Funnel Magazine Volume 2: Edition 7 by Funnel Magazine™

FUNNEL MAGAZINE TRAFFIC & LEAD GEN

6 FUNNEL FEATURES

LEADERSHIP

LEADING TO CREATE GREAT TEAM PERFORMANCE

THE INTERVIEW

46 METRICS

14 STRATEGY & TACTICS

LEADERSHIP

68 SOCIAL MEDIA

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

IN EVERY EDITION

LETTER

GDPR: WHAT THE NEW EU DATA LAW MEANS

FROM THE EDITOR

GENERATE MULTIPLE GENERATIONS OF CUSTOMERS

FRANK KERN

THE AUTHOR OF YOUR OWN LIFE STORY

IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING INTERACTIVE FUNNELS WHY BUYER PERSONA IS IMPORTANT

WHICH FUNNEL WORKS FOR YOU?

2-STEP SYSTEM FOR SELLING HIGH-TICKET

PROTECT YOUR SENSITIVE INFORMATION

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR OF

FUNNEL M

Dear Funnel Genius, In this edition we feature Frank Kern, a master marketer. The first time I heard Frank’s name was at my first personal development seminar. The topic was Neuro Linguistic Programing (NLP) of which Frank is a expert. Our speaker was at an event with his arms crossed and his foot resting on the wall behind him. Frank comes up to him and leans against the wall and puts his foot up, crossing his arms. Needless to say the speaker was impressed with how Frank match and mirrored him. Since that time, Frank’s name has come up dozens of times as I’ve gone on this journey in the marketing industry. Whether it’s his direct response skills, his presence on Facebook, or sales letters, he is one of THE go to guys in the industry. And believe it or not Frank helped save Funnel Magazine... Hawk and I were in Mexico for a friend’s wedding. We were on our last dime and didn’t know how we were going to continue with the magazine. A lot of internal business challenges had come up and we weren’t sure what was next. By happy coincidence, a good friend happened to also be in Mexico at the time. And a stone’s throw away from where we were staying. As a fellow marketer with years of experience in the industry, she understood better than most what we were going through. She offered to introduce us to Frank Kern… and well, to make a long story short you now hold this month’s edition of Funnel Magazine. So remember when you are on the ropes, the end may not be the end. And Frank is here to help you too… Happy Funnel Hacking, Kate Mikado Editor-in-Chief

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

TRAFFIC & LEAD GEN

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

GDPR: What the New EU Data Law Means ARTICLE BY Steve Shaw

GDPR: What the New EU Data Law Means for Email Marketing and Lead Generation on Your Website

The impact of this new law is significant, and affects how businesses are able to use personal data for marketing purposes for years to come.

Before you continue reading, be aware that this article should not be considered as legal advice. It’s for information purposes only, and you’re recommended to seek your own legal counsel to determine what the GDPR means for you.

Thinking of burying your head in the sand? Falling foul of the law can lead to huge fines of up to €20 million, or 4% of your annual global turnover, whichever is higher.

Sure, such huge fines are probably unlikely for smaller businesses with minor transgressions. But you could If you’re running a business and not yet heard about still be liable for compensation to the data subject the GDPR, you’ve been living under a brick the past concerned, and it’s important to ensure you’re doing all few months. GDPR is, of course, the General Data you can to comply. Protection Regulation that has been in effect from May After all, it’s about properly protecting consumers and 25, 2018. their data from abusive practices. Doing so can only While it’s a European law, it has global reach, and reflect well on, and give consumers confidence in, your applies to all businesses that collect, record, organize, business. store or otherwise process personal data of EU citizens. So what exactly are you supposed to do? What can you Personal data? That’s any information like names and no longer do? What changes should you be making? email addresses—even IP addresses—that could be used to identify an individual. Unfortunately, much of the advice that’s out there on GDPR is confusing and conflicting, and that includes advice from legal experts (remember, this article is NOT legal advice and is for information purposes only).

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

So, just what do you need to do to ensure your website and practices are compliant with GDPR?

First, there are slightly different laws depending on about how you’ll use their data before they subscribe. whether you are a Data Controller or a Data Processor? What about checkboxes? While there’s a lot of talk Which are which? about now needing a checkbox on your forms, they’re If you’re at the front end, making decisions about how not always necessary. to collect personal data (for example, generating leads For example, clicking the button to subscribe is for your business) and what to do with it (for example, indication enough of the person’s consent, presuming adding the lead data to an autoresponder service), the language on your form is clear enough. you’re likely a Data Controller. However, if you intend to use their data for more than If you’re processing that data in some way on behalf one purpose—for example, if you’re collecting emails of a Data Controller, then you’d be considered to be a for email marketing as well as address information for Data Processor. direct mailing—checkboxes are probably wise for each As an example, autoresponder services like MailChimp, type of data processing. Aweber and others would fit into this category. Remember, however, to leave the user to check any To add a little more complication, Data Processors are checkboxes—pre-checking them isn’t permitted. often Data Controllers as well—yes, you can fit into A better approach than multiple checkboxes might be a both categories. two-step form. After the person has initially subscribed However, to keep things as straightforward as possible, via email, you can send them to a page with another this article will predominantly focus on Data Controllers, form that offers something via direct mail in return for which more than likely covers the majority of readers. their physical mailing address. Ready to get into the meat of it? The easiest way to understand the GDPR is to focus on six main principles of the legislation. These can be summarized using the helpful CARTES acronym (Cartes is the name of a small town in Spain): • • • • • •

Consent Accessibility Rectification Transparency Erasability Security

In other words, this means separate consent for each different type of data and data processing, without the need for checkboxes. Providing Proof Even when the person has given their consent, you need to keep a record that they have done so and be able to prove this consent.

How? For double opt-in lists, it’s relatively straight forward. The person subscribes through the form, and then further consents to the processing of their data via the confirmation email. You’ll need to keep a copy of But what do they each mean? Let’s look at each one the confirmation email used, but that’s about it. in turn as it relates to email marketing, and what you For single opt-in lists, it’s not so easy. The proof all rides need to do to comply. on the opt-in form itself. Consent Some suggestions include taking screenshots of your The person must agree to how you intend to use their opt-in forms. While useful to get started, there are data. some drawbacks to this approach. For example, let’s say you’re offering a lead magnet of some kind, say a free report, in return for their email. They enter their email, you send them the lead magnet, but you don’t mention that you’ll be sending them regular email messages afterwards.

For example, this might not offer enough verifiable proof in a court of law (it’s just a screenshot after all).

And who is going to be responsible in your business for ensuring this is done each and every time you change a particular form, and recording it in a proper, In this example, they haven’t given their consent. To verifiable manner? ensure their consent, you would need words to the effect of, “Get regular information on XYZ, starting If you’re split testing forms (which of course you should be), are you with LEAD MAGNET today.” able to determine You’ll also need an easily available link to your privacy EDITION 7 policy. This allows the person to get more information

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

exactly which version the subscriber used to opt in? In addition, Article 13(3) of the legislation appears Would you be able to prove it? to indicate that if you already have consent for one purpose, but now want to use the data for a different What else can you do? purpose, you can simply let them know rather than At optinopoli™, we’ll shortly have a solution that request renewed consent. Of course, they have the automatically records the form used for new leads and option to simply opt out if they object. sends it to you. There may be other solutions, but I’ve You might want to run this past a lawyer first, but let’s not yet come across any. say: Opting Out • Your subscribers opted in to receive a lead magnet. Of course, the subscriber should be able to change their mind and withdraw their consent at any time. In other • You can prove that consent. words, they should be able to opt out. With emails, that • You’re now emailing them more regularly, which isn’t strictly in line with the original consent they process should be automatic. gave you. So nothing much changes here. I’m guessing your emails already have an unsubscribe link in them, so Rather than request renewed consent from them to be you’ll already be compliant. able to continue emailing them, you could potentially Existing Subscribers

email them to:

Because of GDPR, a lot of businesses are recontacting • Let them know you’ll continue to email them on a regular basis. people on their email lists and asking them for renewed • Remind them of their ability to opt out if they no consent. However, this isn’t always necessary. longer want to hear from you. For example, if you already have their consent for how you’re processing their data, and you can prove it in This will not only help clean up your list and keep it line with the Providing Proof section above, then responsive, but also potentially ensure you’re compliant you don’t need to ask for consent again. with GDPR.

Again, consult a lawyer to determine exactly how this might apply for your own circumstances. VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

LIVELAUNCHWEBINAR.COM

Rectification

collecting names and email addresses to send regular information that might be of interest, While some of the GDPR requirements might seem a state so clearly. little onerous, so much of the GDPR legislation is just • State exactly how subscribers can opt out, good practice and basic common sense. update their data, request copies of it, or request deletion. Some of this might be automated, Under the ‘rectification’ requirement, subscribers should depending on your autoresponder (for example, be able to correct their data as required, or even provide an opt out facility, and sometimes the ability to additional information you don’t already have. Makes change data) sense, right? And probably something you already • Mention services you’re using to process provide. the data (i.e. any Data Processors such as Presuming that you’re responsive to subscriber requests autoresponder services). State who they are, to, say, change their email address—or have an and if they’re outside the EU, state what automated means for them to do so—you’ll already be safeguards they have in place for the data, such compliant with this part of the legislation. as the E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield. Accessibility Of course, you’ll periodically need to review and update Another relatively easy, straightforward principle. The your privacy policy to ensure it’s accurate. It’s strongly subscriber has the right to do things like: advisable to keep a record of what changes were made and when. • See the data you have about them • Be told what the purposes are for that data This then helps you to: • Discover who the information has been • Trace a particular person’s consent back to a disclosed to (if anyone) specific privacy policy. • Determine how long you will hold the data for. • Determine if you can legally process a person’s data in a particular way at some point in the The full terms are in Article 15 of the GDPR legislation, future. and probably not something you need to worry much about until someone gets in touch to ask about their • Provide proof of consent if needed. data. Presuming you have access to supply the required information within a timely manner, you should be fine. A good way to do this is to: But again, you might want to consult a lawyer to review • Add the date of the change to the name of the your own circumstances! privacy policy file on your webserver.

• Copy across to a new file when you need to make changes. Another common sense directive, but one that’s • Update all your privacy links accordingly. important to review to ensure you’re being as transparent as possible in your use of subscriber data. For example, your privacy policy might be available on your website at /privacy20180430. If you change it in Privacy Policy time for GDPR, it might become /privacy20180525. It’s well worth reviewing your privacy policy and updating it in line with GDPR. Here are a few guidelines This allows you to potentially see exactly which privacy policy was linked to by an opt-in form at a particular to follow: point in time. • Use clear, plain language that’s easy to understand. Avoid using complex legalese that Contact Information only a lawyer could decipher. As with some other parts of the legislation, you’re no • Be as clear as you can about what you’re doing doubt doing this already, but your contact information with subscriber data and why. So if you’re should be easily accessible on your website. At a bare minimum, this would generally include your email address and physical mailing address. Transparency

Erasability

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Your subscribers not only have the right to opt-out, but to also request complete deletion of their data.

You’re also obligated under GDPR to delete personal • Review and update all opt-in forms to ensure data when it’s no longer required for its original purpose. compliance with GDPR going forward. • Review your existing email lists and determine For example, if someone opts out of your emails, you whether you need to request renewed consent, can no longer use it to contact them. It’s, therefore, no at least for those subscribers based in the EU. longer required for the original purpose and should be • Review and update your privacy policy as deleted within a reasonable time frame. required. It’s a good idea, in order to prove your efforts to comply with GDPR, to document and follow a regular process Remember, too, that much of the GDPR legislation just where you delete unsubscribed email addresses from represents good business practice. your autoresponder. For example, this could be a If you’re doing all you reasonably can to do things regular monthly activity. like protect subscriber data, delete it when no longer required, treat it (and your subscribers) respectfully, Security respond appropriately when they contact you, and Finally, another common sense directive that you’re build up a good relationship with your list, you’re probably already largely compliant with. Of course, if unlikely to go far wrong. you’re collecting personal data from people, you need to make all reasonable efforts to ensure that data is After all, GDPR is largely aimed at preventing businesses from abusing and failing to adequately secure. protect personal data, which is a good thing for all of Usually, your email subscriber data will simply be held us. Adhering to it can mean a more responsive email list, by your autoresponder. Practically all such services will and a better reputation for email marketers in general. have appropriate data security processes in place by design. After all, data breaches would potentially be As a final reminder, remember this is just informational and not legal advice. You should consult your own legal catastrophic for them. representative to determine exactly how the GDPR But remember, if you’re exporting data from your applies to your own business. autoresponder to say a local drive, it’s then your responsibility to ensure the security of that data. Finally... Hopefully this article has clarified many aspects of GDPR for you, in terms of how it relates to lead generation and email marketing. In summary, your main priorities should be to:

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

FUNNELS

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

Article by Seth Greene

How Can You Generate Multiple Generations Of Customers For Your Business?

A former marketing client of mine in the iron manufacturing business referred me to a hair salon owner. When I met with the hair salon owner, I asked how the CEO of an iron business knew a hair salon owner.

How far down the tree do you track? A number of years ago, a colleague of mine from a BNI group told me that Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington was coming to Buffalo to speak. Nobody comes to Buffalo to speak.

I couldn’t picture them sitting together at a Vistage I rescheduled 8 meetings and bought a $300 ticket group, as the hair salon does less than $500,000 per to go see Kevin speak. I have always been a HUGE year, and the iron business does 8 figures. Shark Tank fan, and Kevin was a DREAM client of The hair salon owner said he cut my client’s hair. He mine. My 10 seconds of facetime with Kevin at the also cuts my client’s father’s hair, and cut my client’s event (in the book signing line), led to me giving him a grandfather’s hair before him. That family has been 20 minute ride to the airport (pre-Uber). coming there for over 60 years. That led to sending him a Shock & Awe Box, which That’s what Dan Kennedy would call a “lifer.” My former led to my firm doing marketing consulting for him, client lives on the same street as me, and the hair salon then him being my podcast co-host and my business is at least a 20 minute drive. In Buffalo, 20 minutes is a partner. Dream client acquired! long commute for us suburbanites, lol. There is a much My connection with Kevin led to partnering with him cheaper hair cut place literally 3 minutes from both our in another business he owns, Angel Investors Network. houses. There are dozens between our neighborhood That led to a spot as a celebrity guest judge at Kevin’s and the place my former client goes to. He’s never live Pitch Tank event every year. I can trace dozens of going anywhere else. That’s the type of generational active clients to that relationship, and track the referrals marketing you want, and we are going to talk about those clients gave me, and so on. how to get that in just a minute. For example - Pitch Tank led to a speaking engagement Another way to look at generational marketing at Kevin’s mastermind group, which led to a referral to a is to track your generations of referrals. woman with portable pet door product. She referred me to her husband, who referred me to a business partner of his, who is hiring us to create a shock and awe box

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

for him. That’s three generations of referrals right there. When his check clears, I will send a commission check (whether they are expecting it or not, whether they are aware of the chain or not) to everyone involved. You can bet that will prompt some happy phone calls, and even more referrals.

Then there’s also a spot on the sheet that says, “Hey parents, we hope you’ve enjoyed your kid coming home and doing all these chores without you having to ask them. If your kid has done it and you want a video of your child breaking their board, then write your name and phone number right here.”

So how do you build endless chains of referrals? How They send a video to the parents. They film every single do you get multiple generations of clients in your kid breaking their board. They text the video. And then there’s a call to action for them to come in to an business? event that Saturday where they can come in and it’s I will give you an amazing example of an awesome a celebration. It’s a pizza party, and the kid gets their marketing strategy that another business is using, and white belt and they get their uniform. So it kind of gives then we will discuss how to do it for you. them the next step after they’ve broken a board. Kyle Porter owns a kid’s karate school a little bit north of How well does it work? At one of the elementary schools, Atlanta (http://www.samplesdojo.com/). He opened they get 80% of the sheets back that have names and about two years ago and has a great growth rate for a phone numbers of the parents that they treat as warm Karate school. It’s how he did it that is very, very unique leads. That’s basically an 80% opt in rate. When was and should be used in your business. the last time your website got an 80% opt in rate? Has

The first thing that is really unique is that his school only it ever? After the week of karate / pe classes, they call teaches elementary school kids. No adult classes at all. the parents, and say, “Hey is this something you guys want to continue with?” It works pretty quick with a He has essentially a five mile radius around his building great conversion rate. that is basically the only place that he is going to get any members from. Part of that is the density of Isn’t that brilliant? Talk about outside the box thinking! karate schools in the area. And part of it is just the fact They also have an after school program where they of logistically, people aren’t going to drive 10 to 15 pick up the kids in a school bus that they bought and miles for their kids to take karate classes. He has three wrapped with their logos. They pick up kids the kids, elementary schools within two miles of his building, bring them back to the dojo and they have a combined and he’s got 1000 kids sitting in each one of these karate and day care / after school program. elementary schools, and that’s his entire market. That’s how they get the kids in the door, here’s how they He goes into the schools and actually replaces the gym generate referrals. One of their referral events teacher for a week. He teaches all the PE classes at these schools, K through five, kindergarten through fifth grade, and they do a karate class. They keep them focused. They keep them busy, moving, and having fun. Here’s the exact funnel. When they go into the schools, they see each kid two times. The first time they give them a sheet that they take home to their parents, and it’s basically a chore list. It’s five things that they do at home without anybody having to ask them. What the parents are experiencing is the kid comes home and says, “Mr. Kyle from the Dojo’s come in. I had a great time in PE today. He gave me this sheet. Now I’ve got to go clean my room and I’ve got to go vacuum the living room, and I’ve got to feed the dog, and I’ve got to do all these things.” The parents are thinking, “This is great!” And then if the kid does those things, the second time they see them in class, if they bring that sheet back, then they get to break a board. EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

case you are wondering, we are reassuringly expensive). Michael Griffiths is the founder of Referral Marketing Guru, the #1 Referral Marketing Training organization around the globe and he had this to say about starting a referral chain in your business, “The first thing you want to do is work out who also sells to the same clients that you sell to and you don’t compete with one another. Or ask yourself, “Where else do my clients spend money?” All of those people have the potential to be referral partners. The second step is simple, start asking people if they are interested in being referral partners.” is called “Laser Tag Showdown, Parents’ Night Out.” What that looks like is for 50 bucks, you can drop your kid off at five o’clock in the evening. The windows are blacked out. They’ve got black lights hung up, fog machines, strobe lights, and they’ve got a bunch of laser tag sets. They wrap dodge balls in black light tape. The kids say it’s like playing dodge ball in space, and they’re having a great time. All the kids bring friends with them to come play. They also have them running around and kicking bags, and that kind of stuff, so they do experience some karate. So it gives them that first experience of like, “Oh wow. This is really fun,” but it’s not a, “Parents, sign your kid up for this long term commitment,” kind of thing. It works like a charm, and brings in new families as members every time they do it.

Michael says don’t lead with offering to pay people for referrals. “The money will never be the reason why someone finds you referrals. The money, if there is any, should be an unexpected pleasant surprise.” One of the biggest mistakes business owners make when trying to generate generational referrals is that they don’t train their referral partners. You have to teach them how to refer you. They need to know what to say, how to bring you up in conversation, etc.” You can’t leave it up to chance, or assume your referral partner has any idea how to sell your services. Michael’s top three referral tips are:

Communicate as often as possible with your referral partners, networks and the people that are in just circles. The more you communicate, the more you are remembered and the more opportunities that are They even managed to make their billing unique. created for you. Unlike most karate schools where you have to sign a one year contract, or join a Black Belt club and sign a TRUST, TRUST, TRUST…. People will never help you five year commitment, they have no contracts and their unless they trust you. Start with getting to a personal billing is month-to-month. Then the burden is on them level (not business level) and look at the difference it to provide an exceptional experience because the kids makes to the relationship. could quit at any time. Follow a process and don’t rely on hope and luck. If So that is what’s possible if you do this right. That you want to learn how Michael does this, he has some elementary school is essentially an endless chain of great resources at www.referralmarketingguru.com.au/ resources referrals into the karate school. My relationship with Kevin Harrington and Angel Good luck and let me know how building your referral Investors Network is another endless referral chain. marketing chain goes! Kevin gets pitched about 10,000 business a year, so we can cherry pick the best ones to help with their marketing. The Angel Investors Network is always bringing in new investors who want to fund these companies. Recently we even had one investor offer to “donate” the money to us to fund our marketing for one of the companies he was involved in, because they couldn’t afford us (in

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

LIVELAUNCHWEBINAR.COM

Article by Tod Holland

The Importance Of Building Interactive Funnels

That isn’t to say there’s no room for improvement. In fact, as awesome and lucrative as classic funnels are, it’s clear that we’re operating on a numbers game. Let me explain. Say you draw 1000 clicks to your site over the course of a month. Assuming your page is amazing, which as a subscriber to Funnel Magazine, is a pretty safe bet; you should see anywhere from 100200 leads opt into your system. Funnels.

Anybody who has a head on their shoulders knows that 100-200 leads every month can completely change the game for most businesses.

The modern answer to how to get more clients, increase brand awareness, and relieve myself on long drives in That being said, I can’t be the only one who thinks as much about the 85% that bounced off my page as I between rest stops. do the 15% opting in for more information. I paid good The term has taken on its own identity over the past money for high-converting ad copy, targeting, landing few years to incorporate any form of lead capture that page copy, email autoresponders, etc. draws prospects closer to the end of the sales cycle. This is usually done through the use of a “lead magnet” or a If I’m targeting my perfect customer, and my words free item of value tied to your product, and it is used as are speaking directly to their souls, why are 85% of my leads leaving my page before giving me their email an incentive for the opt-in. address for a free e-book, webinar, course, or grilled This article isn’t an indictment of the tried and true cheese recipe? model that’s worked for thousands. I actually love this model, and its simplicity has made me I actually don’t know. I’m famous around my circles lucky enough to find success across for being the most agnostic marketer out there. I say “I don’t know” because there’s always a way to test and multiple industries. find out, and anyone who sensationalizes without data is dragging our industry back to the browser pop-up VOLUME 2 days.

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

LIVELAUNCHWEBINAR.COM

Here’s my opinion, backed by data. If you aren’t getting the opt-in response you’re looking for; chances are your funnel isn’t engaging or interactive enough to keep your prospect’s attention. This is a huge problem for many industries, especially B2B, tech, or any other field where your perfect customer is educated enough not to give out any information without first receiving value.

the lead magnet in an email, the intention being that the lead magnet is so persuasive and useful that the prospect will either head back to the site and purchase the product, or be so enamored at the value that they’ll wait for your every email. The problem with this is that people are busy, and marketers don’t matter until they do. Couple that with the fact that everybody is using this strategy, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for mediocrity. The leads who do opt-in will be distracted with the points in your lead magnet, and like most internet things, your offer will be forgotten unless you spend HUGE sums of money on follow-up marketing.

You need to show enough generosity and respect to your potential leads that not only will they bring themselves to respond to you or your automatons, but they’ll wait for you to reach out to them, and they will 2. A solar company is offering a $1000 rebate for have specific questions to help you determine the best anyone who pays for a solar installation by the end of the month. This doesn’t sound very sexy to the average sales approach. homeowner, so the copywriter gets creative and uses Interactive Funnels come in many forms, and lots of “Get your $1000 Now” as his call to action. As a result, you may already be using one (or a portion of one) he’ll get huge volumes of leads for next to nothing, which without even knowing it. will initially make him look like a rock star. At least, until every lead gets mad because what they want is their $1000 and what the solar company wants is to install their panels. In this case, neither the leads nor the funnel builder gets what they want. Instead of all this song and dance, why not adopt the revolutionary idea of giving the prospects exactly what they want, without forcing them to fill out a form before doing so? Your inner marketer is probably screaming at your screen right now. “This idiot gets an opportunity to write for Funnel Magazine, and the first thing he does is write about Surveys, info products, quizzes, polls, and calculators doing the opposite of what’s been working for us so are the future of lead capture. far?” Instead of praising lead capture, we should be Yeah, basically. celebrating lead engagement, where the client not only is willing to submit their information to you but wants I’m the last guy to stir the pot, and if running the classic to spend as much time as possible on your site getting method is making you money then for the love of God, don’t stop doing what works because you read an information and interacting. article online. Everything else we’re doing is distracting. It is an effort to obfuscate or convince the prospect to move forward. But if you’re looking for a competitive edge for your agency, or simply to generate higher quality leads from Two examples I want to bring up: your own campaigns, look into ways to make your 1. A company creates a funnel to offer a white paper/ funnels more interactive so prospects will want to stick lead magnet/ebook. The lead will opt-in to receive around.

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

LIVELAUNCHWEBINAR.COM

Article by Rahil Joshi

Why Buyer Persona is Important for Sales Funnels

Out of the methodologies used for sales, an important factor is buyer persona, which is nothing but a fictional ID of the ideal customer. The ID or persona will have those qualities that make up a buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personality or an ideal buyer. It generalizes that that particular ID or persona has certain qualities or preferences, based on which shopping is done.

About Buyer Persona

What Is a Sales Funnel?

Use It to Attract Customers and Increase Brand Awareness

A business can have just one or two personas or it can have as many as ten or twenty. Make your buyer persona strong by creating it using insight and market research information for actual customers. Here are the reasons that buyer persona is important:

Sales funnel is a revenue generation process that is created by seller or companies. It is basically a customer The reason buyer personas are so important for journey roadmap for the sale. spreading awareness about a brand and popularizing it is because they give a deep understanding of the needs of the real buyer. Using such insight, you can carry out many types of product or service activities with ease. For example, the persona will help determine exactly what type of content should be posted about a brand in its site, blog, article directory, forum posts, etc. If you already have a product that is gaining sales in the market, but want to enhance it further, buyer persona helps in product development activities. It gives further insight into what the buyer is likely to want more from a product so that you can improve upon it and cater to their needs. Find Out Customer Needs Precisely

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

One of the key reasons to opt for buyer persona is that it helps you easily find out about your customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs. When you identify them precisely, it is easy to

persona, you can find out details like this and more. You will learn which spaces on the internet they frequent the implement steps that help cater to them. By satisfying most so that you can reach out to them here, best ways customers according to their precise expectations, what to market your business on the your brand gains is customer loyalty and it impresses on their minds as one that takes care of their needs through its products or services. internet, what kind of content that will attract them fast Developed Products with Enhanced Features and much more. Another thing that must be noted is that buyer persona can be used to develop products with much enhanced capabilities than what you are providing currently. This is because you can use it to determine the effectiveness of your product in solving customer problems. For example, if cleaning liquid is your product, use the persona to learn about how strong the liquid is in giving the cleanliness that consumers seek when using it on the floor.

Use Buyer Persona to Target Different Types of Customers

It is possible to create different types of buyer persona, each with specific qualities and use it to target a set of buyers. For example, you can create content for a persona and post it in various blogs or article directories. This content will target a specific audience. Likewise, you can do the same using another persona, which targets another type of buyer. Using persona this There might be enhancements that can be made to the way enables your brand can reach out to consumers of ingredients to make it a more powerful cleaning liquid, different needs and ages. yet one that does not show any effect on the skin when used. Hence buyer persona helps to constantly improve Use It to Implement Language and Tone Consistency upon product features so that the product caters to With a persona in place, you can implement consistency consumer needs accurately, which in turn evolves and in the use of language and content style across all strengthens your relationship with them. marketing campaigns, thus bringing uniformity into Learn Which Mediums of Customer Outreach Are it. When you know that a specific language and tone of giving information works, implement it across the Best campaigns so that you gain higher sales. Today the key to online business success is finding out how to best reach out to customers while they surf the net on their desktops as well as through mobile devices. With a buyer

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Article by Manish Nath Tiwari

Which Funnel Works For You?

If you are not an ecommerce giant or a well established brand (well, sometimes they need it too) but instead a fresher or an individual or an medium size company trying to grab a piece of lead/sales via online ads, email broadcast or organic campaign (social media posts, SEO and etc) then you have to have a funnel in place to capture the leads and properly channel them to gain your final goal. That’s Conversion.

landing page will always give you something free as a giveaway. This “bait” (free giveaway) is used to lure the visitors to opt in. Once they opt in then it’s easy to send them multiple future offers without any hassles. Why use it, and who should use it?

If you have multiple brands or offers or you are an affiliate of multiple brands, then this is the best funnel format for you. You can reuse this list multiple times for This process is known as “Funnel Management” but different offers. There are also many companies who mostly people call it “Sales Funnel”. However, just use this funnel just for data mining so that they can sell calling it a Sales Funnel is not the right thing, because all the accumulated data to any third party vendor. you might need a funnel to capture the leads only, so there is no direct sales involved. So in short, there are What can I add on the thank you page? different kinds of funnels and we are going to discuss that in detail below. We will also discuss the usage of Well, just giving a simple thank you note will do along with a link to download their freebies, which can be a this funnel and when and who would need it. discount coupon, ebook, recorded training video, free Lead Magnet Funnel one-on-one Coaching Session, free report and the list goes on. Anything virtual, which has some unique info This funnel didn’t get any proper naming ceremony in it or that cannot be easily Googled. And yes, you can yet, however, I have tried to name it on the basis of add a survey too. If you do that then it will be a smart its functionality. As the name suggests, its only aim is move as you can categorize your leads in a much better to generate leads. Now, every funnel no matter what way. you name it, will have a landing page in it and that Tools you would need

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Landing Page: You can build the same in normal html or you can use any other service provider like Leadpages, ClickFunnels, Instapages, Optimizely, Wordpress and the list goes on. You will also need an

email autoresponder service provider like Mailchimp, popularity. They even sell a part of their paperback ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, Aweber, Constant copy (introduction and first chapter) to create curiosity in the readers. This is used as bait and once you opt Contact, Convertkit, etc. in to download then it redirects you to the main sales Webinar Funnel page or a link to Amazon or eBay or any other link Webinars have become more common these days. where they are selling the hard copy or even the full You have to be very careful with your “topic” which you ebook version of the book. present to your attendees. Now you can either do a Live The funnel flow is same as the webinar funnel. Webinar or an Automated Webinar. Live webinar is done live, it means you can interact with your attendees Sales Funnel and answer their queries. In the case of an Automated This is the most common and most used funnel format. webinar, you pre-record a video and add a fake Q&A They are no fixed steps or flow to be defined for a Sales session at the end, or you might also use a previously Funnel because you might have a single product to recorded live webinar and use the recording for the offer or you might have multiple products. automated webinar. Again, the final aim is that at the end of the webinar you can put your call to action in The ideal sales funnels have following steps involved front of your attendees. in it. “Call to action” is a term used for motivating your visitors to take an action, like hitting a sign up button or clicking a url and etc. So, in short, you guide your traffic toward your final goal, and that’s conversion. Now a webinar could be used just for lead generation (like above), or it can be used for asking people to sign up for one free session for 15 minutes (Do add a price so that they know that they are getting something which is worth a lot of money, (ex: Book a free call worth $xxx but it’s free for few earlybirds). It can also be used to discuss and promote something which you want to sell at discount, so the webinar funnel could be a sales funnel too (we will discuss later). Again, it’s up to you as how you want to use it. Suggested Flow

Step 1: Landing page (offer a free bait to get the leads) Step 2: Sales Page (try to offer something which has lower value, less than $19.99 would be great) Step 3: Upsell Page 1 (This is where you try to upsell the next high value item you have. Normally, in the upsell the user doesn’t have to enter their card details again.) Step 3A: Downsell Page 1 (If the upsell is not a hit, then add a “no thank you button” in the upsell page and get it redirected into downsell page where you can offer the same product once again but at 50% discounted price.) Step 4: Upsell Page 2 (If the first upsell is a hit, then try to offer the higher value product as an upsell, once again the user doesn’t have to enter their card details.) Step 4A: Downsell Page 2 (same a Step 3A)

Ebook promotion Funnel

Now, this upsell downsell step can increase or decrease based on your product list. Always remember to put the pricing like this ex:, Retail price $XXX but our one time offer price is just $XX.XX. These kinds of tips and tricks are just for mental diversion to create a scenario of urgency, as the user will think that they might lose if they don’t by now.

Hope this helps. Please feel free to add your comments Normally, it’s a Sales Funnel only, but again, an below or send me a direct note with your queries. Ebook Funnel could be used for non-selling purposes as well. It deserves to have a separate name because of its usage. Many writers, coaches and even the newbie consultants try to sell the Virtual version of their book to gain mass sale/

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Article by Kate McKnight

2-Step System for Selling High-Ticket Offers with Ease

Dear friend, You are making things too hard on yourself. Life is too short to have a conniption over what webinar platform to use… or to waste your time on the phone talking to someone who is never going to pay you a dime… or to build out some crazy-complicated 18.5 step funnel... Stop overthinking it.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s how you attract your ideal client on autopilot: It all starts with putting out valuable content that both informs and entertains your most perfect prospect. This content should tantalize and tease as much as it informs so that they’ll literally be begging you to learn more. Now that you’ve got them right where you want them (but in a totally ethical, non-slithery way), it’s time for THE most critical part of step 1…

Instead, put this dead-simple, 2-step system for selling Get Them on an Asset You OWN anything (including high-ticket coaching, courses, and services) into action and spend more time living in your With social media changing faster than my newborn, Zone of Genius. building an email list is as important as it has ever been. Don’t be so foolish to think you can get away with just Step 1: Attraction a Facebook group. Far too many online entrepreneurs set out with the best If you want to fool-proof your future, build your list. of intentions with their business, only to get lost in the interwebs. You won’t regret it. STOP lurking in the corner, hoping and praying the Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, how to get those right person finds you at the right moment! people who interact with your content onto your owned email list. You’ve got a mission to fulfill for Pete’s sake! You’ve got something to sell that this world desperately This is where having a well thought-through, wellNEEDS! Now get out there and SHOW crafted lead magnet really makes a difference. people who you are! A lead magnet is something of value (such as a checklist or video training) offered on a landing page in exchange for your prospect’s email address, and there are 5 crucial things yours needs to have if you want it VOLUME 2 to convert: FUNNEL MAGAZINE

1. High value - Don’t give away something sloppy or something I can easily find online in 5 seconds. 2. High desirability - Know your perfect prospect’s biggest problem and promise to solve it with your lead magnet. 3. Specificity - The very BEST lead magnets focus on ONE specific person and one specific promise. 4. Easy consumption - Don’t make me feel like I’m a contestant on Man vs. Food when I’m trying to get through your lead magnet. Make it easy to digest your awesome content and put it into action! 5. Ascension offer - Your lead magnet must align with the next logical step you want me to take; otherwise, you’re wasting your time putting it out into the universe.

with your new subscriber. Build relationships - serve with integrity - profit Don’t be that lonely marketer scratching his head wondering why no one is buying his stuff because he’s not following up with his subscribers and building the kind of cult following that could’ve made him rich.

(Want my step-by-step breakdown and examples to help you craft your high-converting lead magnet? Check out this other article I wrote recently: How to Instead, grab your keyboard and do this: Create the Perfect Lead Magnet) An Email a Day Keeps the Prospect in Play Once you’ve hooked your prospect with the perfect Email your list every day. Seriously. lead magnet and they’ve double confirmed their email subscription (don’t wanna be nailed as SPAM), it’s time “Kate, won’t this annoy the crap out of people???” to initiate step 2 of high-ticket sales domination... For some, yes. It will. They’ll unsubscribe and you’ll move on with your life. They weren’t going to buy from Step 2: Conversation you anyway. How would you feel if someone you really liked asked you out, bought you dinner, and made you feel all But for the rest, hearing from you every day will become part of their routine. They’ll actually look forward to special… then never called you again? seeing your name in their inbox. And by the way, email Or only called you up once a month when they wanted marketing still boasts a 4400% ROI. something? Why Does It Work? Unfortunately, this is how most solopreneurs treat their There are lots of reasons I could go into here - from email subscribers. how it builds rapport fast to the neuroscience behind You suck them in with an amazing, value-packed lead why successful neural coupling through storytelling magnet, perhaps write them a welcome series, then fall generates trust in your audience, increases their off the face of the planet… only to reappear every few understanding, and makes them more receptive to days or weeks with a “new” offer to pitch to them. your message. Listen to me very carefully:

But I don’t want to bore you, so...

People. Don’t. Like. Being. Sold. To.

Let me tell you a quick story instead.

People buy from other living, breathing PEOPLE that I taught myself how to play guitar in 8th grade. By they know, like, and trust. freshman year, I was jamming along to Weezer If all you care about it is making sales pitches, not and Green Day and everyone thought it was building relationships, you’re gonna be one sad (broke) AMAZING. sap.

I even started giving lessons to The KEY to building a PROFITABLE email list full of one girl in the cafeteria. qualified leads who effectively “drink your Kool-Aid” EDITION 7 is to continue the conversation you’ve already started FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

Was I some kind of prodigy? Hardly… I was mediocre at best.

Then, tie these stories to the offer you want to make that’s going to serve your prospect’s needs. These types of emails are edutaining - and that keeps your prospects tuning in to your marketing messages day after day.

But they didn’t know the difference because none of the Tip #3: Visualize your perfect prospect. other girls were picking out Avril Lavigne’s latest teen There’s a real live human on the other end of your angst songs in their spare time. emails. Shocking, I know. You see, when you take the initiative to learn how to do But seriously, you need to keep that person in your something others don’t care to, or don’t know how to mind as you write your emails. Not only to speak to do, or simply won’t, you’re going to get attention and them but to treat them like a person. Don’t pitch all stand out from all the other marketers out there who the time. Feel free to offer your audience products and are flat-out ignoring the people that they should be services that are going to bring them success, but don’t serving. see dollar signs every time you sit down to type up your Bottom line: Hardly ANYONE else is using daily daily email. emails to sell (and even fewer are doing it well). Notice what I didn’t say was a requirement for daily But if you make it a practice and learn how to do it the emails? RIGHT way (I’ll show you how in just a minute), daily An English degree. Or copywriting experience. email will empower you to stand out from the crowd and build powerful relationships with your perfect Fact is, you can learn to write daily emails that sell even prospects. if you’re not a writer. The first step is to build your list and make it a daily practice. Consistency will train your How to Write Daily Emails That Don’t Suck: readers and consistency will improve your writing. Spending any amount of time writing an email no one Want More Tips on How to Daily Email PLUS Fill-inever reads is a waste of precious time you DON’T have. the-Blank Email Templates? So before you dive headfirst into this practice, here’s a few takeaway tips I hope you’ll put into action: I’ve created the perfect pdf just for you. I call it the “1-2-PUNCH.” And inside, I break down this simple Tip #1: Write like you talk. 2-step system in excruciating detail so you can The reason daily emails are so fun to read is because successfully implement it yourself. they flow like a real conversation - not some stilted I’ll also share with you my 5-day “PUNCH” welcome academic paper. You get to show off your personality series templates that qualify your new leads and convert (which goes a long way in filtering out people you don’t the hot ones into buyers. vibe with). When you implement the 1-2-PUNCH and practice Use active verbs. Be yourself. Forget what your English the art of daily emails, you’ll be able to suck in leads, professor taught you. It pays. automagically separate the good from the bad, and sell anything -- all without forcing yourself into “sales Tip #2: Use everything as content. mode”... spending hours figuring out the copy and tech Everyday experiences will form the content of your for a webinar… or wasting time on tire kickers who just emails. Your goal is to tell stories that start conversations wanna pick your brain over the phone. that lead into sales pitches seamlessly and subtly. What you’re NOT doing is blasting your list with cold offers Check it out and let me know how it goes for you! every day. Instead, show some personality and tell stories about your daily life. Enter the conversation inside your prospect’s mind by talking about what’s hot in the news, pop culture, your favorite TV show, etc.

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

SOCIAL

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

MEDIA

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

Answered: Your Most Burning Questions About Online Sales Article by Juliette Stapleton

One of the most common complaints in the online like using Zoom, as it allows me to record the calls and marketing world is this: “I cannot get my audience to later playback the recording to analyse two things: The buy from me.” needs and the language used to describe those needs. Ask questions. It is an issue that holds back, confuses and even breaks so many startup online marketers, but is it really that In both cases, create a note in your Evernote app or a difficult to sell online? My personal experience tells me Google Sheet (or simply use a notebook & a pen) and that it is actually quite easy, but the recipe for success record the exact words and expressions these people requires a few essential ingredients to work. My advice use. This will be your go-to copywriting bank for the is perfect for anyone who is building their online visibility language to use in all your materials to appeal to this through their Personal Brand: coaches, consultants, kind of people. healers, service providers, network marketers, Never be afraid of excluding someone from your ideal photographers, designers, the list goes on. If your face client avatar and missing out. Attract the best and repel represents your business, read on and take notes! the rest. Trust me, poorly chosen clients are the main Know Your Ideal Client source of stress and overwhelm in business. You can easily avoid it by picking only people to work with who If you are not 100% clear on who your target audience will leave both sides excited, happy and able to create is, you are simply wasting your time. fantastic results together. Well, maybe not, if you are trying to figure it out while Tailor Your Offer To Those Clients focusing on building an audience and not actual sales. However, even if you had the largest audience in the Sometimes we get so caught up in our knowledge, we world, but none of the people in it would fit your ideal speak the language of our industry to people who need client avatar, you will still be making no sales. our help but have no idea what we are talking about. So what essentially is the same service, when presented If you already have clients that you absolutely love in the language they don’t understand, will not react working with and getting amazing results, start basing or need to hire you. Rephrase the same offer using the your ideal client avatar on these actual people, their words and phrases they use (even if it seems shocking stories, their habits, their strength and insecurities, their to you at times), and you will see their eyes light up and habits and personality traits. Often business owners are the only answer to your proposals will be a YES! so confused about trying to figure out who their ideal client is, they stop seeing what is literally in front of them If you are building an audience on Facebook, and you already! Our existing clients give us a chance to get have created and growing your Facebook group, here clear who you want to work with and who you do not is an amazing way of getting that information from want to attract also! your new members. Use the “Ask Questions” options in the Group Settings. If you have no clients in this business, start booking connection calls with anyone who is remotely excited There are three questions you can ask. It is a great about what you do. These are not discovery calls screening tool. You might want to ask people about where you talk about working together; these their goals, or what stops them from achieving success. are your best marketing research calls. I (Don’t ask them what they want to learn, this is a question a lot of people do not know the real answer to!)

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

One of those questions can be even used to build your email list by offering a free gift or a download in return for the email address. Just make sure you specifically explain that the email address will be used for future marketing purpose, and perhaps use a double opt-in option in your email list to comply with GDPR! One word of warning. These questions are optional, and Facebook does not collect the data in the answers. It doesn’t even save anywhere, so you need to make sure you take a note or copy and paste these answers into a Google Sheet. If your group is growing rapidly, you probably need a little help with that as it will take you too long to store those answers manually. I am using a service called Group Funnels, which allows me to record the answers into the Google Sheet and then I can connect the Google Sheet to my ActiveCampaign email marketing account and subscribe them to one of my automation sequences.

Serve. Don’t Sell In conclusion, when you learn who you target and what language they use, you can start positioning yourself using your findings in everything you do online with the objective to create relationships first, and focusing on serving these people’s needs before making a sale. This does not mean you need to give away your services for free; this means that your energy is filled with the creative flow of giving and sharing, so people respond to it openly and eagerly. It takes time and consistency, but this is the recipe that works for selling online authentically. Spend 90 days marketing your offers this way, and not only you will see a huge difference in your online sales, but you will also feel powerful and fulfilled while helping your new clients.

This solution is terrific, as I can see at a glance how I can present my coaching offers to people in my group, using their own words and getting an amazing response to my sales pitches.

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

Facebook Marketing Article by Michelle Ciantar

• Once you know what you want to achieve, ask yourself; • What is the purpose of using social media for my business? • What outcomes do I want to achieve? • What results do I want to create? The purpose of using social media for your business may be to – Spending a bit of time planning content for your page or profile will get the most effective results with your Facebook marketing. Creating a solid social media plan in advance is going to save you wasting time on trying to come up with ideas on a whim or throwing out content and seeing what sticks. Now, before you think that this is going to take a huge chunk of your time, let me reassure you it only has to be a simple one page document that will give you clear direction of where you are going and how you are going to get there. As Jack Welch says, “simple messages will travel further and the elimination of clutter allows for faster decision making.” How to Create a Social Media One Page Plan

• Listen to your customers • Increase engagement • Have a platform other than a website to communicate with prospects The outcomes you want to achieve may be to – • Spread brand awareness • Generate leads • Build a list The results you want to create could be – • Showcase testimonies from successful clients • Increase in sales • Build a network of business connections

First thing to get clear on is what you are aiming to achieve from using social media in the next 3, 6 and 12 So the one page document will consist of the following months’ time. It could be – in a table format. • Build a community to communicate with and provide value to • Increase the amount of followers by ‘x’ amount • Position yourself as an authority • Drive traffic to your website

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

What is our purpose? What do we want to achieve? What results do we want? Who are our target markets? What are our 12 month social media objectives? What are our 6 month social media objectives? What are our 3 month social media objectives? How are we measuring our success? Who is responsible for managing our social media?

To further complement your one page social media plan, use a SWOT analysis as an effective tool to identify four areas of your business that could be improved upon and keep you ahead of your competition.

Strengths – List the things you currently do really well • Announcements and ask how can you do them even better? • Funny videos or stories • Articles about your product or service Weaknesses – What is not currently working or causing • Useful videos bottlenecks in your business and how to minimise or • Share other social media posts of yours from strengthen your weaknesses? Instagram or YouTube Opportunities – Are there any trends happening in your industry that you can use as an opportunity to market Think about the type of content that makes people your brand? What are other successful people in your want to share because it makes them look and feel field doing that you could use as an opportunity to good to show that they are funny, smart or in the know. What triggers your audience to think about your grow your business? brand, product or service and how can you incorporate Threats – Are there any political, environmental, those things into your content? What emotions have economical, legal or competitive threats that could hurt a powerful pull on your audience that really motivates your business and how can you mitigate any damage and inspires people about your products and services? or threats to your current operations? Spending some time on developing a solid social Develop a Content Plan media plan will help strategically position yourself Developing a content plan will keep your message on to communicate effectively with your audience and point and make it easier to manage the consistency of achieve the objectives of your business. your posts. Keep in mind what your target audience’s biggest fears, needs, wants and desires are when thinking about what content to use. Some content ideas to get you thinking about your business could be based around • Any news happening in your industry • Your company or personal blog

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

Getting To The Next Level - What I Think I Know So Far ARTICLE BY Dave Farrow

Leadership & Strategy

It’s all of this and more, and it’s real, but this world view has a problem.

I’m in my forties and have been an entrepreneur my whole life. When I say my whole life, I mean it. One In my experience, thinking about strategies to reach of my youngest memories is selling a toy I bought at a the next level is the best way to keep your head above garage sale to another kid for twice the price, so I could water. It’s the most useful way to view business. buy candy. I think I was 7. I started buying things and selling them, then selling I’m here to say, firstly, that I don’t have all the answers. I a company’s products, then making my own products, never will. Every year I think I have business figured out then doing interviews (over 2000), then getting backers and then I get schooled by life and circumstances. So, to sell my stuff (infomercial), then teaching others how this article is about what I think I know so far. Subject to to market, then Consulting, then hiring and offering change, I offer no guarantees and or warranties. Also, services as a firm, then building a brand that offers no refunds and no do overs - Just like life. marketing services, and finally, buying real estate and investing. Stages Bump Up to the Next Level In my experience, business comes in stages. It seems like every conference I go to, and every meeting I have with Every stage had a sort of machine or balance of its another entrepreneur, the phrase “taking us to the next own. Money comes in and out. Products or services are level” always comes up. This is repeated in one form or delivered, leads are found and converted. It has a type another so often, it’s almost a running joke. of beautiful balance to it. The desire to reach the “next Level” is behind nearly To get the next level there is always new energy that every marketing effort I see. It’s also the hook that needs to be added. people use to make empty promises. So, is the “next It reminds me of the classical model of electron orbit. level” a place? An income? Reputation? In fact, I have found that many things in business are similar to physics; to understand, you need to know a basic classical theory behind electricity.

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Science Side Note: Electrons orbit a nucleus in an unchanging state. Only so many electrons can orbit at

each level. When you add an electrical charge (more electrons), it adds energy, bumping up other electrons to a higher orbit. Get high enough and the electron jumps to the next atom. That’s how electricity moves. (Don’t write me about the electron cloud and how quantum theory has changed this model, it’s just a metaphor, don’t overthink it).

and regulations have resulted in multiple scandals and lawsuits. So far, they look like they are changing their culture and will become a company that looks nothing like the original plan of the founder. What plan are you sticking to just because you like it? Where is your blind spot?

Eliminate Risk? So, in order to bump to the next level, we need to add energy. In business, this is an investor, mentor or At the end of the day, to be an entrepreneur is to take consultant. But it can also be a Marketing Campaign, risk. Staying at your level or shooting for the next one a new product, a new strategy. are both risky and no one can know what will happen in the future. There is one way, however, that you can One of the reasons I love PR so much is because it can limit your risks. With strategy. take someone from nothing to famous quickly. When you plan, split your thoughts into two scenarios: When we have a new client and help them get major both winning and losing. We all want to win but no one media attention, it is life changing. That media spot is talks about losing. What if you could set up the game now connected to them for years. so that when you lose, you still gain? When I think about the next level, I form it clearly in my This is the ideal plan. This is the equivalent of all ways mind. What would the day to day look like? What are looking for a silver lining. I met an inventor who had the risks and problems? And how much energy (or web produced thousands of copies of their product for a hits, sales, price) is needed to be there? launch that failed. He was devastated and stuck. Then Be Flexible a liquidator came along and took his entire stock for just slightly over the cost of shipping. “The Reed that Bends in the Wind Does Not Break” – the TAO The liquidator then resold the stock for a big profit. The point is, if that inventor had the humility to plan for the Once you form this clear picture, don’t stick to it. Be possibility that his product would not be popular they flexible. At this point I may sound a little crazy, but could have been prepared to liquidate and recover follow me, as this is an important key to success in my costs, maybe even a small profit. opinion. But the inventor was so focused on getting rich they It’s better to go into battle with a plan and abandon didn’t think about the down side. Now they have debt it, than to start planning on the battlefield. I have seen and someone else made a profit from their invention. many business plans fail simply because reality was telling them to change the plan and they did not listen. This is the equivalent of a landlord losing a tenant who I have also seen people fail because they fail to plan. leaves the place an utter mess - you can be upset that The only thing I have seen work time and time again is you missed out on rent and the cost of damage, or you for skilled, intelligent people to make the best possible can focus on the new tenant you can get who will treat plan with the full intention of following through, but the the place better and may pay more. humility to abandon it at a moments notice in light of As you jump to the next level, be ready to fall down new information. without falling out of the game. Think of how Steve Jobs changed all of Apple into Equilibrium high end, small sku, multi-use products while Sony still stayed with the single task per product. They sold Getting to the next level is like jumping from one rock a digital recorder, display screen, camera etc. or you to the next to cross a stream. Many people need to could buy one tablet that does all of this and a hundred get their house in order first so that when they jump, other things. BlackBerry invented the smartphone and it’s from a solid foundation. However, others make yet, did not change to join the app revolution. the leap because the rock they are leaping to is MORE stable than the one they are Or more recently, how Uber used brash, almost criminal standing on. To understand which disregard for local rules and regulations, to develop one you are, I like to think the largest workforce in the world (that are not counted of equilibrium. as employees yet). Yet today, this asset has become EDITION 7 a liability. The same brash disregard to public safety

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

Equilibrium is a state of balance - your revenues and exceeding your expenses. Your people are paid on time and you have a good reputation. One of the big mistakes I have seen is not reaching a state of equilibrium first before reaching for the next level. I just bought four properties. I need to finish renos and start renting them out before I look for new deals no matter how good the deals are. I have had to exercise patience far more often than I prefer. In one case, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m working on a robotics project for over four years. But I need to perfect and test everything before launching. When you do a launch, there is only one shot to get it right so preparation and having a solid foundation is the best strategy. But then, there is the other scenario where your market is in decline. A competitor or change has made you fall behind and the writing is on the wall. You need to change or die.

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

What are your revenues and incoming leads? Is it growing steady or drying up? What are your competitors doing? Is technology changing things? This is a key moment in life and the next decision you make for your company will affect years of your life so try to be objective. Look at it from all sides and honestly consider that you are wrong. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather be wrong any day than lose money.

The Auth o

r of Your

With a p en

and a p

iece of p

aper, or

VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

opportu

nities to

// Kate Mikado

decide w

Own Lif e Story

hat kind

of tale w e

want to te

ll the wo

rld.

This is exactly a cycle of reality wherein people who aim to be successful misinterpret those success stories as a pattern of easy going pathways and calm rivers, without realizing that these stories are real life.

The Author of Your Own Life Story Interview by Kate Mikado

Success stories had never failed in illuminating many people’s torch of fighting spirit. Admitted or not, everybody admires listening to these picture-perfect kind of tales. We all love how they ignite some spark into our hearts, and provoke us to push beyond our limits again. And, to envision ourselves in the same exact direction where these triumphant people are precisely moving on is very much encouraging. In fact, it sometimes shifts our mood from ‘I’m scared to do it. What if I fail? I hate failures.’ feeling to the mentality of ‘I want to try it. I don’t care how many times I fail as long as I do my best. I can do it! If they can do it, so am I! I will do it!’. It’s as if there would be no obstacle that can hinder us from reaching the mountain top.

who made his boring history catalog into a journal of success! For those who are new to the name, Frank Kern, is one of the most influential and fulfilled personalities who has flourished in the glamorous world of business.

And, in real life, not all stories end Aside from his signature blonde with a happy ever after. surfer-style look way back 2012, he is It’s not like reading a book and also widely known for his astonishing skipping some chapters, and going entrepreneurial capabilities and forward to the happy and exciting business appeal, and for his unique ones you would only like to read. chosen industry: the online business. Instead, it’s more of reading the Yes, he is an internet marketer. Also, conflicts and why did the character he is a business consultant, referred arrived at such climax. to as one of the best business gurus, See, the truth is, we make our own life and a motivational speaker. story, and to only rely on motivation from other people will really never help us move forward. Yes, they can inspire us but in the long run, there would be nobody else who can push us every minute of every single day except ourselves. People who wonder why others are moving fast while they move slow in climbing the mountain top or the hill of victory is that they, literally, are moving slow towards what actions they can to change and improve their own stories.

But, before all the smiles, the bright spotlights, the applause, praises, and standing ovations, Frank Kern never imagined that he would gain such attention today, after years and years of hard work. On his interview with Hawk Mikado, the publisher of Funnel Magazine, he was asked when everything started, “The entire world has acknowledged you as a widely-known entrepreneur, a direct response marketer, and a very splendid centrepiece of the industry of internet marketing for more than 20 years. When did you realized that you craved people’s attention in this kind of industry, specifically online marketing?”

Reality check: the path to success is to take massive action, because ideas, and an optimistic point of view is never enough. But with the combination of perseverance, focus and determination, nothing is Frank Responded, “Well, it began when I had myself a door-to-door However, whenever a strong wind impossible to achieve! is almost putting out the fire of the According to Anthony Robbins, ‘If selling type of job for a credit card torch, some people’s inspiration will you talk about it, it’s a dream. If you processing system in Macon, GA. fade away in a snap. This is when imagine it, it’s a possibility. If you And, I could honestly evaluate myself doubt, blame, and regret come schedule it, it’s real.’ So, it’s always as the lowest-scoring member of the team in terms of social interaction. in. As a result, we tend to question up to you. I didn’t like much of being slapped our abilities, asking, “How did All these beautiful thoughts had with rejection almost every single those triumphant people climb the mountain top that fast while I am been instilled in the mind of Frank day. Those two things, out of many Kern, a prominent American factors, mainly pushed me to find moving so slow?!”. entrepreneur, the man whose salary another way to sell to people without We just go back again to the success is almost $1.4M,and the estimated receiving personal stories we used to listen to. net worth of $28M, and the man

EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

rejection and without being seen as a kind of introvert person. And so, I came up with a brilliant idea: why not sit behind a computer and hide all day long, while selling millions of stuff to people and receive millions of approvals. Since then, I’ve been interested in selling stuff online.”. When he concluded that selling stuff on the internet is a much better way to benefit, he began innovating ideas and improvising products that might bait potential buyers. He studied every scheme online, he investigated what people need, what people want and desire, and everything he might find profitable. He even listened to Anthony Robbins tapes in order to gain more knowledge and wisdom, and read a lot of business books in order to enhance his latent qualities. He performed many online researches. One example was the huge demand of parrot owners to teach their parrots to speak. Frank risked his funds when he hired a writer from Elance for $650 to encode the book ‘Teach your parrot

VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

to talk.’. Fortunately, this book squeezed him an income stream of approximately $3000 every month.

In the same interview, Hawk raised another question, “A lot of people are also aspiring to be like yourself, a very good businessman. How do you actually make a productive and He was amazed with the results and fruitful business?” it was the ‘boom’ he was waiting for to turn the tables around. He Mr. Kern replied, “For me, to focus never stopped learning and trying on what’s working and to discard things out. Plus, he craved for more what’s actually not, would make accomplishments. He did the same things profitable in an easier way. thing: invest his money, time, and But of course, they will never know effort to a thing that might not what’s working until they search and possibly work in a positive way. probe things out. Look, a lot of things that can be seen online easily grab He focused on another type of people’s attention, since there are pet and was able to develop a also a lot of magnificent concepts course for more than 600 various out there that may also work for breeds of dogs. He studied again them. However, it sometimes regarding with fun facts about dogs covers the fact that these concepts and perceived that these animals might also not work for them, and can actually respond to positive basically, waste everything they had reinforcement. invested. So, I suggest to check out Then, he used the similar book for only one of 9 million things that all breeds but on different websites. best suits the criteria of the most His technique may appear to be an potential thing to sell, and the unsophisticated technique to sell, aspect that must be enhanced. In but mind you, it gathered him the simpler words, people who want to amount of $1,000,000 in the year make money online must guarantee themselves that they are spending 2005 and 2006. and risking on the right track, or if Additionally, some of the products not, they can easily get back on the which Frank Kern created, like right track. Anyway, in connection Mass Control, Mass Conversion, to what my colleagues and I did List Control, Screw Google System, and are continually doing, in order etc. boosted his esteem in the to be very good businessmen in the marketplace. One more thing online industry, was to sort things that made him successful was the out first. Afterwards, we stopped StomperNet launch that made him doing a million things and just earn a total of $18.3M in just a day. deeply focused on what has already After all the hardships, the failures, worked. By the way, these are the and the realizations, he began exact same things we teach our to spread his knowledge and customers in the continuity program. wisdom to other aspiring business On the other hand, I advise people people who wanted to be big-time to be brave enough to explore entrepreneurs. He began teaching and gamble. The Business world is people about the procedures in naturally filled with trial and error stuff. Have no fear. So that once making money online. they find the most profitable thing No wonder his name has been to sell and the strategy for it, it’ll be spilled all over the social media easier to focus and strive.” sites, on commercials, and several Hawk noted, “Awesome! I see magazine articles. how much important courage and

determination is when it comes to used car sales lot, and used that as business, and how much it can help a chance to get back on the right a businessman to work on profitable track again. stuff. It’s a big part of the progress.” Frank believes that if you set your Speaking of failures, of course Frank comfortability boundaries into a Kern had also encountered many short-term period only, you will not unfortunate events in his life. He get used to uncomfortable things was devastated, to the point where and you have to face the truth that he almost lost everything he had wherever you go, in the real world, when a flood destroyed his property uncomfortable things will stick to you in Macon, GA. no matter what. Therefore, if you want to achieve your goals, do not And, guess what? The calamity be afraid to encounter the possibility transformed him from a wealthy of discomfort, such as pressure, man into a homeless one. He had failure, stress, disappointments, no choice but to move into a singleetc. or else, it’ll be harder to move wide trailer Milledgeville, GA, with forward. plywood floors, a table made of peach crate, and a mattress on the He said, “The best thing about floor to rest at nights. Also, he was Failures, Stress, Disappointments not able to afford heat or hot water and Mistakes is that it helps people for his mini trailer home because he to slowly overcome fear, and could not afford the gas bill. just give the best shot they can. Also, these things may form more Yet, soon enough, he had the luck advanced ideas, and teaches us to of being hired as a service crew on a grow in different aspects. Trust me, I Greek fast food restaurant which, at know it. I’ve been there.”. least, gave him an income of $4.25 per hour. Frank shared his experience about making a big mistake in his career, He lived a slum life for a while, until way back August 2008, which he he worked for one of his cousins in a also considered as a blessing in

disguise. He said, “I remembered having trouble with authority long time ago, when the Federal Trade Commission sued me in 2003. I was actually one of the board members of ERA. Our mission was to coach and educate marketers. I remembered working on a certain project. We were looking forward to how can we design a device, like a black box, that provides the right information to our customers, with how the marketers can cope with their business and stuff like that. Everything was in a pretty state and we were so focused on it. The only conflict was that I had no idea about the existence of a Federal Trade Commission, and I was so clueless about their advertising regulations. They sued me. It cost me a lot. I probably would not cross that line again. But, ironically, I could say that aside from my wife and my 3 adorable children, being sued was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it served as an eye opener.”. Hawk noted, “, Awesome! But, let’s talk about Kartra. We recently

EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

discovered that you switched to Kartra now. What was its significance to your business life? Can you please share a brief story about it? ”.

their burden. We also studied and observed the things about our app that can serve as a complication to the customers. I was affected by the truth that the ‘texting stuff or filling the information was a little too much Frank said, “Yeah, sure. Well, of a hassle for some of them. discovering the potential of this Kartra thing is one of my examples Luckily, we upgraded the app to of me exploring many things then the point of automatically filling in focusing on one thing in particular, on the blanks on the copy for the and just adding on top of what’s customers. Unexpectedly, the notion working. Basically, I was still became more alluring to people, researching things I could add to and we are looking forward to my list of profit-potential products. improving it until it’s at the very best And, I first just noticed my dear quality. Overall, I just want to share friends, Andy Jenkins and Hector the one thing I had learned from Youngway, on how they actually this process. You know, selling stuff spent billions of dollars in building is easy. It’s just a matter of offering Kartra. So, I understood that there people things that would make are many people who are willing them happy and then, endorse and to spend a lot of money for such sell them things that would make a hobby. And so I convinced them them happier.“. to collaborate with me on bringing Hawk remarked, “Right. But, you up Kartra in the market, and they must have done a lot of strenuous miraculously agreed. Then we were activities and a lot of stressful able to establish a company with methodologies to create such a Kartra wherein the customers can successful business, and to last long not only take on another automated enough. Is this your key on building a platform, but also where they can $10 million plus company? I wonder effortlessly press some controls, and how many people you had recruited everything will be created for them, in order to work and accomplish this such as the page templates and with you.”. email automations. It turned out pretty awesome, although I needed Frank responded, “Well, I believe to hire an in-house person, paid that the real secret to success is when about $30,000 a month, to fully- you move out of the comfort zone operate the application for me.”. and work like hell. But in contrary, we don’t do extremely extraneous Hawk said, “Yeah, I also got the things. We just work very, very hard opportunity to play with it. And, I all along together. I have just about loved the design of clicking buttons five full time employees with me. and it just completed everything. We fix one core product which is the What I only had to do was to start continuity program, at the moment, filling in all the blanks. Fantastic!” and have one core strategy that Frank mentioned, “Yes it was. And clicks. That’s it. For me, recruiting a now, the good news is that we’re lot of people is totally irrelevant”. working more into enhancing the Hawk declared, ”Amazing! It makes app. In fact, I conducted surveys sense to me. By the way, I want to about people’s struggles and their know more about your continuity visions of where they wanted to program. Why did you build the be, and anything that has to do program and who was it intended with our company as big help to for? Tell me about it.”. VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Frank replied, “Primarily, we decided to sell the program because we found it very profitable. It was one opportunity for us, the company and I, to increase the number of our customers, and to select the targeted offers. We built the program for people who are already at the middle of working out their business. I hosted video conferences every other Wednesday, and had live seminars twice a week, in addition to sending newsletters in the mail, campaigns, templates, etc. What we did was to provide them some useful information that is concise and straight to the point, regarding investigating details of their businesses, focusing on some particular aspects that needs the most appropriate strategy. Everything was all about simplified growth. Furthermore, we also created the Private Client Group in which we guide the entrepreneurs to examine what’s going around their businesses, and to see if there are conflicts that we can resolve. Thus, to see and try thousands of plausible things and techniques that can fix the business itself.”. Frank Kern believes that we are the author of our own life story. Each one of us is given a pen and a piece of paper, or opportunities to decide what kind of tale we want to tell the world. We can do anything or be anyone. We can also let other people’s story of success touch our lives. We can invite some people for writing more ideas. But, we can never call on anyone to write the whole plot of our own life story. Only a person can help himself, and he can only help himself if he would start putting words into actions. Nothing is impossible. It is you and your persistence that will make you a successful person. Now, it’s up you ‘what kind kind of story you want to tell the world’. Hawk: Hey, everybody! This is

Hawk Mikado, publisher of Funnel Magazine and I’m here with Frank Kern, out of his studio. Thank you very much for inviting me today.

interaction. They were like, “Dude, this is literally, you can’t get worse than this.” So, I was not very good at door-to-door sales. I started looking into how can I sit behind a computer Frank: Thanks for having me, thanks and hide and not have to actually for coming, thank you for having me face personal rejection every single in my studio. day and that was it. Hawk: So, you’ve been an Hawk: So, your introvert allowed entrepreneur, you’ve been a direct you to excel as an internet marketer, response marketer, you’ve been just that’s really cool. one of the brilliant cornerstones of the internet marketing industry for Frank: It well, it didn’t make me excel, over 20-plus years. it made me at least get interested in it, you know? Yeah, pig-headed Frank: A long time, yeah. perseverance, I think made me Hawk: So, how did you get started moderately good at it. in this? Hawk: It says here that you are Frank: Abject failure. I was a door- making 2018 your most profitable to-door salesman. I am a level nine year ever. How are you doing that? million introvert, I actually took Frank: More of what’s working and an evaluation brain scan thing less of what’s not. So, it’s really, at a clinic and I scored the lowest really easy online especially to get you can possibly score on social

super distracted by stuff. I’m on the same list all you guys are on, you know, and everyone’s email copy is so good that you’re like, “Dude, I’ve got to try this thing,” you know? And so then, you go down the rabbit hole with the new thing and some of them work, and some don’t. And what we decided to do as a company was to focus on a singular thing, we’ve actually had that singular focus since 2016 which is our membership. That cause last year to be our most profitable year ever and creating all that, we set everything out to be relatively selfmanaging. Now, the continuity just works, you know all the funnels just work. Who knew with this whole funnel idea, you know kind of works pretty good. We added more on top of what was working. Our most insightful thing that we experienced as a company was to stop doing a million things and to just look at

EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

what has worked really, really well, building more into that. So in fact, and then just do that with very I’m on the list this week of like things Frank has to do, is to build tutorials intense laser focus. for a book funnel. So someone could Hawk: So, you recently switched come in and just press the button, over to Kartra. and how the book funnel pages are built, and all the invite sequences Frank: Yeah. and webinar stuff are built, then Hawk: Can you share a little bit that’ll just continue to get more more about the experience with robust. I’ve done these surveys a that? lot. I first did a survey of this nature, Frank: Obviously, I’m very biased I think in 2006, asking people because I own equity in Kartra. So, what their biggest challenge was I got very fortunate and the guys, and getting to where they wanted they started Kartra. Andy Jenkins to be. I was overwhelmed and it and Hector Youngway are friends became specifically narrowed down of mine, and they spent about four to overwhelmed with the text stuff, million dollars or so, building Kartra, you know because the text stuff is and then at the last minute I came a pain, no matter what platform in and I said, “Hey, I’ll tell you how you’re using, it’s always a hassle. to really take this to market, if you’ll So we figured, “Hey, you know if give me a piece of your company.” we can make it work, someone can And they agreed, miraculously. press a button.” It’s good to get rid So, therefore, my review of Kartra of that problem and then the added is very, very biased. But it’s been ability of filling in the blanks on the extremely easy to integrate with copy, I mean you really can but of them because what we did as a course, you have to have some skill company with Kartra was to make with your copy, but to take away it not just another automation a lot of that learning curve, really platform. We wanted to make it a made it more appealing for people situation where you can come in, and so it worked pretty good. press create campaign button and Hawk: You’ve built a $10 millionit just builds the page templates, plus company and have a staff of builds all the email automation, and just five full-time employees, how do everything for you. So prior to doing you make that work for you? that, I was an Infusionsoft user and they’re a great company, I found it Frank: This company is not at 10. This personally, maybe because I’m not company in combination with other so bright, to be very, very difficult companies, I have pieces of, but to use. I had to have an in-house this company you’re referring to... person that was around $30,000 last year I think we did seven point a month just to run that application something, seven and a half, give or for me. So with Kartra, I don’t have take and we don’t do a lot, I don’t mean that we don’t do a lot of work to do that, it has been awesome. but we don’t do a lot of extraneous Hawk: I’ve had an opportunity to activity, we have one core product play around with it, as an Affiliate which is this continuity program, Marketer as well. I love how you we have one core process that sells can literally just click in and it fills that, of all things a funnel and then, out everything, and you just fill in we just built two other programs the blanks. So, if that’s your idea, that are all here, physically. So, it is awesome. unnecessary to have a lot of people. Frank: It was, yeah. And we’re VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Hawk: So, can you tell me a little bit more about your continuity program? How you developed it and why you decided to go with that? Frank: Yeah! Well, certainly I did it because it’s very profitable. But the difference between the one that we created and most that you would see is number one the price, it’s probably around ten times more than the average continuity programs, as we have $400 a month. The target market is different, this is typically for people who are already doing things, it’s not a beginner, it’s not unfriendly for beginners but a beginner would find it to be a bit much, you know, and it’s personal interaction. So, we shoot live workshops for members every week, twice a week in fact, and then I do live video conferences for them every other Wednesday, in addition to sending them a newsletter in the mail, and campaigns predone, templates, and all that kind of stuff. And the reason we built it was because of two things: Number one, I tested it years ago and it worked and so again, going back to the thing that’s why these years were so profitable and last year as we just keep doing what’s working, you know. But Number two, it was the gap in the market. I think that courses can get you very, very far but eventually, you’re going to need somebody to talk to, you know and so, we provide that somebody. So literally, I just finished a video conference with members where I’m looking at them, they’re in the studio over there where I can see them on the screen, I could see their computer screens, you can see their campaigns, and answer their questions personally and that’s not really readily available in the marketplace. Hawk: So, how do you see it progressing? Because we’ve been

coming out, I would say “coming out of the information age” and moving towards more mastery or actually being able to implement. How do you see that progressing in your business and in the businesses of the members that you have? Frank: I think that we will enter the insight age. So I think, to speak to implementing, I think there will be a continuing demand for professional services which is the “they do it for me” thing. I think information went from being very, very valuable that maybe ten years ago to now being, it’s still valuable within context but it can also be the source of overwhelm and stress for people, I mean it’s literally you’re bombarded with every day. So, what people need now and what they want now is more insight which is “Please just tell me, like the one thing or two things and don’t give me seven thousand videos to watch, just give me like the one thing, so I can go do it.” And so, I think there will be a large evolution towards that but I don’t think that the concept of selling information will go away, ever. I just think that more opportunity will open up within more insightful, more concise training for people.

client group which you involve ten entrepreneurs that come in. They spend $30,000 one-time payment, no payment plans and you bring them in three times a year. How does that impact their business? How does that help you grow your business?

Hawk: Awesome! How do you guys Frank: Well, it impacts them all drive traffic to your program? horribly, and they just hate it. That Frank: Ads, primarily Facebook. was a great question because it We have a little bit of Google, we really makes it where I can say good test it. But we are committing the things about the program. Yeah, marketing sin of using primarily one well I don’t offer it anymore because platform and we don’t do the, tried we sold it out. So we, I started out I to build the page up or whatever, I said, “I’m going to have 13 groups,” don’t even know how many fans I and we’re going to do it, that’s why have if you would call them that on we have this big echoey studio here Facebook, I don’t care, you know? because of the vast majority of the I mean, it’s nice to have them and space is actually utilized by them, everything, I mean it that way, when they come. And then it pares but we buy traffic. So, I’m not an down to six groups and I was like, affiliate guy, it’s all media. I want to “I think, four is plenty,” because this be able to control the media coming is a lot of work, you know? So, it’s these two-day meetings with just to me and turn that into a profit. groups of ten. So, it’s a lot of twoHawk: So, you created this private day meetings, and the core thing

that they get in that, aside from just being able to call me or whatever, so these are very high achievers, it’s not a beginner’s group or anything like that nor is it a mastermind. So, private client literally means private client. it’s like I mean, look at your stuff, let me see the ads, let me see the numbers, let’s get in here, and you know, tweak things and make them better or fix them where needed. Aside from the benefit of that which is they get 19 years of experience, we’re not having to do the 19 years of work is, it’s clarity, it’s a lot of focus on clarity. So, every single one of these people come in and they’re like, “Okay, I want to grow and I have nine million things I want to do,” which is normal and so our job is, “Okay, great. You have nine million things you want to do. Let’s look at all of them, let’s look at the ones that have produced the most revenue and then, how about we focus on those? Then let’s build a very simple process around that.” EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

So, everything we do as a company, whether it’s from our own company or that we try to get for our members in continuity or our private clients, it’s simplified growth. I’m very sold on the “80/20 principle” and the idea of “less is more” when it comes to growing a company. Hawk: Awesome. So that’s sold out. Do you guys do a Mastermind at all? Frank: We don’t do a Mastermind now. We have another program called Flagship which is for people who are at six figures all the way up to seven and that’s newer, and we’re in our second group now. But I personally don’t enjoy Masterminds in the traditional sense of the word, where day one, we’re all going to sit around, we’re going to say what’s working and then we’re going to try to make it better. Then on day two, we’re going to all talk about what needs fixing, we’re going to try to make it better. For me, I find that disorganized and I personally don’t get value from it, so we don’t do that in our program. That program, that’s for one-day meetings a quarter in a straight curriculum based. So, it’s very instructional where it’s here’s a tool, here’s a thinking process to use, here’s how to gain clarity and focus. The idea is you leave with like a thing to do, not 9 million things, not a bunch of new ideas, but a very clear vision of here’s what I want to get done, here’s exactly the plan to get it done, and then between those meetings, we talk to clients every week on focus calls to help them stay on track. Hawk: Awesome, and between that, and you also have a podcast called the “Your Next Million.” Frank: Yeah. Hawk: Can you share with me a little bit about what you talk about and what you do on the podcast? VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Frank: Yeah, I noticed there was a lot of material online within the internet marketing space for people who are getting started but there is not a lot of material for people who were already up and running, and want to do better. So I figured I would fill that gap because that’s my perfect client anyway. I’m terrible with new people, I just, I don’t have the, I’m not nice enough, really. My dude, I told you what to do yesterday, hurry up, so it doesn’t go over well with them. I don’t think they enjoy the process. So, I recognize that gap in the marketplace. So, your next million is designed specifically to take the person who’s at six, seven, eight figures, whatever, they’ve got 9 million plates spinning and with every episode, give them a usable concept and worksheet that they can use to get to where they’re going. So again, this is the whole focus of it, it’s very simplified growth.

we could just go like that. And now, we’re doing our job, so I would much rather just go like that, then like hit me and you have 15 other people and break our bags and try to move this stagnant 20-ton boulder. So, that’s why I choose the clients that are already doing things and plus I can do a better job with them, you know? It’s hard to get results for somebody with zero momentum. At least it is for me, it’s not my strong suit. I’m very, very good at being able to say, “Oh, you’re doing that. Well, let’s add this to it, or let’s tweak this,” or whatever. So, there was a function of evolution in terms of the results for that, personal brand or preference.

Hawk: Awesome. So, you’ve been incredible with email copy, that’s been something that I’ve seen email headlines, just one of the things that consistently captured my attention. Can you share with me some of Hawk: That’s awesome. So, I am the tips and tricks that you have for the same way when we work with somebody who’s looking to up their private clients, I don’t work with game with email? newbies. Frank: Don’t try, yeah. So, I don’t mean don’t try to up your game Frank: Yeah. with it but when you’re writing Hawk: And when somebody new email, you really need to write wants to come, it’s like, “Okay,” it’s something like you’re writing to a three times the investment because friend. So, every media has context you need to go do all these other like the blog typically delivers news, things. So, how did you figure that? or instructions, or opinion. An email How did you, in your business and contextually is usually going to be in over the last 19 years figure out if received from one friend to another or who your ideal target audiences? and is usually going to be very short, Frank: It was personal preference. very conversational. So, if you want I just prefer to work with them. to do better at email, if you want to I mean, if you imagine in the write good email making, you want business you and I, we’re trying to to just be a lot more colloquial in it get an entrepreneur a result. If you and have a lot shorter copy, and metaphorically look at that as we’re don’t make it seem salesy. So, all trying to take a 20-ton rock and my stuff, I literally write to my list like move it. If that rock is not moving, I’ve known them forever and they’re we’re not going to be able to do it, friends of mine because most of you know? I mean, maybe through them have been on my list forever. I some Herculean force, we can do it consider them to be friends of mine but if that rock is moving a little bit because they’ve helped me build and we just have to move it faster, everything I have. So, I just assume

that familiarity, you know, and it works well and there’s very little, gosh I’m really killing any chance I ever have of selling an email copywriting course but nor would I ever want to, there’s very little strategy to it. It’s just like, here’s the thing, I want them to go click this, check it out, you know? The function of the email is primarily to get a click and how would I write it if I was writing it to my friend Andy Jenkins or something, “Hey man, check this out, it’s pretty cool. See you later.” That’s it. So, in the course of email copy, I don’t think my email copy is particularly good, I just think that if you compare it to other marketing based email copy, the other copy is pretty bad because it screams “I’m trying to sell you something,” and when I’m trying to sell someone something, I just tell them, “I’m trying to sell you something, right now. Here’s why you should buy,” which is exactly what you would say to your friend. Hawk: Yeah. Frank: Some works pretty good.

other person in the world? We have found personally that longer form has had greater longevity and they convert better. If we do a lot of preselling in the ad copy and even if initially a short copy ad will perform better, it won’t last, it just gets burnt out for whatever reason. Hawk: Yeah, short ads definitely have a shorter life. Frank: Yeah. Hawk: So, what are some of the free optin gifts that you give through your ads? Frank: I just started doing opt-ins like a month ago. So, from May of 2016 until a month ago, there was none at all. It was “buy this book at $5.60, it’s pretty good”, and then that self-liquidated and it led into my Continuity Program and that’s how we built it. Once the Continuity Program had hit the financial goal that we built it to hit, then we started deviating our focus from that into creating Flagship and Private Client Group. Our campaign for Flagship right now is because I found dealing with webinar software to be a pain in the ass, it’s just an on-demand class which is a fancy way of saying video. So, it’s an automated webinar but it’s not just opt-in and here’s the video and so it’s presented as an ondemand class.

Hawk: That’s awesome, I love that. One of the things we interviewed Ryan Levesque about I was just curious if you’ve seen anything with this, he mentioned, “Instead of writing, putting a sales letter together, putting the same thing you’d write in an email using that as Hawk: There’s a lot of controversy an ad on Facebook.” Have you guys around automated that looks real, ever tried anything like that? using something like every webinar. Frank: Like long form Facebook Frank: Yeah. copy? Hawk: Automated that doesn’t look Hawk: Yeah, basically using the real, it tells you it’s automated or just Facebook copy. doing the on-demand, what have you found in testing that works best? Frank: Long form, ads are long form, yeah. So, and you know, you Frank: I haven’t tested. I haven’t never know if this is a universally really paid attention to the testing applicable principle. What are the of one versus the other. We have dangers of listening to people like done automated that looks real, us? Is it, if it works for us it doesn’t however, it was largely real because necessarily mean it’ll work for every a real human was there moderating

the chat and actually answering people. And we ran it for about three months and it worked. I did not test that against not doing things, I really wanted to do it in there, it was a seven-hour class. So, I wanted to have a guy in there answering questions, engaging people, and trying to do a good job, and all that stuff. I think that if you deliberately deceive your audience into thinking they’re getting one thing and they’re not, then that’s a pretty bad foot to start with. So, and I doubt we’d be successfully fooling anybody, if you’re like, “Ok, here’s a real webinar,” and it’s like everybody knows if it says WebinarJam on it or EverWebinar, or ClickFunnel, or whatever. It’s not a stupid real webinar, so why bother? You know what I mean? Hawk: If it’s playing in the next 5, 10, 15 minutes, or even the next hour, not probably a real webinar. Frank: Yeah. I think an on-demand class is pretty good, though. It’s like, it’s clearly not live because it’s on-demand. So, if you go watch the Stones on-demand, it’s not like, “Oh dude, we’re on-demand! Okay Keith, tune-up. Bill let’s get the keys ready. Charlie you good? Okay, go.” That won’t happen. Hawk: We’ve worked a lot of corporate clients and in corporate, you do not do an automated webinar, it’s either on-demand or it’s live. So, it’s really interesting that you’ve taken that into the small business world. Frank: Well it was literally that distinction between using the word “webinar” and “on-demand training” that’s a couple of weeks old. It wasn’t even that the webinar software is a pain because I segment the data based on gross revenue. So, I’ll give one offer if someone’s under a certain growth revenue that’s, “Okay, you should join our

EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

If someone is over a gross revenue, I’ll put them on a training that’s at the end, I’d said, “You know, you should consider joining Flagship.” And I couldn’t figure out how to make them auto-register for the automated webinar based on the tags that were applied, I know this is techy boring stuff but this is funnel magazine. So, probably the readers are familiar with this kind of thing, I couldn’t figure out how to make the tech work, so I was like, “Screw it, man I’m just going to do it as an on-demand class and hopefully it won’t hurt conversions and it had absolutely no difference whatsoever,” like no one cared, they’re like, “Huh? Okay, cool.” I know if it’s a webinar, it’s going to be a video anyway. So, a video on a page, it’s no difference. Hawk: So, have you used products that use the PLF or multi-video series type launch funnel so far? Frank: Yeah. I’ve even automated this, it works pretty good. It’s been years ago, so I think I’ll give you some data. Actually around this, we spent around $300 grand and this is maybe 2015. So, 2015 or 2016 VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

a while back, we spent $300,000 running traffic to automated webinars and automated the launch funnel where people were opting in for a mission specific video like “here’s how to do a thing” and then a blind ad where people would opt in for a report called the “Future of Internet Marketing.” I think I was like, “Here’s some benefits in this report,” but it wasn’t necessarily like here’s how to do a thing, there’s no objective behind it. Every single person who opted in, regardless of where they opted in, went through our entire behavioral dynamic system. So, they saw every offer we had overtime when we ran this thing forever, spent a lot of money on it. And then at the end of that task, we looked and said, “Okay, which opt-in source had the greatest amount of revenue per registrants?” And the greatest amount of revenue per registrants was webinars which are really surprising because they’re more committed. Especially if you’re choosing a time and showing up, and filling out the extra fields, and all that. But it was interesting which the reason I bring that up is because to address launches, I think they’re

amazing, especially if you do them internally to your own list and don’t involve affiliates, I really like them. I think they’re amazing with affiliates involved as well. Although I think you can have a diminishing of goodwill towards the end of it because you got nine million people using scarcity tactics with your name in front of it. So it’s like, the money’s nice but then they have the repercussions of that problem here. I would not accept something I would prefer to endure but it’s an automated system that worked pretty good. Hawk: I know you mentioned earlier that you don’t really have affiliates who promote you. What was the decision behind that and has that impacted your business? Frank: It has been amazing for the business. The decision behind it was I don’t want to share the money. I would rather buy a customer for less than I would have to pay an affiliate and source matters. So, I don’t want some random person going and promoting my stuff and sending me customers, and I’m not sure what promises they’re making when they’re sending the customers.

It might be a biz op type customer or beginner customer, or whatever and therefore that person might go, “This is awful. I don’t like this guy’s stuff. He’s talking about strategy and thinking tools, and all I want to know is what color buy button should I use on my page.” So, for those reasons, oh and there’s liability which people don’t realize. There’s a tremendous amount of liability when you have affiliates. So, if you’re my affiliate, you say “You’re going to make a million dollars in ten seconds if you buy Frank’s stuff.” I’m liable for that and I don’t want to be liable for that. And it was financially motivated, I can acquire a customer for less than the commission I would pay to an affiliate, and paid media is not going to ask me to do a reciprocal mailing for them. “Cygnus, I don’t think anyone’s signing up on my list. Connor, I hope Frank promotes the latest product launch to me. I’m hoping he’s going to send me cut and paste emails just like the other 19 people were sending me this week about the exact same product. If only he’ll do it.” I don’t think that’s happening. So, I’d much rather not have to be in that situation with the people that are completely responsible for the financial wellbeing of my family. Hawk: Awesome. So, breakeven is the number one thing you’re just hiding that cost less to acquire customers and affiliates. How does somebody from your perspective, get to a breakeven point in their funnel? Frank: Depends on the funnel. The only way I know to answer the question is to give you numbers. Our book funnel that we ran forever... It was, and this is funny, it is funny to speak on this topic about how much marketers model each other without any thought, whatsoever. Our book funnel was my consulting book. I don’t run it that much anymore

because I’m just mainly promoting Flagship or Continuity things, relatively full. I can get customers if I want them from the list or whatever, and that started as a free plus shipping book funnel, classic, and I like to maintain goodwill with the marketplace, than ever possible. I was like, “Alright, most people are charging, like $8 shipping,” but then, you see the comments under the app, people are like, “Hey, doesn’t cost $8 to ship a book. You’re ripping us off.” So, like “Well, that’s kind of a good point.” I went to USPS gov, and I looked at the bulk media rate shipping cost for like, anywhere in the United States Continental is five dollars and sixty cents, I said, “Okay, I’m going to charge five dollars and sixty cents shipping,” and it was costing us around 13 bucks or whatever to fulfill one of these books. So, I said, “Well gosh, you don’t wonder what would happen if I didn’t ship the book and told him it was a download.” I said, “Change the app from free book reveals to new book reveals.” and I said, “This is an instant download, left the price the same because it was working and had no effect on conversion at all.” So, and this I know, I’m not directly answering the question but I will. But what’s funny is now, if you go and you look at a lot of book funnels, they’re charging five dollars and sixty cents without realising that I have no idea whether or not that’s actually a good price. I literally chose it because that’s how much it cost to ship a book in the continental United States by the US mail. I wanted to be truthful in the advertising. Here the numbers on that over, like all this time, right? We would get, if we spent a hundred grand on media for the book funnel, the book funnel consisted of a book, an order bump, an upsell, a down sell, and in a second upsell. That little chunk of the book funnel would get us about a twelve percent return

on cash collected, over that thirty day period, which is not a lot. One, or twelve, or a hundred thousand dollars, but it of course crushes Wall Street, but it’s not a lot, and to get to that point, our primary focus was two things: Number one, lower the cost to acquire the book buyer through better copy, which we never tested any other copy. It was always through, “Okay, let’s see.” You know, what happens when we scale and what if we add an order bump and like, logical things like that. What we would see over time was that, after about day sixty, that 12% ROI would end up being around 40% because some of the upsells were on payment plans. That was pretty good and the whole purpose of it was just to acquire a customer at a self-funding profit. Then they could all join our Continuity Program which would be a series of offers, you know, for Continuity and that worked. Hawk: So, what are that back-end offers? What’s the bump in the upsell, downsell? Frank: So, for the book funnel, I want to really make it clear that all of these prices are really extracted. There’s no class, so for all I know, they’re the worst prices ever. You change it by a dollar, it converted, it just worked, and I was like, “Screw it.” I’m really not a big split tester, quite frankly the tech was never there to be accurate. Split testing, in my opinion, until Carter came along, and now, I’m just like, “I don’t want to bother.” Because I’m used to not bothering, whether it was so long that I’ve got to get it right the first time, a lot of times. Our order bump was 37 bucks and that was, they didn’t know they were getting it, was about two hours of seminar footage that went along with the book. The first one click upsell was another seminar presentation called “Reframe” and the sales angle on

EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

it, and this is a good sales angle for one click upsell, is that it solved a problem that fulfilling on the book’s promise created, which sounds weird, so I’ll explain. If someone followed all the directions in the book, they weren’t getting a lot of leads, and so now your problem is, if you’re a consultant, how do you pitch a free consult to someone repeatedly, without being annoying, alright? There’s like, you know, you don’t want to keep that, “You want a free consult? How about now? Now?” The training taught them 13 different angles of approach on how to do that. So, that was the first one click upsell, $297 no idea if this is a good price. Totally, just like, “$297?” and never split tested it against any other price. “Rohan, it was horrible.” We converted around 2.5% for that, give or take, over time. Like one day, you know book funnels are, like, “Well, we’re 5% converting, we’re going to be rich,” the next day, it’s nothing like, everything’s terrible, the tech is broken. If they said no to that, there would be, “Ok, do you want to do it for three payments of $97?” “Yeah, and that was pretty much the VS selling” like, “Ok,” looks like nothing particularly good. And the final one was a Video Black Box which was an instructional angle. Both those points are important because while the conversion rates might not have been as high as what other marketers could get, both of those pitches, whether it was the pitch for Reframe or the pitch for Video Black Box, actually helped the person who watch the video. So, regardless of whether or not they bought, they came away learning something, you know. In the case of Reframe, I actually taught them one of the angles and scripted it out for them in the videos like, “Here’s an angle you can take. Here’s the scripting for it. If you want the other 12, you can buy it.” In the VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Video Black Box, one, I taught them the framework for a video which is patterning interrupt deliver concept or pattern interrupt deliver content, and then ask for results, I gave them examples. And the reason I tell you all of that is because, very rarely do I do well on the front end. I’m not that great, I’m not a particularly good copywriter, I don’t make very hard-hitting VSL. I’m very, very aware of compliance matters with, the long-ago sued by the Federal Trade Commission in 2003, and I’m a board member of the ERA, so our job is to educate marketers on compliance. Therefore, I’m not like a hard-hitting copy guy. The reason our stuff works is because of the relationship built and then, communication over time, yeah.

“Yeah, all this stupid crap, you’re doing, you can’t do that anymore, ever again, and you’re an idiot.” They didn’t say it, you know, I mean, they’re very polite. Actually, if you ever get sued by the government, I hope that anyone who ever goes through it, at least has a similar experience to me, where they’re friendly and while they were freezing the assets and taking the money, it wasn’t, like you know, men and women, and what do you call them, windbreakers with, you know, billy clubs, smashing our stuff. They were like, “Hey, here’s some papers, give us your money.” Yeah and I said, “Okay, sorry. Didn’t know you existed. Really, feeling stupid, right about now.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, get out of here. Don’t do Hawk: That must be interesting it, again.” getting sued. So, that did not explode the Frank: It was. It was entirely my fault. business, at all. But the result of I had no idea there was a Federal that was, maybe I should learn Trade Commission and nor did I how to do this the right way. Then, know that there were advertising I actually ended up selling dog regulations. I was just literally training materials. I was so afraid to clueless. I was 30 years old, this is do anything with marketing. I was 2003. And probably the best thing, like, “I can never sell anything with it unpleasant and very expensive, marketing, again. It’s going to make it was arguably the best thing that them angry.” You know? So, I’m ever happened to me, outside of going to sell dog training material marrying my wife, Natalia and because that’s very innocuous. Then, having our children, and obvious it’s who knows if it’s impossible to get things like that, you know. So, I sued, but it’s less likely than if you’re wouldn’t want to do it again, but I selling success information. certainly wouldn’t take it back for Aside from that, it was always anything, it was an eye-opener. things of like, necessity, you know? Hawk: I shared with you a little I mean, I created Mass Control bit before the interview, we had a which was a thing that really put pretty traumatic experience that me on the map, years ago, and I led to the creation. What are some did it because I had a tax bill, like, pivotal moments, other than being I was very content being completely sued that have actually skyrocketed behind the scenes, doing the dog your business because you had to stuff. The dog business was doing ok because I’m making a million take a different approach? dollars a year. But at the time, well, Frank: Well, getting sued was a this is amazing. You know? Like, big one. Although that inaction I literally talked to nobody, ever. I conquered the business, that killed hit refresh all day, and I surf, and the business because they’re like, I’m getting a million bucks a year. It

wasn’t all net or anything, we’re still, I’ll take it, you know? I had a tax bill because apparently taxes are not optional, so I was like, “Well, I’ll do this Mass Control product, and teach people how I did all this stuff,” and then, watch it, and then, that worked. So, I said, “Okay, I’m going to keep doing more of this.” And another thing that helped was getting a tremendous amount, well, it felt like a tremendous amount of haters. Back during all the product launch era, where the internet community got very tired of being on the same email lists, coming all the time, like clockwork, “Hey, you know, you better buy this thing right now.” And that made me think, “Okay, well, if the marketplace I’m serving, doesn’t like this, then I should probably find a better way.” Which is what caused me to think, “What if I just advertise?” Well, here’s this novel idea. Yeah. Again, back to what we started with, you focus on what works and then do more of that. I built the dog business from cold media, like nobody knew me. I did it under a survey, well, not a survey, what do you call? A pen name! You know? I started with nothing, and started running ads to this funnel, and it worked. It was like, “Wait a minute, what if I just did that, and never did any of this affiliate stuff, again.” And it was huge, very, very successful. Hawk: That’s awesome. You mentioned you’re a part of an EFT group or something like that. Frank: ERA. Hawk: ERA, thank you. Can you share a bit more about what, how the ERA helps entrepreneurs? Frank: Yeah. The ERA stands for Electronic Retailing Association, and man, this is an unbelievable organization. Talk about masterminds and stuff, you know?

And like, people like, with my mastermind, we got everyone’s seven figures. If you’re in the ERA and you’re seven figures, you go to one of those meetings, you’re like, “Yeah, I’m just a seven figures.” Like, I’ll speak to them and the guy will answer or ask a question, it’s like, “Yeah, I’m spending about fifty million dollars a year on media,” and I’m wondering, how I can get a better return? Like, “Oh my god, dude, that’s your spend?” You know? “What are you making?” He’s like, “I know about 250 million dollars.” That’s the kind of people who are in that, a very, very big player in direct response. And the purpose of the ERA is to be a collaborative bridge between the direct response world and the regulatory world. Our job is to try to educate marketing folks about, “Hey, you know, there’s these things called rules, and we’re supposed to follow them.” And then, work with the regulators to say, nobody understands that law because it’s written by lawyers and stuff. How can we make it where people actually understand what this is, and you know, tell us what you see, that’s going on, that you don’t

like, so we can say, “Hey, don’t be doing this. They don’t like it.” So, our job is kind of to raise educational awareness around stuff that’ll get you in trouble. And as a result of that, you end up with a bunch of really, really accomplished direct response people, all in one singular community, sharing ideas, which is cool. And man, they make us internet people look like, just children, the same like, I thought, I was something, until I went to the first ERA meeting, I’m like, “Well, I’ve got a lot to work. I got pretty good at, like, one thing, over the past 19 years,” and these people are like, 20 times bigger than me, you know? So, it’s cool. Hawk: So, what’s the website, so somebody can get involved? Frank: It’s retailing.org. Yeah, and I would recommend everybody join, it doesn’t cost a lot of money. It’s not expensive, and if you want them to, they’ll check your stuff, and check to see if you’re compliant, and if you’re not, they’ll tell you. And if you ever get a letter from the ERA and it says, “You need to change your marketing.” I would strongly suggest responding to the letter and changing the marketing, because

EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

top of the pile at the Federal Trade about me or to me on Facebook. Commission. Hawk: So, in the last month have Hawk: What’s something that used you seen an increase or a decline in your ad production? to work, that no longer works? Frank: I really don’t know if there’s anything that used to work, that doesn’t work. You know, and I’ll tell you the reason why is because we drive traffic into a funnel and then follow up with them. So, I’m not very good at staying on top of the latest tricks and hacks and all that kind of stuff. I would probably assume things like Adsense Farms or whatever that kind of hacky stuff might have been really great a long time ago but isn’t now. But the Direct-Response Association, I think was it called Direct Marketing Association, DMA I think it was started a hundred years ago and it’s the same. Yeah, look it up it’s crazy, it had a different name I think, but I did the research on it. So, our profession is over a hundred years like direct responses around seventeen hundreds and I can’t remember the dude’s name. There’s like the whole coupon, direct mail stuff that’s all the way back then and it’s the same stuff, I mean there’s nothing really different, so we have different sources of media, it’s cheaper now. You know it used to be extremely difficult. We got to run a radio ad and hope that works, and then the dude has to pick up the phone and call or something. And now, we run a Facebook ad and you get results in minutes, whether they’re good or bad. But in terms of true direct response principles, they’ve never stopped working, I doubt they ever will. Hawk: Have you seen anything with the camera Jen Lucas scandal? Frank: No, I didn’t. I never watch those nor do I actually get on Facebook. I’m all over it with ads, but I don’t have it on my phone, I have no idea what people are saying VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Frank: No, but here’s one thing we did learn in the last month which is, I don’t know what this means, maybe it’s a one-off, all right? So, to be clear, I’m not slandering Facebook, they’re amazing, thank you for giving us a good advertising platform, and thanks for letting us like profit off of the thing you built. We tested very extensively well, I don’t know maybe $30 grand or so, where the tests going to audiences that had income demographic targeting on there. When someone registers for one of our on-demand trainings, there’s a drop-down box that says, “What’s your gross sales?” You know under $100K, over $100K and they’re like four or five options, or whatever. And we ran this test to audiences that liked marketing stuff like the obvious ones, you know? People who like me, Ryan, you know the low-hanging fruit. Anyway, we put that income overlay, and the income overlay will show it to people with net worth of over $500K, a net worth of over a million, a net worth of over two million. They were like, this is going to give us a lot of people with successful businesses which is who we target and we looked, and measured the ratio of people who said I’m under $100 K, versus over a million, or whatever. And there was no difference within any statistical relevance between the amount of over $100K people that came from the very expensive highly segmented targeted traffic of this income data versus the same audiences that did not have the highly targeted income data. So, one of these things where people all freaked out about like, Facebook’s got my data and they’re using it’s like, “I don’t know, got it or not.” Because we tried to use the

income stuff which they provide. Only show this to people with this much money and it had zero effect at all, except where it costs more. Hawk: Yeah, a lot more. Frank: About double, yeah. Hawk: If you’re only paying double, I want to know what all they are doing. Frank: I got a good Facebook guy. Hawk: Yeah because when we did it, I think it was about five times as much. Frank: It’s ridiculous! Absolutely no difference. So I’m like, “Dude, what? Come on! We’re believing that this is good data and maybe it is, maybe we did it wrong.” Again, Mr. Zuckerberg, please don’t throw lightning bolts at us and blow up the studio here. Hawk: One of the things we’ve done, we’ll acquire a list, specifically for the purposes of adding it to a Facebook audience. Have you guys tried that for other graphics purposes? Frank: We’ll take book buyers and upload them where we used to, we don’t really do it anymore, and create look-alikes from it and all that kind of stuff. Hawk: This wouldn’t be a look-alike, this is going to a data. Frank: You mean by the list? Hawk: By the list. Frank: Yeah. Hawk: For cold traffic. Frank: No, did it work? Hawk: Yeah. Actually, makes it a lot less expensive. Frank: That’s pretty good! Hawk: That’s about 30%... Frank: So, what size of list history did

you buy? Hawk: Usually, they are from a couple hundred thousand to a couple million and from there, we take that... Frank: On a localized type of campaign or something? Hawk: No, just it’s specific, like let’s say you wanted to sell Kartra, you’d go buy a list of Infusionsoft. Frank: Oh, yes. Hawk: Right? And you could then target people who haven’t known or who have previously had a known Infusionsoft account. You could then sell specifically... Frank: That’s smart! Hawk: Then, you know there’s a cost to acquire the list, so we know we’re going to produce from that ongoing and then from there, just targeting those people, there’s literally no demographics in basements... Frank: --- office like, “Are they buying my list? Those bastards,” for the record you’re probably not buying Infusionsoft customers with that direct for sale. Hawk: Correct, yeah. It’s not Infusionsoft, other people who know, right? Frank: Yeah, yeah. Broker, useless broker. Hawk: They have so I was just curious if you’ve ever done that? Frank: We haven’t but I probably never would even though it’s less money because the audiences are so small, we try to just target a lot bigger audience to scale. I’ll pay more for them if I can just get more of them. My belief is look, I’d rather make 10% of a million versus you know, I don’t know, 30% of fifty thousand or whatever. Actually, I bet that the math doesn’t equal

that. I was almost like what if 10% of millions less, but math is not an exact science, you know because I’d rather just get the speed up but that’s a smart thing. That’s why we don’t do it, it’s this deliberate what is like, “Yeah,” I was like, “Okay, let’s just get a bunch of them in.”

same webinar and the ones under 100k.So, if you like a trial of our Continuity, you can take one, very low. You know if you want it, try it. It’s not our target, so I don’t want to go referral, I don’t want to send him a million affiliate emails to them. We just make a little offer and some take it, some don’t but it’s not our Hawk: Yeah, because I sign a list main concern. of you know, hundreds of millions expensive. We buy this list... Hawk: Yeah, very cool. Frank: Yeah I’ll buy it. We just had a guy, a client today who he’s got a three million person list, he’s geographically limited. So, he’s kind of like that’s all he can do and he can’t spend his budget anymore because the list is really not that big, you know? I think the algorithm is what, 19% of the list size is actually going to be on the platform at any given moment and all this kind of stuff. So, we try to work with bigger audiences just for that reason. But we do, you know, I was paying on the book funnel. We got up to about 30 something dollars a book buyer. That’s what it cost, settled at $5.60 a book. And for a qualified, on-demand class register right now, about 24 bucks.

Frank: Yeah. Hawk: What, by the way, your book, I know somebody who’s bought it multiple times. Frank: You know the fourth time is the best, I think. Hawk: Fourth time is the best? Frank: Yeah, that’s when you’re really like, “I’m going to read it now.” Hawk: I just, I thought it was funny, they get it shipped and it was, this was before you changed. They got it shipped every single time. Frank: It’s a little handy.

Hawk: I know. We’re pretty much wrapping up here. If you had one thing that you could share and if Hawk: For a webinar, on-demand they took nothing else away from webinar? the rest of this interview, they were Frank: For a qualified one. Yeah, to do one thing today with their which is over 100k because they business or in their life, what would that be? give us their... Frank: Alright, one thing here. I Hawk: Yeah. don’t know if it would be a do, it Frank: We ask because I’ll see a would be more thinking. So, who different offer, why offer someone watches this, where are they on the something they shouldn’t buy, you entrepreneurial journey? Are they know? So, we don’t offer them starting? our Flagship Program unless they Hawk: We have a lot of agency qualify for it. owners who watch this and experts Hawk: So the same book offer of in funnel marketing, different kinds the training and different offer on of marketing, ads, everything and the back-end? then we have people who are learning and trying to figure out, most of them are trying to figure out Frank: Yeah, it’s literally the exact who they should hire.

EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

Frank: Really? Hawk: Yeah. Frank: That’s great! Hawk: Personally, I don’t like selling information. I like selling implementation and the only time we give away like we have programs up to the wazoo, we give away and you know all of our competitors... Frank: Take this program, so you can realize what a pain in the ass this is, I hire, it’s exactly. Hawk: We actually have a program, we don’t offer the service anymore but we give the program away for free and we say, “This is literally everything you need to know about this. At the end of this program, you can either give this to somebody on your team to do it or you can hire us to do it.” And when we have it live, I think about 90% of the people who went through like actually completed it, came back to us and said, “Hey, we don’t want to do this ourselves, can you either train our team to do that, like come in and do like a VIP day with our team or just do it for us.” Frank: Yeah! Hawk: And people are like, “Why would you give away all this content for free?” Frank: You’re using the old demonstrate, you can help them by actually helping them trick, how nefarious and underhanded Sir, you evil marketer. That’s great! I like that methodology. Alright, so the one thing for both of those guys would be a shift in thinking because it’s never tactical. I mean Dude, it’s right copy and put it in front of people, and if it doesn’t work, repeat the process until it does. Clearly that’s not, you know I mean it doesn’t matter, see I don’t sell courses anymore, so I don’t have to try to Church it up, you know? It’s like this, try again. So, I VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

would recommend a shift in thinking which is understand that we’re really in the business of multiplying capital and if you look at the richest people in the world, they are typically investors. You’ve got, of course, some entrepreneurial stories like Steve jobs, although he’s no longer with us but traditionally these are entrepreneurs who then parlayed that money via investments and business is absolutely no different. And if you look at historically, exciting investments that make the cover of magazines and has historically brilliant people, they’ll get maybe 20% a year return on their money. We’re in advertising, it’s not unusual to get double your money in like seven days where these guys are taking a year. So, if the mindset shifts from viewing advertising and marketing as an expense to be avoided which is where a lot of affiliates come in and say, “Well, if I can just get other people to promote my stuff.” To instead thinking of it as an opportunity to multiply capital which is literally all we’re doing, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling, we’re multiplying capital by leveraging assets. You know period, our assets, our funnels, and/or expertise, and the capital, we multiply capital expended in advertising. If you start thinking about business that way, the brain will start looking for how can I continue to leverage even more of this capital and multiply it more, and as a result, you’ll make a whole lot more money. Hawk: So, when you run an ad, you create a product, or launch anything, or do anything, do you have a time frame that you say, “If it doesn’t work by X point, I’m not breaking even or more, by X point that I need to either kill it or revamp it? Frank: No, but again we had one singular funnel until January. So, the timeframe that I gave us for

scaling Flagship to coat media, we’ve literally just started coating media in the same recently, was that four months? You know 120 days. Yeah, that’s four months and it was a $120,000 budget to do it. That’s probably unpalatable to a lot of people. They’d be like, “Dude, you’re out of your mind!” That’s a, well yeah, I am, but we use an actual process and the thing is, we get the clients, it’s a decisionmaking process. You look at and I know it’s not a direct answer to the question but it’s the right answer to the question which is well, what’s my main goal for the business period? What’s the purpose of the goal, a long term vision of it? What’s the thing that I’m considering and then what’s the success criteria look like for this? And then, what are the long-term benefits of this? You know if it actually works out and then you look at what are the things that can go wrong, and then you just weigh those against each other. So, that’s the process I go through. I don’t actually say, “Okay, there’s 90 days at breakeven or I’m done.” Because that’s more short-sighted than the way we look like, I’m never retiring, I’m not going to sell this business, I’m not going to stop you know, I’ll be 80 years old if I live long enough. I’ll be like, “Well, you should try a better headline.” You know the exact same thing people that say, “We were hundreds of years now, I’ll just say it with the old man voice.” So, we look at it a lot longer term than that. Hawk: Awesome, thank you so much. You’ve been awesome. Again, this is Hawk Mikado, Publisher of Funnel Magazine and we have had the blessing of being here in Frank’s studio and getting his brilliance, wisdom and insights.

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Metrics

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

How to Quit Sweating The Small Things And Start Running Your Business Like A Kingdom With One Simple Metric

Imagine if you were able to quit bootstrapping, stop worrying, and multiply your bottom line by cutting your workload in half? It sounds crazy, but if you you’re wearing as many hats as you can… Then that’s exactly what could happen.

ARTICLE BY Christopher A. Evans

have made is your opportunity cost. OK, so how can I use it?

You want to use this calculation (estimation) to figure out the right way to spend your available resources like time, labor, and money so you can get the maximum I’m talking about metrics, time management, and return. putting your most valuable asset — yourself — where it counts the most. How can I measure opportunity cost? Put on your thinking caps because I’m going to show Opportunity cost is all about perspective, and it’s a you how I calculate my opportunity cost, and how you powerful tool for gaining clarity in your business. can apply it to your business. Because it’s about perspective and the perspective is Firstly: If you’ve never heard about opportunity what’s important, you have some freedom in how you cost, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s evaluate it and you can tailor the same principles to something that most grade schools don’t really cover, any situation. and that a lot of professors make way too technical You can look at the dollar amount after a set amount and complicated. of time, or you can create a statement that says “For So what are opportunity costs? every (blank), I could (blank).” Remember, resources are finite and every situation is different — so don’t obsess Opportunity costs are the costs associated with too much about exactly how you phrase it. choosing one option or opportunity over another. For example, if you have the opportunity to invest in The point is that you understand the results, and you an asset like stocks or property but you leave use that to make smart decisions. your cash in a regular savings account, the difference in what you would You do that with this simple formula: (What you gain) / (What you give up) = Opportunity Cost Ratio for That Opportunity VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Let’s compare apples to oranges. Say you can purchase an apple for $1, but an orange for $2. Plug these opportunities into the formula, and you will get these answers: 1 apple per $1. 1 orange per $2. Easy peasy. Adjust these so that they match. You can change the apples to 2 apples per $2, or the oranges to 1/2 an orange per $1. Piece of cake! Now we can factor out the common unit (money) and make the score I mentioned above. “For every dollar I invest in apples, I could get 1/2 an orange.”

“For every hour my assistant works, I earn $9,990; and if I wanted, I could spend that on 999 more hours of “If I spent $1,000, I could get 1,000 apples… Or I help.” could get 500 oranges… Or I could get something in You have to measure your time, and you have to be between.” aware of the costs when you choose one opportunity “For every orange I buy, I could get two apples.”

Now all you have to do is figure out what you want, over another. and you will be all set to spend your resource (money) And now that you’ve figured out your most effective wisely. opportunity, you know what you need to do: create Think that way about everything and you will quickly more of that opportunity because every day you are choosing to either save $80… Or make $80,000. find your business in tip-top shape.

That’s the secret of opportunity cost. That’s the power of evaluating it for your business. And that’s how you can Let’s take a common, real life situation that I see a lot quickly figure out what small things you need to give of freelancers struggling with. Say you offer a service up and where to spend your resources. That’s how you that’s worth $20,000 and it takes you an hour to close multiply your efficiency to earn more in less time. the deal. You close about half of all your sales calls, so To learn more about what I do, visit my website we’ll call this $10,000 per call. https://chrisevansmarketing.com In your next hour, you checked your email and maybe answered a customer service call. You earned nothing, but at least you saved the expense of having someone do it for you. Here’s why that matters.

Well, you just made $10,000/hr.! And now… You’re saving maybe $10/hr. on an assistant. Great! You just made $10,010. Right? Not quite. If we evaluate that opportunity cost, then we find out that (say it with me) “For every hour I spend being my own assistant, I give up $9,990.” “For every $10 I save, I’m giving up $9,990.” “For every hour I spend closing deals, I could pay an assistant for 1,000 hours of help.”

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

IP H ER S AD

LE 68

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

The Anatomy of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign Article by Andrew Wallis

A question I hear often get as a business coach is… Does Email Marketing Still Work?

The media you use to get your marketing message out to the world will have a huge effect on the type of client that you will attract into your business.

The world has changed a lot since emails were the I highly recommend you read the book “Jab, Jab, primary way to communicate with your prospects and Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk” to get a better clients. understanding of what type of consumer hangs out on With so many channels to communicate through, it’s no what media channel. wonder business owners are super confused on how to Of all the above media channels I still get the best get their message out to their marketplace. type of clients through are email, phone and snail mail Here’s a list of channels I use to communicate with communication. clients and prospects: I’m not saying the others don’t work; they absolutely do, it’s just the quality of client seems to be so much • Email better for our business through these media channels. • Snail Mail (Yes, I still post letters) Clients that are great to work with and the ones that • WhatsApp stay committed as a client for the long term. • Facebook Messenger • Facebook Groups How To Structure Your Emails So They Work • Text Messaging • Linkedin Here is a checklist of things I use to create good, • Instagram engaging emails. Use this article to help you create a • Phone calls (Yes, I still call people) series of emails to aid you in your marketing. Why I Still use Email

Headlines

If no one opens it, your content is useless. The most Have you ever heard the term “different horses for important aspect of your email is your headline. Who, different courses?” What, How-to emails are always good, using people’s first name from time to time also improves open rates.

Action Step One - Create a list of 10 compelling headlines VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Power Coaching Tip - Borrow other people’s headlines, Be Controversial & Create Your Enemy pick up a magazine relevant to your industry that has the same target market as you and swipe all the Being vanilla won’t help you with any type of marketing, period. You have to take a side and when you do, you headlines for future use. will create enemies (i.e., people who don’t agree with Lead In / First Few Lines you). Like newspaper articles, you have to grab the reader’s attention right from the onset! If the first few lines are boring or don’t resonate with me, then you have lost me. I’m off to the next email in my list

Don’t be put off by this, this is exactly where you need to be. With powerful enemies, come powerful friends, a tribe of people that totally believe in what you are saying.

Some ideas to use a lead in are…

When it comes down to it, we sell relationships. And relationships are built upon knowing, liking and trusting someone.

• Start with a personal story, people love to hear about other people’s lives! It’s human nature • Be controversial, nothing sells better than controversy, news channels make a living out of this. • Ask a question – this is my favorite when working with my coaching clients as it gets the reader thinking. If you can do that, then you help the prospect sell themselves into investing into your products or services. Action Step Two - Practice different types of lead ins. Write 2 lead-ins for each of the above ideas. Only practice will improve your skill set, your business should always be like a lab, you should always be experimenting.

Action Step Four - Every model or service you don’t deliver should become your enemy. Find flaws and tell your audience about them. Continuing with my fitness industry example, as a Personal Trainer who offered one to one personal training, Weight Watchers was my enemy. I educated my list of readers about where I felt Weight Watchers got things right (mainly the social support and accountability) but primarily my focus was on the dangers of using their system. When I moved to semi-private training (2-3 people in the same training session), one to one training became my enemy. I was educating the people who read my emails on the benefits of training in pairs and in groups over one to one.

Power Coaching Tip – Read storybooks to help you become a better storyteller. Telling stories will help you Power Coaching Tip - Don’t be afraid or too politically correct to do this! This is how businesses sell their services sell! and products. Take Subway as an example. Their rise What’s Your Prospects Problem to fame came off the back of making everyone believe their subs were healthy! Remember Jared, the “Subway My favorite copywriting formula is Problem-AgitationGuy”? It’s so wrong but absolutely genius. Solution. It just works and is easy to use for non-writers like me. Give Your Practical Solution What’s the problem your email is going to help your If your email can directly help the reader then they will reader solve? How can you agitate this even more? stay tuned to your emails. Finish your emails with one thing they can do to solve their problem (the problem Action Step Three – List your target market’s top 5 your email is about). problems (I work in the Fitness Industry so common problems might be… Can’t lose weight; no time to Action Step Five - Make a list of easy to use and workout etc.) Once you have a list of problems, the next communicate solutions that your email can provide step is to then list out the most painful agitation points your readers. For example, you can give your (again using Fitness as an example… Embarrassed with readership caloric deficit formulas, easy to use recipes, my body; hate the way I feel, etc.) coaching tips. Power Coaching Tip – Your clients and customers have Power Coaching Tip - Don’t give away the whole all the answers you need for your marketing. Don’t solution. Give part of it away so your reader assume you know what it feels like to be them unless is hungry for more. you have actually walked in their shoes and viewed your business through their eyes. Ask them and use what they tell you to attract more clients like them. EDITION 7 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

Call To Action

of doing it. I promise you that if you do this enough, eventually people will take action.

I personally unsubscribe to emails that just keep trying to sell me stuff. I only stay tuned to emails that can help Power Coaching Tip – Subscribe to lots of email lists me with my business, fitness or life! to see how others lead you into their call to action and swipe ones that suit you and your business best. A while back a wise person recommended I use a 4 Tell, 1 Sell system for the majority of my emails. This means I educate for 4 emails with the 5th email being an offer to one of my products or services. Try it, it works! Action Step Six - The goal of email marketing or any type of marketing is to move leads into hot prospects. You have to have Call To Actions for this to happen. If you’re not used to doing this, try one on your next email and measure the response. Don’t worry about this working first time around, it’s more to create the habit

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

FUNNELHUSTLERSUMMIT.COM

Leading To Create Great Team Performance Article by Dusty Staub

Great teams are forged in the fires of meaningful performance and worthy challenges. Leaders can engage in practices and processes that serve to create high performance teams. In fact, skillful leadership is critical to the formation, sustainability and growth of such teams. Over the past thirty years in working with more than 200 organizations and thousands of teams, we have discovered the keys to powerful leadership methodologies and practices that generate great teamwork at all levels of an enterprise.

focus on the essential purpose behind all of the work being done. This was first highlighted in the first edition of The Heart of Leadership in 1996 by Staub and more recently popularized in Simon Sinek’s great TED Talk on the power of WHY (“Great companies focus on their WHY” while others focus on the what and how of their business). Are you keeping the core WHY of your business in the front and center in your team meetings and work-up sessions?

Generating Trust The six tried and true keys to creating great teamwork A team can only perform well if there is a high level are: of trust. Our experience over the years and now the • Focusing on essential purpose-the meaning confirming recent research on teams coming out of behind all of the work Google demonstrates that psychological “safety” is • Generating trust, a sense of openness and the critical ingredient to strong team performance. safety to speak up This means feeling it is safe to speak up, share wild • Dividing and empowering processes to double ideas, make a mistake, ask a “foolish” question or feel the valued output in half the time respected and valued. Without this sense of safety, of • Engaging substantive issues being invited to participate due to a sense of high trust, • Outlining clear accountability a team will quickly devolve into a group, or even worse, • Being flexible, keeping an open mind and open a committee! heart Dividing and Empowering Focusing on Essential Purpose This practice focuses upon breaking a larger group People get excited about and engage more when into smaller sub-teams, enhancing communication, they feel they are contributing to something increasing participation and telescoping time. This significant and meaningful. Great allows the team to cover more ground and get more leaders help team members to accomplished in less time. We have found in our client organizations that you can get twice as much

VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

done in half the amount of time when you have a team motivated by a sense of purpose, trust and they become adept at “dividing and empowering.” The key here is mixing and remixing the sub-groups while always coming back to the larger team to share insights and ideas with the whole team. Discussions with then focused sub-groups breaking off to get real work done and then re-engaging the whole team to share outputs for further insights, suggestions and improvements. Engaging Substantive Issues

the work will be monitored, ensuring clear accountability. Be Flexible: Keep an Open Mind and Open Heart A non-judgmental attitude and genuine sense of caring about the needs and interests of the team and its members is key to creating a sense of safety and openness. Some guidelines to help with this are: stay alert and work to see the best side of all

involved; confront non-productive behavior with a Working on issues of substance gives a team the clear, firm, yet respectful tone; when in doubt, describe experience of getting something of importance the behavior and accomplished in the “real ask for the team’s help and input in addressing it; time” of the meeting. This is highly motivating and reframe situations and perspectives to generate winenhances the sense of pride in the team and of being win options, finding a able to get things way to affirm an individual as well as the team; make done. Some guidelines are: Having the team develop a use of insights from improvisational theater by using list of important and key topics; choosing a meaningful “Yes, And” to build topic/issue to actively work on in the “divide and on ideas and generate positive team momentum. empower” breakouts, clearly define the desired end Finally, don’t be afraid to deviate from the game plan product and in order to meet the then facilitating to achieve timelines, deliverables and emerging needs of the group. This means facilitating reflect on team learning. at the interest horizon of the team and builds a sense of power and Outlining Clear Accountability It is important that the team know who has taken what overall effectiveness. on and when it is supposed to be addressed, reported back on or delivered. The guidelines here are: list the assignments and the process owners or champions for the work; get a delivery or report back date by each assignment; question and ensure that the timelines are realistic; agree on who and how

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

How to Protect Your Sensitive Information Article by Heide Hargreaves

You can call me insecure person; however, I believe our computer is not secured as we all think to store sensitive information such as legal documents, tax stuff, and other files. It makes me take an extra step to keep all my information safe from prying eyes. Protect your files on your computer

the data for others can only see, however, I could only view the unscrambled version with my key password. If there were anyone who tried to steal your computer, they would only see the file, but not the inside without the password.

Both Macs and Windows do have built in tools that will help to encrypt your files and accept your user In the older days before IT, we used to store our files account’s password as the access key, that way you can in a folder in a locked file cabinet. In the same way, we enter your password easier and it can do a lot more to need to store sensitive files on our computer because it lock down your files. is more convenient than hoarding stacks of papers and wasting the trees as well. In the older days we used to How to encrypt your files on MacOs lock our file cabinet with a key to protect others from Many Mac users have it easy, go to System Preferences going into our files, in the same way we would need to then click on Security & Privacy, click on File Vault. lock our digital files from thieves, hackers and etc. can’t This will encrypt your entire hard drive, to prevent access them. I believe in having a regular username anyone from accessing your files unless they know your and password would protect me if someone got access account’s password. I also found that it can encrypt to my device, to find and steal my valuable files with a external USB drive as well, you can right-click the drive free to obtain software. where your USB drive is at then click on Finder and I also found storing my sensitive and important files in choose Encrypt. my USB drive, did help to reduce storage space on my In Windows computer, however one biggest issue was to make sure that I never lose the USB drive, or the USB drive gets It is more complicated, some PC’s automatically encrypt stolen and I would have no back up. their flies by default, how you can find out is by going to Settings then click on System then About then scroll In order to truly protect my sensitive files, I found it down to “Device Encryption.” Some computer does not is best to have encryption. As this technology have this ability in Windows, it offers something similar uses complexed algorithms to jumble called “BitLocker,” as you can access it from Control Panel then click on System and Security then Manage BitLocker. With BitLocker can encrypt your computer VOLUME 2

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

and your USB external drives. It is useful if you want to move files between PC’s or to lock the date under another layer of security by putting a portable USB drive in a physical safe.

If you decide to use their service, you would be trusting your data to someone else with risk, if you want extra security I would suggest storing your files I VeraCrypt container and sync them to cloud storage. This way, if someone has full access to your account and the bad However, there is a catch with BitLocker, it requires your people would also need your VeraCrypt container’s computer to have a special chip called “Trusted Platform password to access the flies. Module (TPM), not every PC’s comes with one. And it also requires the Professional edition of Windows 10. If Sending your files to someone else you have the Home version and your computer did not come with a Device Encryption feature, you won’t be Sending your files to someone else would be tough to keep your files safe. The best secure way to send those able to use any of the built-in encryption tools. files (vs the old way handing the file over in person) A good thing is that you can turn to a third-party options is to encrypt them. Share only the encrypted version VeraCrypt a free program for Windows, MacOs, and and have the receiver to decrypt them on their own Linux that can encrypt your computer’s entire drive. PC. However, it is not practical because your receiver You can also use it to encrypt certain group of files might not have VeraCrypt and then you have to ask inside it’s secure “container,” even though I recommend them to install the whole new program just to read encrypting everything. If you encrypt your hard drive your files. There is another route to send the document or put any files in the encrypted container, it would be to a professional who regularly deals with sensitive wise to remember your password because if you forget documents like lawyer, or tax preparer, they may have it, you won’t be able to access those files at all and all a “secure file box” on their website where you can drop will be lost. the data, however, you would need to create an account to use it as well. This would be the best secure option. Storing Files in Cloud Servers However, there is still an “if,” you will have to trust the There is another option that I often do, to have easy person who is managing your encrypted cloud storage. access to my files on any devices and I also use the If not using the secure file box, you can use the cloud cloud servers to have my files as a backup in case my storage service to upload the file by using the build in hard drive fails and for file sharing as well. It is safe to file sharing features to send your receiver a link. This store your files in the cloud; however, you would need to is safer than sending the files as an email attachment know little more about the security of the cloud service even though the receiver may not have a strong security. that you choose from. Sharing the file thru Dropbox would be a little bit safer There are many popular file-sharing services such as since you would be using their https, so others would not Dropbox, even though you encrypt your data, it won’t see the files over the network and would remove your make your file completely private. The Dropbox service files as soon the receiver receives it and downloads, allows accessing files to do things like previews and however, Dropbox can still see your files. allow other users to share and collaborate your files. It is your choice what you choose to do with your files There is another service SpiderOak One Backup, is and taking the chances, as this is the reality of this in favor of added security for your files encryption, technology world. At least you can keep your sensitive however, you are still giving them control over your files information with some security and pray that others do to their service. And the service can choose who can their part. read the flies and even change them, leaving you no control over your data they host for you. If you already have your data encrypted before using their service, they can only access your jumbled encryption but not the actual files you have stored. However, neither service will protect you if someone gains access to your account thru security breach or have your password, your files become freely accessible to them. That is why I strongly encourage everyone to choose a strong, random generated password and turn on the two-factor authentication for every cloud service I use, with one authentication by sending me a text as well, that way I can catch the break-in instantly.

EDITION 7

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

FUNNEL MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 Edition 7

• • • •

PUBLISHER - Hawk Mikado EDITOR - Kate Mikado LAYOUT - Joe Freeman COPY EDITOR Janelle Bledsoe

• PRODUCTION

Jane Amora John Amora John Paul Cabrera Russ Enriquez Lisa Emmons

Joe Freeman John Zint Roca Francis Rodriguez Sydney Tomol

• SUBSCRIPTIONS

FunnelMagazine.com

• OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER

4660 La Jolla Village Drive, Suite 500 San Diego, CA 92122 832.800.4295 hawk@funnelmagazine.com

• HOW TO REACH US

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Editor@FunnelMagazine.com Subject Line: LETTER TO THE EDITOR CUSTOMER SERVICE: For service on your subscription, including renewal, change of address or other customer service matters call 855.350.4295 ARTICLE PROPOSALS and unsolicited articles can be emailed to: Editor@FunnelMagazine.com SUBJECT LINE: Article Proposal or mailed to Editor, Funnel Magazine 4660 La Jolla Village Drive, Suite 500 San Diego, CA 92122

• POSTMASTER

Send address changes to Funnel Magazine, 4660 La Jolla Village Drive, Suite 500 San Diego, CA 92122

• CONNECT

Facebook.com/FunnelMagazine Twitter.com/EditorMikado Linkedin.com/company/FunnelMagazine FunnelMagazine.com/VIP

Disclosure: We receive compensation from the companies whose products and services you purchase via our affiliate links, usually indicated by MyFunnel.Link/

QUARTER 2

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

LIVELAUNCHWEBINAR.COM