that I still need to do myself. I want to be the voice and the sort of person of the business, right?

So I want to be the one who is doing all the webinars and things like that, so I'm going to prepare for that, and then wrapping it up, and tomorrow morning, I'm flying out to Liverpool for a couple days of basically brainstorming with like-minded entrepreneurs, which helps me to keep myself sharp, and from the next week on, just a lot of good stuff coming. So, hope everyone has a great day, and I will talk to you all soon.

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In episode #19, Wilco shares his mastermind experience and ways to grow a business.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:40: Went to Boise in Idaho for a Mastermind together with my coach and mentor, Russell Brunson.
01:28: It's not always easy to find the right people who I can sort of still learn from.
01:30: When I go to an event, I prefer to be the dumbest guy in the room.
02:41: That's currently the path I'm currently on, as well, to move my business from a seven figure into an eight figure business.
03:18: There's only three ways to generate more revenue in your business.
03:47: You need to get customers in, otherwise you're not gonna make it.
04:10: In order to scale, it's not always matter of just getting more customers in.
04:26: That's number one, get more customers.
04:30: The second thing is, get those customers to spend more.
06:12: Thirdly is get them to buy more often.
06:20: Try to get them to buy something with you every single month.
07:32: But what I'm gonna be focusing on more from now on, is also to get them to spend more.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, it's Wilco de Kreij here, and it has been an amazing week. But I'm not gonna lie, I am exhausted right now. I just came back from the United States. I went to Boise in Idaho for a Mastermind together with my coach and mentor, Russell Brunson. He's the founder of ClickFunnels. For the last couple days we've basically been in a room with 25 like-minded entrepreneurs who are all rocking things out of the water. They all have an awesome business, and we've just been sharing about what works, what doesn't work, on both strategic level as well as a tactical level, so more or less on a high level like, where are we going, where are we headed? As well as things like what Facebook ads work? Or what's the latest kind of promotion that's working? Or on a webinar, and all these kind of things.

We've been basically giving each other feedback on how we can all grow our businesses. What was great about this Mastermind is that ... I basically go to quite a few Masterminds and events and things like that, and to be completely honest with you, it's not always easy to find the right people who I can sort of still learn from. When I go to an event I prefer to be the dumbest guy in the room, but that's not always easy. If I am the dumbest guy in the room it means there's a lot for me to learn, and that's what's great about this group, is that, like I said before, this group of people, they're all smart people, first of all, but they all have big businesses. That means that they're sort of going through the same stages as I am in our business.

One of the things we were talking about is, how to sort of move from a seven figure business into an eight figure biggest. In order to get to seven figures there's obviously different things you need to do than to go from seven to eight figures. There's different steps you need to take. You can go to seven figures ... Well, let's just say that ... How do you say that? I think in order to get to seven figures you need to ... That's the stage where you create your product and you start to create processes, and then from seven to eight figures, then you really need to think about building a bigger team, think about ... You need to have multiple levels in your team. There's all kinds of different things you need to do. You sort of need to work on a different level. That's currently the path I'm currently on, as well, to move my business from a seven figure into an eight figure business. I'm not there yet, but that's the course I'm currently headed.

Of course, we also discussed about how to go from eight to nine figures, because some people where already in that stage. But to be honest, that for me ... We'll tackle those steps after I hit eight figures. First, let's do it one step at a time, I'd say. One of the things we talked about is, what could you do to grow your business? What it really comes down to is that there's actually only three ways to grow your business. There's only three ways to generate more revenue in your business, and that is it. This might seem super obvious, but once you focus on these three things, that's where all the magic happens.

Like I said before, in order to go from zero to seven figures, what most people do is they focus on getting more customers in, and that's always, because that's where it all starts. You're focusing to get more customers into your business, but that's basically the most important thing. You need to get customers in otherwise you're not gonna make it. In order to go from a seven to eight, usually a lot of people who are at seven figures, they have a ton of customers coming in, they sort of figured out where they're getting their customers from. They got, for example, Facebook ads running, maybe they're working with affiliates. They have a source of traffic, have a source of customers, so they know how to get customers into their business. Now, in order to scale, it's not always matter of just getting more customers in. There's other things you can, actually should do.

The three things ... The only three ways to basically grow a business are these. First of all, like I said, get more customers. That's number one, get more customers. The second thing is, get those customers to spend more. So instead of just having, for example, a product that is, let's say, a couple hundred dollars, also have a higher-ticket product which is, for example, a couple thousand dollars. If there's one thing I learned in this group, is that a ton of people, big businesses, they're not just selling something for a couple hundred dollars, they're also selling something for a couple thousands, or even 15, 20, $30,000. First time I heard it I was like, "What? You're selling a product for like $30,000, and people buy that?" They're like, "Yeah." They sell a ton of those. I'm like, "What?" That for me is just way outside of my comfort zone, but it really opened my eyes of what's possible.

A lot of those people, they're doing exactly that. They have various products who are like a couple hundred dollars. Then they have other products that are thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, and they sell ... Obviously they don't sell it as much as their cheaper products, that would be crazy, but it does bring them in the biggest return. Let's say you're selling something for $20,000, even though I know for a lot of you it might be way outside of your comfort zone. For me, it actually is as well. But let's say you're selling something for $20,000, and you're selling a hundred of them. That two million there right there. Is that correct, two million? Let me just ... Yeah, that's two million. I was just checking.

That's number two. First one is to get more customers. Second one is to get your customers to spend more, to have something that people ... THere's always a group of people within your customers who are willing to spend more money with you. Now, what's the third thing? We get more customers, get them to spend more. Thirdly is get them to buy more often. Get them to buy more frequently. Instead of just buying ... Instead of having just ... Having them to buy, I don't know, once a year, maybe twice a year, try to get them to buy more often. Try to get them to buy something with you every single month, for example. There's obviously multiple ways you can do that. You can offer something more frequently, which is the obvious thing. If you have more things to offer, they're able to buy more frequently from you, as well.

That's one thing. Also, obviously recurring. As you all know, I'm a big fan of recurring, which means, for example, selling something on a monthly basis because that way, once someone is locked in at a monthly basis, they're gonna basically guy something from you every single month. They're gonna send you money every single month. That's another way. By really focusing on these three things, that's really how you can scale your business even further. These are basically the only ways how you can actually grow your business. You can get more customers in. You can get them to spend more with you, and you can get them to buy more frequently. The first two ... The first one is something I've been focusing on for a long time, and I still am. Obviously it all starts by getting more customers in. Getting your Facebook ads out, work with affiliate, doing content marketing. Doing all these kind of things to get more customers in.

But what I'm gonna be focusing on more from now on, is also to get them to spend more. I'd love to actually offer some higher-end packages as well inside of our business, as well as getting people to buy more frequently. Wanna roll new offers out more frequently, because that way you can actually leverage your existing customer base even better, which is a great way to add more revenue into your business. That's one of the many take-aways actually had over the last couple days. I think I made like 50 pages of notes, which is insane. This was a big notebook, and I've been writing all day long. There's so many golden nuggets I got there, it's insane. I'll probably share some later on with another episode, as well, because there's just way too much to just cover in one episode.

Besides even just the insights I got and the actual clarity I have now in my business, it's also just a big source of inspiration and motivation, to just be along sides other entrepreneurs who are all crushing it. People who are running seven, eight figure business. It's been awesome, we had a blast, and a lot of fun as well. It's not just about strategic and tactical things, there's also just being around awesome people who understand the mindset that I think a solo entrepreneur should have. People who actually understand what you do, instead of just saying, "Oh, yeah, that's cool," and they have no clue what it's all about. This whole online world is a bit different compared to many of the other industries. It's just good to be around good people who sort of get that. Anyway, I think that is it for today.

Once again, if you wanna grow your business, the three things ... Just to make sure you've gotten them all. Get more customers in, and then get those people to spend more with you. Thirdly, get them to spend more, basically things more frequently with you. Those are the three things that you can do to grow your business. I hope it helps, and I hope you have an awesome day. Bye-bye.

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In episode #18, Wilco shares why he had to let go of his return on investment focused mindset.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:14: I pretty much calculate everything in life.
02:09: In my business, I pretty much calculate everything, as well.
02:32: Based on calculations, I make decisions on whether or not I should focus on something.
03:46: Over time, everything I did in my business sort of had to be ROI focused.
03:56: It's ridiculous to think that we need to have an ROI on everything, right, because sometimes it just cannot be calculated.
04:50: I joined Russell Brunson's Inner Circle mastermind last year.
06:20: You have to do content marketing, right, but if you do it yourself you can spend quite a bit of time.
07:49: I let go of that ROI mentality, it was only after I sort of accepted that you know not everything in my business should have an ROI, but sometimes it's just okay to go for your gut feeling, basically.
08:50: Don't always try to calculate everything.
09: 40: Ever since I let that go, the ROI focused mindset, it helped me to not being held back like I was before.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, hey, everyone. It's me, Wilco de Kreij here, and today is actually a pretty awesome day. The sun is shining here in the Netherlands. It's actually starting to warm up, pretty warm for this time of year, and for one reason or another that just gives me energy, just fires me up, and it makes me happy. Yeah, pretty good day today, and today I wanted to talk to all of you about something that I think is pretty important actually, because this is something that I thought was a habit of mine that I had for years, and years, and years, and years until maybe a year ago or so, and I always believed it was a good thing, but looking back it actually held me back big time. In one way or another it is actually a good thing, but there's some kind of a balance there, right? So, what is this about?

For those of you who know me, you might know that I'm a really calculating guy, basically. Like I pretty much calculate everything in life. Well, not everything obviously, so don't tell my wife that, but I calculate quite a lot. Just a random example, recently I calculated up to the specific day how many days I was abroad over the last eight years, so for the last eight years, how many days I actually spent abroad. I believe it was, I don't even remember. I think it was around 31, 32%. Something like that. Just over 30% of the time I've been abroad because I love to travel. I did very longer trips, as well, like six months trips, so that adds the timing up quite a bit. Obviously there's like no logical reason for me to calculate that. There's no benefit, no upside, or anything like that. It's just a fun fact for me, and yet I spend time calculating it, and that's just to give you an indication of how much of a nerd I am calculating things.

In my business, I pretty much calculate everything, as well, right. So, either based on the data that I have, you know, seeing if someone worked or didn't work, but even ahead of time I'm sort of trying to calculate in my mind or even on Excel sheet where I sort of estimate by calculating what something's going to do for my business. Based on calculations, I make decisions on whether or not I should focus on something, right. Simply put, one major factor I look at pretty much everything in my business, and that's really what this podcast is about is ROI, return of investment.

So, me personally, I'm a very, very ROI focused guy, and I think that's because online we can basically track and measure everything, right, so if I run Facebook ads, I know exactly what my ROI is. If I send out an e-mail to my e-mail list, I know exactly what my ROI is. If I do a launch with affiliates, I know exactly what my ROI is. With all these things, I know exactly what the result is, right, and because of that, I sort of, over time, changed into the habit of basically only doing things that I could measure the ROI of. I just had to know what the ROI was, so I beforehand could sort of decide what are, you know, I thought it was, hey, this is going to give me a good ROI. Plus, I also knew that backwards, like looking back I could actually calculate and measure whether it was the right call, whether it was the right decision, so I can learn from that, right.

Over time, everything I did in my business sort of had to be ROI focused, right, and that's obviously a silly thing, right. Obviously it's important for various things, like Facebook ads, like a lot of the channels you need to have a good ROI, but it's ridiculous to think that we need to have an ROI on everything, right, because sometimes it just cannot be calculated. Sometimes it's just too vague, or you know there's no way to actually measure or calculate what the ROI is of a certain spend that you're doing, right. For that reason, for a long time, I sort of ignored everything that I couldn't calculate. I ignored everything that did not have an ROI or I knew that I couldn't track the ROI, and that kept me back for a long time, because if you think about it, there's so much stuff that you can do which wouldn't necessarily result in a clear ROI and a clear result, or at least not a measurable result, but it might actually, in the long term actually, be very worthwhile your time, or your energy, or your money, or your whatever it is about, right.

A clear example for me personally, is for example, the fact that I joined Russell Brunson's Inner Circle mastermind last year. It's a $25,000 mastermind, which for me, spending that on education, which that really is. It's all about learning from him, but also mingling myself with like minded entrepreneurs who are all doing massive things online. They're all building massive companies, but spending $25,000 on something like that, which is quote unquote just education, seems like a fair bit of money, quite a bit of money, and there was no way for me to really calculate an ROI on that. For a long time, I just ignored it, right. I just figured, "Look. I'm not going to do it." So last year, after being scammed, which is actually a pretty funny story. It's in one of the previous episodes on this very podcast, so I highly recommend you to listen to that. After being scammed, not by Russel Brunson obviously, but by someone with his name, let's put it like that. You'll have to listen to that episode for the full story, but after being scammed, I joined his Inner Circle. I wired $25,000, and like I said, there's no way I could put an ROI on that, but now, I'm like, I think it's like nine months ago since I joined, something like that, there is definitely a good ROI on that.

But beforehand, I would never have done it if I would still be in that ROI focused mindset, right. Same thing with for example, let's give you another example. Let's say, content marketing. I mean, we all know, like content marketing is the hoo-hoo, like you have to do content marketing, right, but if you do it yourself you can spend quite a bit of time, but in my case, because obviously there's a lot of stuff on my plate. It's not just the marketing side, but I'm basically helping out a lot on what our tools, what our virals should look like, what new features we're going to build, what connect IO tools we're building, how it all works, and really like I want to be in control or all these things.

We have roughly 15 people in the company, which takes up quite a bit of time. We have affiliates and marketing campaigns and all of that, so there's a lot of things I need to spend my time on, so I could not really devote myself to write content every, like a couple articles per week. It just wouldn't fit into my schedule, so the only way that I could do more content marketing, is if I would hire someone to do it, right. Once again, if you go looking for someone, there's no way you can measure a good ROI, because content marketing is going to take quite awhile to get ROI from that, and not only that, if I'm going to hire someone, there's time and training, like all these kind of delays before you would ever get a result. Even after you get a result, it's not as easy to track or easy to measure as for example Facebook ads.

For that reason, I never really started doing content marketing or at least not in a way that was scalable by hiring a team and making sure it was taken care of. It was only after I let go of that ROI mentality, it was only after I sort of accepted that you know not everything in my business should have an ROI, but sometimes it's just okay to go for your gut feeling, basically. Sometimes it's okay to not being able to measure something, it's okay to not know what the exact result is going to be, but just go for your gut feeling, and take a leap of faith, and just go for it, right. Just go, and like I said, I never really did that until roughly a year ago. Since that time, I've done various things that I would never have done beforehand because I had to spend quite a bit of money beforehand without knowing what the result is, and every single one of those things actually resulted, if I had to guess, in a positive ROI, and I say if I have to guess, because there's now clear one-on-one way to measure it, but my gut feeling says that I made the right call.

That's really what today's all about. If you are like me, if you are trying to calculate everything, if you're trying to do everything perfect forget about it. Like, don't always try to calculate everything. Don't always try to find excuses not to do something, which is sometimes if it feels right, if you think this is the right thing to do, even though you're not completely sure if it's going to have a good ROI, just go with the flow. Go for it. Obviously is there's like, you don't want to put everything on the line, like it has to be a calculated risk, right. I mean, I wouldn't spend all my money on one thing, but so it really depends on your situation. As long as it's a calculated risk, and sort of like it's not even as much calculated, but more like an acceptable risk. I think that would be the best way to describe it. Just go for it, and don't always require to have an ROI. I'm not sure, maybe I'm the only one who's having this problem. In that case, we'll there you have it. Now you know sort of what my problems are. Ever since I let that go, the ROI focused mindset, it helped me to not being held back like I was before.

That's if for today. I'm heading out. I have a couple more hours to crunch in some work, but then I'm heading out actually, so I will see you all, or listen to you all, or talk to you all in the next episode. Cheers. Bye-bye.

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In episode #17, Wilco will help you send out more effective emails through your email subscriber list without having to learn any copywriting or without having to learn anymore new skills and you can implement this right away into your business!

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:55: Ever since I've implemented this strategy into my daily routine, it has not only helped me to improve all of my email marketing.
01:32: Email marketing is the number one most important thing in my business.
01:54: We have upviral which is all about building up your email list.
02:17: Most of the sales happen after we sent out some emails.
03:20: I always used to keep an eye on basically other people who I think are good email copywriters.
03:53: So what I did a year ago, was I started categorizing all the awesome emails I got.
04:17: Some folders that I have is for example the first one is bonding.
04:40: Good job on closing out an offer in a creative way that I think wow I can use this, I add it to my closing or scarcity folder, right. If
04:50: If I see really good headline, like a headline I just need to open, I add it to my headlines folder.
05:00: If there is a certain kind of email that tries to really engage me after I haven't been active on a certain email list, I add it to my re engagement folder.
05:15: A real good pitch and try to sell me something and one way or another they use a real clever hook, I add it to my sales and pitch category.
05:30: Right, if there's an email with really good story telling that I am just being sucked into the story, I add them to the storytelling one.
06:15: When I see an email like that with a real good survey, a questionnaire inside of an email.

Transcription:

Wilco de Kreij, here back with you again for another episode of the Uncensored Growth podcast. And today I want to talk about email marketing. And more specifically, I want to help you become a better email marketer. I want to help you send out more effective emails through your email subscriber list without having to learn any copywriting or without having to learn anymore new skills and you can implement this right away into your business. It's a simple, yet effective strategy that I have been using over the last, I think the last year or so. And ever since I've ... Ever since I've implemented this strategy into my daily routine, it has not only helped me to improve all of my email marketing. It has not only helped me to get more results from all my email marketing but also it made all of my email marketing effort a lot easier.

You know. It's now easier and faster to write an email. I don't have to think a lot about it. And that's all because one powerful strategy that is actually in hindsight pretty obvious to do for some reason I never really did it until a year ago. And my guess is you've never done it as well. So as you may or may not know email. Email marketing is in my business. The number one most important thing. Right? Everything I do is all to get people on to our subscriber list and then from there, we try to bribe them or whatever you want to call it.

I try to get them or convert them into a customer. So not only are we doing that ourselves. So obviously our tools are focused on that as well so. We have upviral which is all about building up your email list. True virality. By making sure all your subscribers will get that their friends to subscribe as well. So everything is all about email marketing and that is just and all because it works.

It plain works out. We actually did some tracking. I mean. Facebook for example, posting on facial construction media. It's nice and all but most of the sales happen after we sent out some emails. After we actually build a relationship through email marketing. That part you probably already knew so I am not going to talk about that too much but ... for me as a Dutch guy. For me its not always easy to write a good email. Right sometimes, sometimes I struggle a lot. But even if I know how to write it.

I often used to struggle with what should I actually send out. I mean there are so many different kinds of campaigns that you can send out to your email list. Right? You could be inviting, inviting them to a webinar. You could be trying to build a relationship with them. You could be sending some value. Maybe you want to sell something. Maybe you want to close, or close a certain offer by implementing scarcity into you emails. And obviously there's so many different ways to write all these emails and the good thing is that we have a ton.

And I mean like thousands, probably tens of thousands of smart marketers worldwide, who are doing it on a daily basis. Now what I used to do, is always, I always used to keep an eye on basically other people who I think are good email copywriters. Right so, I used to subscribe to their email list and I used to check their emails and say "Hey this is actually a good title or hey this is actually a very good email". But I never really, you know all I did was basically, I just thought of like alright I should remember to start it. "Oh Yeah, I should remember this kind of email. Oh hey maybe this email is actually nice to use in my automation or email sequence.

Right so, all the emails, I sort of remembered it so what I did a year ago, was I started categorizing all the awesome emails I got. So I am subscribed to a lot of emails, email list all in the same niche that I am, in the online marketing niche. And every single time, I see an email that stands out for a specific reason. I drag them into a specific folder. So I have various folders inside of my Gmail account. So everything is being collected inside, inside of a Google email, a Gmail account. And for example, some folders that I have is for example the first one is bonding. So if I see an email that really makes me feel like ... that they, that the person sending out an email really makes a closer connection with me as the reader. Its really bonding kind of campaign. I drag it to the bonding folder.

If I see a really well written closing or scarcity email. You know if they're doing a real good job on closing out an offer in a creative way that I think wow I can use this. I add it to my closing or scarcity folder, right. If I see really good headline, like a headline I just need to open. I just know I need to open it. I add it to my headlines folder. If there is a certain kind of email that tries to really engage me after I haven't been active on a certain email list, you know sometimes you recognize that kind of email. I add it to my re engagement folder. If there's a really good pitch. Like just a real good pitch and try to sell me something and one way or another they use a real clever hook. That I think "Hey, you know I could use this in one of my campaigns in the future". I add it to my sales and pitch category.

Right, if there's an email with really good story telling that I am just being sucked into the story. I start reading the email and right away I know like all right. Boom. This is a good story, right. This is something, I mean I would never ever, ever copy that story but sometimes you can take inspiration of a certain way of telling a story, right. So if I see an email like that, I add them to the storytelling one. If there's an email that asks me to basically answer something, right. If there is something, sometimes you get an email saying "hey how, how advanced are you on online marketing? Easy. Beginner. Advanced. Whatever". Like they ask you a certain question and you can click on any kind of link inside that email to identify your, your answer.

What they do on their end is obviously they start tagging you and now they know that you are for example, an advanced marketer or now that you have an email list of over fifty thousand people, what ever your answer is.

But sometimes when I see, when I see an email like that with a real good survey, a questionnaire inside of an email. I add it to my survey and questionnaire category, right. Same thing for writing an invite and also same thing if I see a really good value email in which someone shares a really good trick. So I have been doing that for about a year now.

I've been, every single time I see a good email. An email from another marketer that I would think "Wow this really stands out" I add it one of those categories that I just described. And the end result is that every single time that I need to do something. So for example, if I want to send out a webinar invite, I can just go to my folder of webinar invites and I see all the best ones that I have seen over the past year or two, right. So for a year, if I check it later it's going to be two years of data. So I would never ever, ever copy any of those emails but usually it's good to have some inspiration before I start writing an email. Because usually other marketers, they already have a good hook. They already came up with a good clever way of describing it or funny ways or a good headline or whatever.

So if I'm looking for a headline I can just go into my headline folder and I see all the clever headlines that at some point, at some point in time I have tagged as hey this is a good headline. And it just helps me so so so much. So every single time, instead of starting to start over, instead of having to come up with everything myself. I just have a glimpse in that specific folder, what the email is going to be about that I am about to write and it makes it so much easier to not only create something but also to create something creative and effective, right.

So if you are listening to this and you are doing any kind of email marketing. Which you should right? If you are not doing any kind of email marketing, you start your list right away. I mean head over to UpViral dot com for example and subscribe. And make sure, build your email list. Do what ever you have to you don't even have to use UpViral, if you don't want to.

But make sure to build that email list and also make sure to subscribe to other people inside of the same industry as your on. And every single time that you, you see an email that you think "Wow this is really clever. Hey, you know I should remember this add it to a folder so you can remember". Then ideally specifically create multiple folders, like I did, like I just told you. So for example if you see some bonding email, if you see some scarcity emails, specific headlines, if you see storytelling ones, if you see certain webinar invite, if you see value emails. Like create different kind of folders inside of your, inside of your email account and drag them into the right folder. And initially it might not help you as much but over time, you will have a data base of all the kind of things that you've seen in the industry, in your industry what you think is a really good email campaign. And it's just going to help you a ton.

And just in case you don't want to, you don't want a daily ... you don't want go through all of those emails and clutter inbox or whatever. I'd highly suggest to use a service called Enroll dot me. That is Enroll dot me. Its a free service. It works for Google email, G mail. It will basically, automatically remove all those emails from within your inbox. From you inbox but it will also send you a daily digest email of all the emails in just one email. So you will get just one email, every single day with all those emails inside of it. That's pretty awesome service. I use it a lot to keep my email books clean while I can still be on top of all those things, I want to be on top of. So highly, highly recommend it. So I hope that this helps and I will see you all or talk to you all in the next episode. Just bye bye.

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In episode #16, Wilco talks about a book that pretty much all of you probably read and definitely have heard of. It is The Four Hour Work Week from Tim Ferriss, does it work? Is it possible to run an online business in four hours a week?

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:37: We've been traveling through the mainland as well as through the Galapagos Islands.
01:09: In my experience is really beneficial for basically understanding how to do marketing right.
01:32: I personally read it, I think four or five times, which is The Four-Hour Work Week from Tim Ferriss.
02:04: Rescue Time is a tool that you can install in your computer and it automatically keeps track of what you do.
02:42: What I just did is actually logged in to see how many hours I actually spent during my trip.
03:52: Right before we left we just finished a major new project launch of ConnectExplore.
04:00: I want to talk about what I need to make happen beforehand and what I actually did focus on those five hours.
04:30: Whether it's actually possible to run the four or five hour work week.
05:00: First things first, like I said before, it's not easy to cut back your time to four or five hours a week.
05:59: Now the first step is obviously having the right people on board.
06:38: What I started to do first is I started accepting that my people are the right people and I started empowering them to do the things that I was normally doing.
07:21: For every single task, you want to make sure you are the person who is responsible.
07:35: I started writing out all the procedures, so instead of just explaining it on a Skype call, for example, and explaining them how to do it, I actually wrote it all down.
08:51: Secondly, like I said, you should make sure that everyone has their own responsibility, but for some critical things, you want to make sure you have back-ups as well.
09:20: Pingdom is a service that checks all our servers every 60 seconds whenever something goes down.
09:58: Obviously, you'll be the best to understand and know which staffs in your business are most critical to run your business, but it's just good to have back-ups on place.
11:00: It's always good to have a trial error, usually the last week before I head off I pretend that I'm not there.
12:17: Well, actually I just logged into my stats, like I said, and I can actually see that more than 80% of my time, I actually spent on customer tickets.
12:44: I do think it's the most important one, and I just want to make sure everything is good.
13:30: I didn't focus on growing the business further, I didn't focus on marketing, and I didn't focus on my affiliates, none of that, I just focused on customer support.
14:18: I realize that my team is actually doing a fine job and I don't need to take back that responsibility.
14:44: The bad side is, or not really bad, but if we're going to look at this as an experiment, I did nothing to grow the business.
15:11: I'm on Slack, which is our team communication.
15:46: I'm someone who's pretty much goal oriented, so I want to reach at a sky sort of thing.
16:12: I prefer to not just go for a four-hour week, but I prefer to focus my business and drive for growth.
16:29: I highly recommend to take regular breaks
17:27: At the end of the day, we don't live to make our business or we don't live to be an entrepreneur.
18:28: so if you're listening right now, do this, book a trip, go away, take your time off, because I promise you it will give you so much new energy and so many new ideas that you'll easily make that back.

Transcription:

Hey, there. It's Wilco de Kreij here and I'm excited because I am back because I didn't record an episode for the last couple of weeks, but for a good reason, because over the last couple of weeks, my wife and I we've been traveling through Ecuador. We've been traveling through the mainland as well as through the Galapagos Islands, which was awesome. We totally had a blast. We met a lot of people, we explored a new culture, because that's usually what we try to do at least once or twice a year. For example, last year we went to the Philippines as well as to South Africa. This year we started off in Ecuador, and like I said, it was awesome.

Now, although there's a lot of good stuff behind that, you get to really understand how a new culture thinks and does their thing and all of that, which in my experience is really beneficial for basically understanding how to do marketing right, because you get to have a better understanding of how people think, but that's not what I want to talk about today.

Today I want to talk about a book that pretty much all of you probably read and definitely have heard of. I personally read it I think four or five times, which is The Four-Hour Work Week from Tim Ferriss. I actually just ordered his book yesterday, his new book, The Tools of Titans. I haven't started reading it yet, but I'm excited to dive in. Anyway, so the Four-Hour Work Week, and probably a lot of you, like everybody might have an opinion about it, right? Is it true? Is it not true? Does it work? Is it possible to run an online business in four hours a week?

Now, I just logged into my Rescue Time statistics. In case you don't know, Rescue Time is a tool that you can install in your computer and it automatically keeps track of what you do, so how much time do you spend? Not just how much time you spent on your computer, but it even shows you, for example, you spent X amount of time on Facebook or maybe X amount of time on Gmail, maybe X amount of time on whatever it is that you have open on your computer and it automatically gives you an indication of how productive you are. Like Facebook, not productive. If you're, for example, in Microsoft Word, or whatever, it would think, "Hey, that's actually productive," so it would give you a good glimpse of whether or not you are productive. You can actually break down your statistics on a week-by-week basis, day-by-day basis, et cetera.

Now, in this case, what I just did is actually logged in to see how many hours I actually spent during my trip, because like I said, I've been away for just over three weeks, and I can see exactly how much time my laptop was on. Like if my laptop was on, that mostly meant I was working. Sometimes I maybe checked Facebook for personal gain as well, but most of the time it was for work. Altogether, I spent 15 hours on my laptop over this little bit more than three weeks. Like I said, part of that would be for personal gain, but 15 hours in just over three weeks comes down to five hours a week minus the Facebook time, it will probably like four or five hours a week for a three-week period.

Now, in this episode I want to talk about that. I want to talk about how do I make it happen. You might be thinking, "That's easy," you just cut back your time, three, four hours a week or five hours a week. Don't forget that right now in our business, we have got 15, 16 people working full time, we have over 15,000 customers. Right before we left we just finished a major new project launch of ConnectExplore, so we've got a lot of new customers coming in, so obviously it's not easy at all to be offline that much.

I want to talk about what I need to make happen beforehand and what I actually did focus on those five hours. If I could cut back all my time, usually I work 50 hours a week, 50 to 60 hours a week, roughly I guess. What if I needed to cut that back to just a couple of hours a week? What would I focus on? That's what I experienced in those couple of weeks and whether it was successful, whether it's actually possible to run the four or five hour work week. The reason why I want to do this podcast right now is because everyone has been hearing this concept for years and I never really shared my opinion on it because I think you should actually experience it first. Even though I already experienced it a couple times before, because, like I said, we usually do these kind of trips a couple times a year, but I figure this is a good time to talk about it.

First things first, like I said before, it's not easy to cut back your time to four or five hours a week, especially if you've got so many people demanding your attention. I'm assuming that you know it as well. The second you open your inbox it's like peeew, everybody wants your attention. Suddenly you're not working on your own to-do list, but you're working on someone else's to-do list. Right now, imagine that happening on email, on the support desk, in your team, like people inside of the team are asking questions and all of that as well as on Facebook. Everywhere people are asking for my time. If I were to answer to all of that that would already be a good chunk of my normal week let alone if I would just be working a couple hours a week.

I've been thinking about like, "How do I get to the point from spending 50, 60 hours a week to a couple hours a week and that would be okay?" Now, there's a couple of steps that I need to take in order to make that possible. This is for you if you want to do the same thing, especially if you already have a business with people involved. Now the first step is obviously having the right people on board. If there is nobody on your team who could take over your responsibility or your tasks, then you're screwed, maybe. To be honest, the first time I did this, the first time I tried to hand over my task, I didn't think I had the right team. I thought, "This, is a special task. Only I can do it." I sort of felt like, "Only I can actually do what I do." It's just crazy to think that, but sometimes as an entrepreneur, we get to believe that we are sort of like these supermen and everything we do only we can do, which is crazy to think.

What I started to do first is I started accepting that my people are the right people and I started empowering them to do the things that I was normally doing. The way I did it, first of all, I have the right people and believe that they are the right people, and then write down the responsibilities fully. You shouldn't just say to a team of people, to multiple people, like, "Hey, you should all do this," because if let's say you're talking to two people at the same time, and you're saying to both of them, "Hey, you should take responsibility of this or that, or a certain task," then they'll be like, "Oh, maybe the other person does it," like they don't really feel the responsibility. You should hand over your responsibilities to a specific person in your team. For every single task, you want to make sure you are the person who is responsible. Even if there's multiple people working on it, one person should be responsible.

Now, what else I did, is for a lot of the tasks that I used to be doing, I started writing out all the procedures, so instead of just explaining it on a Skype call, for example, and explaining them how to do it, I actually wrote it all down. The reason for that is not because that's faster, because it's actually a lot slower and gives you a lot more stuff to prepare, but once you write it all down, it's so much easier to hand over to people to, even if later on let's say you're going away, you're writing down exactly what you're doing so you can explain it to someone else.

What happens if that person goes away? What happens if that person gets sick? What happens if, whatever happens, like the shit hits the fan, then if you have a written guide on exactly what needs to do, like step one, do this, step two, do that, step three, do that, then all of a sudden it becomes so much easier to just hand it off to another person, for example, and by doing that, you starting building up this whole data base of written procedures which basically tells people how to run your business, and it might seem a bit vague, but once you start writing down what you actually do on a notepad and then you start breaking it up in step-by-step plans, you'll notice that there's a lot of the things that you do are actually repetitive or at least can be explained if you really take effort into explaining it, right?

Then, secondly, like I said, you should make sure that everyone has their own responsibility, but for some critical things, you want to make sure you have back-ups as well. Simple example, what happens if your server goes down? You might be normally the one that starts to make phone calls and whatnot to the right people who might be able to help out. Now, that's obviously not going to cut it if you are traveling or if you are not available, so what we do is we have Pingdom. Pingdom is a service, pingdom.com. It's a service that checks all our servers every 60 seconds whenever something goes down it sends a text message to me or to multiple people.

In this case, I made sure that one person is the key person who's responsible for that. Whenever something goes down, multiple people get a text, but he's the key person responsible. However, I also have a back-up person. He's also responsible, so if the first person doesn't respond, immediately the second person takes over, so even if I'm not there there's two other people who are taking care of that, just to make sure, to be fully safe. Obviously, you'll be the best to understand and know which staffs in your business are most critical to run your business, but it's just good to have back-ups on place.

Just to go back a couple steps, every single time before I head on a trip, before I go traveling, before I know I am going to be away for a certain amount of time, I'm going to be away for a certain amount of time, I'm going to be off-line during the days. I will literally not be online for various times, then this is exactly what I do. I start writing down all the things that I do. I explain them as clearly as I can in a written format. We have them all in one system. You can, for example, use Google Docs, so that everyone on the team can actually access them.

We have clear responsibilities and for the most critical tasks, we have a back-up person as well, so there's two persons actually responsible in case the first one, something's up. That way helps a lot and obviously, what's really important here is that your team should be confident enough that they can handle it, so it's always good to have a trial error. Usually the last week before I head off I pretend that I'm not there. I'm just there to help them out, so that if they still have questions they can still ask me. I think that's really critical, or at least that makes me feel more at ease when I'm actually away.

All right. That's a long time talking about all of that, so what did I actually do? Once I was actually away, what was I focusing on. In our business, we have a lot of things I could be focusing on, right? We have, for example, Facebook ads, we have email marketing, we have relationships with affiliates, we have doing webinars, we have deciding what new features we build in our tools, testing our tools, coming up with new ideas for our tools, we have the customer support, we have answering emails. We have so much stuff that I could actually be doing. Now, what did I decide to do now that I had to focus or decide, basically cut back my week from 50, 60 hours a week to just couple hours a week.

I'm going to be silent for one second. Let me ask you, right now, answer these. What do you think from all of the things, what do you think I was focusing on most? Was it trying to grow the business? Was it better marketing, because I'm a marketer, right? What do you think it was? Well, actually I just logged into my stats, like I said, and I can actually see that more than 80% of my time, I actually spent on ... da doo, da doo, da doo ... customer tickets.

That's right. I know, I know, I know. I am the CEO in viral and normally a CEO wouldn't be doing the support desk themselves and I get that, because to be honest, it's not my favorite part of the job, but I do think it's the most important one, and I just want to make sure everything is good. I'm a bit of a control freak, and as it happened, like I said before, right before we left we had a major launch and it actually went a lot better than I initially expected, which means we added a couple thousand new customers within a couple days, and obviously, that also resulted in more support tickets and my team, they were doing their very best, but I just noticed that sometimes the reply line actually went up. Normally we try to reply the exact same day, but I noticed that because of the many tickets and me being away that sometimes the response time went up and that, to me, is just not acceptable, so I mainly focused on answering our customer questions.

I didn't focus on growing the business further, I didn't focus on marketing, and I didn't focus on my affiliates, none of that. I just focused on customer support. I actually think, even though it's not the most fun part, but it was actually a good decision, because in the end, it's always about your customer. At least that's the way I think.

Basically, if we're going to look at this as an experiment, like the good and the bad, what happens if you cut back your time to four or five hours. Is that a good or a bad thing? I know a good thing about all of this is that every single time I do this, and I think I mentioned this in one of the earlier episodes as well. Every time I'm away for a while, I hand off certain tasks to my team that initially I was doing myself and once I'm back after the three, four week period, I realize that my team is actually doing a fine job and I don't need to take back that responsibility, so before I left, I had the responsibility, I described how it should be done, they did it for a couple weeks, when I came back I'm like, "All right, cool. You guys keep on doing that and that gives me the opportunity to focus on new things again," so take on new responsibilities or future or new growth opportunities or whatnot.

That's the good side. The bad side is, or not really bad, but if we're going to look at this as an experiment, I did nothing to grow the business. We just basically maintained it, which means that for a short period of time, sure, this could work. For a short period of time I could manage or I could sort of get away with a couple hours of work to just keep a tab on anything, answer any questions of our customers, as well as answering the questions of our team, obviously. I forgot to mention that before, but obviously everyday I'm on Slack, which is our team communication, so whenever they have some question, I answer them right away, so they at least know how to continue if there's anything, even though they didn't ask me that much, because they were all well-prepared, but those are the two main things.

But, like I said, this is not something I could do permanently, because that amount of time, I will not be able to grow the business. Now, sure, if it would be my life's mission to only work four or five hours a week, I'm actually pretty convinced that I could manage to do that, but the business would suffer in a big way. To be honest, I'm someone who's pretty much goal oriented, so I want to reach at a sky sort of thing. You can have it both ways. You can have the biggest business in the world and triple your business every year, whatever, and expect to only work a couple hours a week. With the power of internet, you could work a couple hours a week and make a decent living, but it's not like you're going to aim for the moon if you're doing that. Personally, I prefer to not just go for a four-hour week, but I prefer to focus my business and drive for growth.

However, I highly, and this is something that I really, really encourage all of you if you're listening right now, I highly recommend to take regular breaks. It's so easy to not do that. Every single time I book a trip, every single time I book my flights to be away for a month, usually in the past I was actually three, four, five, sometimes multiple times even, six-month trips. I'm not doing that anymore. Every single time I book a one-month trip, it scares the beep out of me. I'm always scared when I book it, but I do it because I know that once I'm away, I love it, but my initial response is that, "No, no. I should be focusing. I miss all these opportunities and things could go wrong," and blah, blah, blah. All these kind of excuses which are all making it easy to stay at home.

The truth is, yes, I am missing opportunities when I'm away and yes, things will go wrong and yes, some of my team members might make a mistake that I probably wouldn't have made myself, and you know what? That's fine. If we don't allow ourselves to make mistakes or we don't allow ourselves to miss an opportunity, then we're trapped. We're trapped in our business and that's it, right? At the end of the day, we don't live to make our business or we don't live to be an entrepreneur. I love what I do. I wouldn't trade it for the world. When I wake up, it's the first thing I think about. When I go to bed, it's the last thing I think about. I'm always thinking about my business and how to grow it. I'm passionate about it. I absolutely, absolutely, absolutely love it, but why wouldn't we also focus on things that we love outside of that?

For me, personally, it's traveling and just be away. For example, last week, we were traveling on the Galapagos Islands for a couple days and we had a boat cruise, and during that time I wasn't able to be online at all, not at all, even if I wanted to. We didn't have any connection. We were in the middle of nowhere and it's just so good to be away from everything and to be not checking Facebook, not checking your email, not checking your stats everyday. It's just some kind of freedom in your mind that just gives you a whole lot of energy, so if you're listening right now, do this. Book a trip, go away, take your time off, because I promise you it will give you so much new energy and so many new ideas that you'll easily make that back.

That's pretty much it. That's pretty much the episode I wanted to talk about. I know this is probably not the most organized or a well-organized episode that you've heard, but I think it will still have value with you, so just to summarize, so if you want to get away, make sure you prepare everything well. Write down all your responsibilities for your team. Make sure that everyone knows who is responsible for what and they have step-by-step instructions and also have back-ups in place for the most important things in your business and always have a trial run by pretending that you're not there for, for example, a week or two weeks, where you're basically not allowed to do anything what you're normally focused on.

All your team should all be focusing on all those things and obviously they can ask you questions, but at least they'll be able to ask their questions while you are still there. Maybe even most important, and didn't even mention that, as clearly before, accept that things will go wrong. I think that that's the most important part, because if you can't accept that then, like I said, you're stuck. Do that, book a trip, go away, and I'll see you all or listen to you all, or talk to you all, that's the best way to say it, I'll talk to you all in the next episode. Cheers. Bye bye.

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In episode #15 Wilco talks about on how to get more than 50% conversion rate on your opt-in pages.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:29: I got some pretty awesome stuff for you prepared, If you want to convert more traffic into leads and customers.
01:05: It's not easy to go offline.
01:51: I want to talk about is your conversion rate or pretty much how to get 56% or 55% conversion rates on your opt-in pages.
02:52: I actually convert, I think it was about 54%-55% of all traffic entered their email address.
03:36: Often we would start split testing.
04:01: I created five different pages, and every single page had the exact same copy.
04:30: First round is we split tested the design.
04:42: Second test, based on the winning design we then create five different ones, all with the same design but this time just a different title.
05:02: We try not to go for similar ones, we really try to go for big differences, a different kind of hook.
05:38: We actually got 54%-55% conversion rate.
05:57: Because that's usually what I do, I look at the page, and I think which factor is going to be the biggest influence.
06:06: Right now I'm looking and considering to change the opt-in button.
06:22: A page only converts well if you're getting the right kind of traffic.
06:43: For example, with Facebook ads, what I always make sure of is that I pretty much use the same wording on the actual ad versus what's on the landing page.
08:34: If you're doing online marketing it's the best thing ever that you can track everything you can.
08:44: One tool that I really recommend, is called Visual Website Optimizer.
09:01: Inside of Google Analytics you'll find content experiments.
10:24: Never ever run traffic without using it for split testing as well, because that's just as valuable as the actual customer that you're getting as well.

Transcription:

Hey, it's me Wilco de Kreij here, and I'm happy that you're tuning in today because I think I got some pretty awesome stuff for you prepared. If you want to convert more traffic into leads and customers. Right now it's Thursday, while I'm recording it. It's Thursday, so I've got one day left before my trip. On Saturday I'm flying out to Ecuador, which is pretty much the other side of the world for me. It's a 12 hour flight. Me and my wife are going to travel around, we're going to Ecuador as well as the Galapagos Islands to dive and see the turtles and whatnot.

As you can imagine, especially with a business like this ... Right now we have 15, 16 people or so in the business. It's not easy to go offline. It's not easy at all actually, and when I say offline I literally mean offline. For the first week or so, the first four or five days we're going into the jungle, and there is no electricity there. There is no nothing. There's just ... Complete detox from all the online stuff. Which, to be honest, scares the heck out of me. I'm just a bit of a control freak and I'm so used to be continuously online. Every single day of the week I'm online, so it's actually a good thing. I really don't want to, but at the same time I know that once I'm going to be offline for a while it's going to be a good thing. It's good to take a step back and look at the grand scheme of things, to work on strategy and move forward.

Today, what I want to talk about is your conversion rate or pretty much how to get 56% or 55% conversion rates on your opt-in pages. I remember when I saw other marketers in the past, when I was still starting out, I saw other marketers post statistics on Facebook or on Twitter or wherever, they were talking about their results. That they had opt-in pages converting at 55 or 60% and those kind of numbers. I always thought, Wow, that's like ... That seems like impossible, or maybe just with a small volume." So I was like, "How can you get 50 or 60% conversion rates for your opt-in page?" To me, I knew it was possible because I saw how all these other people talk about it, but I just wasn't able to do it.

Fast forward a couple of years. Obviously I learnt a lot, and I want to share my experience with that, because originally I posted on Facebook one of the results of one of our funnels, one of our opt-in pages. On that opt-in page I actually convert ... I think it was about 54%, 55% of all traffic entered an email address. Which I think is pretty sweet. Obviously that didn't happen overnight, so on this podcast I want to give you the backstory of how that's happening.

Obviously, if I would be able to create an opt-in page that would convert that good right away then I'm a magician or I'm very lucky. Usually it's not like that. There has to be a certain formula in place or certain things that you need to do. What I did, and it's basically what I do for every single opt-in page that we create if we're planning to drive a lot of traffic to it, is often you would start split testing. That shouldn't be a surprise, but most people, they just do one split test and that's it, or they don't really know what to split test.

Now, in this example what I did was ... First of all, I created five different layouts, completely different layouts, and the reason why I did that ... Normally that wouldn't be my first step, but I just wasn't sure whether the layout was any good, in the actual design of the page. I created five different pages, and every single page had the exact same copy. The exact same text, just the design was different. I created five, because I just wanted to have some good numbers and we have a decent amount of traffic to go through. If you don't have that much traffic, I recommend to just go for two or three, because the more options you add the more difficult it's going to be before you have any significant results.

First round is we split tested the design. After we got some traffic coming to the door, we then knew which design was converting best. All right, sure, awesome. What most people do, they do a split test and that's pretty much it. That's not where you should stop. Second test, based on the winning design we then create five different ones, all with the same design but this time just a different title. I just wanted to test out which title actually worked best. Which was the main headline on top of the page.

Because of that we had five completely different ones. We try not to go for similar ones, we really try to go for big differences, a different kind of hook. If you just change a few words, the difference is not going to be that big. You want to test out completely different hooks of how you could describe what you are offering, to see what works. Once you know which hook works best, then later on you can start tweaking the actual title and see if you can get it to convert even higher.

Like I said, we split tested five different designs, then we split tested five different headlines, and from that test we actually got 54%, 55%-ish conversion rate. Obviously we don't stop there, so right now I'm setting up a new split test based on the winner of those two tests. Now I'm actually deciding what factor I think will the biggest influence from the page, because that's usually what I do. I look at the page, and I think which factor is going to be the biggest influence. Where can I have the biggest gain or the biggest win. Right now I'm looking at and considering to change the opt-in button. The button that people actually click before they opt-in. I will be probably creating three or four different variations. I will continuously be split-testing it.

Now obviously it's not just your split test. A page only converts well if you're getting the right kind of traffic. In this case we're driving Facebook ads to this page. What's really important with this, is that wherever your traffic is coming from, there should be synergy between where they're coming from versus where they end up on. For example with Facebook ads, what I always make sure of is that I pretty much use the same wording on the actual ad versus what's on the landing page. If, on your landing page you're going to say, "Hey, download this checklist" for example, then on the opt-in page you're going to say download this Ebook, then some people might think "Hey, wait a second, I was here to download a checklist. Where is that checklist?" So you're going to lose them. You're going to make sure that whatever you're promising them in your Facebook ad, that you're pretty much using almost the identical same text.

If they click on your ad it means that that text that you wrote, the ad copy that you wrote on your Facebook ad, for one reason or another it attracts them. They had the urge to click on that ad based on what they read, so why would you try to change that and then test again whether that other description that you have would also interest them. What you should instead, just use the exact same wording. Of course you can make little tiny tweaks in order for it to make sense, but in general what you should have on your ad on Facebook should be similar as what you have on your opt-in page. So there's one smooth ride from the moment they click on the Facebook ad there should be no thinking. They should be like, "Yeah, I just have to do this and then I'll get whatever I'm promised." They shouldn't ask themselves, "Hey, do I want this?" Because they should make that decision before they click on your Facebook ad and from that point onwards they just need to continue without making it more complex than it should be.

I'm not sure if this helps you, I just want to share this with you, so that I give you a bit of an insight. A lot of people, they see these kinds of numbers like, "Aw, yeah. Awesome conversion rates." And I ask them, "How's it going for you? What do you do?", like "Yeah, I don't really split test."

To me, that doesn't make sense. If you're doing online marketing it's the best thing ever that you can track everything you can. If you were looking for split testing, you don't don't know how to do it, one tool that I really really recommend, I use them a lot, is called Visual Website Optimizer. I use it a lot. If you don't have the budget, you can even use Google Analytics. It's not as user friendly in my experience, but it definitely works as well. Inside of Google Analytics you'll find content experiments. If you search for content experiments you'll find it and it's actually free, which is pretty awesome. To me it didn't seem as accurate as Visual Website Optimizer, but sometimes we even just do it manually. Just keep track of the numbers manually.

We just literally, for every single opt-in page, as well as how many people actually opted in, I just put it into Excel and then based on that I check which one actually wins. It doesn't even have to be super complex. Sometimes the old fashioned way works as well. No matter how you do it, the important thing is that you should do it. If you want to get epic conversion rates, and obviously that doesn't just go for your opt-in page but also for a sales page and whatnot. If you're not running split test then you're wasting traffic.

In fact, right today we're actually firing up new Facebook ads and I'm pretty sure that the initial round of Facebook ads, it's not going to be profitable. The funnel is not that good yet, but I wanted to run it anyway and the sole purpose of that is to gather data. I want to split-test which Facebook ad works best. I want to split-test which opt-in page works best. By the time we get the rest of the funnel done, I already have data to see which opt-in page converts and whatnot. I already have a better understanding of what moves my audience. What triggers my audience to opt-in and to take action and whatnot. Even if it doesn't make me any profit right away I have that data. Never ever run traffic without using it for split testing as well, because that's just as valuable as the actual customer that you're getting as well.

That's what I wanted to share with all of you. Like I said I have one more day left before I start my trip. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to record more episodes during my trip. If not, I'll get back to all of you by the end of February. For now, I want to wish you all an awesome day. Bye bye.

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In episode #14 Wilco talks about the risk he took on his previous product launch (ConnectExplore) and shares the sales funnel that he created for the product launch.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:29: We just recently had a big launch for ConnectExplore, one of the products in our Connectio Suite.
00:39: I had to make some tough decisions that were actually quite risky to do.
01:10: As a company one of the goals that we have is to increase our recurring revenue.
02:17: What we actually do is we try to get as many people, as many affiliates to promote to their audience.
02:27: To make it even more interesting we usually even add a contest to it.
03:22: A real critical element for affiliates is how well it actually converts.
04:16: One of our goals is to have a recurring offer where we get as many recurring products into our business as possible so we can actually maintain and improve our products.
06:15: I had no idea whether it was actually going to work.
06:25: I'm going to do something that has not been done before in our industry and I'm just going to go for it.
06:40: I actually created a funnel that is basically a blend of a lifetime offer and a recurring.
06:53: ConnectExplore which is a tool to find more interest on Facebook ads, find more interest and add it to your Facebook ads.
07:58: ConnectSuite is our overall package or membership of various Facebook ads tools.
10:28: It just blew up, I'm not going to share the numbers with you, but it converted way, way, way above my expectations, I just loved it.
10:56: Right now we have ConnectLeads, ConnectAudience, and ConnectRetarget.
12:16: I actually got this idea from Frank Kern, who recently started his Inner Circle product.
13:58: I call it the lifetime recurring blend funnel,
14:12: Taking risks is fine.

Transcription:

Hey, it's Wilco de Kreij here back with you again. As you probably know we just recently had a big launch for Connect Explorer, one of the products in our Connectio Suite. In order to set up this launch I had to make some tough decisions that were actually quite risky to do. I had no idea whether it was actually going to work out but it did work out. What I want to do now is I want to share this with my audience, with you, so you can also learn from it. Also, I'll share the funnel that we created for it as well.

While I was working on this new product called, once again, ConnectExplore. While I was working on it I wasn't sure how I was going to put it into the market. There's obviously a lot of ways you can do it. As a company one of the goals that we have is to increase our recurring revenue. That means that, basically subscription style income where people either pay as a monthly or a yearly fee instead of just a one-time purchase where they get to it. The reason for that is pretty obvious, because running a software company there's obviously a lot of continuous updates and continuous improvements so we actually have quite a large team. I believe right now we're 15 or 16 people who are continuously building, improving all these tools.

If we would be selling all these tools for a one-time fee, there's no way we would actually be able to maintain them all on a long-term basis. We actually need to have subscription style customers in order to be able to maintain it and to keep making it the best products in the market. That's what our goal is. At the same time, when I do a product launch like this, like we recently did for ConnectExplore, we don't just put out the product and say, "Hey, here is our product," or maybe we sent out an email to our email list.

What we actually do is we try to get as many people, as many affiliates to promote to their audience. We basically say, "Hey, you know what? If you promote this to your audience, you will get a percentage of every sale that you refer. To make it even more interesting we usually even add a contest to it. We say, "Hey, the person or the affiliate who refers most sales in a single week during this special offer that we have, you'll even get a bonus on top of your commissions." We do that in order to get as many people as we can to promote it to their audience.

Obviously, the thing is ... The tricky thing is to convince people that they should actually promote it. It all starts ... That's the first key criteria. It all starts with having a great product. If you want to know more about how to actually get affiliates to promote your product I would highly recommend you to listen to one of the first episodes of this podcast. In that episode, I actually dive into more detail about how you can get affiliates to promote your stuff and your products, and your business and your services.

One thing that we've noticed in the past is obviously that ... A real critical element for affiliates is how well it actually converts. If they would send out to their customers how many of their customers are actually going to purchase it. One of the things why I decided that is because let's say they have three options that they could promote for it but they could only choose one. Let's say for one they would make $100. The other one they would make $200, and the other one they would make $1,000 for the exact same amount of effort, the exact same amount of time, and the exact same amount of emails. Obviously, that third one is going to be the most interesting one so they're going to promote that one and not the other two.

What we always try to do is we want to make sure that our products convert the best from all the things they could promote. Fortunately, enough, so far, it's always been that. Affiliates have always been telling me, "Oh, your products always convert really, really well," but there's always, there has been an exception actually. As I told you, one of our goals is to have a recurring offer where we get as many recurring products into our business as possible so we can actually maintain and improve our products. The thing is that if you sell some product that automatically, like something is, for example, $100 just as an example. It's $100 and people get a one-time fee. They pay it and that's it, no contracts, no anything. $100, they pay you. After that they don't have to do anything again, they don't have to pay anything.

Versus that same offer which is $100 per month for example or $100 per year. Then automatically, automatically your conversions are going to be lower than usual. It's more of a thing that they have to overcome. Paying just $100 one-time fee is a way easier thing than, for example, committing yourself to paying $100 a year, for example. What we noticed is that if we do a product launch and we have a recurring product on the end so it's actually something like, for example, $300 a year for example, it's not converting as well as a one-time product does. For us that's a bit of a problem because on one end we want to actually well more recurring products. However, we know that if we do a product launch and we invite affiliates to promote this, which is one part of our traffic strategy, we know in order to succeed with that we should actually have a one-time offer where their audience can actually get in without having to pay X amount of dollars a year or per month, et cetera.

That was a bit of a problem and that's what I've been breaking my mind on, "How do I go about that?" At some point, I ran into, I had an idea. I had no idea whether it was actually going to work but if nobody actually tries and dares new things then who does? I figured, "You know what? I'm just going to stick my neck out. I'm going to do something that has not been done before in our industry and I'm just going to go for it. Someone asked me, "Hey, did you actually test this out before launch?" I said, "Nope, I'm just going to go for it." What I did is I actually created a funnel that is basically a blend of a lifetime offer and a recurring. Let me explain that.

As I told you in the beginning of this podcast, we launched ConnectExplore which is a tool to find more interest on Facebook ads, find more interest and add it to your Facebook ads. Also, to see and know exactly which interests are actually performing for you. You can actually break down all your Facebook ad statistics on an interest-per-interest level. Things like views and click rates, for example. Not the conversions but views and clicks whereas you can see for every different interest without having to set up a single split test.

We wanted to launch this and what we did is this. During the special offer, we had a lifetime access to ConnecExplore. Just a one-time payment and you would get ConnectExplore for life, just like a person wants to see the best. That's the best deal they're going to get, just a one-time fee, no hassle or anything like that, they keep ConnectExplore for life. Here's the catch, we also ... And we make this very, very clear on the sales pitch, this is not something dirty or anything like that. We make this 100% clear on the sales page.

On top of that we gave them a free 30-day-trial of ConnectSuite. ConnectSuite is our overall package or membership of various Facebook ads tools. After those 30 days, it would actually continue into a $97 a month plan. That's actually already a discount compared to buying all these tools separately. What we did was on the front ad we said, "Hey, here's ConnectExplore. For a one-time fee, on top of that you're going to get as a bonus a 30-day free trial of our membership which is the recurring part. You know what? You can just cancel at any time, just let us know, one single email. Just inform us, hey I want to cancel it. That's it. You don't have to do anything else and you will only pay the $97 per month for ConnectExplore."

Obviously, some people do want to keep on using the trial and the membership which is obviously awesome. One thing you would expect before it already is that part of the people who are going to purchase this, they already know, "Right after I'm going to cancel." The reason is because they just want to get a lifetime access to Connect Explorer for $97. They see the trial of Connect Suite and they know, "You know what? I'm just going to cancel it, that's fine." That is fine. You can cancel it right after and you just keep your lifetime offer.

My idea was that if people do that, people are going through the payment process and they know, at this point they know that the ConnectSuite trial, they just signed up for it for $97 a month if they do not cancel. They know it's actually $97 a month which is already at a discount. Then as you upsell ... "Upsell" because it's not really an upsell per se, but we basically say, "Hey, by the way, you now have the 30 day trial but you know what? If you skip the trial and you upgrade to a yearly account, you will get it for a good discount."

That means that on the front-end I just paid $97 for ConnectExplore and they know they have a 30-day trial which would continue into $97 a month. On the upsell they could immediately upgrade to a yearly plan of Connect Suite, they skip the trial, they don't have to pay $97 a month anymore. That funnel right there which I think is the mix of a lifetime offer, really recurring offer, a blend of them. It just blew up. Once again, I'm not going to share the numbers with you but it converted way, way, way above my expectations. I just, I loved it.

Affiliates were happy because all these people were actually ... The conversions were really good on the front end. At the same time, a lot of people also took us up on the yearly offer on the back end. Even if they didn't, part of the people are obviously going to stick into the membership because they like all the tools that we have. We have some, I'm not going to lie, I'm just excited about all the tools that we have. Right now, we have ConnectLeads, ConnectAudience, and ConnectRetarget. We have some really, really fancy tools coming out that are all going to be included inside of the ConnectSuite as well.

That's the funnel that we had. The reason why I wanted to record this podcast is to share that funnel. Maybe as a part of inspiration maybe you will have this same sort of struggle where you want to increase your recurring revenue line. Also, you know that if you just sell a recurring product then it's going to be tricky thing to sell. For example, a while ago I was talking to a friend of mine and he was ... I'm not going to share his niche but he was in a certain e-Commerce niche. He did the exact same thing. He sold a really cheap product of a frequent shipping offer. He sold it for, it's free but you just pay $8 shipping for a certain product that you got in the mail. That was a no brainer deal.

He included in that purchase he said, "By the way, you also get as a trial a 30-day free membership for us." After those 30 days, it would continue in $10 a month. That might not seem like much but obviously, it adds up. Every single person, they just want to get that single product. After awhile, after those 30 days if they don't cancel you have them in your recurring. It's actually, I think it's genius. I actually got this idea from Frank Kern who recently started his Inner Circle product.

What he did was actually he said that, "Hey, you know what? I have this box. You can buy this box for $47. With that you're going to get, you will get the first month of, I think that's just Inner Circle for I believe it was $397, let's say $400 a month. You pay $50 now and after 30 days you're going to pay $400 a month. That was his main offer and everyone just bought it because they want to have that awesome box with all this stuff for just $50. Everybody was totally planning on canceling.

As the upsell he said, "Hey, thanks you rock. We're going to send you this box to your doorstep. You know what? If you click right here then you're not going to pay $400 a month you're going to pay $300 every single month, and you're going to pay it right now. You're just going to skip the trial but you're going to pay $300 a month. For every single month, you save $100. That's just, I love it. It's so clever because people know that it's actually ... It's not like, "Oh, it's worth $400." No, people signed up for it thinking they are going to pay, if they wouldn't cancel, $400 a month. If they would then end up paying $300 a month that's an awesome deal, it's like a no brainer deal. It's not even like, "Hey, click to pay $300." It's, "Click here and we will cut $100 every single month off your bill." It's actually cheaper if you take that upgrade.

That's really what inspired me to create my mixed funnel, my blend. I call it the lifetime recurring blend funnel but that's just my way of saying it. I'm not sure if this helps you or not, I just wanted to share this out with all of you to maybe, as a bit of inspiration. Also to, taking risks is fine. As far as I know, nobody in this three who is in my affiliate circle has ever done a funnel like this but someone has to stick their neck out and just try different things. You don't always have to go after whatever everyone else is doing. Just dare to do your own thing. If you believe something that could work go for it, even if you're the first one to do it. If it doesn't work out then you figured it out, that's not going to work but at least now you know. You're not just not doing it because nobody else is doing it, but you're not doing it anymore because you know it does not work. Maybe based on that you have some new ideas that you want to try after that.

That's basically it for today. I'm sure that it's a bit longer than usual but, yeah. Basically, what I wanted to do is just dare to take risks, don't be afraid, just go for it. If you are selling some kind of a recurring product or you're planning to, definitely try to implement this idea into your business. It worked really well for me and I hope it will work out for you as well. That's it everyone. Bye-bye, and I will talk to you all soon.

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In episode #13 Wilco talks about the importance of consistency in your business.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:43: ConnectExplore, it's one of the new products that we just launched for Connectio.io
01:16: There is actually one thing that helped us a lot to get more affiliates on board for this one, to get a higher conversion on the sales page.
02:37: What I think helped this a lot over the last couple years is one thing and that is consistency.
04:06: It's a trap, right? You're always going after the next thing.
04:49: UpViral is our viral referral platform and Connectio.io is a suite of various Facebook ad tools.
04:54: The first tool that we created inside of Connectio.io was actually ConnectAudience.
05:56: The things they deliver are actually a great value for what you pay, right?
06:22: Over the years we've shown to our customers, our affiliates, to partners and people around us that this is what we do, and we're sticking to it.
07:07: The reason why they promote it is because they believe in what I do.
07:42: Just by doing the same thing consistently it's going to help you so much.
08:55: I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to customer support.
09:20: That helps me to understand them better, understand our customers better.
09:52: I've actually replied to over 1600 emails, which is insane.
10:22: The whole team is always striving to the best kind of rates of our support.
10:40: We want to make sure we make our people happy.
11:42: Keep on doing it, don't give up after a couple months, but just keep on doing it because only after a while are you going to get that tipping point where everything else becomes easier.

Transcription:

Hey there it's Wilco de Kreij here and while I'm recording this we just got out of a product launch for Connect Explorer. That basically means that right now I desperately, desperately need some sleep, but obviously that's not what we're going to talk about. If you've been following me then you probably saw some emails about it as well, ConnectExplorer, it's one of the new products that we just launched for Connectio, you can check it out at Connectio.io. What we did is we had a big product launch in which we had a special offer for the first couple of days and we then besides just sending it out to our own existing email list and through our own existing customers, we also invited a bunch of affiliates to promote it, so you know they can actually send it out to their audience as well so that we can actually get a lot of people at the same time all checking out this introduction offer and hopefully get access to it.

Now there is actually one thing that helped us a lot that we've been doing over the last couple of years already actually which helped us a lot to get more affiliates on board for this one, to get a higher conversion on the sales page. To get more people to actually purchase, but also for example to get more people to actually take us up on our web sale, because after people got access to ConnectExplore we had an up sale offer so that you can actually get access to that as well.

There is something we did over the last year, two years or so, maybe even longer but at least definitely the last two years that has helped those on all of these things and all together, like I'm not going to share any numbers, I'm not a big fan of that, but the launch went really, really well, above expectations, and I'm just super grateful for my team and all of the customers that actually got access to it, but also for all the affiliates who were kind enough to promote ConnectExplore to their audience. Just super happy, super grateful, and that's why I'm shooting this quick podcast for all of you while we just got out of the trenches. I'm obviously still super busy with the launch and all the work that's involved with it, but I just wanted to touch base with my podcast crew, which you are one if you are listening to this right now to sort of give you the backstory of this.

What I think helped this a lot over the last couple years is one thing and that is consistency. Just consistency, consistently doing something that you believe in. I mean, I'm not sure about you but I'm subscribed to quite a few email lists from all kinds of marketers, and one of the things that I noticed is that a lot of people, they just jump from one thing to the next, right? For example this day they do some kind of product launch for a sort of product, and then I don't know, it's the best thing ever. Right? It's the best ever like, ever, ever, right? Then two months go by and then they promote something else and then that thing is actually the best thing ever, like ever, ever right? And maybe there's even a huge overlap. Then if you then go back to that first product, is it still being updated? Do you still have people working full time on that adding features and what not? No, because now the new thing is the new thing, right?

That just does not make any sense to me. I mean, what ... at what point in time did we actually think that that was a good idea to just start over every single time. Now, granted I'm not going to lie, I've been there, right? I've had various product launches in the past where you know, I just did a launch and then six months later I had another product coming out, and that was sort of like the routine for a while.

At some point, I saw the light, that's not going to work, it's a trap, right? You're always going after the next thing. There is no real world business that works that way, right? It's not like BMW is going to create a car and then after a year they're going to say, "You know what, we're going to get rid of all the cars, now we're just going after motorcycles," and then after a year like ... it doesn't work like that. You want to keep on adding. It's fine to add new products, to launch new products, but you should always ... it should be added on top of your whole whatever you're doing, instead of just replacing the old stuff, right?

What we've been doing over the last two years or so is we've been focusing on two platforms and two platforms alone, which is UpViral and Connectio. Viral is our viral referral platform and Connectio is a suite of various Facebook ad tools. The first tool that we created inside of Connectio was actually Connect Audience. We haven't launched that to the public first, but we actually started building that in February 2015, so almost two years ago. We still ... We're updating it continuously, we have people on top of it. For example at UpViral, we started that even earlier actually. We have three developers working on it full time. Why? It's not that we want to launch something and then just forget about it. We want to keep on adding things on top of it, we want to keep on building.

Now the thing is when you start out doing that, obviously I have a lot of, I don't want to call them competitors but other people in the marketplace who are also creating tools and software, right? Because they usually don't really ... a lot of ... like no offense but a lot of people they build something and they don't really continuously add features, continuously improve it or they don't really have good support or whatever, and because of that they are able to deliver things sometimes for a lower price than we do, right? The things they deliver are actually a great value for what you pay, right? Not going to lie about that, it’s a great offer, but for us in the beginning, it can sometimes be hard to sort of compete with that because someone who is brand new, they're going to see two products and yeah, well this one is price x and this one is price y, why would I pay more for this? From the outside they might even look sort of similar. Right?

Over the years we've shown to our customers and to our affiliates and to partners and people around us that this is what we do, and we're sticking to it. It's not like, "Oh yeah, we're going to do this for a long time," and then six months later we're focusing on something else. No, we said this is what we're going to focus on, and six months later, a year later, we're still doing it, we're still, you know we're not changing, this is what we do and what our long term vision is. Just by doing that consistently it just gives so much trust to the people around you to the partners and to customers as well or potential customers. I mean we even saw, I was talking to various affiliates, they literally told me that the reason why they promote it is because they believe in what I do. So someone said actually that he has been following me for a while but initially he didn't want to promote my products to his audience because he wasn't sure whether we were going to be around.

We have the long form sales pages, right? We have very long sales pages, so for some people that seems a bit off, it's like all the marketers are doing that, so it must be something that you know ... you must be like all the other marketers who are just going to continue and run off and do something else, right? It took them a while to realize that. Just by doing the same thing consistently it's going to help you so much. I think that goes for a lot of my customers as well, right? I see a lot of people, they just do one thing and if it doesn't work out, then they go to the next thing. They're going to try something else, but what I realized and it took quite a few years to realize it actually is that usually there is somewhere along the line there is a tipping point, at which point initially it's really hard to get something off the ground, right? There is a tipping point where everything suddenly becomes so much easier, but you're not going to get to the tipping point unless you stick to the same thing. You just got to grind, you just got to do the same thing over and over and make sure that you do it consistently. Only then you'll be able to get that tipping point and that's when everything becomes a lot easier.

Just giving another example and it's actually one of the reasons why I'm so tired right now, because the truth is a launch like this, a lot of work goes into the preparations, right? All the sales pitch are done before hand, all the affiliates know what to do, all the videos are ready before hand, we have all the videos created for ... in the members area. Everything is all done beforehand, but the thing that kept me up the most is customer support because I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to customer support and normally I'm not in the customer support desk a lot, we have a team taking care of that, we trained them well, but always when we launch a new product, I sort of become this control freak who just wants to see what's happening inside of our support desk. The reason for that is actually because I want to see if there's any issues and I'll want to see how people are using the tools because that helps me to understand them better, understand our customers better and to makes sure we can create updates for it that are actually going to make sense.

We actually already have quite a few updates listed just from the initial couple days because people are sending over some great results, if I wouldn't have been inside of the support desk myself, I might not have seen that. I mean my support staff might have summarized it for me, but there's always something that gets lost in translation, so over the last seven or eight days or so, I've actually replied to over 1600 emails, which is insane.

That's just from the support desk by the way, that doesn't include my own inbox, my Facebook inbox, and doesn't include any of the chats I've had with affiliates and all of that. 1600 just from the support desk, back to our customers, that I personally did, not even the rest of my team. But that's just the reason why I want to make that clear, once again one of the things I think we've done consistently is we care about our customers, not just me but our whole team. I mean the whole team is always striving to the best kind of rates of our support, as we automatically keep track of how happy you are. If you send in a reply, and we send a reply back you can automatically vote how happy you are with the reply. We're always striving to basically get the highest score possible. We want to make sure we make our people happy.

That's also something, if you just do that for a week or a couple weeks then people aren't really going to know this, right? If after a couple years people have been sending multiple messages in and every single time they're happy with the result or at least most of the times because obviously you can't always make everyone happy, right? Over time it's going to become clear, "All right, these guys, they actually have good support, right?" If you just do that for a week, or a couple weeks or a couple months, it's not going to have an immediate effect but once you do that long enough, once you do that consistently over a long period of time, at some point there is a tipping point where people are going to talk about it and say, "Wow these guys, they're actually really good. They have good support, go there." That just makes everything so much easier, right?

That's really just the thing that I wanted to share with all of you, so whatever you're doing in your business, don't try to switch from one thing to another, but be consistent in what you do. Do something that you actually believe in and be consistent with it. Keep on doing it, don't give up after a couple months, but just keep on doing it because only after a while are you going to get that tipping point where everything else becomes easier and also it takes a while to sort of get a certain image into your customers or into your prospect's mind. If they're going to see that for a long period of time, over and over that you're actually sticky to what you do, then they know that it's true, you're not just saying that it's true, but they know that it's actually true.

That's it for today, I hope this helps and I hope you all have an awesome day. Bye, bye, cheers!

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In episode #12, Wilco talks about how to get sane during a busy period in your business. You might be able to relate to such a busy period, right?

Listen as Wilco provides you with great advice on how do you make sure you're not stressed out, at least to a minimum degree, while getting all your stuff done.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:52: We run two software companies, UpViral and Connectio.io
00:55: Suite of various Facebook tools, tools for Facebook advertisers to make their ads more profitable and more efficient.
01:10: ConnectLeads, ConnectAudience, ConnectRetarget.
01:12: Launch a new product: ConnectExplore
01:22: The downside is that whenever we launch a new product, there's so much work that goes into that.
01:53: When we launch a product, we usually do it with a lot of affiliates.
02: 39: I want to move and I want to move fast.
02:50: What we always do is we pick a date that we're going to launch it in advanced, usually like two months in advanced.
03:00: that's the date we are going to launch it, no exception, no excuses.
04:10: We have first Christmas day and second Christmas day in the Netherlands.
05:06: The thing is that I wanted to talk about today, how do you stay sane in a period like this?
05:59: First thing I do is I always have a clear, detailed list so I know exactly what I need to do.
06:58: I imagine the worst case scenario.
07:46 It's good to try and achieve as much as you can, but never forget that whatever you're trying to do it's not as important.
08:42: It's really important to take time off.
10:14: Focus on your end goal.
10:25: I also reward myself.
11:51: Record a podcast episode to talk about it.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, everyone. I hope you're all doing great and I also hope that you got to enjoy Christmas over the last couple days. Right now it's just a few days after Christmas, right before New Year's, and I'm sitting at my desk and I am super, super stressed out, actually. It's an incredibly busy time at the business right now and sometimes it just drives me crazy. I'll probably have to start at the beginning.

As you probably know, we run two software companies. One is AdViral and the other one is Connectio, which is a suite of various Facebook tools. Basically, tools for Facebook advertisers to make their ads more profitable and more efficient. In that arrange of tools we have actually multiple tools, right, so we have right now connect leads, connect audience, and connect with targets, and we are about to launch a new product, which is pretty exciting I think. I'm actually really excited about it. It's called CONNECTExplorer.

The down side is that whenever we launch a new product, there's so much work that goes into that. I mean, not just the product itself, but ... Well, also the product itself, actually. It's not just thinking about what it should do, it's not just designing it and the whole infrastructure and actually building it, like the actual development of it, but also things like testing and training the support team and creating training videos and all this good stuff. That's just the tool, right, and even outside of that there's so much stuff on the marketing side.

When we launch a product, we usually do it with a lot of affiliates. We invite affiliates or other people who in turn can then promote our tools to their customers and to their audience and they will get a percentage of the commission. There's so much work involved with that. Not just the sales pages and the sales videos and the email sequences and all that kind of stuff, but also things like running ads to get affiliates on board and talking with affiliates on one on one and deciding on the pricing structure and the funnel and all this. There's just a thousand and one things that need to happen.

Which is cool, right? It's good. That's part of our job and I like it. The thing is that whenever we launch a product, I'm not someone who's just going to work and see whenever it's done, blah blah blah. I want to move and I want to move fast. I want to take the best out of the year and I want to do as much as I can in order to move forward. For that reason, what we always do is we pick a date that we're going to launch it in advanced, usually like two months in advanced, and we say "All right, that's the date we are going to launch it. No exception. No excuses, that's the date. Unless someone dies, that is the date that we're going to launch it."

In this case, we picked January 4th. We picked the date roughly, I think two months ago. From that point on, we know that's when it's all happening. Usually that works out pretty well, right? Usually over the last couple of products that we launched everything ... Basically, ahead of time everything was fully done. The reason why I like to do that because I don't like to have stress in my life, right? I'm trying to avoid stress at all times.

In this case, we had some delays on the team, mainly on the marketing side, which means that everything was sort of pushed back. The result of that is that right now we have less than a week left and there's still various things that need to be happening on the marketing side, things like videos and finishing up the sales page and quite a bit of work all on the marketing side.

I'm confident that we will finish it, but in order to get it to be done it's just a super stressful time at this moment. For example, right now ...

Even on Christmas, we have two days of Christmas, right? We have first Christmas day and second Christmas day. That's just a thing here in the Netherlands. It's the way we do it. That's usually when we all go to families, just like you probably did. On the first Christmas day, we went to my wife's family and then on the second Christmas day we went to my own family. Usually we go there at eleven or so.

During the morning I worked, and then the moment I go back home I worked, which is not something you want to do on Christmas day. That's the way it is right now. On all the other days I usually work right now from like eight am to around twelve pm with not much breaks in between. That's just because I want to get stuff done right now. It's not always as fun.

Just so you know, these are not my typical working hours because that's obviously crazy, but what ends to happen needs to happen, right?

The thing is that I wanted to talk about today, how do you stay sane in a period like this? You might be able to relate to such a busy period, right? You maybe had some deadlines in the past as well where you just need to get so much stuff done, or maybe you even earlier on ... For example, when I look back at university or at high school, I remember when I had exams or tests that I was always super stressed out because there was so much to learn and to do or whatever. You might be able to relate to that where you're just so, so busy that you're just stressed out and you're just generally stress out.

Now, how do you fix that? How do you make sure you're not stressed out, at least to a minimum degree, while getting all your stuff done. There's a couple things that I do to stay as sane as I can, even in the busiest moments of the year. First thing I do is I always have a clear, detailed list so I know exactly what I need to do.

For example, when we do a product launch, we actually have a full template of all the steps, all of the tiny, tiny steps that we need to do. We know when we're going to launch a product from A to Z, these are all the things we need to do and we can just check it off of our list. All right, that's done. That's done. That's done. By knowing exactly what you need to do, once you have it on a list, once you've written it down, you can just forget about it basically. You can remove it from your head because you have it on the list and you know if you just follow that list you're going to finish everything, right? That's the first thing I highly recommend you to do. Write everything down that needs to happen.

I think one of the most important things for me, when I sometimes go crazy and I'm super stressed out and I'm not always as fun to be around with, I guess, what I do is I imagine the worst case scenario. What if everything goes South, and I mean everything. We're all trying so hard to have an impact in the world and to grow our business, but what's the worst case scenario? Even if the worst of the worst of the worst would happen, at the end of the day this is just, quote unquote, just a business. If everything fails, if a product launch doesn't go as planned, nobody's dying. Nobody's getting sick. It's not that bad.

People around me, especially over the recent period, I had multiple people in my environment who sadly passed away way too early. That just makes you realize ... That just puts things in perspective. It's good to try and achieve as much as you can, but never forget that whatever you're trying to do it's not as important. The people around you, your wives, your family, your husband, your parents, everyone around you. That's what really matters. If you are sometimes stressed out and you're just generally stressed out, just think of the things that are really, really important and that sort of makes you realize that the things that we sometimes seem to worry about are not even that important.

That's something that helps for me a lot, actually. I do that pretty much every day. Just make myself realize that it's not that important. The worst case scenario is still a pretty good deal if you look at it like that. Everyone's healthy and all of that.

Also, it's really important for me, at least ... Everyone is different, of course, but for me it's really important to take time off. Even though it's super busy and, like I said, I made long days right now, but I always go for a walk, for example. Just clearing my mind and not doing anything with work. The moment I start working nonstop, all the time, I just know the next day I'm going to be less productive. You're still human. Maybe you are a robot, I don't know, but for me I cannot be productive all the time. You need to have time off. Instead of having that at random whenever my body says, "Well, stop," I'd rather just plan it in and I schedule it in beforehand. Every couple of hours or whatever I go for a walk, take a little bit of time off, and that really helps me to stay sane as well.

While doing that, I usually also imagine that worst case scenario. "oh yeah, I'm trying my best, but don't forget this is just a business. It's not your life." That really helps me to stay sane as well.

With that also, obviously, and really important at least for me once again, everyone is different, is exercise. Personally I love to play squash. It's a kind of tennis kind of thing. It's really energetic, I love it. That just helps me to clear my mind and to just be able to focus the next day again. I usually do that in the evenings. It helps me to focus the next day again on the business. For me, that's really part of my routine as well.

One thing that really helps me stay sane as well, especially during such a busy period, is focus on your end goal. Right now, we're super busy for this launch, and I have my end goal. I know exactly what the end goal is going to be. With that, I also reward myself. For example, by the end of January my and my wife, we are actually going to Ecuador for a three week trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos islands. We're going to travel around because we just love to travel, we love to meet new people and love to explore new cultures and all that. We're going to Ecuador is South America for a couple weeks. That helps me now, as well. I'm like, "I'm just going to be super, super busy. That's fine because I know what the reward is going to be. In a couple weeks or in a month from now I'm going to fly off and I'm going to spend some quality time with my wife while traveling to an amazing country." That helps me a lot as well.

Altogether, let's go through the list. How do I actually stay sane even if it's super, super, super busy? First of all, have a clear list of what needs to be done so you know exactly what needs to be done. Also, keep in mind what the worst case scenario is because often you're worrying about things that are not really worth worrying about. Also, make sure to take time off, exercise, and also focus on your end goal. If possible, reward yourself after you've put some really hard work in. That sort of is the pain that you're going through.

That's how I do and also maybe I could even add another one which is record a podcast episode to talk about it, which I'm doing right now. Actually I'm recording this at the beginning of my day right before I dive into the action because I just wanted to get this off my chest. I actually feel that it's already helping, so that's good.

What I'm going to do now is I'm going to go for a walk, clear my mind a bit, and then I'm going to dive into the action. With that having said, I hope you have an amazing day and I also hope that you have an awesome New Years Eve and an awesome start of the next year. All right, that's it. I will catch you all in 2017.

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On this episode, Wilco we’ll talk about the most important success factor in your business.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:38: Have you ever bought a tool or a software or something like that and ended up never using it?
01:32: UpViral, Viral referral marketing platform.
01:44: What Dropbox did was if someone signed up to Dropbox they get everyone of their members to own their own unique invite link.
03:18: Brad Costanzo, added 3,000 subscribers within a couple of weeks using UpViral
04:06: Facebook community where people can actually discuss and brainstorm about how they are viral hacking their business.
04:38: 10,000 emails subscribers for three weeks using UpViral
06:15: What my point here is that usually it's not about the tools that we have.
08:03: The point is if you are selling a product to your customers and it doesn't really matter what it is, often it's not just about your actual product.
08:35: Do everything in your power to make sure that they are going to see all the value that you have in it.
09:26: Like showing case studies from others to first of all learn from so they can learn what others are doing.
09:28: Start seeing results from others so they believe it actually works.
10:14: If you sell something make sure, absolutely sure, that you do everything within your power to make your customers believe and know it actually works for them.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, it's Wilco de Kreij here back with you again. Today we're going to talk about something that I was really fascinated by over the last couple of days. Before I dive into today's episode, let me ask you a quick, quick question. Have you ever bought a tool or a software or something like that and ended up never using it? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. At least I hope I am. I think all of you can relate to that where you sometimes buy a piece of software, but for one reason or another you don't really use it, even though at the moment you purchased it, at the moment you actually entered your credit card details, you were sure this was going to help you solve problems, or this was going to help you get more results, or whatever your motivation was. You had some reason to buy it but you ended up never really using it.

I probably got tons of tools that I've bought just for the sake of maybe I could use it and I end up never using it. I think a lot of people can relate to that. That's related to what I want to talk about today because as you probably know, if you're listening to my podcast, I am the founder of UpViral and UpViral is a viral referral marketing platform. We've been building it for years and it allows you to basically use the exact same model as what Dropbox did. What Dropbox did was if someone signed up to Dropbox they get everyone of their members to own their own unique invite link. All these people could literally invite their friends over with their own unique link and they would automatically keep track of who was signed up.

They could literally say like, "Hey, every single time one of your friends signs up you will get extra storage into Dropbox." Dropbox is like a cloud based backup space, in case you're not familiar with that. That used them to grow tremendously. I'm 100% sure that if you know Dropbox you probably know about it because one of your friends sent it over to you. That's how powerful it is. That exact same model, that's what you can do with UpViral as well. You can do it in tons of different ways.

You can run giveaways, for example you can say, "Hey, if," for example, "you get five of your friends to subscribe as well, then using your own UpViral link then they will get something of value." You can get for example a discount coupon or some other piece of value, a video, something that you're sending them, whatever it is. You can also use it to run contests. Anyway, this tool, this podcast is not here. I'm not here to pitch UpViral or anything like that. I just wanted to give you a rundown so the rest of this episode is going to make more sense.

We've been doing that for a long time for a couple of years now. Officially we've been on the market for like one and a half years or so. Obviously, we've been building it before that time as well. We have thousands of people who are customers. What's funny is that last week, I think it was last week, we published a new blog post in which we interviewed one of our customers. His name is [Brad Costanzo . He launched a brand new coffee brand together with his wife and he used UpViral as a test to see how it all went. Within a couple of weeks he added 3,000 subscribers, email subscribers to his new brand new startup using an UpViral contest which is pretty awesome even though it's still a fairly small campaign.

We interviewed him. We asked him a bunch of questions how he did it to send it over to our customers so they can learn from that as well. We published that on our blog. Coincidentally, we sent it out to all of our customers and just a few days later someone else in our Facebook group, we have a Facebook community where people can actually discuss and brainstorm about how they are viral hacking their business. I say viral hacking because that's how I summarize this process. Viral hacking means that you have this type of referral platform somewhere inside your business where people, if they sign up, you give them their own unique invite link so they will actually start promoting your business for you on your behalf.

Someone who's also viral hacking, who's also using UpViral, he boasted in the Facebook group that he's been using UpViral for three weeks now and on his very first campaign he got well over 10,000 emails subscribers. I mean that's crazy. He started out with a Facebook fan page with 250 fans which let's be honest isn't that much. He boasted his results in the group. He said like, "Oh yeah, I've been using it first time ever about three weeks time and I've just collected well over 10,000 email subscribers."

What's funny is that initially we sent out that case study to our customers by using an email. Then quite a few of our customers, that are inside that Facebook community, so they saw someone else also talk about what results they were having. Over the last couple of days, basically on our support desk we measure what kind of results we're getting or what kind of questions we're getting, how many, et cetera, et cetera. Over the last couple of days we see an immense spike in users who already had UpViral but they weren't necessarily doing it. They weren't necessarily using it.

All of a sudden like, "Oh yeah, I want to start a new viral campaign as well," and they got all these questions to strategic or how should I do it best or things like that which is funny. All these people already had access to UpViral. They bought it at some point. They kept it and they didn't really take action, enough action. All of a sudden they see two case studies in a single week where other people are getting really great results using UpViral. All of a sudden they all start using UpViral. What my point here is that usually it's not about the tools that we have. I mean inside all of your businesses you have all kinds of tools that you're using, right?

If I look at myself, obviously I use Facebook ads, I use Slack for communication, I use for my emails, I use UpViral for growth. I use all these things but usually it's not about what tools you have but it's about believing that these tools work. If you see other people are having results, if you see other people are saying like, "Yeah, this tool is awesome. I got this, this and this done with it," that's when you in your mind believe that that tool is actually what you need to use. My point here being is that we have all these things in our businesses. We gather information. We buy courses. We get coaching. We buy tools that we think could help us but all of these things don't really matter as long as we don't really believe it's going to work.

If you buy a certain course that's going to help you using Facebook ads but if you don't really believe in Facebook ads, or you don't believe that Facebook ads course is actually showing you the right things, then it doesn't matter. You can look at it but if you don't believe it that those things are actually true or actually working really well, then you're not going to take action, right? It's the same thing with tools. If you don't really think or believe it's going to get you results then it's not going to work. My point here is not just saying like, "Oh yeah, we got some amazing cases that UpViral works," which by the way it does. We have people who've gathered hundreds of thousands of subscribers using UpViral which is I think pretty awesome. I'm happy with that but that's not the point here.

The point is if you are selling a product to your customers and it doesn't really matter what it is, often it's not just about your actual product. It could be a piece of software for example. It could also be coaching or anything else. It's not just about the actual product. It's not just about the features that you have, but what might be even more important, is that you need to onboard your customers into believing that whatever you're selling works. Not just through the point on your sales page where you say, "Yeah, this is awesome and it works." Then they click the buy button and that's it. It only starts there. It only starts there.

After that point don't just give them the product and that's it but actually do everything in your power to make sure that they are going to see all the value that you have in it. You don't do that just by saying like, "Oh yeah, we have this feature and we have this feature and you can do this with it and you can do that with it," but actually show other people who are having results using the product that you have. I think that's just super important. I mean for me as a super entrepreneur who's running multiple companies as service companies, that way of thinking is incredibly important.

Usually I'm so focused on building new features because it's often easier to think that that's what's going to get our customers more and even more results. What I realize now is, especially this week, that it's not just about extra features but it's also about the education and just giving people the belief, the trust that it actually works, like showing case studies from others to first of all learn from so they can learn what others are doing. Secondly, start seeing results from others so they believe it actually works because only if they believe something works, they're going to go through the pain of implementing it, because no matter what you are selling, for example if it's a course, there is always a bit of quote, unquote, pain.

They always need to spend time going through it and the only way they're actually going to do that is if they actually, actually believe that it's going to get them the results they want. That's pretty much it. What I just wanted to give you the quick punchline if you sell something make sure, absolutely sure, that you do everything within your power to make your customers believe and know it actually works for them, not just to the point of getting them to actually purchase your product, but especially after that. Send them even more. Send them case studies.

Send them everything they need because once, even if it's just a one time purchase, the more they will start believing in that your product or you as a person or your brand or your business is the ultimate thing that they want and the ultimate thing that is going to get them results, the more, first of all, they're going to use it, but secondly the more they're going to talk about it with their friends. Like, "Ah, this is awesome and it works and it's amazing." That's what we are seeing right now. People are talking more and more about UpViral because, first of all, they're getting more results and also because they see other people who are getting results.

I just want to share that real quick. I hope it's going to make sense to you all and I want to wish you all an awesome day. Bye, bye.

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In Episode #10, Wilco answers the question that he got asked a lot, listen as he discuss what he’ll do if he has to start all over again from scratch and what kind of business will he start.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:29: What would my wife start something online?
03:10: Formulated the business model for my wife if she will do this.
04:08: What would be my model, exactly?
04:04: Pick a market you know, that there is money to be spent.
04:32: People buy on emotions.
07:15: Look what other brands and people are doing.
07:25: connectio.io/blog/, Spy tools for Facebook Ads.
08:25: look in Alibaba/Aliexpress
09:50: Start driving Facebook Ads, see which ones works best.
10:10: I really suggest to go for just one product first, make as simple as possible.
10:59: Add a recurring element on the backend.
13:40: I would create my own brand.
15:52: Bulletproof coffee, they are not selling their product, what they sell is productivity.
16:22: One actual product at the front end, one recurring element on the backend, and one high ticket item.
16:52: Octopus funnel.

Transcription:

Hey, it’s me Wilco de Kreij here, back with you again. Today, I’m going to answer a question that I get asked a lot and I usually really, really don’t want to answer this question. The question is, “Hey, what would you do if you had to start all over from scratch again?” Or, “What kind of business should I start?” A lot of people ask me that and the reason why I think they ask me that is because at this point they don’t have a business yet and they want to sort of know the pathway from zero to hero.

They sort of want to know, “Hey, what should I do in order to become successful online?” I think that’s just an impossible question to ask. It’s way, way too broad. It’s pretty much like if I were to ask someone, “Hey, how do I build a house?” There’s so many things you could mean with that. Do you mean on the planning side? Do you mean how to buy it? Do you mean what kind of stones to pick, the constructional side? What do you mean? How do I start a business is not really a question that can be answered. Right?

Over the last weekend, something very interesting, and a lot of fun in the process as well, happened. Because like every Saturday morning, my wife and I we do our grocery shopping for the whole week. While doing that, we always take down a nice lunch for Saturday afternoon. Right?

Same thing this weekend, so we sat down at noon for our Saturday lunch at home. We were talking, we started talking, and one of the things we sort of run into … Not really run into, but some of the things we talk about is that I’m an entrepreneur and I can work from wherever I want. It doesn’t really matter whether I’m here in the Netherlands or whether I’m traveling. I can work from pretty much wherever.

She’s, more or less, the career type, so she has a job and she’s not an entrepreneur, she’s not a marketer, she doesn’t do anything online. She’s just like, she goes to her job and she comes back. There’s not really much room for traveling, except for when she has time off which is kind of limited every year obviously.

We started talking and she’s like, “What if I would start something online?” Right? “What if I would have my own thing as well?” Right? She’s not really much of the online type. Like I said, she doesn’t know anything about marketing and at the same time she also doesn’t want to rely on just online stuff. She wants to actually, if she would start something, she would want to have a physical product for example, something like e-commerce. She wants to actually see the product. She doesn’t want just have a digital product like I do, for example, with software.

What happened was we started this conversation at 12, at noon, and we didn’t get up from our table until 5:30, which is kind of crazy, we spent roughly five, five and a half hours on this conversation. We just kept talking and talking, and brainstorming on things we could do. Looking backwards, what I realized is we sort of formulated the business model that she would be able to start if she would do this. I’m not sure if she would, she’s really focused at her job, and there’s a lot of other stuff she wants to do as well like sports and friends and all of that. I’m not sure if she actually would, maybe, maybe not.

We’ll see. Regardless of that, like what came out of this conversation is actually pretty interesting, I think, for you guys. For all of my audience that maybe is on the pathway to start something. I figured I’m just going to record an episode on basically what the model is that I think, that I definitely would start if I would be her. Personally I’m really much focused on the software side, and I love the digital products, but let’s say I want to start a more physical business with an online, obviously online based, but like an e-commerce or anything like that, what my model would be exactly.

The first thing I would consider in picking a niche or picking a market would be to pick a market where you know there is money to be spent. It needs to be something that, for example, pretty much all B2B, business to business markets that would be the case, but there’s a lot of business to consumer markets as well. I mean if people are pregnant there’s a lot of money in that. People buy on emotions. People buy on things like that, and you can more easily charge something without people actually knowing what it is. Basically the market needs to be something that where people spend money on, and it should not be a commodity, because a commodity, that’s pretty much a race to the bottom.

People know how much they spend, for example, on coffee. Obviously you can increase the value of that a bit by making it all healthy, or making up like you get all coffee from all parts of the world, but still there’s no way people are going to pay $80, for example, a bag of coffee beans. It should not be a commodity, it should be something where people are willing to spend money on. It should be something where people buy on emotions. That’s what I like, because when that happens, when people buy on emotions you can more easily create your own brand and then charge whatever you want, in a way. Obviously there’s a limit to that, but if you market it right you’re in more control of your pricing, and because of that you’re more in control of your margins as well.

That’s really what I’m interested in. Without really solid margins it’s really hard to advertise. That margins are not even there just to make a profit, but the margins are there to be able to advertise on the line, and still make a profit. I see a lot of people struggle with that. In fact, my wife she actually did one project before, and that’s why I brought up the coffee example, because in the past she started a web-shop for a subscription-based coffee bean shop. The problem with that was that there was really, almost no margin. There was like a 10% margin, or something like that. The only way she could drive traffic into that web-shop was if she would be able to send free traffic. There’s obviously a lot of limit to that.

Either it takes a lot of time, and even then it’s sort of limited. Going back to what I would do if I would have to start over all again, I would pick a market where people spend money, where people buy on emotion, and it’s not a commodity. That way you’re able to find something where you can put your own price tag on it, and go for a good margin on your product. What I would do next is inside that market is I would start looking, this would be a shop in the Netherlands. What I would do in this case. This goes also if you go for an English-spoken market, but I would basically look at what other products are doing, or what other people are doing. For example, if I see any Facebook ads inside that market, and there’s obviously some tools out there, we’ve covered some on our Connect IO blog, at ConnectIO/blog you’ll find some tools.

If you look for spy tools or something like that you’ll find various sites where you can find basically tools where you can find existing Facebook ads to go through. If I could find any ads to similar products, and see if they have a lot of likes, or a lot of shares. If they get a lot of likes, for example, we did some research and we saw some ads that had like 20,000 likes on the actual post that I know for a fact that that person who is running that advertisement has been running it for awhile, and there’s no way that person would keep on running that specific Facebook ad without making a profit.

Now I know that that person is targeting that Facebook ad to a specific product while making a profit. I know, hey, that’s a good start. I would start inside that market, I would start looking for various products which are all really cheap to get. I would go for physical products that are roughly, if you check them out on Alibaba or Ali-express, which is one of the sites that you can buy stuff on in China, ideally stuff that you would be able to buy for between $3 and $5, $3 and $6. Something like that. Like really cheap, but these have to be things that people don’t really … It’s not a commodity, and you have your own, you put your own swing to it, and you can really solve a problem with that. That way you could … You think you’ll be able to charge, for example, $15 or $20 for that.

You’ll be paying, for example, $5, and you’ll be charging $20. What I would do is i would try to find, roughly, let’s say three, four products of these. Like not more than that. Just three or four, that will be your best bet. That’s the first phase of what I would start. I would start advertising that. I would see which one of those products I would be able to make to get the best return on. It doesn’t even have to be profitable at this point, even if it’s just break even that would be perfect. Let’s say if I would be spending $5, and I would get $20 back, that would leave so like $15 for overhead cost plus advertising cost.

I would start testing it all out, I would start driving, in my case mainly Facebook ads. All these three or four products, see which one works best, I would then cut off all the others that are not working, and I would just pick one of those products. Just super easy, because one of the things when first starting something like this is also your motivation. I know that for my wife, for example, she’s not someone who’s going to be super passionate, super motivated, who is going to be working for months and months and months before getting results. I really suggest to go for just one product first. Make it as simple as possible so that you’re going to stay motivated as well.

You’re going to pick three or four products, see which one you can get work on, spend, for example, $100, $200 on ads on every one of those products, which might seem a lot, but that’s the amount of money that you need to put into this in order to fully test to see what happens. Pick the one that’s working best for you. That’s the one that you’re going to go for. Then you’re going to optimize. You’re going try to see maybe a couple different sales pages for example, different ads, and see if you can get to better. That will be your front-end product.

Once you’ve got that running, right after what I would do is I would add a recurring element on the back-end, which means that after they purchase that first product, I would try to get them into a recurring subscription style business. That could be for example an online course, or an online membership, which would be my preference, because I’m all about online. If it’s all online then you’ll only have fixed cost to create it. For example, if it will be a membership with like videos and all of that, you would have to spend money on making those videos, maybe, but there’s no cost of actually sending the products out, which means there’s a lot of margin on that.

This could even be a low-ticket, a really cheap recurring subscription. Could even be like $10, $20 a month, for example. Obviously it starts to add up, because that’s really what we want. We don’t want to just keep on selling, selling, selling in order to grow, but if you have a recurring element the every single month you’re going to get more people into that membership, and into that subscription style business, and that way it starts to grow. Even if your sales are flat. Even if your sales are the same every single month. I’d be doing that. I’d be adding a recurring element, and in case of my wife, like I said before she’s really into the physical products and she really likes doing that, so maybe for her it would be better to go for a subscription box.

In a lot of niches and a lot of markets you have these boxes where every single month you send something their way. Well I just told you about the coffee business that she sort of started, which is like that web-shop, and I think she only had like seven or eight customers, like not a lot. That was for a subscription-based for coffee. The thing is, and that’s actually what raffled me. I think she had like a total of seven customers, which is not a lot, once again, but she started that roughly two and a half years ago. Two of their customers who started right from the start are still a customer, so every single month, they still receive coffee from my wife’s business, and they still every single month they pay for it. That’s the power of recurring. Like even two, two and a half years after they’re still a customer, that’s really why I would want to add a recurring element into that business.

That would be my second phase. I wouldn’t start it off creating that recurring element right away, because initially I don’t even know whether this business works. I don’t even know whether that front-end product is going to [inaudible 00:13:06], but once I do know that, that’s when I right away, I start adding a recurring back-end offer. Now, one thing I would also do is instead of just shipping out products from China or whatever, that’s what I would initially do, right. I would initially just buy products from China. Keep it super low-key, keep it really easy to get started and don’t over complicate it. Right after I prove the concept, I would actually create my own brand. I would hire a designer, I would create my own brand name, I would create my own logo, and all of that. Every single product that I would sell would have that exact same branding.

I would change the packaging, it could be the exact same product, but I would change the packaging so that it’s actually … It all adds up to the brand. Let’s take an example, if something is a brand you become exclusive. There’s nothing else that could offer that. I mean if you would sell, for example coffee beans, there’s a lot of other coffee beans. Let’s say, this is a silly example, you would have the brand Coolio Coffee, whatever. There’s no other place where you can buy Coolio Coffee. Obviously you’re not selling coffee, then you would be selling something like a new, exploring new tastes of the world. Whatever your hook is. Like, you’re not selling the actual product, you’re selling them an emotion. Of course coffee might not be the best example, but in most businesses you don’t really sell what product you’re actually selling.

I don’t know if you guys know from Bulletproof Coffee, they’re not really selling their coffee. What they sell is productivity and high-performance. That’s what they really sell. It’s just delivered in the form of something else. That thing that you’re actually selling them, that emotion that you’re actually selling them to, that’s what you want to have in your brand all the way through. Going back to, so like wrapping it up. What I would do is I would, once again, I would pick a couple of products, front-line products, physical products, all low cost products like $3, $4, $5. Sell them for like roughly $20 or so. Start driving Facebook ads to them. See if any of those actually converge. Once it does and actually proves the concept, I would start creating a brand, I would also create a recurring element on the back-end, so right after someone purchases it I would actually say, “Hey, you know what, you’ve now joined this membership.”

Get them into that recurring membership, and then the next phase would be to add a higher-ticket item. Something like, especially, once again, this is from my wife’s perspective. She wants to also work one-on-one with people. tHat’s what she likes to do. If that’s what you like to do that’s awesome. In that case I would ideally add also a higher-ticket item on the back-end for, for example, $5,000. Where people get to work with her, like workshops or whatever, the market she would be in. More or less a one-on-one or one-to-group kind of level. That would be a third product in the line. At this point it’s a pretty simple business. We would end up with one actual product on the front-end. We would have one recurring element on the back-end, and we would have one high-ticket item afterwards that as well.

All of that is in the same brand, and obviously everything you do, if you start a blog, or if you do any outreach or anything like that. Everything adds up to that single brand. Once you got it running obviously you want to add multiple front-end products. I mean I sort of see that as an octopus funnel where all these kinds of products all lead into the same bucket that you have in the middle, which is that recurring element. That’s pretty much in simplified way what I would do if I had to start all over from scratch if I would not go for a fully digital business.

Honestly I’m a geek. I love all this online stuff. I would probably go for something that’s 100% digital, because there’s just a lot more margin, and because of that it’s easier to advertise and scale up. If I would be like my wife, or maybe you’re the same as well, who just wants to have a physical product, who wants to see what they’re selling, who wants it to be actual real in the real world, then this is definitely what I would do. Perhaps maybe this is something that my wife actually is going to execute on. We’re going to see if she does. I’m obviously more than happy to help her out along the way. If we do that I’ll definitely report back on this podcast. If you are listening to this, let me know if this inspired you, or if this helped you. I’d really love to hear that. That having said, I think I’m going to stop recording now, and I’ll talk to you all soon.

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In Episode #9, Wilco talks about Facebook ads, listen as he shares his knowledge on what to do if your Ad campaign is not working.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:46: Facebook video ads are right now probably the cheapest way to advertise on Facebook.
01:25: connectio.io, to make your life easier and your ads more effective.
02:19: The number one thing that I see people doing wrong with their Facebook ads isn't actually even remotely closely related to their Facebook ads.
06:00: Let's be honest, with Facebook ads you're sort of doing interruption marketing.
07:20: In order to be effective on Facebook, you shouldn't just get some people to buy your stuff.
08:05: Webinar, that actually made a huge difference.
08:53: Well the problem usually is that they're funnel and website is not converting the way it should be.
09:59: Start looking at your actual funnel.

Transcription:

Hey there it's me, Wilco de Kreij here and welcome back to today's episode. I'm actually really excited because, I don't know. I'm just in this zone right now. I'm just in this flow where I'm super productive and a lot of things are moving forward and I'm just overall excited.

Just this morning I actually just recorded various videos which we'll be using as Facebook video ads because as you may or may not know, Facebook video ads are right now probably the cheapest way to advertise on Facebook. At least that's what my experience is. Plus, it's not just cheap but it's also really good way to communicate with your audience, right? You actually can be more persuasive than with just a written text, for example. Yeah, really like video ads.

I figured today we're going to talk about Facebook ads because I know a lot of you are doing Facebook ads or you are planning on doing it. If you're not planning on doing it then you're actually shoot because it's actually a major, major opportunity. Obviously, because we have a platform that is specifically targeted at Facebook advertisers, which you'll be able to find at connectio.io, we have various tools all specifically targeted at Facebook advertisements to make your life easier and your ads more effective basically.

One of the questions we get a lot; obviously, is people asking us, "Hey, this campaign is not working. What's wrong with it? What do I do wrong?" Obviously, when you're targeting on Facebook or when you're advertising on Facebook you need to consider a lot of things. I mean you need to target a specific group, you need to write the right copy. There's a lot of things you could do wrong as well. I mean if you target the wrong kind of people, if you write the wrong message, if you have the wrong image, if you have ... there's all this stuff you have to do right and if you don't do it right your ads may not confer and it may not be working, right?

For a long time, actually, I thought that was always the main issue, but actually I don't think. The thing, the number one thing that I see people doing wrong with their Facebook ads isn't actually even remotely closely related to their Facebook ads. In order to explain that need to go back a little bit first. If you've been following me for a while then you may know that when we launched a new product we always do the three-part video sequence. Well, not always but usually we do a three-part video sequence where we drip out three different types of content videos and this is all inspired by Jeff Walker in his launch formula sequence.

What we do is we drip out three different videos and they all educate people and they all educate or market about what's coming in a way that they actually appreciate the value. After those three days, after those three videos, sorry, well then release the product into the market. By that time people will have signed up to our email list in order to see those three videos and have consumed these three videos and then when we present them with the actual offer it's going to be a no-brainer for them.

The way we usually promote this is using our own email list as well as affiliates. Affiliates also send traffic over to these pre-launched video sequences. It works really, really well. A couple months ago I figured, you know what? We're already doing quite a bit of Facebook advertising and retargeting all of that but I figured what I'm going to send people into this three-part video sequence on a more evergreen basis. Let me explain that.

What we did was we had those three different videos. What we had was an opt-in page, people could actually sign up or we actually said, "Hey, you can sign up. We'll send you this free, awesome information," and as soon as they signed up they would be able to watch video #1. Then the next day or the day after, depending on how fast actually if they read the emails or not, but let's say they just read all the emails then the next day they would actually get video #2 which is once again more content. The next day they would get video #3 which is even more content and then the day after they would actually get an offer saying, "Hey, you can buy this." That's what we had set up.

We started driving Facebook ads traffic to that. That means people see a Facebook ad on their timeline, which is obviously mentions the free information that we're going to give them and they sign up. They enter the email address and then they go through that sequence. When we started driving Facebook ads to that it was not even remotely profitable. We were spending a lot more money than we actually got back from it. We started to tweak a lot of things. We started to tweak the audience. We started targeting a more specific audience. We started to split test all the images. We started to split test all of the copy. We started doing a lot of testing. Everything we tested was inside Facebook ads platform, right? Changing the ad types, just a link ad or a video ad and all these kind of things.

In the end, we actually got it profitable but just somewhat profitable, basically, which is a bad thing because usually when you have a really specific audience on Facebook and you're able to just make it barely profitable then it's going to be really hard to really scale that up to a wider audience because as soon as you go after a wider audience your conversions will drop and usually you'll have to spend more on every customer. Even on a very specific audience you're having a hard time making a profit. Then it's going to be even harder making a profit on a wide audience.

Looking back, at some point I realized this feels like an uphill battle and when I started analyzing what other people were doing who were in the same market, none of them were actually promoting a three-part video sequence. I thought maybe that's the issue. Maybe that's the problem that we have here. Because let's be honest, with Facebook ads you're sort of doing interruption marketing. It's sort of like, for example, if you advertise on Google where people search for your certain keyword, they're actually looking to go on a holiday to turkey, or whatever. Then you present it with an ad that you have you can book a holiday to Turkey at your website. That's like pool marketing. People are already searching for it and you just give them what they're looking for.

On Facebook, they're not looking for the thing that you got to offer. You're really interrupting them. What my ad was doing was it interrupted them and it got them to enter their email address. That's like a micro commitment, right? It's easy to do but the problem is that I've been looking at the numbers and everybody who signed up immediately went to video #1. Then the number of people that actually watched video #2 a few days later or one or two days later was actually already considerably lower. Then the third video was even lower than that and then only a small group of people actually got to even see the offer.

Well, maybe all of these people would have been interested in the actual offer but because I dragged it on for a couple of days it just didn't work. I just got a small group of people and obviously some of those people still purchased, right? The problem is that in order to be effective on Facebook, you shouldn't just get some people to buy your stuff. You basically need to make sure that you are converting better than anyone else. I mean if you are converting better than any of your competitors that's when you can just outbid them. That's when you don't mind if you spend a bit more money on your ads because you know you're still going to make money on your bottom line.

When I realized that I figured you know what, scratch that. We're going to start over. At that point, I started building a new funnel for the exact same product, exact same offer. We started running a webinar. We drove people into an opt-in form once again. This time instead of going into a three-part video sequence we invited them to a webinar. That actually made a huge difference. I mean right from the bat when we implemented that even though I'm not very good at webinars yet, we're still learning as we go.

Right from the bat it was profitable and this was without any split testing. Just to go back, initially we did a lot of split testing on this three-part video sequence trying to get it to convert. Eventually we actually got it to convert. Then I tried a new kind of funnel and with the first attempt it immediately was profitable and from that point onwards we could just scale up and optimize from there.

That's really the one thing that I see going wrong with people as well. People they always look at their Facebook campaign like, "What is wrong with my Facebook campaign?" Well the problem usually is that they're funneled. That their website is not converting the way it should be. I mean if you're not converting as well as your competitors then no matter what you do they're going to win. They're going to be able to spend more on Facebook ads. They're going to be able to overbid you. You're going to either left with a loss. You're not going to be able to make a profit or you're just you're not able to scale up your ads. You're going to spend a couple of dollars a day, for example, and you'll be able to have it profitable like that but there's no way you could ever scale up to, for example, $500 a day for example. In order to be at that level or even higher, you need to be have a good enough margin and a good enough conversion that you're able to do that.

That's really, I think, the one thing that I wanted to share with all of you that if you are running Facebook ads and you're having a hard time or you're not really sure. You're not making money or you're not able to scale up high enough, instead of just focusing on your actual Facebook campaign, instead of just focusing on your actual Facebook ads and what targeting you have, start looking at your actual funnel. Could you ... Is there something you could do to boost your conversions?

Don't think of, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to change the colors of my buttons," or anything like that because that's just marginal difference. Well, what kind of a big shift could you do, even if it means that you have to delete your whole funnel and just start over just like I did. I mean it's not always easy. I put a lot of time and effort into it. I just deleted it like boom, gone. Start over. It's worth it if it's going to give you big results.

Don't be scared to make big changes, but really ask yourself what could we do? Maybe you already have a good product and maybe it's somewhat converted. Maybe you don't have, for example, an extra offer on the back end, an up sale, for example. Maybe that could be the one thing missing that will add extra profit to your business so you can actually you're able to afford more on the front then on your actual Facebook ads.

I hope we didn't confuse too many of you. I know this is just I just hit record basically during my lunch break so I can just talk to all of you and share some knowledge and share some information with all of you. I really hope that this helps you and I'd actually love to hear your feedback as well so hit me up by email. You'll probably know where to find me. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to talk to you all in the next episode. Peace out, everyone. Cheers. Bye-bye.

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On this episode, Wilco we’ll be talking about something that is a bit more responsible or maybe you might say either paranoid or smart.

• The importance of backup in your business.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:26: My business went back to zero multiple times.
02:43: Is there something in your business that if you would just take it away, the business would be in trouble?
03:36: I'm not going to be dependent on any single thing any longer.
04:32: The first day, with the launch going on, my wife got in an accident.
05:20: The first thing I do is I make sure that my sales page is always hosted on two different platforms.
06:15: What if something happens to me?
08:30: If you're just depending on one traffic source, make sure to add multiple.
08:59: You should never have all your audience at one platform because it's just a risky thing to do.

Transcription:

Hey everyone. It's me, Wilco de Kreij here. Welcome back to yet another episode. Today is actually one day before my birthday. Tomorrow, I'm getting 30 years old, which is quite an age, actually, depending on what age you are. You might be thinking, "That's old" or you might be thinking, "That's actually still quite young." In any case, I think it's okay. I'm happy with where I am.

One thing ... When you hear about someone who's actually turning 30, you probably think, "All right. He should be a grown-up," but I like to think of myself as still a bit of a little kid, basically. I still love to go to Disney. I go to Disney perhaps even every year or so. I just love things like that.

Anyway, today, I'll be talking about something that is actually a bit more responsible or maybe you might say either paranoid or smart. I like to decide at the end of this episode.

If you've been following me for a while, then you know that in the past, my business went back to zero multiple times. The first time this happened was when I was 100% dependent on Google AdSense as my monetization strategy. At some point, they closed down my account. I went from doing really well to zero, literally, overnight.

You might think I learned something. I guess not because a couple of years later, my whole business was not 100%, but more or less 99% depending on traffic that was coming from Google AdWords. I was buying traffic from Google AdWords. At some point, they changed their algorithms. I lost all my traffic once again literally overnight.

I had it happened two times where I was doing really well. I worked on my business for years and then just in a matter of a single email, it was boom, slap, done. I was back to zero. I actually learned a really, really powerful lesson because of that. I was actually talking about this last week when I was doing an event here in the Netherlands for a group of entrepreneurs and marketers. I told them what I'm going to say to you now.

You want to have a backup for everything. What I mean is that I'm not just talking about a backup of your files, but basically, what I'd like you to do is look at your business and think, "Is there something in your business that if you would just take it away, the business would be in trouble?" More often than not, there's something bad that you can just take away, and if that happens, you're screwed, basically.

In my experience, it's not really a matter if it's going to happen. It's more or less a matter when it will happen because a lot of stuff will go down, especially when you're in business for a while. You'll notice that all kinds of stuff can go wrong. It could be a technical problem. It could be with your staff. It could be a legal problem. Whatever it is, but there's a ton of stuff that actually could go wrong.

After I had that experience in my early stages of starting my business, of going back to zero multiple times, I actually said to myself, "I'm not going to be dependent on any single thing any longer." I actually became a bit paranoid, I guess, because of that.

Let me just give you an example of how this actually recently saved my business. Earlier this year, we were launching Connect Retarget. When we launch a product, it's basically a short period of time where we have a special offer. We invite a lot of affiliates to promote it to their audience and all of that. Because of that, because it's all packed into just a few days, those few days, usually, four or five days, are pretty much non-stop work. I don't sleep a lot. There's a lot of work to happen.

Earlier this year, we were doing this launch, Connect Retarget, which turned out to be our biggest launch this year, 2016. The first day, with the launch going on, my wife got in an accident. That's the thing with this whole business and all. It's nice and all, but when something like that happens, it just puts things into perspective.

As you can imagine, I just completely dropped the ball in the launch. I just ran to the hospital, and that was about it. For the next couple of days, all I cared about was my wife. Fortunately enough, right now, she's okay and she's fully recovered. All good on that end, but at that point, obviously, all my priority was to cover for her, to take care of her.

What happened with that launch? If this would've happened a couple of years ago, that whole launch would've flopped totally because I was not there. These days, actually, like I said, I prepare for everything.

To give you some examples of what I did in this launch or what I'm doing every launch or any promotion that I do, the first thing I do is I make sure that my sales page is always hosted on two different platforms. Not just on one server, but I also have it on Amazon. I have it at two different places, so that, if, for whatever reason, something goes down, if one of the servers ... If even Amazon goes down ... Trust me, it happens. I actually had it during one of my launches. If Amazon would go down, I could immediately redirect all the traffic to my other website.

I actually use a service for that called Cloudflare. I highly recommend that. It's free. They also have some paid plans. I highly recommend it. That would actually allow you to, even if your server's down, still be able to redirect all your traffic to another location. Whenever there's a downtime, then you can just redirect it. That's just one thing. That's the first thing.

When I think of that and I know how to redirect the traffic, I'm thinking, "What if something happens to me? What if I get hit by a bus, for example, while, at the same time, the server goes down? There will be no one to actually do that."

What I set up is I'm using a service called Pingdom.com. What they do, they check all my service every 30 or 60 seconds or so. Once they notice that something is down or really slow, for example, not just me, but multiple people in my team will automatically get a text message saying, "All right. Watch out. This site is actually down." I made sure that every single person who gets that text knows exactly what they need to do.

The moment something goes down, even if I'm not there, even if I'm asleep or even if, for example, I just got hit by a bus, though, I'm not hoping that's going to happen, but what if? I still know that it's not dependent on just me.

Earlier on in this podcast, when I asked you, "Is there something that if you would take it away, would the business still be running?" That one thing could even be you. What would happen if all of a sudden, you have to leave for one to two weeks from your business? Even though it's during that big promotion you have planned for months or even though it's during that big launch or big thing that you've been working on for months and months and months, what would happen if you would suddenly have to leave? Because life gets in the way. Because you had a death in your family or someone got hit by a bus or whatever happened, You have some kind of an emergency, and you just have to go. Would you just accept that those couple of months of work are just wasted? I don't like to do that.

Like I said, I plan out everything. I describe all the things that need to happen during a launch, during such a promotion. I make sure that I'm not the only who knows it. I even back up myself.

Yes, I might be a bit paranoid with that, but I really think that it saved my business, especially if you grow and especially if other people are actually dependent on your business. You have your staff. You have other affiliates and all kinds of people who are depending on you. You just cannot take the risk of letting something fail. You just need to make sure that everything you have in your business, whether it's a traffic source ...

If you're just depending on one traffic source, make sure to add multiple. If you're depending on one web host, make sure to have multiple in place. If you have your whole email list at a certain email autoresponder, make sure you'll always have a copy of your full list. Make a copy every week, every two weeks or so, so that whatever happens, if that company would suddenly disappear, you would still have your email list.

That's also why I would never recommend anyone to just focus on, for example, getting Facebook fans. Of course, that's a good strategy, but it shouldn't be "the" strategy. You should never have all your audience at one platform because it's just a risky thing to do. Always spread your eggs in multiple baskets, so to say.

That's really the point here what I'm trying to make. Yes, it's totally okay to be paranoid about that. Just take a napkin, take a piece of paper, whatever you have laying around. Just write down all the things. What could be taken away? What are you depending on in your business in terms of traffic, in terms of convergence, in terms of your customers, in terms of your team? Anything. Just in your mind, answer your question like, "What if this would go away? What if that person on your team actually goes away?"

For that reason, just to give you another example, I could just train my team. For example, my support staff. I could just train them and say, "This is how we all do things" and all that, but I make sure that all that training is also documented, so that even if someone has to leave, even if someone gets pregnant or whatever, someone could just dive in and they could learn all of that quite quickly and just take over, basically.

There you have it. I hope this helps and I hope you will actually do something with it. I hope you're not just going to listen to this and think, "All right, cool. I should maybe do something," because I know for a fact that at some point in time, you're going to regret if you don't really do this. At some point in time, there's stuff going to happen that you don't foresee. There's stuff going to happen that you don't want to happen. If you're prepared for that, even though it takes a bit more time beforehand, then you can just continue instead of being stuck from that point onward.

I hope it helps. I will talk to you all soon on the other side. That means, once I'm actually 30. Talk to you soon everyone. Bye-bye.

View Details

On this episode Wilco shares how he actually didn't realize that he got scammed until after he paid out 25,000 US dollars, which is crazy, right?

Time Stamped Show Notes:01:21 I decided that I wanted to have a coach or a mentor.
01:51 It had to be someone that is ten steps ahead of me.
02:20 founder of ClickFunnels
02:59 The cost of this group, of this inner circle of his, is $25,000 a year.
04:04 Russell Brunson is using Upviral.
05:48 I call his team, and I joined, and I wired the $25,000.
08:00 The funny thing is that it's actually joined Russell Brunson's inner circle because of that scammer.
08:51 As it turns out, those $25,000, it was easily worth the investment.
09:30 As an entrepreneur, don't look backwards.
09:41 Have a vision, and move forward.

Transcription:

Hey everyone, it's me, Wilco de Kreij here, and today I've got a crazy story to share with all of you. Recently I got scammed, and I actually didn't realize that I got scammed until after I paid out 25,000 US dollars, which is crazy, right? In order to dive into that story, I'll probably need to start at the very beginning for it to sort of make sense, sort of like know why I actually fell into this trap. You might think, "Well that's just a bit stupid." I just want to give you the full story.

As you might know, as an entrepreneur, it sometimes can be a lonely journey, right? I mean, we have to make all these kind of decisions and we usually, we don't always have people to brainstorm with. We sort of need to have the vision and we need to set the strategy and the whole team, or your whole business depends on it, right?

In my experience, it can be a lonely journey. For that reason, at some point, I think it was like last year or so, I decided that I wanted to have a coach or a mentor. In order for someone to be a coach or a mentor to me, I knew that that person needed to be at least ten steps ahead of me, right?

If someone was at the similar level in terms of their business and what phase they're on, that wouldn't really inspire me. Or like if I would ask a certain opinion, like, "Hey, how would you do that?" If someone is at the same level as I am, I would probably be asking him like, "Why would I believe you, and why not just go for my own gut feeling?"

It had to be someone that is ten steps ahead of me, so that if he or she would actually say, "I've done this, I tried this and this is the best way." Then I would actually believe them, that to be the best way, and I would actually take action on that instead of second guessing their opinion or their input, right?

I've been searching a line, and I've been doing some research and all, and at some point I ran into this guy Russel Brunson. You might know him, he's one of the bigger online marketeers. He's the founder of ClickFunnels and I've been following him for a while. I've been reading his book, I've been listening to his podcasts, and all of that. I think about sixth months ago or so, I started to, I was sort of curious and I was thinking of joining his inner circle.

He has like an inner circle, which is a group of people, group of one hundred entrepreneurs that he gives mentorship to, or coaches, or however you want to describe it. It gives you access to his mind, basically. You can actually ask him questions, one on one, and there's some brainstorming sessions in the US as well, so it's a good way to ask him questions and to leverage his knowledge, right?

The cost of this group, of this inner circle of his, is $25,000 a year, which is quite a bit of money, right? The first time I started thinking about that, I've been thinking about it a lot, and for me, most of the money I spend in my business, I can sort of estimate what I'm getting back out of it. If I spend money on ads, I know what I'm getting out of it. If I spend money on development, if I build my team, a lot of the things are, I can sort of see what the return is.

For this, I was actually paying out $25,000 just to get some input. Just to get some answers on questions. In my mind, it was not an easy decision to make. It was not like, "Oh, yeah. It's just $25,000, I'll just throw it at it." No. It's actually a lot of money. I just wasn't sure, basically. I had a call with his team, I thought about it, and at the end I decided not to go for it. I just let it be, and I figured I'll just do it on my own.

A couple months later, a friend of mine, actually a couple friend's of mine, they texted me and they said, "Hey, Russell Brunson is using AdViral." He was talking about it, AdViral, which as you probably know, is my baby. It's my main business. He was talking about it on social media. He was saying, "Oh, yeah, it's great. We're getting all these kind of results." He was literally promoting AdViral on his Snapchat and all his other channels as well.

I was like, "Oh, wow. Russell Brunson is using AdViral, how awesome is that?" I'm looking up to the guy. I think he's a superstar. I was getting all excited that he was using AdViral, which is, I think, pretty awesome. He was getting good results with it as well, right? A few days later, I actually got an email from him. At that point, I was freaking out. I was like, "Woah. Seriously? Russell Brunson is emailing me?"

He emailed something in line of, "Hey dude, it's great software. Awesome. Keep up the good work." Something in that line, right? We emailed back and forth a little bit, and then he asked me whether I had a second account for AdViral. His team had their own account. He already purchased one account, and he said, "Hey, do you have a second account? In return, I'll give you one of my products."

We made a swap, I also gave him access to our auto products connect for ConnectIO, our Facebook access products. I gave him those accounts, and he gave me an account, and because he was emailing with me, I was so excited I actually talked to my wife saying, "Oh, yeah. Russell Brunson is emailing me." I felt like this was super cool. I never had contact one on one with the guy. I've been following him, listening to him, to his podcasts, just the fact that he made time out of his busy day to reply to me was just, it was awesome.

That's actually why I decided at that point, while I was emailing with him, I figured you know what? I'm just going to join the inner circle, right now, right here. I call his team, and I joined, and I wired the $25,000. You might think everything is good, right? Well as it turns out, in a way it is good, right?

The inner circle, I love it. It's actually, seriously I love it. Recently, I sent a message to Russell, because now that I'm in the inner circle I can obviously contact him one on one. I sent a message to him, because I was checking the login that he sent me earlier in that email conversation. I was checking that login to see, I wanted to check out what it was. I never really had time to dive into it. At this point, I wanted to dive into it.

I opened the new login that they sent me, I entered my email and password, and it didn't accept it, right? It didn't work. I sent a message to Russell saying, "Hey dude, the login that you sent me, it's not working. Could you please fix that, or let your team fix that because I'd love to check it out."

He messaged me back, saying, "Dude, I never gave access that login." I'm like, "Wait a second. Yeah you did." I reminded him of the email conversation that we had and he said, "Well, no. I don't remember that. That was not me." We dig in deeper. As it turns out, those emails were not Russell Brunson. Let me explain to you what happened.

Russell Brunson, he was using AdViral, and he shared that on social media. We dove in deeper. What apparently happened, someone else saw that, and they signed up for a domain name, which is similar to his ClickFunnels domain, and he imitated Russell Brunson by sending me an email. He took on a fake domain name, he used the name Russell Brunson, he emailed me saying, "Hey, could you please send me a login?"

We emailed back and forth, and all this time I was thinking it was Russell Brunson, when in fact it was a scammer. It was someone who went through all that effort, signing up for a domain name and pretending to be Russell Brunson, sending me emails back and forth in the actual language as if it was Russell Brunson, right? Only with the goal of actually getting access to AdViral and ConnectIO. I get it, right? Who doesn't want to have access to those tools, but I mean, that's a lot of trouble, and also illegal by the way, but a lot of trouble to just get those tools.

The funny thing is that it's actually because of that scammer, it's actually because of that scammer that was emailing me, I believed it was actually Russell Brunson that I joined the inner circle. Here's what happened, right. This guy, just last week we looked up his account, obviously, and realized he never actually used it.

A couple months back there was this guy, a scammer, he went through all this trouble to sign up a domain name and to imitate someone he wasn't actually himself, to get that account, and now a few months later after going through all that trouble, he hasn't even used it. He's just putting a lot of effort and a lot of work in, and I'm guessing that he's still at the same spot as where he was a couple months ago.

Now, on the other hand, I actually joined the inner circle because of these emails. Sure. As it turns out, those $25,000, it was easily worth the investment, because I'm already way ahead of that right now. I think that's the main idea I want to give you. It's a bit of a crazy story when me and Russell figure this out, that someone actually imitated him and I actually joined because of the scammer. We laughed so hard.

Some people might say, "Doesn't that feel awkward that you actually joined because of the scammer?" That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what made me to decide to actually move forward, I moved forward and that's the power that we have as an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, don't look backwards. Don't look at the decisions you made that did work out, that didn't work out, or try to find excuses for things.

Have a vision, and move forward. If something happens, just take the best out of it. I think that's really what sets us apart from those that are just not, that don't have a vision, that are short sighted. These are the kinds of people that might be doing these kind of tricks, trying to scam someone and get a free account or whatever. That's just super short sighted. I think, I guess, the biggest takeaway that I wanted to share with all of you with this crazy story, is that just have a vision, go for it, and don't find excuses or don't blame all of us if something works or doesn't work out.

Of course, yeah, I could have been pissed off that someone scammed me and that I paid out $25,000 to Russell. Just to make clear, the $25,000 obviously went to Russell. It's not like the scammer also tricked me into paying that to him, but I did pay out $25,000 because of those emails. If the scammer would not have emailed me, I would not have joined the inner circle. I'm actually thankful. Just in case he or she is actually listening, thanks for that. I appreciate it, because of your short shortsightedness, I'm actually way ahead from all of this. Yeah, thanks for that actually.

That's it. I just wanted to share this quick story with all of you, I thought it was super funny but also like I said, please take the lesson out of it that just have a vision on long term, and do what you believe in, and you'll be all right. Everyone peace out, cheers.

View Details

On this episode Wilco talks shares his five biggest lessons that he learned over the last fifteen years as an online entrepreneur, that got him from zero to where he is today.

• Make sure to solve problems.
• Never, ever rely on just one thing in your business.
• Give away value first, then reap the rewards.
• Care about your customers.
• Don't try to do it all by yourself.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:29: How I got started online?
04:41: Make sure your business solves real problems.
06:57: Never rely on one source, or one thing in your business.
11:10: You should always give value first, and then reap the rewards after that.
12:50: You should always treat your customers with the respect they deserve
14:45: Don't try to do it yourself.
14:50: The five things that helped me grow my business to where it is today.

Transcription:

From the outside, the road to success always seems so easy, right? People say, "He already has a successful business. What does he know? What kind of problems does he have?" The reality is, that it's never like, "I want to go from here to there, and it's easy." No, it's actually not easy, at all. There's a lot of hurdles in the way, a lot of bumps in the road, and that's why I think it's important to stress out, or to sort of point out the five biggest lessons that I've learned over the last fifteen years as an online entrepreneur, that got me from zero to where I am today.

Just in case we haven't met before, my name is Wilco de Kreji, and I'm an Online Entrepreneur from the Netherlands, as you can probably tell, by my terrible accent. I apologize for that, but I've been working online for over a decade now as an Online Entrepreneur, and during that time, I've started various businesses, I've sold various businesses, and we acquired tens of thousands of customers worldwide through online marketing. Now I don't want this to be about me. I wanted this to be about you. I want to show you how you can grow your business, so let's just dive into it.

First, let me tell you a quick story of how I got started online, so I was sixteen years old, it was back in 2002, which in online terms is like ages ago, right? This is actually a funny story, at least a lot of people seem to like this story. Anyway, so I was sixteen years old, 2002 it was, and at that time, the move The Matrix was super popular here, and in that movie, every character had their own pair of sunglasses, right? Being a sixteen year old boy, I wanted to have one of those, as well, but here in the Netherlands, they were nowhere to be found, so I went looking online, and I found a company in the United States, which, for me, was the other side of the world, right? Who actually sold sunglasses, so I figured, "Hey, if they're not being sold here in the Netherlands, but they are in the U. S., then maybe there are other people, like me, who want to have those sunglasses, so let's try to sell them, right?"

Now I was sixteen years old, like I said, so I didn't have any money, so I couldn't just say, "Well, I'm going to buy those sunglasses, and then I'm going to sell them online, or sell them anywhere," because I didn't have the money to actually buy them, right? What I did was, I put up an ad online, and I told people like, "Hey, you can buy these sunglasses from me. You'll have to pay me first, then after a while, I'll have like a month of order periods, then after, at the end of the month, I'll do an order in the U. S. I have to have to wait two months in order for those sunglasses to go back to me, because of the shipment time by sea, and then after those two months, I'll send you your sunglasses, so they'll have to put their trust in me.

Send me their money, and then wait for like three months before they would their sunglasses back. Now, the thing is that, I was expecting to sell a couple of sunglasses, so I would maybe have my sunglasses for free, right? Now, what actually happened is that we actually did ... I say we, but I mean me and my parents. I did actually 17,000 euros worth of sunglasses that are 6 euros each, so the whole house was filled with sunglasses, which is another story actually, so we sold 17,000 euros worth of sunglasses, being a sixteen year old kid, and while I was setting all of this up, I didn't even tell my parents yet, right? At some point, I knew to say to my parents, "Hey, listen, like I just received 17,000 worth of sunglasses, and I need to send that over to the U. S., hoping that that will then get a box of sunglasses back instead of a box filled with stones, for example."

Now at this point, online shopping wasn't the thing yet, like it wasn't big, especially for my parents, who are pretty much old fashioned. They're both farmers. I used to live in the countryside, so they were not happy, but being they were also entrepreneurs, so they supported me, and they said, "All right, sure. We'll do it. We're going to wire the money, and we're just going to put the trust there, and if it this goes South, so be it. We'll just have a go for it." Everything went right. Everything went really well, and at the end, I learned tons of lessons. I didn't make any money out of it, any profit out of it, because of something I did not foresee, that's once again, another story, but the most important thing is that that's the main lesson I want to share with this story, is that you got to solve a problem.

Like if your business doesn't solve a problem, you're making this too hard for yourself. Like I found I stumbled on the problem that people wanted to have these sunglasses, but they were nowhere to be found in the Netherlands, so by getting them to the Netherlands, I solved a problem. That's really the first lesson that I want to give to you. Make sure your business solves real problems. For the following years, I kept doing eCommerce by importing all kinds of products from all over the world, and selling them here in the Netherlands, and I realized that my passion wasn't really with making all those packages, or with the customers support, or all of that, but my passion really was with online marketing, so I started looking online, and to see what I can do with that, like, right?

I stumbled upon Google AdSense, and a whole new world opened up for me. I mean, you can actually make money if people click on your add? Well, apparently, yeah, so what I started doing a lot was I started creating a lot of websites, and I started ranking them in Google, right? Was doing a lot of SEO, and all I did was on those websites, were filled with Google AdSense and banners, and it went really, really well. I mean, I'm not a big fan of sharing members, some people do. That's fine. I just, I'm not a big fan of it, but like even in today's standards, I was doing really, really well. I went, like I was the King of the World, at least that's how I felt, and at some point, boom, like my AdSense account got shut down, because apparently you can only have three AdSense banners, and I had like five or six on every page, which is me being silly.

My own mistake, but I went from doing really, really well, to absolutely zero, literally overnight, so I started thinking. First I started crying, but after, I started thinking, "What can I do?" I realized that having, I was relying just on Google AdSense, so I figured I'm going to do affiliate marketing. Not the kind of info marketing products, or anything like that, but like real, tangible products here in the Netherlands, like holidays, or mobile phones, or mortgages, or anything like that, so instead of focusing on Google AdSense being my [amortization 00:06:03] strategy, I had a bunch of affiliate networks, so my idea was if one of them stops, or one of them doesn't want me anymore, or one of them goes bankrupt, or whatever, no problem at all.

You think I was safe, right? Well, guess what? Like 99%, pretty much all my traffic at this point, I stopped doing SEO, and I started doing a lot of Google AdWords, so 99% of my traffic was from Google AdWords. Guess what? Boom. There was a new quality score update. Basically, long story short, all my traffic dried up literally overnight. I had, so I was once again back to square one, and once again, I was doing really, really well. Like this took me a couple years, a couple years after the AdSense incident, so I was doing really well. Back to zero literally overnight. Once again, round two, so that really taught me a really, really important lesson. I think, maybe even one of the most important ones, is that never rely on one source, or one thing in your business.

Always have a backup. No matter, whatever, it's a traffic source, your servers, your email company, whatever it is. Always have a backup in place. Never rely on one source for any part of your business, so when the AdWords happened, I was fully focused on getting a Master's Degree in Marketing Management, so I decided to first finish what I started. First get my degree, and then start a new business from scratch, so that's what I did, so after a year, when I got my degree, I said to myself, "Hey, I'm going to a new environment, and I give myself six months to start a new business from scratch," so I went to Sydney in Australia, which by the way, is my favorite city of all. I love to travel.

Love meeting new people, but that's another story, so I went to Sydney, Australia, I [hired 00:07:44] an office in downtown city center, and I said to myself, "Hey, I'm going to start a new goal, and a new business, and I have the goal of getting X amount of dollars every single month," so it was really just about how much money would I make, right? I had like an exact figure in my mind that I wanted to hit, so I went there, and I was full of energy. New environment, new everything, and I had the experience, right? I started various businesses in the past, which were really successful, so I can do this, right? I'm going to crush it, so I started working, and one month went by, two, three, four, and I went nowhere, and I don't mean nowhere as in I'm not hitting my goals. No. Nowhere, as in not a single dollar made.

Like not at all, so I was, to be honest, like I was in an awesome country, but I was feeling down. I was feeling desperate, and I had no idea what to do, so I'm not sure why, but at some point, I started a side project, which wasn't focused at making any money at all. I was doing a lot of Facebook marketing at the time, or at least learning about it, and I realized there was a gap in the marketplace, so I hired someone from oDesk to build me a plugin, which was called Word Press or Facebook at the time, so I gave it away for free. Just enter your email address, and that's it. Here it is. You just go download it, and after a while, like this was a side project.

It was not, like this was not business for me, right? It was just like something for fun, outside of the stuff that I was doing to make money, so I gave the plugin away for free. People started opting into my email list, and after a while, I started looking at the numbers, and I'm like, "Hey, there's a couple thousand people who signed up to download this free plugin. Maybe I should do something with that." I hired the same guy again, and he build me Word Press or Facebook Pro, which was like better, even better version, and this was around the end, like literally the end of the six month period that I gave myself, and still I had nothing to show for it. Nothing went how I was hoping it would go, so I remember, there was this last week in the office.

Literally the last week I hired [the 00:09:44] [office 00:09:46], because right after the weekend, I would fly back home to the Netherlands, and the last week I went crazy, because I wanted to finish that plugin, and on the sales pages, and all of that, that week, so I can send that out to that email list, and I had no idea how to sell something by email, right? I just, so I've been just working, working, working, and that last Friday, Friday night, we were going with some friends. We would have like a good bye party, and all of that, with a barbecue, all Aussie style, and just before I closed down my laptop, I was done. Like the sales page was ready, everything was done, I press send.

I literally press send on the email to let all those people who opted in before, letting them know, "Hey, here's the pro version of what you downloaded first. You had the free version, but here's a pro version, and you can buy it, right? If you want." I hit send, and then I was taking some stuff from my desk, and put it in my pack, and I looked at my laptop, and it was ping, ping, ping. Orders came in. I was like super excited. I mean, like that night, I went out with my friends to celebrate the last night together, because I was going back home after, and that night, I was checking my phone, and I made more than half a year combined in total, so I was just amazed. That really taught me a super valuable lesson.

That's that you should always lead with give value first, and then reap the rewards after that. Don't just try to make money. Don't go for a monetary goal, because money is [inaudible 00:11:11]. You shouldn't just focus on making money, because that's insane. Focus on giving value, giving value first, and then the rest will follow, and that's really the biggest lesson I learned from that. Like all the things I did, just to make more money, didn't work, and as soon as I started providing value, just give value away for free, that's when everything changed, so that's really the big lesson that I want to share with this one.

After I got back home, I treated that part of the business, the plugin selling business, as my core business, and I was working on that for a couple of years, until I got an email from this company that I never even heard of before, but they were an investment company basically, and they wanted to buy the whole company. They wanted to buy it all, and I have sold various smaller companies in the past, but never something like this, not never something like this big, right? There was a lot of thinking, a lot of consideration, a lot of going back and forth, and it was a long, stressful process, actually, but at the end of the day, we made a deal, and they bought our company, right?

Including the staff, same people, the whole product, everything in the business was theirs, except for my time basically, and after a couple months, I kept checking them. I kept checking how they were doing, because it still felt like my baby, right? Even though it was there's, but it felt like my baby, and I was looking at, "Hey, how are they doing?" Everything went South, like had the same team, same product, like an awesome product, what went wrong? What happened? I started talking to some of our previous customers, who were now their customers, and they told me that their customer support sucks.

Excuse my French, but they did not treat their customers with the respect they deserved, right? That really reminded me of a really valuable lesson, is that you should always treat your customers with the respect they deserve, and really care about your product the same way as you care about yourself, basically. If you really care about your customers, and they feel that, they know it, then it's one of the easiest way to stand out. People that. People love a good customer support, and people love being treated fairly, so whatever you do, really care about your customers, and you'll stand out right away. All of this happened a few years ago, and once again, I was able to start a new business from scratch, and this time though, I didn't want to spend a couple of years building it to get to the same point where I used to be, so I knew I had to change something, right? Up to this point, I always hired people for the things that I couldn't do myself, so I hired developers on a project basis.

I hired graphic designers on a project basis, but that was about it. Like everything I could do myself, I'd just do myself, because I've always been this control freak. Like, I want to do it this way, my way, right? At this point, it was time for me to let that go basically, so I started hiring more people to grow the company. To help me grow the company faster than I could do on my own, and that really like before when I started doing that, it was super scary. Like I told them to do this, and they did it their own way, not my way, and I was like, "Oh, no. You should do it differently," so there was definitely some things that I needed to learn in that process, but at the end of the day, like I could have never grown my business this far, or my online, never, ever.

Right now, for example, our business is like fifteen people on a full-time basis, plus various people on a project, or like a freelance basis, and like I'm super grateful for my team. Like they're the best, and they do things much better than I can, and yeah, like I would have never been able to grow the business this big without those people, so this is like the fifth big lesson that I want to share with you, is don't try to do it yourself.

Get people to help you out, so there you have it. The five things that helped me grow my business to where it is today. Make sure to solve problems. Never, ever rely on just one thing in your business. Give away value first, then reap the rewards. Care about your customers. Don't try to do it all by yourself. I hope this helps, and I hope it inspires you. If you've been following me for a while, then you know that usually I send out the actionable advice, right? The nitty gritty of online marketing to help you grow your business.

Now this time though, I really wanted to focus on these five critical elements, because I can tell you everything I know about driving traffic. I mean, we've sent millions, and millions, and millions of people to our funnels, using pretty much every traffic source there is available, right? I can show and teach you all of that, but it wouldn't matter if you don't have these five critical elements in place in your business, and that's why I'm really sharing this video here for you today, so once again, I hope it helps, and I hope you have an awesome day. Cheers. Bye,

View Details

On this episode Wilco talks his experience on How Kiss metrics kept him paying $200/month for 8 months in a row without using it.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:15: How do Kissmetrics kept me paying $200/month for 8 months in a row without using it?
05:28: One of the reasons why I didn't not want to cancel is because I was heavily, and I mean heavily invested in this platform
06:27: You can get people to be invested into your business if they put some kind of effort and they're going to lose that if they stop
08:22: Why give your subscribers the fear of missing out?

Transcription:

Hey everyone and welcome back. Today I wanted to share a thought with all of you that has a valuable lesson inside, especially if you're doing something like subscription style basis. If you have some kind of a recurring element going on because if that's the case, if you have a subscription style business then you know it's the most important thing to keep people on, right? You don't want people to cancel your subscription after for example, 3 months. You want to keep them as long as possible into your subscription. I mean, that's the goal, right? That's what's going to make the biggest difference to your bottom line.

Here's the funny thing, just this morning I cancelled a $200 a month subscription which I had for 8 months and I never, ever used it. That's crazy, right? I've been paying $200 a month, I never, ever used it and I had that for 8 months so, that's like $1600 just gone. When I cancelled it, I was thinking like, "How do they get me to do that? Why did I stay for 8 months while usually if I don't use something I cancel it immediately?" I'm not someone who just forgets about it. I always take note about it and if I'm sort of in doubt about whether I'm going to keep on using it, I set a reminder in my calendar for the next month to just think like ask myself, "Do I want to keep on paying for this subscription?" Usually, I don't let the subscription go on forever, I cancel them quite quickly. This time I let it go on for 8 months. That's interesting, right?

This subscription was for Kissmetrics and in case you don't know what it is, basically Kissmetrics is like Google Analytics on steroids. Especially if you have a recurring style business, you can do some really interesting things like, more in depth funnels, or like you can actually track your insurance rate, how many people actually unsubscribe and all of that. There's a lot of awesome things that you can do with it that you can just simply not do with Google Analytics. For that reason, I signed up roughly 8 months ago so, just in the beginning of 2016 and like I said, it started at $200 a month at least when I signed up, then the next plan depending on how much traffic you have, you go I believe it was like $700 a month. It's quite expensive but, as you all know if you don't measure something there's no way to improve it as well. It all starts with measuring to decide what you need to improve.

I remember when I signed up, they had awesome support. I was in the trial period and they could live chat and because there's a big learning curve, and not just that, you're actually needing to implement it into your business so there's a lot of work that you actually have to put it. It's not that you're just going to add in for example, on your website just like with Google Analytics where you just copy paste a single piece of code and you can just set it and basically forget about it. That's not how it works, you actually need to connect it to all your back end systems so you actually need your developers to basically say, "Hey, if someone makes a purchase then you'll actually have to send out a trigger that the purchase has been made, and if they cancel it then another trigger." Not just that but, you actually have to think of all this logic all by yourself.

It's not like a standard format because every business will use it by itself. The point is not like how complicated it is but, the point is that you have to put in a lot of thought and effort into it and even getting started. It's not something you can just do for an evening and you're done. It actually takes a lot of time. What they did that's really, really smart is that they had live support and whatever question I had, they answered it right away and they even jumped on Skype with me to just talk things through, brainstorm about what's possible. They all got me excited about actually implementing it and they helped me in every step of the way which was awesome. This was all during the trial period. At that point I didn't even pay a cent. I remember that was actually an interesting thing as well.

I remember during that conversation at the live chat, at some point I made it clear that I was going to continue with Kissmetrics and I had, I believe it was a 2 week or 4 week trial period but, the trial period was not over. I told them like, "All right, this is definitely, I'm definitely going to use it." He asked me, "Are you sure this is what you're going to use?" "Yes, I'm sure. This is good." I remember that was actually an interesting thing. At that point they charged me, right away they ended my trial period and they just continued in the monthly subscription. Which was kind of odd because I still had a week left or so but anyway, that's another story.

The interesting thing is as soon as I sort of left the trial period and I entered the paid period the live chat was gone. That was the first thing I noticed. I logged in, I wanted to ask something and like boom, now I'm a paid customer and where's the live chat? No, you actually have to go to the support channel and they were not as fast and later on they added the chat back in but, initially they cut to down right after I joined the paid plan. It made me wonder why would they actually invest more into the new customers than who are not even a customer versus those who are already a customer? Now when I'm looking back it actually makes a lot of sense.

One of the reasons why I didn't not want to cancel is because I was heavily, and I mean heavily invested in this platform. I've been spending countless days just to brainstorm about how all of this works. My team had been putting a lot of time into this as well just to see how we can all integrate this and actually building it all out. By doing that because they were hand holding me, they were helping me along the way, and they were motivating me and basically letting me know what the benefits were going to be like, "If you do this, then you can see that, and that, and that." kind of statistics for your business so, that's all kind of awesome and I was like, "Yeah, that is actually kind of awesome. Let's build it out, let's put more time into it."

After a while we had it all set up and now I was invested now, I was invested in the business or in that platform and it was not as easy for me to just say the next month like, "I'm not ... I'll just cancel it." because if it's just money that's fine but, I actually invested a lot of effort and a lot of time into that. That's one thing that's an interesting lesson, if you have a subscription style business, and you can get people to be invested into your business, into your subscription, or if they put some kind of effort and they're going to loose that if they stop, that's a good locket, right?

For example, if you have a page builder and you help people as much as you can to get their business to set up, using your systems then after they spend quite a bit of time on it they're not as likely to stop using it. They want to keep on using it. That goes for a lot of things. Make sure of you have some kind of subscription style basis, make sure to get people as invested as possible into your product, into your service, into your business, whatever you are doing, whatever you're selling to them in order to reduce the chance that they want to stop.

Another thing that I noticed is that I was checking their pricing and that's actually an interesting thing as well. After I signed up, later on they increased their prices. It was actually more expensive to get started. I remember at some point I was actually considering on stopping. I was like, "I haven't really used Kissmetrics in a couple months, I only set it up and it's just a bit too complicated. It's not as easy to grasp so let's just stop it." I went to their website, committed to actually stop the subscription and I remember I was looking at their pricing and the prices pretty much ... not doubled but the entry level I believe it almost doubled. Or at least it was quite a steep increase. It was more expensive than when I started and obviously when I started you sort of got grandfathered into the price that you sign up for. They're not going to increase your monthly rate if they increase the price but, it's just for new customers.

I was looking at their pricing and I knew like if I'm going to cancel and I'm going to change my mind later on, then I'll end up paying even more than I'm paying now. That was actually another thing that kept me from canceling. Because they increased their prices, I didn't want to loose out. I sort of had this fear of losing out because if I would just cancel and later on I would change my mind, then I'd have to pay even more. That's also something that I think is a good lesson to be learned. If you can give your subscribers the fear of missing out if they would cancel, and increasing the price is just one option. Obviously you cannot always keep increasing your prices. Sometimes you can because your business grows, and you add more benefits or, you're getting better at it or, you're getting a better brand or, if you're selling software that you're adding more features to it, obviously you have some things that you can justify a price increase. You cannot do that every single time.

Another example of how you can do that is for example, adding extra benefits after people sign up and have been a subscriber on your subscription based style business for X amount of time. For example, let's say someone joins your business and maybe after 3 months, for every single user regardless of when they joined you want to reach out and say, "Awesome, you've been a member for 3 months. From now on you're going to get X, Y, or Z extra." That should be some kind of extra benefit, an extra service or, maybe priority support or, depending on what you're doing if it's a software some extra features that's only available of your loyal subscribers or whatever it is. Give them something extra that only is available for people who've been inside your subscription style basis for at least 3 months or, maybe 6 months or, maybe even in multiple steps. After 3 months they get something extra, after 6 months they get something extra. Now it actually increases and now they know that if they would ever cancel, and the later on they might change their mind and they want to resubscribe, they're not going to have those benefits. They've actually gathered extra benefits because they have been a loyal subscriber for a long time. That gives them the fear of missing out, if they would decide to cancel.

There's a lot of other ways that you can put in place to get people to be more active or stay on as a subscriber for a longer time. I'm happy to do a podcast about that. There's just so much stuff that we can talk about that. Things like gratification, good onboarding, getting them results as soon as possible. There's a lot of things that will help to reduce your turn rate and to get people to stay subscribed to your subscription style basis business for a longer time. I'll get into that in another episode but, today I really wanted to focus on this thought of what I noticed with Kissmetrics. By making sure that I was heavily invested, I actually put in a lot of effort into getting started with them, that reduced the willingness to actually cancel, and secondly my fear of missing out. In this case they increased the prices and for that reason I didn't want to cancel as well. Altogether, it took me 8 months to cancel a $200 per month subscription which once again is kind of insane because I never, ever used it.

I set it all up and I never really dove into all the statistics because it's just not as easy to grasp. For most of the things that I'm doing, we are using Google Analytics and I just love it, because I'm also heavily invested in that. I'm very familiar with Google Analytics, I'm a bit of what you would say, an "advanced user". I love it. For that reason I never really used Kissmetrics and like I said I've been paying $200 a month for 8 months in a row. I think those are definitely some things that we can all use to basically improve our subscription style basis. I really hope that you enjoyed this and I will talk to you all soon.

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On this episode Wilco talks the 3 types of affiliates to promote your product.

• Those who promote for the product
• Those who promote for EPCs
• Those who promote for friends

So listen below to find out how Wilco puts everyone in baskets based on why they would promote his products and why they wouldn’t.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:51: Why having affiliates has been my number 1 channel for getting new customers on board.
02:02: Having affiliates, it’s so far the only way I’ve seen to generate at least 7 figures in just a few days.
02:20: How do you get affiliates to promote your product?
02:22: What types of motivations help people to promote your product?
03:35: 3 types of different affiliates
04:26: Group of affiliates who are mainly promoting because a product is awesome
05:00: Those who promote fro earnings per click
05:30: Group of people who just promote for friends or if you promote them.
07:22: My criteria, I really want to make sure that my product is rock solid, and that’s one part of the game obviously.
07:37: The second part is to make sure affiliates get that as well.
11:40: Formulate a strategy on what you think is your strengths.

Transcription:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back. Today, we’re going to talk about something that might be a bit controversial or it has some … Let’s call it “reputation problems” to say the least, right? If you’ve been following me for a while, then you know that I’ve been doing a lot of affiliate-based launches, and what that means is that when I launch a new product or I have a special discount going on, we actually invite a bunch of affiliates, a bunch of people who will then promote our product to all of their customers all at the same time.

Instead of saying, “Hey, we have this affiliate program, and you can join every time, and you can just keep on promoting it,” which obviously is possible, but what I do instead is before I do a certain promotion, before I launch a new product in the market space, I start roughly like 1 or 2 months in advance by gathering affiliates and asking, “Hey, do you want to promote this product on this date?” I all gather them around the exact same date so that we can actually do a special offer for, for example, 5 or 6 days, and all these affiliates, they all do their best to promote that product all at the same time.

That’s one of those moments when you probably … You probably experience that yourself as well when a new product hits the market, and all of a sudden, you get like 20 different emails from 20 different people all saying that you should grab that product, that you should actually get access. That’s because it works. It works incredibly well, but for some reason, it has a bit of a … Like I said, a bit of repetition problem especially for those who are more inside … Let’s call it the “SUS” or “Start-Up Scene.”

Like I said, it’s been incredibly effective. For me, it is and has been my number 1 draw channel. It’s been my number 1 channel for getting new customers on board. Personally, it’s so far the only way I’ve seen to generate at least 7 figures in just a few days. I haven’t been able to do that with Facebook ads in just a few days. I haven’t been able to do that with any other channel in just a few days, but with this model, it’s definitely possible. I’ve done it a few times, and I love it.

The thing is like the thing I wanted to talk about today is actually how do you get affiliates to promote your product or specifically like what types of motivations help people to promote your product? The reason why I want to dive into this today is because like pretty much every single day, I get messages from people on Facebook, on email, et cetera asking, “Hey, man. I got this product coming up. Do you want to promote it?” I get that question all the time, and I’m not alone. Pretty much everyone who has known to sometimes promote an affiliate product, they will get this kind of messages.

Right now, it is not as bad as it used to be because I personally don’t promote as many products anymore like usually, in the past, I promoted way more. Now, I limit it to like one a month or so, so the more you start promoting, the more people start realizing that, so the more they start asking, “Hey, do you want to promote my product?” What I see is that there’s like a big group of “beginners” who are trying to leverage this model as well, but they’re having a hard time to get their foot into the door to actually get the attention of the affiliates and to get people to actually promote their products.

I think that is mainly because there’s a bit of a disconnect between those who want to use this model versus those who are actually the ones who are promoting. What I’ve actually realized is that there’s actually 3 types of different affiliates or like different motivations for affiliates. Pretty much every affiliate, pretty much everyone who you can get, who you were trying to get the attention of, or who you’re trying to convince that they should promote your products to all of their customers, or send out an email to their email list, or put it on their blog, or whatever it is, usually, they fit into one of the 3 categories.

Once you realize that or at least once I realized that, it suddenly became a lot easier to convince affiliates, to convince people to promote my products because I wasn’t just trying whatever. Now, I could actually see, “All right. This person actually … He is really into that,” or, “This person is really into that.” What I found is from these 3 things, so usually, they have 2 … If you have 2 … If you can convince them of 2 of these things, then you’re usually good.

In a nutshell, what I see affiliates are into or like what their main motivations are is that I see 1 group of affiliates who are mainly promoting because a product is awesome, so they’re really doing it for the product, and they’re really doing it if they would use the product themselves as well, right? They would never promote a product if it’s not really good, if it’s not groundbreaking, if it’s not new, if it’s not something that they would genuinely basically recommend to their friends, if they would talk to their friends and say, “Yeah, you should definitely get it.” That’s 1 group of affiliates who will only promote it if the product is really, really solid and that’s something they would just talk with their friends about basically.

Then, there’s another group of affiliates who mainly promote based on … who mainly make the decision whether they will be promoting based on how well it converts, so they really look at the EPC which is the Earnings Per Click or the Earnings Per Visitor, however you want to call it, and they really just want to make sure that they get the best. Basically, most … the biggest amount of those for every single email they send out to their customers. That’s their number 1 criteria. Then, there’s the third group of affiliates who mainly promote, just promoting to their friends, so they’ll basically promote. If you promote them, then they’ll promote back. That’s basically how it works, right? It’s like backscratching idea.

I’m not judging any of those three like everyone has their own motivations, but once I realized that, there’s … These are the 3 main motivators either for the product because the product is great, or because of how well it actually converts, or because whether you promoted them, or like being friends, and going to conferences, and those kinds of things.

Now, once you start realizing that, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to basically run specific campaigns where you will be convincing as many affiliates as possible. First of all, like in my strategy, how I use this knowledge is that I want to make sure that my products are awesome. If I wouldn’t be using it myself, it means that it’s not good enough, and I’ve actually had that in the past where I’ve been working on a product, and it was 95% done like I spent a lot of money, and a lot of time, and a lot of effort into it.

Then I realized that there’s actually another tool out there that already does what I’m doing, and I just deleted the whole product because I want to make sure not only that it’s an awesome product, but I also want to be unique because if I’m unique and if I’m the only one who does what I’m doing or at least in the way I’m doing it, that means that affiliates are going to be more inclined to actually promote it because they know it’s something new, something that their audience doesn’t have.

While, for example, if I would be launching a new page builder, then I know that a lot of my audience will already have click funnels, or lead pages, or any other tool like that, and my affiliates know that as well, so they’re not going to be as motivated to promote it. While if I basically create a new category of products, and they know none of their customers have that yet, and the product is really, really rock solid, it’s going to be easier for them to now say to their customers, “Hey, you should actually get this,” instead of saying, “Hey, now you should get instead of click funnels, the one that I promoted last week, now you should get this new awesome tool.” That’s not really going to work, right? That’s one my criteria. I really want to make sure that my product is rock solid, and that’s one part of the game obviously.

The second part is to make sure affiliates get that as well. What I’m actually doing is I want to make a really clear demo, and I want to make it clear in just … In the first 5 seconds, it should be clear exactly what it does and why it’s unique. If you cannot explain your product within 5 to 10 seconds, then you’re making it too complicated basically. The main thing that you’re branding it around, you should be able to communicate really, really fast because affiliates, they’re busy. They’re all busy people, so you want to convince or at least peak their interest enough to watch the rest of your demo, and you want to make sure that they get why your product is so awesome, right? That’s one thing that I do. I want to communicate how awesome my product is before it even goes live.

Secondly, we have this group of affiliates who promote because it has … Basically, they pick a product which converts best, so I want to make sure that I hit that sweet spot as well by communicating clearly how my previous products have been converting, so I make clear that … I show statistics. I share all my statistics from previous launches and perhaps … Sometimes, I’ve even launched it internally like before I do a public launch, I released that product internally like to a segment of my own email list. If that’s the case, I would also share those conversion numbers, so I would … I could literally say, “Hey, this has proven to be converting at X amount of dollars per click, or per visitor, or whatever I want to share,” and that makes sure that for the affiliates who are most interested in that, I got their interest as well.

Now, I already have 2 groups of people, right? Those who mainly promote for the product and those who mainly promote for conversions because I always make sure that my launch is convert … Like my goal is to always make sure they convert way, way better than anyone else’s, and I think I really believe that’s one of the main success factors for my launches because my affiliates know that, right? Once they promoted me, once they usually recognize like, “Hey, this is converting insanely well. I should probably promote this, do it more often the next he’s doing some kind of a launch.”

Then, thirdly, we get this group of people who just promote for friends or if you promote them. Now, that’s pretty much like a strategy call like you’re left to decide for yourself how far you want to go in that. I love to hang out with everyone. I love to go to conferences, but I know in the past, for example, I’ve been committing to do promotions for other people without even knowing what the product was.

I remember one time, someone came to me saying, “Hey, I’ll definitely promote your product, but you just have to make sure that you’ll promote my products which is going to be ready in a couple of months.” At that time, I said yes. A couple months later, I saw the product and it was … Pardon my French, but it was not good. It was bad. It sucked, right? Basically, it was a terrible product.

From that moment on, I realized like I’m never going to commit to doing a receipt, what I call that, so I’m never going to commit without like just … I’m not promoting a product just for the sake of someone promoting me. I’m not going to do it. I’d love to have a look at it. I’d love to check it out, to see evidence of it, but my main reason like I actually fall in the first category. My reason if I would promote a product is because I should love the product. I should be using it myself. I should be talking with my friends about it.

If your product is that good, then I will promote. If not, I’m not going to promote it, so I’m not doing it just for the receipt or I’m not doing it just for the sake of getting them to promote me, but that’s obviously a strategy call because I’ve seen … I know quite a lot of people who are doing that exact strategy. They promote people to make sure they promote back.

If I look at their numbers really, really well, but hopefully, you’ll have to basically ask that question to yourself like, “What’s most important for you?” For me personally, it’s not really about the money. I just want to do what I love, so for that reason, I only want to promote products that I really believe in and I actually use myself. Once again, that’s all for you to decide.

That’s basically what it said, right? Once you notice, once you’re clear of that, there are 3 groups of affiliates with 3 different motivations. Usually, they have at least two of these motivations so either for … They want to promote the best kind of products, they want to have the highest conversions, or … and/or they want to just promote people who are going to promote them back or so like their friends.

Once that clear, now you can formulate a strategy on what you think is your strengths, right? Maybe you are good network, and maybe you want to go for that friendly relationship, and you just want to make sure that they promote you just because you promote them and just because you … you’re going to all these conferences. Maybe you have a rock solid product and you think, “Hey, that’s actually the core thing I should be focusing on,’ or maybe you’re really, really good at conversions and you know you want to go after that group, but whatever it is, make up your mind and go for it.

I think that like just having this sort of vision in place and instead of just going in blind and just trying to convince everyone of everything helped me a lot to convince a lot of affiliates to promote my products, and that’s why my launches have been this big of a success basically. I hope that helps. I hope it also inspires you to … especially if you’re not doing any affiliate-based launches to consider it because it’s incredibly effective. If you’re listening and you’re one of my friends who are already doing launches, then now you know how I do it and how I put everyone in baskets based on why they would promote my products and why they wouldn’t. I hope it helps and talk to you all soon.

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On this episode Wilco talks his 3 most profitable single automation:

Abandoned Cart Automation
Website Visit Automation
Did You See This?

So listen below to start applying these automations into your business right away:

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:47: Email automation. What is it?
02:38: Abandoned cart email sequence.
04:19: Website Visit Automation
05:10: Keeping email super, super short inspired by Dean Jackson
05:52: What I usually have in my business, I usually have some extra offers on the back end.
07:30: Three of my most profitable email automations
08:17: These three email automations, they all just consist of one simple email

Transcription:

Hey, everyone. It's me, Wilco, here. Today we're going to talk about something that really, really, really excites me. It is email automation. Specifically what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you three of my most profitable email automations. Each of these three are really easy to set up. They're all just one email but they're incredibly effective. I'm going to give you them in just a minute.

First of all let's talk about email automation. What is it? Until a year ago or so I was sending out all my emails to my email list in broadcast style. Which means that I would just select a part of my email list, I would then write down the email, and I would press send, and all the people I selected would then all get the exact same email at the exact same time. At the time I already had some automation, if you would want to call it like that by doing things like, if someone give X to my product, they buy one of our products, then on day they're going to get a certain email, on day two they're going to get a certain email, on day three, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

In a way that is already automated. These days we've got way more options. Personally, I Active Campaign, but there are other tools like Infusion Soft or Direct, and I'm pretty sure there's going to be more tools on the market that really allow you to do all kinds of crazy stuff. For example, let's some product number A from you. You can then do a quick check: does this person already product B as well? If not, then send an email about product B. If they already do have it, then we're going to send out product C for example.

That's just a basic example, but basically what it allows you to do is you can set up all kinds of logics where you use the information you have on every single subscriber, whether they purchased a certain product, whether they visited a certain page, when they visited a certain page X amount of time, whether they have certain in your system based on interests that you added to those persons, or whatever you want to do. You can use that in your email logic.

Right now I'm not going to talk about that. That's really not the time. I'm happy to dive more in depth into that. Let me know if you want to know more about it. Right now I want to share three of my most profitable automations that are actually really easy to set up assuming you have the right tools in place.

The first one, the obvious one actually, is the abandoned cart email sequence. What I do is on every checkout page, if someone is going to get access to my product, I ask them to enter their email address first. What I then do is then on the second step they will actually add in their credit card or their PayPal in formation. What I do, once they enter email address, I start an automation in my Active Campaign account where I wait for thirty minutes. After thirty minutes I'm going to check, this person just entered their email address on my checkout page. Thirty minutes later did or did they not purchase my product yet? If not then it means they entered their email address but they actually did not make a purchase. For some reason or another they were planning to make a purchase but apparently they stopped. They didn't finish it.

What I do, I send out a really simply email saying I saw that you were about to pick up, and then the name of the product ... For example, I saw that you were about to pick up earlier and that you didn't get a chance to finish your order. I just wanted to see if there were any problems or anything at all that I could help with. You can reply to this email and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Talk soon, Wilco.

All I'm doing is sending out a casual email just checking in if everything is all right. That single email helps to get a lot of extra sales, because usually people have some kind of a question that they were just not really sure about. They were on the edge of buying, but they were not completely sure. Just by sending out a quick email thirty minutes right after they enter their email address on the check out page but if they did not finish their order, send it out and it's going to dramatically increase the number of sales that you're going to get. That's the first automation. My email abandoned cart automation.

The second one is actually a bit more advanced. It's not even advanced, but it really depends on what tools you're using. With Active Campaign it's pretty easy to set up. I'm not really sure about for example Infusionsoft or Drip, but what you can do in Active Campaign is you can store automation is someone visited your sales page or any other page for X amount of time. If I notice that someone who visit my sales page for at least times, and one hour after that they have not made a purchase, then I'm going to send them a casual email saying, are you still looking at getting more results from you're, and then whatever the product is about; are you still looking to get more leads into your business, if it's about [viral 00:04:35] for example. Are you still looking to get more leads into your business? Let me know, Wilco.

Just real casual. A non email what it's called. That's inspired by [doing the action but keeping it super, super short. A lot of people will respond because it feels like a genuine email. Obviously it doesn't work on every visitor, it only works for everyone who visit my site who previously has opted into my email list. I cannot just start sending emails to everyone who visit my site. Everyone who's on my email list and they visit my sales page for at least times but they don't make a purchase, I'm just going to send them out the casual email. A lot of people actually respond, I actually get a 20% conversion on that. That's pretty damn awesome for an email that only consists of couple of words. That's my second one. I highly recommend you to add it into your business as well.

Once someone actually makes a purchase, what I usually have in my business, I usually have some extra offers on the back end. Which means that right after they make a purchase, I might show them for example discounted product on another product so they might actually get access to that as well. Sometimes one, sometimes two, depends on the product. What I know is that a lot of people, they get access to a certain product and they already expect to see some other product. They already expect to see the next product. They might not even be interested in that so they just close it down and they haven't even seen both of them.

What I do is right after they make a purchase, I wait for roughly forty-five minutes, and then I send them a quick, casual email saying, Wilco here, I notice you just got access to a viral or whatever product it is. I don't come across as any sales or anything like that but I just wanted to make sure that you saw these discounts that we made available for you as well. If it's not for you, no worries at all, no pressure, but I just wanted to make sure you saw them and here are the links. Then I just add in the links of these extra offers that I made available. I don't want to pitch them on it, but I just want to make sure they're seen it. If you want to go one step further you could make sure that you only send out these emails if they did not visit those pages by actually checking whether they visited those pages. Using Active Companion, if you're using Active Companion.

That, if you would do like that and you would first of all check did they visit those pages? Only if they did not see any of those special discounted offers that you made available, only then you're going to send out that email to make sure got across as sales-y or pushy, or anything like the, because that's obviously not what you want for a brand new customer.

There you have it. Three of my most profitable email automations. They all consist of one email. One is just an abandoned cart email. If they enter their email address on the checkout page but they don't actually make a purchase, send them a quick email and ask them if there's anything wrong or can you help or anything like that. If they visit your sales page for at least X amount of time but they don't make a purchase, send them a casual email saying are you still interested in this? Let me know. Cheers, Wilco.

Finally, if they actually do get access to it and you have some extra offers on the back end. You have what's called a one-time offer or a special discount, but they don't take you up on that offer, they don't even check that page, just send them an email saying you just wanted to see if you got these pages. If it's not for you, no worries but I just wanted to make sure got them. Here are the links, and then you add in the links to the special offers.

These three email automations, they all just consist of one simple email, but they're incredibly, incredibly effective. I hope this helps and I hope it also inspires you to do more with email automations, because for me, like I said in the beginning of this podcast, I love it, I absolutely love it. I geek on this stuff, but that's because maybe I'm a bit of a marketing geek as well. I can spend hours and hours and hours on this kind of automations.

Sometimes I dive a bit too in depth, but those simple ones, they might even be my favorites because they're super-easy to set up, so every single time that I come up I can just easily add them into these products as well, and they work. They don't have to be complicated, just plain and simple. One email, boom, and it works. I really hope that this inspires you to implement those into your business as well, and I'd love to get your feedback on it as well. That's it for now, and I'll see you all in the next podcast.

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On this episode, Wilco talks the holy grail of online business. He explains what is the best business model you could have or you could add into your business today.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:29 Holy Grail of online business.
01:25 Why am I in this business?
04:21 The main reason why it's so awesome is you get to have predictable income.
05:19 Not only does it reduce stress, but it also allows me to build my business and scale it up
05:39 Why would you just charge a one time fee if you could also make sure that every single customer will one way or another would actually just keep on paying you on a monthly or a yearly basis?
06:55 Make sure to add a recurring element somewhere in your business
07:20 If ever you are planning to sell your business, then having a recurring subscription-based model in your business will seriously have a major impact on the evaluation.

Transcription:

Hey everyone. Welcome back and I'm really happy that you're tuning in today because today I wanted to talk about eh Holy Grail of online business. That's pretty much a fancy way of saying what I believe is the best business model that you could have or you could add into your business today. I'm not just saying that because this is actually what I've been focusing on over the last couple years and it's what I'm going to be focusing on over pretty much for years to come.

It's my number one priority in my business and that's why I really wanted to take some time to basically hoping to inspire you to add this into your business as well in case you don't have it yet. Last Sunday night I was doing my Sunday night routine, what I call it. Every Sunday night I sit down for an hour and I write down all my current goals and I write down what my achievements are going to be like for the next week, what I need to achieve, what I need to do exactly so I can start the week pretty much with a clear mind and a clear vision so I know exactly what to do.

Last Sunday night I was doing that as well and I was thinking about what is the end goal of all this. Why am I in this business? Why do I run this business? What's the ultimate goal that I want to get out of it? For me it's not money or it's not, I don't know, people looking at me or whatever it is that might inspire you. For me personally I'm doing this for freedom. I really want ultimate freedom, not just financially, but pretty much in every aspect of my life.

A big part of that means that I want to live a stress-free life pretty much, right? For a big part I think I've pretty much covered that. I've been able to travel the world every single year. We usually go abroad for a couple of months or we just travel and we explore places. That's awesome. It's great, but at the same time I remember a couple years ago when I was doing all of that, I was traveling the world. Me and my girlfriend, we were traveling through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Australia, all these awesome places, but I was not ultimately free because I remember that while I was doing that every single day right after breakfast, this was during our travel trip.

Every single day right after breakfast I went back to my room, my hotel room, and I opened my laptop, checked my statistics and I remember every single day I went to check how many sales I generated from the day before. Every single time that I did not hit my goal, my criteria that I wanted to hit, my exact sales figure number, I felt down. We were doing awesome things. We were doing things like riding elephants. We were swimming with dolphins and all of that, but I felt down because I didn't hit my sales quota, my sales number the day before, which is insane, right?

I was living the life, "the life", but still I didn't really feel like I was ultimately free because I was still sort of chasing this goal or chasing my business. I think a big part of the reason for that was because every single sale that I made back then was a one time sale, which means that every single customer would just have to pay once and they would get pretty much a lifetime access to whatever I was selling. There was no incentive for them to pay us at a monthly or a yearly fee.

That means that every single month I needed to make X amount of sales to at least cover my expenses. I have my whole team, I have my whole staff and a lot of expenses like server, [inaudible 03:34] and all of that. Only after X amount of sales I would even start at zero. Every single month at the first of the month I would start off with zero sales and you know, the game starts all over again pretty much.

To me that's not really freedom because you're always chasing, you're always having to get new customers because if you don't then you're being left behind and you're actually losing money, right? Over the last I think two years or so my number one priority has been to build up recurring revenue. That is what I believe the Holy Grail of online business or pretty much any kind of business actually.

Now, for me personally I'm doing it as a service, but there's obviously lots of ways that you can charge a recurring fee in your business. The main reason why it's so awesome is now you get to have, once you do this, you get to have predictable income. It's not just about selling products every single month, but now you actually know even if I don't sell a single product next month I'm still going to do X amount of revenue next month and the month after and the month after and even next year because you know you have X amount of people on a subscription basis and you know if you look at the numbers, X percentage will actually cancel on average. That's usually normal.

You can still calculate exactly how much revenue are you going to get over the next month and the next month and the next month, et cetera? Not just does that reduce a lot of stress, at least for me it takes pretty much away all my stress because I know my business is going to be good for a long time, but also I get to invest way, way more back into my business because I have this predictable income. Because now I can easily make commitments. For example big investments for a year period because I know it's going to be good because I know I have this predictable income.

Not only does it reduce stress, but it also allows me to build my business and scale it up because I get to invest more without taking all the risk that comes with it. At least way less risk, right? Obviously it's also way easier to keep a customer than to always get a new customer. Acquiring a new customer is always more expensive than keeping an existing customer. Why would you just charge a one time fee if you could also make sure that every single customer will one way or another would actually just keep on paying you on a monthly or a yearly basis?

Now, obviously you don't have to make this your number one goal, you don't have to change all your business and make sure that every single product isn't just a recurring base product, but you could easily add this in. For example you could have it as a one time offer. For example if you sell a product, then as an up sell you could for example charge something as a recurring fee. Or you could just have some extra services that you could add to your customers or offer to your customers at the monthly or yearly fee.

Whatever you do, try to add this somewhere in your business because it's going to make all the difference. Of course the start might be slow. When I started off it wasn't a jackpot right away because actually conversions went down. It's way easier to sell something at a lifetime fee versus a recurring fee because a lifetime fee doesn't have the lifetime commitment for our customer while at a monthly or yearly fee people are asking themselves, "Hey, do I really, really want to have it?"

Conversions will go down, so it's going to be a bit tougher in the beginning, but once you're through the first initial part it's going to pay off big time. I would never, never, ever go back to where I was a couple years ago. I just love it. Seriously, if you have a business, no matter if it's online or offline, make sure to somewhere in your business add a recurring element. Charge something at a monthly or yearly fee, start building it up.

For example, if ever you are planning to sell your business, some people are into that, then having a recurring subscription-based model in your business will seriously have a major impact on the evaluation, on how much money your business is actually worth. It's actually a good thing for that as well. That's really what I wanted to share with all of you. Make sure you have a recurring element in your business and don't do it tomorrow, don't do it next week, but start making plans today. Talk to you all soon.

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On this very first episode, Wilco talks about what should you be doing to scale your business. Listen as he talks about what should you be automated or delegated and why it's ok to do things that are not scalable in order to grow your business.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

1:37: Difference between growing your business and really scaling it.
04:01: Should a webinar be automated and delegated?
04:51: In your business, what can you actually automate or delegate to someone else?
05:56: How can I leverage my time better in order to grow my business.

Transcription:

Hey, hey, hey there. Welcome to this very first episode of this brand new podcast. My name is Wilco de Kreij, all the way from the Netherlands and I'm really, really excited today because this isn't just the very first episode of this podcast, it's also my very first podcast ever. I'm really excited and at the same time, a little bit nervous, but I figured, you know what, I'm just going for it. I'm going to press that record button and here I am sharing my thoughts with all of you.

Over the last thirty minutes or so, I've been asking myself what to talk about in this very first episode because in a way, you want to start with a boom. You want to make a good first impression, so the most logical thing for me to do would be to talk about my back story and to share with you what I've achieved so far to peak your interest and to build up my authority.

Now, the thing is, when I start talking to someone and I just met him or her and that person starts talk about himself all the time, I don't like it and I'm going to guess that you don't like that as well. I figured, I'm just going to skip that part. I'll save that for another episode, but right now, I want to talk about just something that's on my mind. What I'm doing currently to grow my business and when I say grow my business, what I really mean is scaling my business because in my personal opinion, there's a difference between growing your business and really scaling it. When I'm growing it, I'm like going for that, "Nya. I want to get some extra customers like on this month, I'm getting one hundred and then maybe next month one twenty, et cetera, et cetara."

What I want to do as an entrepreneur, I want to achieve big things, right? I want to really scale it up. My goal is to get exponential growth. I mean, it doesn't mean that I actually get it. It doesn't mean that every single month, I'm doubling my business. Definitely not, right, but I am really striving for maximum growth. For that reason, I'm also deciding what actions do I take in order to get there.

The main question that I ask myself is before I do anything in my business, before I start, before I think of a new traffic source, and before I think about how can I optimize this conversions or before I think, "Hey ... " Anything I can do in my business, what I think, what I believe could be of impact of growth like it could be an extra traffic source, it could be a new conversion tactic, it could be a new marketing campaign, whatever it is, we're all doing stuff in order to grow our business.

The first thing I ask myself, "Could this thing that I'm planning to do, could it either be automated or delegated?" I mean, we all have the same twenty four hours in a day. If I start doing things that only I can do that cannot be delegated to someone else or cannot be automated, then, it's just a mater of time before my whole day is fully planned. There's nothing more to do.

In every part of my business, everything that I'm doing, if I have to do some things like certain actions, like before I even start doing it, I'm already thinking about, "All right. How can I teach this to someone else in my team," or, "How can I automated?" Because if I don't, then pretty soon, I'm going to maxed out, right? In the past I've had that before. When I was starting out as a solo entrepreneur and trying to do everything yourself, you know, you're driving your own Facebook ads, you're driving Google ads recheck campaigns, you're creating your own sales videos, you're trying to do everything yourself. At some point, there's no way you can handle it because like I said, we all have the same twenty four hours in a day.

Right now, everything that I do is really just I ask myself, "Can I automate it or can I delegate it?" Most of the times, the answer is yes. If it's not like if you really cannot automate or delegate it, then you really need to make a real conscious decision like, "Do you really want to do that?" Because there are some exceptions, right? For example right now, I'm actually working on a webinar which in a way it could be automated, but do not a webinar, but it's not as effective. It could also be delegated to someone else, but it's also not as effective because the truth is, it's most effective if I am actually doing it, the actual business owner and it's actually live.

In that sense, I'm making the conscious decision to do it, but I already have in mind like once I got that formula down, I am going to automate it or I'm going to delegate it. Either one of these two because there's no way I can keep on doing that same thing every single day or every single week because I just don't have the time. That's one of the matches that I want to share in this very first podcast.

It doesn't really matter if you're just starting out or if you already have a growing business, but try to think of all the things that you are currently doing in your business. Make a list of all the things you're currently doing, your whole to do list of the whole week and ask yourself, "From all of these things, what can I actually automate and what can I actually delegate to someone else?" Then, start working on that.

Sometimes it means that you have to put in a little of extra work in order to train someone. I've had that before. Sometimes it was just a simple task that I can just do. It's just twenty minutes a day. No worry, no big deal. Just training someone to do that the exact same thing actually takes quite a bit of time. I have to actually document it all. I need to make sure that they've got some backup in place. It's not always easy, but even if it just save me twenty minutes every single day, it's definitely, definitely worth it because at some point, you just could have been maxed out. You just need to actually leverage your time. You need to be smarter about it.

That's really the first thing I just wanted to share with all of you because I thought this is going to be relevant to everyone in my audience. It doesn't matter whether you're just starting out or really you're actually already have a growing business, but start thinking about, "What can I actually leverage? How can I leverage my time better in order to grow my business fast or no?"

I hope you like this very first episode. In the next episode, we're going to dive more in depth, but other than that, I just want to wish you an awesome day. Thanks for listening. Bye, bye.

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Wilco de Kreij