Funnel Magazine Volume 2: Quarter 3 by Funnel Magazine™

FUNNEL MAGAZINE TRAFFIC & LEAD GEN

6 FUNNEL FEATURES

AUTOMATE

YOUR TRAFFIC, FUNNELS & FOLLOW UP WITH THE WORLD

THE INTERVIEW

102 METRICS

142

156

32 STRATEGY & TACTICS

LEADERSHIP

168 SOCIAL MEDIA

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IN EVERY EDITION

LETTER

IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF YOUR CONTENT

FROM THE EDITOR

TARGETING HIGH VALUE CLIENTELE?

CUSTOM PACKAGING CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR YOUR FUNNEL

NEIL PATEL

TRACK EVERYTHING

102

GENERATING TRAFFIC TO CLIENT FUNNEL WITH NON-PPC OR LONG-TERM SEO

LAUNCHING A PRODUCT IN LITERALLY 4 HOURS

IN BUSINESS, HOW DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF?

THE SALES OF SOCIAL PROOF

SECRET TO 7 FIGURE VIRAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

110

LOOK FOR THE STRUGGLE AND FOCUS ON THE WIN

124

GETTING S.M.A.A.R.T. ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR OF

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Dear Funnel Hackers, Thank you so much for choosing to read Funnel Magazine this month! We have a featured article full of Tracking Conversion Hacks brought to us by Neil Patel. Neil Patel was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations. He was only sixteen when he started to create his own job board. My husband and I were at a local networking event this month for entrepreneurs and business owners. We participate in this particular event monthly itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a small but intimate group of entrepreneurs, business owners, and coaches. As we talked and mingled around the room, we found that the biggest concern of all these entrepreneurs and business owners was finding reliable employees. These business professionals were not in just in one market either they were in construction, nursing, automotive, business coaching, and more. All business owners, entrepreneurs, and coaches need help to free up their time and to be able to focus on doing what they do best! So Iwaswondering,What are theTop fiveJob Boards forthe ITand Marketing Fields? The research I did lead me to find these five job boards for those fields. Stack Overflow, AngelList, AuthenticJobs, Behance, and Dribbble. Facebook is even trying to connect their Facebook users to employers searching for reliable staff members. Under the Explore section are the Jobs on Facebook section! You can scroll down and see the available job postings for your location. All of these platforms and boards to connect people together. To me, this is mind-boggling that finding help is still such a widespread struggle for business owners, entrepreneurs, and coaches. What is the missing component? We have that answer in this issue of the magazine as well. Hawk, The Funnel Genius, and Publisher of Funnel Magazine has the missing component in his article about Automation and Delegation. The struggles with hiring employees and contractors and the better way of delegating and outsourcing to scale your business to seven plus figures. Editor- Tricia Wilkes

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How to Improve the Quality of Your Content ARTICLE BY Bogdan Zlatkov

If you’re a B2B company with limited resources, how Source: Hubspot benchmark data much content should you be aiming to create? This data is super useful and definitely something you There are merits to both a quantity-heavy and a quality- should consider when planning your content marketing strategy. The issue that I take with this data, however, is heavy approach. First, let’s take a look at quantity. it only measures quantity of blog posts and quantity of Those who favor a quantity-heavy approach will traffic. Most importantly, it leaves out the quality of the typically cite stats like, “Companies that published 16+ traffic and the quality of the leads. blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than companies that published 0-4 monthly posts.” Then For example, working with one of our recent clients at Pixel Press, we decided to do a collaboration with they’ll add a fun chart like this… another company on an e-book we were putting out. Our client, a B2B company of about 200 people, was going to partner with another B2B company of about 2400 people. Clearly there was a huge upside to working with a company larger than us and with far more reach than us. So, we spent about a month producing a quality e-book that addressed both companies’ target markets and we pressed publish. We estimated that we would receive about 3,500 leads from the e-book.

We were wrong, very wrong. VOLUME 2

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Not only did we surpass our 3,500 lead goal but we smashed it by securing over 14,000 leads in just 1

month! Wow! Huge win! High fives all around!

Most other content marketers agree that content strategy depends on a lot of factors. But rather than If we only took a quantity metric of this e-book it would stopping at “it depends,” let’s look at exactly what to do be counted as the best piece of content we had made at different stages in the growth of a B2B company. all year. But, being responsible content strategists of course, we also measured the quality of the leads. Position in the Market How? We do this the old school way. Not by measuring conversions (again that’s a quantity-based approach) but by talking to the actual sales team. Yes, we had real conversations with real people which, from what I understand, is pretty rare in the content agency world.

Where you are in the market should be your first step in determining how much content you produce. Ross Simmonds, an expert on digital strategy, stated it perfectly when he said, “If you’re in a competitive space where every ideal keyword has been claimed with 10x content - you’re walking up a steep hill with 50lbs on your back. In this case, it’s possible you’re going to need to take an aggressive effort as you’re truly playing catch up.”

When we spoke with the sales team we found out that the majority of the e-book leads were grossly unqualified. There were people who didn’t even recognize the If you are playing catch up to competitors who have a company name, let alone what they actually did. ton of content out already, then yes, you should churn Having poor quality leads can be attributed to a few out a content library as quickly as possible. Having a good backlog of content not only helps boost your things: SEO for keywords, but it also begins the process of • Misleading subject titles compounding returns. • Over promotion to the wrong audiences According to Hubspot, 1 in 10 blog posts are • Under-nurturing leads compounding, meaning organic search increases their • Misleading CTA traffic over time. So, the sooner you can create blog • Lack of brand placement posts, the better chance you have of hitting that 1 in 10 When creating a piece of content, there are a million shot of one of them taking off. quality metrics that contribute to making that piece of When you’re first entering a market, you don’t really content successful or not. I think this is why everyone know what works and what doesn’t from a content likes to fall back on the quantity metrics. They’re clear. perspective. You need to experiment and see what They’re easy. resonates with your audience. So yes, if you’re new to But if you only measure the amount of traffic and leads content marketing, write and write often. you’re generating, chances are you’ll be wasting your A good benchmark we recommend for new companies sales team’s time and thus wasting your money. to hit is about 4 blog posts per month without a So, while it’s true that creating more content is a good dedicated content writer, or 8 blog posts per month thing, creating content simply for boosting numbers with a dedicated writer. This guarantees that by the end of the year you’ll have 48 to 96 pieces of content. isn’t necessarily the smartest strategy. Taking that into account let’s look at...

Efficiency of the Sales Funnel

If, however, you’ve been in the content marketing game for at least a year or two, it’s time to take a more For a B2B business, the amount of content you create qualitative approach to your strategy. How qualitative should largely be based on: your approach should be is largely determined by how good your sales funnel is already. • Position in the market • Efficiency of the Sales Funnel Continuing to churn out blog posts just to increase • Size of Sales Team traffic is a fool’s errand if you’re just taking that traffic A Quality-based Approach to Content Creation

and chucking it into an inefficient sales funnel. Giving blanket advice like “this is how B2B businesses should…” is never a smart idea. You always need to The internet is full of clever ways adjust your advice based on variables of a business, to increase your sales funnel and that’s why we developed the above variables when conversion rates. From advising our clients. QUARTER 3 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

A/B testing, to copywriting, to page formatting, to the color of your submit button, the list is endless. But from a content marketing perspective, the absolute best way to increase conversions is by improving your content to attract higher quality leads. According to DemandGenReport, 47% of buyers view 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. That means if you’re just churning out content, rather than curating content carefully, you’re actually increasing your chances of someone leaving your site. Sure, they came for that first great blog post, but as they read more they realized the content wasn’t actually that great and so they leave. On the flip side, if you slow down how much content you put out, but make certain each piece of content is incredibly good, you’ll begin to see an increase in MQLs (marketing qualified leads) even if you see a drop in traffic. Increasing conversions is far more effective than increasing traffic. Why?

We recommend taking a look at your highest performing content and see how much time you spent creating it, how long it is, and how much detail went into it. The Size of your Sales Team Despite what people tell you, size matters when it comes to content marketing. Creating a B2B content strategy for an organization with 2 sales people is vastly different than for an organization with 30 sales people. While it would be nice if we could make sure that every lead is highly qualified, sometimes it does just come down to a numbers game. In the scenario we spoke about at the beginning of this post, we generated over 14,000 leads in just over a month. The reason this wasn’t great was because it simply overwhelmed the capacity of the sales team. With a sales team of 9 people, it was impossible to reach out to all those leads in a meaningful way. This resulted in sales people trying to qualify each lead over the phone which takes quite a lot of time. As a consequence, not only were the salespeople frustrated, but they were also jumping from call to call pretty abruptly and possibly creating a negative impression of the company as a whole.

As the smart people at Unbounce explain, “increasing your conversion rate is usually a one-time cost.” Which means spending a little time and money at the beginning, provides you better results well into the It’s important to realize that lack of sales is not always future. the sales team’s fault. If we, the content marketers, had From a content marketing perspective, if you spend done the dirty work for the sales team and qualified 30% more time on your next blog post, sure you lose and disqualified leads within the content itself, we that time, but then that blog post is published for would have saved a ton of time and generated far all eternity. So, if that blog post brings in 5% more more conversions. conversions, it does so long into the future. Your approach to content should be determined by If, on the other hand, you concentrate on putting out the sales process as a whole. If your product requires two so-so blog posts instead of one quality post, sure a direct interaction between a salesperson and a you saved time and increased traffic, but those blog customer, then you need to create content that’s highly two posts won’t have nearly as much longevity. targeted and only attracts the right leads. This is going back to the idea of the compounding blog post. Hubspot has done a ton of studies on this and, after surveying thousands of customers, they’ve found that over its lifetime, one compounding blog post creates as much traffic as six decaying posts. In fact, 75% of HubSpot’s blog views and 90% of blog leads come from old posts. Which means if you spend more time making quality content, not only will you enjoy more leads but you’ll still get those traffic numbers that you so desire.

If, on the other hand, your sales can be directly accomplished on your website, without the need for a sales person, then you want to create a wide range of content that attracts all kinds of demographics. Either way, you should be thinking about your sales process every time you create content. You ideally want to create content that brings the correct audience, to the correct place, for the correct reasons.

A good benchmark for determining the amount of content you create is based on the capacity of your A good benchmark for judging the quality sales team. We always recommend keeping the sales of your content is its compounding team busy with qualified leads, but not overly busy, so lead generation. they have time to do prospecting and outbound sales as well. VOLUME 2

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One Takeaway: The Magic Hour

as one of the biggest factors to their success as content marketers. It may sound simple, but sometimes simple If I could gift every content marketer here one action is the most effective. item to take home, it would be the Sales & Marketing Happy Hour. As you create your own version of The Sales & Marketing Happy Hour keep in mind that it should be One of the most common problems in any organization casual. It should be a hangout where people are free is this fight between sales and marketing. No matter to chat, drink beverages, and even complain a little. I how many clients I’ve worked with at Pixel Press, I’ve recommend hosting it at the end of a workday on a never once seen sales and marketing be 100% aligned. Thursday, but you can adjust it to your needs. There are various reasons for this, but I think it usually comes down to the way success is measured in each (Note: this shouldn’t be a traditional meeting where department. people sit in a boardroom and everyone just agrees with each other and tells each other how great they’re Marketing teams tend to be measured on their overall doing.) lead generation for the quarter, for six months, or for the year. They are thinking at least a few months ahead At the end of the day, it’s important to keep in mind and trying to create assets for the future. that content marketing is a means to an end. It’s about attracting people to your product or service so you Sales teams, on the other hand, tend to be measured can complete that sale. While it’s true you shouldn’t be by number of deals closed on a monthly basis. They overly “salesy” in your content marketing, you should constantly need to hit monthly quotas and, as a definitely be “salesy” in your content strategy. consequence, they are forced to think month-to-month. As always I hope this has been helpful. If you’d like To remedy this, we created the Sales & Marketing to learn more about how we do content marketing at Happy Hour, which is a scheduled hour of time, every Pixel Press you can tweet me at @BogdanYZ. I’m also week, where the sales and content marketing teams working on a massive e-book that will go into much catch up and talk about what they’ve done. It is by more depth about Content Marketing Strategy so if far the easiest way I’ve seen to improve any content you’re interested in getting that when it’s published you marketing strategy immediately. can throw your email in here and I’ll send it to you when This idea certainly isn’t new, it’s just very rare. Most it’s published. content marketers will chat with sales on occasion but rarely do they hang out on a regular basis. However I’ve noticed lately, especially on the Inbound community, that this practice is becoming more and more common. @TrevorAcy talks about how he does this in his excellent post on Aligning Sales & Marketing, as well as @ benjihyam in this awesome talk at Google. They both credit having a close relationship with their sales team

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Targeting High Value Clientele? ARTICLE BY Tim Lyons

Targeting High Value Clientele? Facebook Could Be the Answer You’re Looking For In the somewhat daunting world of high profile clients and equally high value products and services, many business owners are loathe to compete against the crowd using mainstream social media advertising venues currently available. They opt instead for overthe-top marketing and advertising in an attempt to reach their ideal client. Five times out of ten, their money is spent and not a single lead, let alone an actual paying client, has been converted in the process. They are overlooking an obvious, easily accessible vehicle to capitalize on an audience who is poised to purchase… Facebook Targeting.

to the majority of these clients, the response is an emphatic, “but my ideal client is not ON Facebook”. I heartily disagree. The truth is, Mark Zuckerberg created a social media monster and advertising goldmine for those who are willing and able to tap into its riches. Let’s review some recent Facebook Stats: There are 2 billion monthly active users (as of Q3 2017) (1) Over 1billion of those are mobile-only users (2)

• There are 1.37 billion daily active users (3) • Facebook adds 500,000 new users every day; 6 new profiles every second (4) I work with a lot of clients, including my own personal • 72% of all US online adults visit Facebook at gym, that cater to the white collar crowd of professionals least once a month (5) by offering higher-end products and services. When I first mention the potential windfall of leads that can be created by a targeted Facebook marketing campaign

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Of the 2 billion monthly users on Facebook, I can confidently claim that you can find an audience for your product. You just have to know how to get their attention. That’s where matching the right message with the correct target demographic comes in using Facebook Targeting and look-alike audiences.

never heard of this company before? Trustworthiness and the potential to keep thousands more of your hard-earned money in your own pocket. That said, we decided that we needed to create a strong nurturing campaign, offering prospects value first to forge the initial bond.

Case Study Late last year, we were approached by a strategic tax coaching company who was looking for a better way to reach their target demographic: small business owners, ideally high income earners ranging in the mid to high six figures and above. They had tried various types of advertising and marketing campaigns, but felt that they were missing out on a large piece of their potential demographic. During our intake call, we discussed the potential of harnessing the potential of Facebook. While they were intrigued, they were uncertain their clients actually utilized the platform and what’s worse, they had no idea where to start. Their end goal was to fill up their sales team’s schedules with FREE 15-minute consultations to determine whether it was a good fit for both parties. There are many ways to gain the interest and trust of high value clientele on Facebook, and knowing what your target demographic expects is half the battle. In the past, we have created campaigns for our clients that targeted high value clientele utilizing a combination of specifically targeted Facebook ads sent directly to an exclusive offer that alerted our clients of interested parties in real time using SMS texting or emails. For the products that these clients offer, that was sufficient. However, we knew that this targeted demographic would require more nurturing and thus decided to take a different approach: a more complex value-based integrated marketing campaign using a combination of Lead Magnet Facebook Ads, ClickFunnels Landing pages and Thank you pages for each of four e-Books. These flow through to a drip line of nurture emails leading from one book to another with the final two emails in each e-Book’s nurture campaign directing a prospect to a ClickFunnels Offer Page, integrated with a Woofoo Form that then led into their own scheduling app, TimeShare. When it comes to money management and tax advice, most small business owners do an enormous amount of research before turning over their books to anyone. Imagine if you’ve been using the same CPA for a number of years…what would cause you to even entertain the thought of hiring someone new, especially if you’ve

To do this, we opted for our go-to: FREE downloadable e-books that lead into an overall value-based marketing drip campaign. After creating four books that would pique the interest of even the most stringent curmudgeon, we set about designing and writing four sets of ads directing potential clients to one of four FREE downloadable e-Books that we created. While the goal of the entire complex campaign was simply to get someone to set up a free call with our client, we needed to gain their trust first. In this case, we were offering a FREE download of a valuable e-Book, chock full of information the small business owner may not have known about saving money on taxes. But, we needed to get that initial click through to the book for the campaign to be viable. As an aside, for high value clients, it’s imperative to invest in a copywriter who knows Facebook advertising. There are specific words and phrases that get more clicks than others. Recognizing that the vast majority of users access Facebook via mobile, we ensured that all of our ads were mobile-optimized. When we were satisfied with the copy in the ad, we were ready to set up actual Facebook Targeting. Recognizing the characteristics that make up their ideal client is helpful, but another, equally valuable option available in Facebook is a look-alike QUARTER 3

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ensured that no matter where the prospect was in the sequence, they were tagged appropriately so that if they went through all four e-Book sequences and still did not click through for their FREE call, we set them aside for future nurture campaigns. However, every time that a client did click through to schedule a call, they were directed to a Woofoo form with all of the inputted information sent straight through to the client’s scheduling app called TimeShare where they could schedule their call in real time.

audience. We were able to upload a current and past client list into Facebook Audiences and using its datamining abilities, Facebook created a new target base for that reflected behaviors and preferences from their client list. When doing this, we also included a CLV (Client Lifetime Value) as Facebook now has a weighted scale on look-alike audiences that allows you to “rank” your best clients so that they get a heavier look-alike versus an average of all. When prospect clicked a link through an ad for a particular book, they were directed to a landing page about the e-Book in ClickFunnels with a “download now” call to action button. Whenever the prospect clicks on the button, they are taken to a new thank you page in ClickFunnels where they are required to fill out a short form including name and email address to access the download and were immediately dropped into a nurture campaign in Infusionsoft.

When we were getting ready to launch, our client came back to us and said they wanted to create another direct line to scheduling a call with them specifically for Financial Planners based on changes in tax law that went into effect for 2017. We did not have time to create a new e-Book for this extremely specific group of clients, so we created a separate campaign for them consisting of a targeted ad directed at Financial Planners which led to a landing page form directing them to set up the FREE 15-Minute call. This landing page was integrated with both SMS Text Messaging and their TimeShare scheduling app to alert their internal team of the prospect’s interest and to include updates for upcoming calls on their calendars which was reminiscent of the type of campaigns we have run in the past. When working with a higher value client, you have to be willing to spend a little extra time and money to get their attention. This type of down-targeting could yield a higher cost per lead (CPL), but you need to determine what your threshold would be to acquire them.

Considering the very niche demographic we were targeting for this client, we were unsure what results it would gather. However, to date, we just learned they are getting an average of 50 highly qualified leads per week and have 23 upcoming scheduled calls. Our Once in Infusionsoft, we directed each prospect client only needs to convert two of these leads into through a series of 4 emails relating to that particular paying clients to break even on the cost of building the e-Book. The first email was designed only to thank the campaign and covering advertising costs. prospect for downloading the e-Book they chose and offer another link for download. Each subsequent email The net of it is that no matter what you’re trying to sell, spoke more about what was in the e-Book and stressed you can find your audience on Facebook. You just need the fact that, come tax time, they may be leaving money to know where to look and how to get their attention. on the table and offered the opportunity to schedule a 15-minute FREE consultation call to see if our client may be able to help. If the prospect did not click on the link to the Woofoo form to schedule a call, they were dropped into the sequence for the next downloadable e-Book and subsequent email nurture sequence. We

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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).

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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 QUARTER 3 policy. This allows the person to get more information

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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

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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

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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 by your autoresponder. Practically all such services will list, and a better reputation for email marketers in have appropriate data security processes in place by general. design. After all, data breaches would potentially be As a final reminder, remember this is just informational catastrophic for them. and not legal advice. You should consult your own legal But remember, if you’re exporting data from your representative to determine exactly how the GDPR autoresponder to say a local drive, it’s then your applies to your own business. 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:

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Local Live Community in 15 Minutes: The Power of Face-to-Face Contacts ARTICLE BY: Julia Antufjew

Meeting people face-to-face is the strongest and the fastest way of building long-lasting relationships and strong partnerships. We can email or chat with someone for ages – still, one face-to-face meeting changes worlds. According to research by Mahdi Roghanizad and Vanessa K. Bohns published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology face-to-face contacts are reported to be 34 times more successful than email.

Six months after my arrival I’ve built up a large network of like-minded people who in their turn helped me with the challenging task of opening a company in a foreign country, without speaking the language (at that time), in an industry, I was not familiar with. How did I create this network of people? The answer is simple – Live Networking Events.

All key people in my network, even my partner – I have When I came to Shanghai in 2005 as a Business met in a Live Networking Event. Analyst for a large multinational, I did not know a single person in the Orient. Live events are hot in a large city like Shanghai. Through the years I’ve always been a participant, until one day Nevertheless two years later I was setting up my it hit me – why not organize my own? own companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong, hiring my own employees and manufacturing high-quality First I thought the organization of a live event would designer garments for emerging fashion designers and be quite complicated. Not until my partner started fashion entrepreneurs. popping out his Linux live events one after another. His live event management went very smooth. On the top All these activities require a solid network of professionals of that, he also managed to create an audience of 100 helping one to learn local laws and regulations, highly qualified attendees in a matter of four weeks on not to mention all ins and outs of conducting a topic he just started out with, at no marketing cost. a fashion manufacturing business. Mesmerized by such results I’ve decided to test the same method of live event organization for our business. The nine letters, making organization of a live event as easy VOLUME 2 as our life should be, are Meetup.com. FUNNEL MAGAZINE

In this article, I would love to share with you the simplicity of creating your local live community in a matter of 15 minutes and the great advantages of having such a local live community next to your digital communities.

people in real life. From a marketing perspective, footage of a live event is increasingly stronger than any other type of video training due to its social proof connotation. If other people have taken their time to go to an event – it is most likely worth your time to listen to According to the Meetup.com ‘About’ Page, ‘Meetup the content. is the world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or Experience with our first live Group in Shanghai find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to- inspired me to take it even further. In 2018 I’ve started face.’ frequently traveling between two countries: China and Germany. This was when the following question crossed And that’s true. Meetup.com makes it easy to organize my mind: How would it feel to come to Germany local groups and most importantly to build an audience and to have your audience waiting for you already? of highly engaged people interested in the topics Followed by the next question: How about building a covered by the group in a very short time. mastermind community of fearless entrepreneurs in Preparing for the beta launch of our Wild Cat Fashion every country you spend the most time in, to promote Business Training Program, I was looking for a group expertise exchange, collaboration, mutual assistance, of ambitious fashion designers and (e-commerce) and mentorship? I am in love with this idea, and we entrepreneurs aspiring to launch their own fashion have started with implementation in two cities I spent brand. This is how our first group Fashion Cats Shanghai the most time in Shanghai and Berlin. came into existence. It took me literally 15 minutes to Having a local live community is great! The reasons are set up the Group. A few days later we had about 100 many. members. Currently, the Group stands 332 members strong, all recruited by the Meetup platform. • Are you developing a course or a training program? Present your modules as separate live I’ve decided to involve our live Group in the very events to your local group. Use video material development of our training program. We have planned as core content for your course and for future 12 live events with the Group, each event covering a advertising. training module of our program. • Are you looking for more speaking engagements? Speak frequently to your local Now, two events later I am extremely enthusiastic. group of like-minded people. Use video material Live interaction with people is very rewarding. The as your proven track record of success as a presentations are being videotaped to become the seasoned speaker. core part of our training program. Most beta members for our program will join directly from the Group. Why • Are you looking for great interaction with fellow entrepreneurs, expertise exchange, joining the program if you have learned the core content collaboration, mutual assistance, and during the 12 live events? Because finally, knowing mentorship? Create your local mastermind how-to, participants become eager to implement the community and rock the world! new-learned strategies and are enthusiastic about our professional help with the strategy implementation. Quite often it’s being said that entrepreneurial journey

The accountability sessions with the future beta is a lonely experience. Not as long as there is Meetup. members of the Wild Cat Fashion Business Training com! It takes you literally 15 minutes to have your very own local live community, no matter your geographical Program will happen in the Meetup format as well. location. And that’s great because loneliness becomes Is it necessary to have a local group and to organize a matter of choice, rather than a given. But this is a live events if you want to launch a course or a training topic for a separate conversation… program? No. You can do everything online via webinars. We’ve decided to combine our training Tools: program development with live face-to-face Local group creation and management: Meetup.com interaction as an extremely rewarding way to share value and build strong relationships.

Personally, I find it was much more powerful to meet VOLUME 2

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The New Way To Blogging ARTICLE BY Tucker Ferwerda

We’ve all seen (and possibly asked) those same questions before… • • • •

How do I set up a blog? I have a blog, now what? How do I get people to my site? And even better, how do I make money with a blog?

Blogging is a great way to get eyes to your offers, but it’s not the only way to get there. In fact, if you were to tie social media into your blogging habits, you’ll be more successful. Posting on social media on a regular this pattern until we find what we’re looking for. We’ll basis can help get more traffic to your site, and more search websites, blogs, pages, etc until we find it, right? What this method lacks is the human element. Unlike eyes on your products. aged and static sites and blog posts with a comment Understanding Social Media section added at the bottom, social media adds more In order to blog on social media, you have to life to the picture. You have an audience, you make a understand how social media works. We’re post, and you get likes, comments, and shares. Not used to searching something on Google, only that, but you have an audience who knows you. clicking on something that meets Not only that but you have real time results within a our interest, and continuing matter of minutes. Think about this for a second: You’re looking for VOLUME 2 something very specific that you need right away. You

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find it on social media, and see your friend or family member is also following that page. What’s the next thing you do? You send them a quick message asking them about the certain product or service you’re looking for. You ask them about their thoughts, and base your next purchase decision on what your friend or family member says. This is how social media has an edge and needs to be leveraged in order to be successful. Social media is all based on the user experience and algorithm. Simply said, algorithms are simple ways of making things more or less popular. We’ll get into that later. But let’s establish some fundamentals first.

Have no fear. Let’s dive into this... I use a system called the 3-2-1 Method. Let me explain…

Most people try to push products. They bug their friends and family to buy, buy, and buy more. This rarely works. You have to make sure you’re posting things they want to see. Social media is about starting, keeping, and improving conversation. What helps is making sure your audience is interested in the topics you want to post about. For example, if you’re interested in dogs and post all the time about dogs, but your audience is interested in cats, you’re not going to get any engagement, likes, comments, or shares at all. Once you have an audience Consistency Is Your New Best Friend that is interested in you, your content, and your offers, Just like blogging on your favorite blogging platform, then you can start using the 3-2-1 Method. whether it be WordPress, Wix, or similar, it’s important The 3-2-1 Method is simple. 3 days in a row you post to stay active and consistent on your social media lifestyle posts. 2 days in a row you post value posts. channels. Take Facebook for instance. Facebook now And on day 6 you post something business related. has over 2 billion active users on a monthly basis. This keeps people interested in what you’re doing and Let’s say you have 1,000 “friends” on your Facebook in your offers without seeming salesy or pushy. channel. Think of these friends as your subscribers. They have accepted your friend request, and in return are Lifestyle posts telling you they want to hear more about what you’re up to. Just like email subscribers, they want updates and Lifestyle posts are posts you’re doing on a regular basis. news from you. Just like you sending out an email once These are posts about what is going on in your life. If a day to your subscribers, you should be posting at something funny happened at home, post about it. If least once a day on Facebook. This also works for other something amazing just happened, post about it. If you’re traveling, post about it. If you’re at a social media channels. special event, post about it. If a special The 3-2-1 Method life event just happened, “That’s all great and all, but I don’t know what or how to post? I post all the time and never see results. I never get any engagement on my posts! I need to know how…”

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post about it. These are posts you post the most and are happening to you or your family. We post more of these because at the end of the day, people don’t buy stuff from people they don’t like. You don’t buy stuff. You buy from people you like, know, and trust. Now, we don’t always have to post positive stuff. We want to show people we’re human. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Sometimes things can backfire. Why do you think soap operas and TV series are so successful? It’s because they bring you along the roller coaster of life. The ups and downs and everything in between. Now this also doesn’t mean to be Negative Nancy, but the more genuine you can be and the closer you can bring people into your life, the better.

the previous days, and we did a great job at letting people know beforehand that this offer was coming (in our lifestyle and value posts) then we should get a sale or something similar. More Comments, Likes, and Shares

Now this is where it gets fun. The more engagement we get on our posts, the more the social media platform will show it to others. Let’s use Instagram for example. The more comments, hearts, shares, and tags a photo gets, the more Instagram will help us by showing it to more people. This is where the viral effect comes in. The more viral a post can be, the more successful you’ll become. Add humor to it, you’ll do just fine. Tell some stories, and they’re hooked. It’s important to comment Value posts and reply back to people on social media. This then These types of posts are just that. They offer value. They shows you’re listening, and the post will be seen by help lift your audience from where they are to where more people. they want to be. They always are based on the topic Finally, what we all want at the end of the day. of your audience. They could include tips, tricks, blog posts, how-to’s, case studies, shout-outs, lead magnets, At the end of the day, we want to make money while free stuff, surveys, etc. These posts are extremely blogging. We want eyes on our products and services, important to your audience, but we don’t want to give and sales streaming in. Leveraging the tools that are too much away which is why we do them two days in a easily accessible can greatly increase our chances for row. This helps establish us as an authority on our topic success. We’ve used these methods for a long time and and shows others we care about them and their success. have always seen success from them and I hope you see it too. Business posts Now, go enjoy being successful. This is when we ask for the sale. We post about something business related that will lead to someone making a purchase or get closer to making a purchase. This could include joining a group, making a purchase, or subscribing to another social media channel. We use language as a call-to-action. We direct people do doing something that will lead them closer to purchasing from us. If we have done this right during

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Article by Charly Wigstrom

The Cheapest Way to Promote Affiliate Products using Facebook Ads

10 Things You Need To Know Before Running Your First Ad for affiliate Products It seems like everyone is on Facebook these days, and it’s not just for keeping up with college friends or your crazy Aunt Sally either. There is a lot of business that happens on Facebook as well. You may even be considering using Facebook Ads as part of your next affiliate promotion. If so, this article is for you. Below I’ll share with you 9 tips for running Facebook Ads for affiliate promotions.

And again, just a reminder, make sure that all your landing pages are compliant with Facebook Ad guidelines. 2. Start hyper-focused, then expand Whether you’re advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google or any other PPC (pay-per-click) network, start off your targeting hyper-focused, then expand from there.

I started doing paid advertising with my company in the insurance leads industry, when we entered a new 1. Create your own landing pages market or tested out new keywords, we would only run Sending people directly to your affiliate link is a great ads from 1-4pm each day. Why? Because that is when our conversions were the highest. way to get your ads banned. Instead, send them to your own landing page. This could be a simple page where you pre-sell whatever it is you’re promoting…whether it’s a piece of pre-launch content or the sales page…and invite them to click through to download it.

That allowed us to get our best results. Here are some examples of what I mean by being hyper-focused:

• Single moms, 25-34 who homeschool their kids and live in the south Or, even better, you can use this as an opportunity to • Male business owners, Married, 45+ with no kids grow your list by turning these people into subscribers at home to YOUR list, and then sending them on to the content • Diabetic males, single, 30-49 in the United or offer you are promoting. States

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I’m not saying you have to be that targeted forever, but when you are starting out and haven’t run ads for an affiliate promotion before, you want to target the

absolute best potential people, so be sure you start off 4. Know how much time you have hyper-focused. Are you building up page likes, which is a long-term Let’s say you are going to spend $100 per day on ads strategy? and each click will cost you $1 (just to make the math Are you promoting a product launch with only 72 hours easy). left? Do you want those 100 clicks to be spread across the There’s nothing wrong with either of these goals, but entire range of demographics, interests, geography, you do need to be clear on how much time you have etc.? Or do you want them focused on the exact person to run your ads because that will greatly affect the that is most likely to buy the product you’re offering as strategy you will use. an affiliate? You don’t want to employ a strategy that only works in Of course, you want the people who are an exact the long term if you only have 48-72 hours left in the match for what you’re promoting…even if that means promotion, and conversely you don’t want to cram a you only end up spending $72 instead of the full $100. ton of ad spend into one or two days if you can spread NOTE: Generally speaking, you want to avoid it out over a few weeks and do a little more testing and targeting people in college or under 25…unless the offer tweaking REALLY fits that niche — because they typically don’t 5. Make your picture relevant and interesting have any money! This is pretty self-explanatory. If you’re promoting an offer related to fitness, have a picture related to fitness. If you’re promoting a productivity product, have a picture of a stressed out person. As a general rule, across most industries and niches, the best converting color is going to be red. That means red borders, red backgrounds, and red text.

Link To Video https://youtu.be/Uil8SiLpkTc 3. Get clear on the end game What is your goal with this set of ads? Is it profitability? In other words, you want to spend $100 and make $200. Is it to support a friend? You don’t care if you make any money, you just want to make your friend Joe $10,000 in sales and break even…maybe even lose a little. In other words, your number one objective is to help your friend, not necessarily make money. Is it to boost your standing on an affiliate leaderboard? I’ve done this in previous promotions where the difference in prize money between 3rd place and 4th place is $10,000, so I’m willing to LOSE some money However, as we’ll discuss in a later tip, the ultimate on my ads because I’ll make it up in the prize money. solution for your ads is to test it. Just make sure you get very clear on your #1 priority when you start running ads. QUARTER 3

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6. Tell them what to do

Anyway, when you start, focus on your CPM (cost per thousand impressions), then once you get refined you Never overestimate people’s ability to read between can switch over to CPC (cost per click). the lines and know what to do. That being said, I’ve had good luck with sticking Never overestimate people’s ability to read between with CPM because eventually, I’ll have an ad that the lines and know what to do. Always make your call outperforms the market, so I’m better off paying per to action clear. impression than per click because it ends up being If you don’t tell them exactly what you want them to cheaper. do, you will miss out on likes, subscribers, opt-ins, sales, At any rate, always start off with CPM and then switch commissions, or whatever result you are going for. to CPC later on, if it makes sense to do so. Make it as simple as possible for them — tell them 8. Always set a limited time or a limited budget exactly what you want them to do. You do not want to get surprised, so make sure that you If you want them to click a link and sign up for a free set a budget for your campaign. training, make sure your ad says “click here to sign up for this free training”. Whether that is a lifetime budget for a week of ads, or it’s a daily amount, make sure you set those limits. 7. Start off with CPM bidding KEY POINT: Only spend what you are willing to lose. CPM bidding is cost per thousand impressions. In other words, when you’re running Facebook ads, Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, “Charly, how do you only spend the amount of money that you are willing to have absolutely no return on. get ‘cost per thousand’ from ‘CPM’?”

It’s Roman numerals, I didn’t come up If that’s $30, then you only spend $30. with the acronyms, I just use them. A lot of times, with that first $30, you might make a $20 return, and then you can reinvest that $20 into a VOLUME 2

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NEW ad, building upon your previous split test results. • Audiences • Images 9. Try an internal campaign first • Headlines Start off with an internal campaign – meaning a • Text campaign that keeps your audience ON Facebook • Calls to Action • Anything else you can think of. such as getting someone to like your page. I’m not afraid to test stuff. By doing this your ads will get approved faster and And if you want to have success with your Facebook Facebook will like you more. Ads, you can’t be afraid to test stuff either. Remember, Facebook’s objective is to keep you in their ecosystem. It’s better for Facebook if you stay on The key to success with Facebook Ads (or any kind of advertising) is testing early and often. Facebook (naturally). With that in mind, start with internal campaigns, and Test, test, test and then test some more. then over time, you can move to external campaigns When things aren’t converting like you think they should, that send your audience to a landing page outside of test to see if you can improve the conversion. Facebook. When your ads are performing well, test to see if you 10. Test, test and test some more. can get them a little better. This is probably the most important tip on this list. When you see a competitor’s ad that’s a little different, If you take NOTHING else from this article, make sure test yours to see if you can incorporate something you saw them do. you understand and apply this. TEST EVERYTHING. All. the. time.

When you get tired of testing, test your tests.

Test early and test often.

Now you have the Ultimate Guide to running Facebook Ads for your next affiliate promotion.

ALWAYS be testing.

Be sure to refer back to these 10 tips before running To be clear, I am NOT saying don’t run ANY ads until ads for your next affiliate promotion – you (and your ad you have 30 different variations. budget) will be glad you did! Start with between 2 and 5 images or two or three headlines, or calls to action and start testing. Odds are one of them will outperform the others and you’ll start to get some data and maybe even make some money. Always be testing. Here are some of the things you can (and should) test:

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Article by August Grabinski

Why Custom Packaging Can Make A Difference For Your Funnel

then simply the package’s weight, meaning those who choose to innovate will no longer be penalized and forced to pay more for their freight. Unboxing videos are a phenomenon. A recent study has shown that 1 in 5 consumers have watched an unboxing video**. Even more important than the ever-growing presence of these videos is the consumer’s reliance on these vloggers reviews. Online reviews consistently prove to be a determining factor in consumer buying with a recent study showing 88% of consumer trust them***.

Within 100 milliseconds a consumer’s first impression is made. Along with labeling, packaging is what consumers initially see when making these very important perceptions. When looking at several similar products, packaging can either be the reason why or the reason why not the consumer decides to purchase. Why not use packaging as a benefit instead of a hindrance? In 2015, the USPS made changes to better reflect the 300% increase in custom packages being sent to consumers*. ‘Dimensional Weight Pricing’ allows retailers to be charged for the volume, rather

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Custom packaging is more than just branding. Creating an optimal size box allows the product to have better protection. A recent study shows that consumers want the most, with 80% saying the protection of their item is the most important aspect of packing while just 11% have been completely satisfied with their packaging

experiences to date****. Simply put, packaging is if there is a mishap with a customer who is active on a tremendous opportunity to create a unique and social media. memorable purchasing experience. At Mel Printing and Fulfillment, we have the knowledge and technology to create a super-efficient packaging solution. Let us help you develop custom packaging for your product. We work with clients from the ground up building the most practical solution. We also offer a turnkey fulfillment solution as well as managing the supply chain for your product or products. Dealing with a direct manufacturer with a supply chain solution as well as complete fulfilment capabilities has many advantages including speed to market and cost efficiencies. Why pay to have multiple products sent to one location only to have it shipped out to your customer? Getting the lowest cost on all products doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always make the most sense. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also the value in having one point of contact. How many times do multiple vendors end up pointing fingers at each other when something goes wrong? In the end, the only person suffering is your customer and ultimately, your business. * Global Consumer Packaging Industry Report ** Google Unboxing Video Study *** Google Unboxing Video Study **** Global Consumer Packaging Industry Report

Custom packing means better branding, happier customers and increased perceived value which translates to more sales and loyal consumers. Custom packaging is worth it. Letting this shot at strengthening your brand slide could also potentially cost more than making the minimal investment in packing, especially

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Article by Adam Moody

Generating Traffic to Client Funnel With Non-PPC Or Long-term SEO

Good news!

continue to pursue as you move forward with your client.

You just landed a new client who wants a funnel built for But what about providing results NOW? their spray foam insulation business that has 3 locations Wouldn’t it be great to provide faster results to the client and is likely to expand. without asking them for a $5k ad spend budget for You’ve got the best looking ideas laid out and testing? you presented the client with a great overview Now, you might also be thinking, of course a “spray with milestones, automations, and email follow up foam insulation” company wouldn’t have the money for campaigns to maximize the return on traffic through a PPC campaign….but you’d probably be wrong. the funnel. That’s a $2k to $5k per installation service business. Speaking of traffic… Do you think they would appreciate some quick leads Did you discuss with your client WHERE this traffic was and be interested in a PPC budget if you can provide going to come from? results? If not, you both could be in for a rude awakening! You bet they would! The first step is to always discuss with your potential Here’s several methods you can use right now to start clients how they envision people getting to the funnel. driving traffic to your client’s new (or existing) funnel. Do they have a PPC budget? You’ll get faster results and start building the trust and Are they experienced in online advertising? authority that makes you more than just “their tech person” and into a trusted business advisor. Do they have a long term SEO plan? 1. Existing Customer File Are they going to local networking events, using leaflets, flyers, or other physical methods? Ah yes, the existing customer file. Especially true of physical “brick & mortar” businesses, but also good for Now, that’s all great stuff that you online businesses. Every existing company has contacts, can (and should) work out leads, and previous customers stored somewhere. ahead of time and Maybe it’s in a filing cabinet. How could you use that? VOLUME 2

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Utilizing Press Releases is a great way to get a surge of traffic and can have some excellent SEO advantages... but that’s for another article! Every business has newsworthy announcements that you can use and good press release services will do the writing for you - just supply the details and away they go. This is a great method to combine with a special offer or discount announcement so that you can capitalize on the extra traffic. Business owners love seeing themselves and their business in the news! Hire an assistant to scan and enter the data into a spreadsheet and then create a special offer just for these prior contacts (be sure that you have permission to email them). This can be done also by someone in the business, or you can help out by finding someone to do it for them. Create an engaging email with a special offer or discount and watch the traffic start coming in. You’d be surprised how many businesses do not take advantage of their prior customers! This is just a way increase the number of transactions per customer - which we should all remember as one of 4 ways to increase revenue...right? Ok, that’s 3 great ways to start getting traffic into your client’s funnels without having a long term SEO 2. Free Samples - Use Them! strategy or an expensive PPC campaign set up. Does the client have anything that can be used as a Which ones are you going to put to use to start getting sample? quick results for your next client? How about a free service (dental cleaning? Training guide? 1 month free membership?) that can be created If you’re interested in optimization, automation, from the client’s business and used to have influencers productivity, and time management like I am, you can find out even more and get in touch with me promoting the business for you! at www.productivity.academy. I not only work with That’s right, just about any business could have a free building funnels and business, but helping other online service created from their offerings, it doesn’t just have entrepreneurs with their productivity and goals while to be your typical Instagram stuff. not helping with SEO & Digital Marketing training at Don’t think that just because you aren’t selling clothes www.semanticmastery.com. or other photograph worthy items, that you can’t use influencers. Find out where they are and approach them. Would they be willing to take a free sample in exchange for a review or promotion? This is a win-win situation where you’re helping an influencer share new material or products that they get to try for free and you get the benefit of driving traffic back to the client’s funnel or website. Done correctly, you can form a JV partnership with good influencers… 3. Extra, Extra, Read All About It! That’s right, the news is still around and it works!

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Article by Robert Neckelius

How About 9 New Clients In A Month?

Do you run a B2B operation and would like to get new What I realized was “people are never going to buy from you if they have unanswered questions”.. clients on autopilot? How about 9 new clients in a month?

But if I could actually answer all their questions on the spot, why couldn’t they become a client right then and there? No contact form, no live chat, no phone call, no proposal, just order.. and let’s go!

In this article I’d like to outline some of the things we’ve .. The same way they shop bikinis or posters online.. done in my video production company to acquire new Well it turns out it’s possible.. you just need to build a clients on autopilot.. B2B funnel that can close deals for you! This wasn’t always the case.. Here are some of the things we did to accomplish this. We used to have a website with a contact form. Get over false beliefs around “people don’t read long Prospects would fill it out. texts/websites” We’d annoyingly try to find a time that suits to talk It just ain’t true. If it’s relevant, they’ll read. This is for both us, have the same conversation with every important because if you have this belief you won’t prospect, where they ask for a proposal. really make this work. We’d spend hours crafting a nice proposal, which then Start treating your website like the salesman that it is would get rejected as we we’d frantically follow up and Your website can close sales for you while you sleep, even kept asking ourselves why this sucks so much. if you sell Facebook ads, social media management, or Well, there’s a better way. any other B2B service!

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They’ll need to know your price.

Add bulk discounts if possible

They’ll need to know your process.

We’re kind of getting into business growth tactics here

They’ll need to know a bunch of other things depending on your offer. One example for us as an animation company is that people often want to know if we make videos in several languages, they want to know who owns the video rights when it’s been produced, etc. but I just had to throw this one in there. It won’t make These are all questions that need to be DIRECTLY sense for a lot of you readers, but for some it will be a answered on your website if you want to make the sale game changer. when you’re mid REM sleep. Again, we sell video production. Turn your service into packages

I added one paragraph on our site saying 10% off if This might sound hard, but if you just think about it you you buy 3+ videos. can probably pull it off. In 3 weeks 5 new clients took us up on our offer, 1 client So many B2B service businesses use a contact form because they’ve convinced themselves that “every client needs something different”.. Ok sure, that may be true but if 90% of what they all need is the same then why not just turn it into a package deal that can be advertised on your page, ready for purchase?

had done it in the previous 4 years when we never asked. By the way, we’ve gotten up to 22 new clients in a month, I literally just didn’t put it in the title because I thought some might call bullshit and not read the article.

This is what we do, and to customize their orders we Also our average order value is close to $1,400. simply put add on services when the clients fill out their Hope that’s motivation enough to turn your B2B service brief on the thank you page business into a machine that can close new clients on Provide testimonial overload autopilot. One of the things we started to do was ask everyone for https://neckelius.com a testimonial, and post it on our site. My thinking is that on the 43rd testimonial any skepticism they had left will be shattered, and they may proceed and buy. Retarget people who don’t buy This doesn’t really have to do with the website itself, but just do it.. okay? My Facebook retargeting ads have had an ROI of up to 1400%.

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Article by Josh Jurkovich

Marketing Foundations: What You Need To Have Completed Before Hiring An Agency.

In my couple of years servicing clients I’ve worked on some projects that have gone smoothly, and worked on some projects that have been a nightmare. I started thinking about what the difference was between the two. The difference between the successful and disastrous was one thing: having a solid Marketing Strategy that I like to call the Marketing Foundation... A foundation that clearly explains who the target customer is, what the offer is to that target customer, why the offer is valuable, and how they plan to ascend that customer through the buying cycle and value ladder to eventually purchase high ticket items that provide tremendous value.

The Core Foundations: How The Internet Changed Everything “People don’t buy the way they used to, is your digital presence giving people what they want?” What is Your Offer: Who is Your Customer? “If you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one, this will help define a niche for the core business offer and customer personas so we are creating the right content to deliver to the right person at the right time.” What is Your Offer:

The Buyers’ Journeys -“The buyer’s journey needs to be mapped out. How does a prospect go from first being aware of their problem and your product/service, to I’ve completely changed my business model to offer becoming a customer or evangelist? Have you mapped a two day intensive marketing foundations bootcamp this out?” prior to signing any type of retainer agreement with the business. This marketing foundations course will go Your Sales Process -“Does your sales process match through some key foundational assets that a business the way people buy? If not, it needs to or there will be needs to have before ever worrying about writing a some disconnect. Legacy sales still works, but not as blog, doing social media, PPC, SEO, etc. Those are all well as it should and it doesn’t provide our customers simply tactics to reach a typically common goal which or prospects the value or experience that they deserve.” is growth. But… you can’t know which tactic is right Brand Story - How do you tell your brand story? Why in which scenario, if you don’t have the basic you exist? How do you help people? This will be the foundation in place…. basis for all the copywriting a business does, from Facebook ads, to Google Adwords, to ebooks, to blogs. This will be the main story we are telling. People don’t respond to logic, they respond to feelings, and VOLUME 2

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the best way to elicit feelings is through storytelling. take a task you used to have to do yourself, and allow a computer and technology to automate it. Your Funnel (business Model) Give Them What They Want - “You know what Outsource What Your Can -With proper systems, project management software, and automation tools, questions your prospects are asking Answer them!” it’s then much easier to outsource and assign tasks to Provide Value-FREE - Always give more than you freelancers and Virtual Assistants. Without process, receive. Help more people succeed, for FREE, and outsourcing is a nightmare. Without automation, others will pay you for the same advice. outsourcing can also be a nightmare. Value Ladder/Ascension - You can’t ask someone We’ve built a foundation, showed you how to develop to marry you on the first date. Most high ticket items a business model that will scale, then given you tips on will require a customer to “ascend” to the high ticket how to optimize your process, automate everything, item where you provide more and more value for and outsource what you can’t. With this, you can truly more money which ends up taking more of your time. find freedom from your business and get away from being an employee of the business.

Building the Process: Optimize Your Process to Scale - Once you have a foundation, you need to have a process, and a process that will scale. How do we build out business processes that can scale the outreach at the front level of the funnel and make sure delivery and fulfillment of the services happens the same way every single time and truly wow’s the customer?

I am in the process of writing a book and putting together a webinar presentation outlining what needs to be done at each step. Please reach out to me if you are interested in learning more about any of these core foundations!

Automate Everything - We need to be using technology to our advantage. There are hundreds of thousands of tools available to make our lives easier. If it’s slow and repetitive, chances are someone has found a way to

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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

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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. QUARTER 3

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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

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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.

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this strategy, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for mediocrity. The leads who do opt-in will be distracted If you aren’t getting the opt-in response you’re looking with the points in your lead magnet, and like most for; chances are your funnel isn’t engaging or interactive internet things, your offer will be forgotten unless you enough to keep your prospect’s attention. spend HUGE sums of money on follow-up marketing. This is a huge problem for many industries, especially 2. A solar company is offering a $1000 rebate for B2B, tech, or any other field where your perfect customer anyone who pays for a solar installation by the end of is educated enough not to give out any information the month. This doesn’t sound very sexy to the average without first receiving value. homeowner, so the copywriter gets creative and uses Here’s my opinion, backed by data.

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 have specific questions to help you determine the best sales approach.

“Get your $1000 Now” as his call to action. As a result, he’ll get huge volumes of leads for next to nothing, which 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.

Interactive Funnels come in many forms, and lots of you may already be using one (or a portion of one) Instead of all this song and dance, why not adopt the revolutionary idea of giving the prospects exactly what without even knowing it. 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 doing the opposite of what’s been working for us so far?” Yeah, basically. I’m the last guy to stir the pot, and if running the classic method is making you money then for the love of God, don’t stop doing what works because you read an Surveys, info products, quizzes, polls, and calculators article online. are the future of lead capture. But if you’re looking for a competitive edge for your Instead of praising lead capture, we should be agency, or simply to generate higher quality leads celebrating lead engagement, where the client not only from your own campaigns, look into ways to make your is willing to submit their information to you but wants funnels more interactive so prospects will want to stick to spend as much time as possible on your site getting around. information and interacting. Everything else we’re doing is distracting. It is an effort to obfuscate or convince the prospect to move forward. Two examples I want to bring up: 1. A company creates a funnel to offer a white paper/ lead magnet/ebook. The lead will opt-in to receive 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

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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

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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

implement steps that help cater to them. By satisfying customers according to their precise expectations, what 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. Developed Products with Enhanced Features

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 way enables your brand can reach out to consumers of different needs and ages.

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 Use It to Implement Language and Tone persona to learn about how strong the liquid is in giving Consistency the cleanliness that consumers seek when using it on With a persona in place, you can implement consistency the floor. in the use of language and content style across all There might be enhancements that can be made to the marketing campaigns, thus bringing uniformity into ingredients to make it a more powerful cleaning liquid, it. When you know that a specific language and yet one that does not show any effect on the skin when tone of giving information works, implement it across used. Hence buyer persona helps to constantly improve campaigns so that you gain higher sales. upon product features so that the product caters to consumer needs accurately, which in turn evolves and strengthens your relationship with them. Learn Which Mediums of Customer Outreach Are the Best 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 persona, you can find out details like this and more. You will learn which spaces on the internet they frequent the most so that you can reach out to them here, best ways to market your business on the iinternet, what kind of content that will attract them fast and much more.

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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

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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, other link where they are selling the hard copy or even ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, Aweber, Constant the full ebook version of the book. Contact, Convertkit, etc. The funnel flow is same as the webinar funnel. Webinar Funnel Sales Funnel Webinars have become more common these days. This is the most common and most used funnel format. You have to be very careful with your “topic” which you They are no fixed steps or flow to be defined for a Sales present to your attendees. Now you can either do a Live Funnel because you might have a single product to Webinar or an Automated Webinar. Live webinar is offer or you might have multiple products. done live, it means you can interact with your attendees and answer their queries. In the case of an Automated The ideal sales funnels have following steps involved webinar, you pre-record a video and add a fake Q&A in it. session at the end, or you might also use a previously recorded live webinar and use the recording for the Step 1: Landing page (offer a free bait to get the leads) automated webinar. Again, the final aim is that at the Step 2: Sales Page (try to offer something which has end of the webinar you can put your call to action in lower value, less than $19.99 would be great) front of your attendees. Step 3: Upsell Page 1 (This is where you try to upsell the “Call to action” is a term used for motivating your visitors next high value item you have. Normally, in the upsell to take an action, like hitting a sign up button or clicking the user doesn’t have to enter their card details again.) a url and etc. So, in short, you guide your traffic toward your final goal, and that’s conversion. Now a webinar Step 3A: Downsell Page 1 (If the upsell is not a hit, then could be used just for lead generation (like above), or add a “no thank you button” in the upsell page and get it can be used for asking people to sign up for one free it redirected into downsell page where you can offer session for 15 minutes (Do add a price so that they know the same product once again but at 50% discounted that they are getting something which is worth a lot of price.) money, (ex: Book a free call worth $xxx but it’s free Step 4: Upsell Page 2 (If the first upsell is a hit, then for few earlybirds). It can also be used to discuss and try to offer the higher value product as an upsell, once promote something which you want to sell at discount, again the user doesn’t have to enter their card details.) so the webinar funnel could be a sales funnel too (we will discuss later). Again, it’s up to you as how you want Step 4A: Downsell Page 2 (same a Step 3A) to use it. Now, this upsell downsell step can increase or decrease based on your product list. Always remember to put Suggested Flow 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 below or send me a direct note with your queries.

Ebook promotion Funnel Normally, it’s a Sales Funnel only, but again, an 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/popularity. They even sell a part of their paperback copy (introduction and first chapter) to create curiosity in the readers. This is used as bait and once you opt in to download then it redirects you to the main sales page or a link to Amazon or eBay or any

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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” QUARTER 3 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.

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Article by Amee Gray

Marketing in the Fast Lane

Establishing a marketing strategy can be scary. Marketing is generally a large portion of your budget, and naturally, it takes some time to see the results. When you have taken huge risks to realize a personal goal or dream, taking the leap of faith into a marketing plan can feel like jumping off a cliff where you can’t see the bottom. This is a very exciting time too. Marketing your product or service is the way you tell the world about what you’ve created or what you are doing, presumably something that you have cultivated from a place of love and passion. It’s a highly personal, invested and meaningful time in your business development. Good communication with your digital marketing consultant will help ease the anxiety and keep you informed as your campaign progresses.

your business to a particular theme or mission promotes the kind of loyalty that would convert a big box, instant gratification shopper to a dedicated consumer willing to wait for a smaller business to furnish inventory or services. And finally, customer service. Without a good customer service plan, every dollar spent on marketing, website, storefront, sales, and inventory are a complete waste. Don’t neglect it! Big Box stores and corporate conglomerates have policies and procedures, but they really struggle to enforce customer service policies. Smaller organizations have much more control over who they hire, how they train their staff and finally how they incentivize and show appreciation to their employees. I wish I could tell my clients that digital marketing is an easy, overnight execution with instant results, but the marketing of any kind takes time, requires a scalable plan, a budget and cooperation. However, there are a lot of tricks of the trade that will help rapidly increase your search ranking and drive a lot of traffic to your site. With the right plan and team, this can be done effectively in a reasonable time frame. But it takes commitment, perseverance and a bit of fearlessness.

Most new businesses and start-ups are competing in industries where the giants have purchase power and big marketing budgets. That can be intimidating. But new businesses have many advantages, among them; a consumer trend towards buying local and supporting businesses that are part of and contribute to the communities or causes that are dear to them. Consider too that the larger the business, the more exposure they have to liability and a cynical Start with a budget! and easily disenfranchised consumer base. Consistency to brand and anchoring Know exactly how much you can afford to spend on marketing in the first year and be prepared to spend about 60-70% in the first quarter. Clearly communicate

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that number to your hired marketing strategist or consultant. If you aren’t sure how much to allocate towards marketing, consider that 10-12% of revenue is the magic number for increasing revenue. Don’t have revenue yet? Project your revenues and allocate 1012% of that. But be realistic. Don’t just say, “I want a zillion dollars in revenue!” Know your true market value and be realistic in your estimates.

presence at events where your product is relevant. Send a team of high energy, relatable brand ambassadors out on location to talk about and demonstrate what your product or service can do. Offer samples, give away freebies, ask for email addresses, offer discounts, and set up social media activations. Get people curious and talking. Make sure there are lots of signs and information about where and how to buy what you are selling.

My prescription for delivering quick and high marketing impact results includes multiple platforms and experts You need a marketing plan and a sales plan, (yes they dedicated to delivering on time and on budget. Among are 2 different plans). my dream team would be: If the survival of your business depends on a quick return on your investment, then I highly recommend • A graphic designer with a great understanding investing in a strong closer as early as possible for your of your determined brand personality. sales and customer service team to make the absolute • A dedicated SEO focused site programmer best use of marketing efforts. Many great customer on maintaining curated relevant backlinks as service platforms can assist with data capture and well as for consistent on page optimization, relationship management that are very affordable site maintenance, and tagging/tracking the compared with the cost of losing potential clients, but performance of your website. nothing can outperform an interpersonal connection • A social media and PPC search engine media and the availability of a strong customer service person buyer who knows exactly where and when and sales rep. Running simultaneous and cohesive to place your ads and who also has a keen understanding of search engines and audience sales and marketing strategies is the absolute key to success in the first year. The old saying goes, “You can targeting. lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.” • A social media manager with a proven track Remember that a great marketing platform will deliver record for audience growth and community curious, interested and motivated buyers to your site or building and a keen sense of customer service to your call center, make sure you implement a strategy within social. with a quick customer service response and get those • A crack email marketing expert to deliver sales! optimized automated emails that keep your product or service top of mind. SEO Search engines are the yellow pages of today. Cliche as it sounds, Content is truly King. Don’t even Remember looking up services in the yellow pages start marketing until you have a content plan to include: and calling several until you finally found one that could work within your schedule and budget? Today, A highly engaging client-facing website search engines not only simplify finding products A beautiful cache of original artwork including high- and services specific to our needs, but they also help quality professional photographs of your products or ensure our satisfaction because of the wide availability your services in action. of supporting information and reviews found online. Lots of professionally written copy for email, website, Oh! Kids today don’t know how good they got it! press releases, communications, social media, and Pew Internet Research says 77% of online business to business seekers began their last session at a search advertising. engine such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. According to High-Value Production videos! Video content is the #1 a recent Hubspot survey 72% of consumers who did way to communicate with your audience. a local search visited a store within five miles, Local Brochures, physical coupons or other leave behind searches lead 50% of mobile visitors to visit stores within one day (Google, 2014) and 78% of materials including swag and promo items. local mobile searches result in offline A solid social media plan. purchases. (Search Engine Land, Finally, and I cannot stress this enough: have a physical QUARTER 3

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2014) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing- the Authority and has a significant impact on SEO. statistics) Pretty convincing statistics! Conversely, if you drive a curious audience to your site from social media and the campaigns aren’t cohesive, Google ranks pages based on two primary metrics: that can also negatively impact your SEO with a high Authority, which is a measure of how many people bounce from a turned off or confused audience. Keep share or link back to your content, and Relevancy, your posts on social media relevant and maintain a which is a measure of how well you create content that consistent voice throughout your digital footprint. relates to the keywords users type into search engines (like Google) to find your website or blog. Websites and Social Media Advertising blogs which create relevant content that gets found by Social media advertising is the perfect way to deliver internet users, and then gets shared across the web, is highly targeted ads to individual users by using deemed as being authoritative. profile data to match audience interests, geographic I believe in organic and authentically cultivated traffic. location and other demographics that might determine I do not believe in buying an audience or creating a purchase history, intent or general interest in an item or bunch of non-relevant backlinks. These tactics will only service. With so many social media forums available give you heartbreak in the long run. When multiple right now, all or at least most of them offering an content channels are orchestrated, they will serve to advertising platform, there is most certainly one where strengthen all others and give you a greater authority your audience is spending time. The most popular sites in search. Therefore the tighter the budget, the shorter being Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are joined the timeline with a heavier concentration of services in the advertising world by SnapAds from SnapChat on the very front of your strategy. If you set a yearly which is no doubt “the” place to market to millennials. If budget, I believe it is better to focus the majority of your audience is not definitively on one platform or the your budget in the first 120 days of the marketing plan other, you may consider diversifying your ad spend with to creating high-value content and distributing it in cross-platform marketing. The social media advertising volume across the matrix. options are limitless and offer you a direct avenue to a “ready to buy” community like never before. Search Ad Campaigns (PPC) Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns Pay-Per-Click (PPC) through Google Adwords is a time-saving and cost-effective way to gain more 62% of B2B consumers prefer communication via visibility, referrals, and recognition for your business. email in comparison to direct mail, phone calls, and Piggybacking off of SEO, there is really no better office visits. If you consider that it takes an average way to capture new relevant traffic from the business of 7 points of contact to generate consumer curiosity, to business community than through a combination then I strongly urge you to add an email campaign to of optimized keywords and highly targeted search your arsenal. Additionally, you can pack a lot into an advertising. Searchers who discover products and email that you can’t fit into an ad. Offers, contests, services they are already looking for are more likely to audience growth through sharing and information! In convert than consumers seeing advertising that is not the age of texting and remote, non-familiar contact, targeted to their search history or demographic. email marketing acts as a much more personal means of reaching out to your audience. Email marketing is Social Media Engagement the best place to promote new services and products, Social Media should not be neglected. When a well offer introductory pricing and specials to build a base crafted Social Media campaign creates an engaged for generating new revenue streams. following with return users who share, like and follow, Two Spoonfuls of Sugar with Your Medicine those social media pages also show up in a search. We’ve all googled a keyword and had the first page Two final bits of advice: One: Don’t let marketing flood with the website and 3 or 4 social media pages of distract you from handling your business. Too often one specific company. When that happens, a searcher business owners get wrapped up in trying to monitor naturally feels that the specific company dominating and track their SEO and advertising on an hourly the top of search engines also dominates the basis and then neglect their business development. If market. And, generally, they do. Social you’ve hired an agency or a consultant, set up a routine Media contributes greatly to reporting procedure and let them do their job. If your consultant or marketing director is on the phone with you, educating you about analytics or how digital VOLUME 2 advertising works, they aren’t doing the job you hired

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them to do. If you are on a retainer, time spent with you on the phone or in meetings are billable hours just as they would be with any professional such as an attorney or an accountant. Don’t spend your consultants allocated hours for you getting a cliff notes education on digital marketing. Study the results of the reports they provide to you and be clear on timelines and expectations from the beginning. Two: Don’t confuse Marketing with Sales. Marketing is meant to drive awareness and deliver an audience to your sales funnel. A good marketing consultant will advise you on the keenest solutions for strengthening the joints between marketing and sales. And a reputable salesperson will generally be skeptical in contracting with a company that doesn’t have a marketing funnel because they generally work on commissions and don’t want to have to do marketing and sales just to close a small percentage.

Generally, a great website design will carry you through a marketing funnel and with the right Information Architecture will capture data for future remarketing and best of all convert visitors to lifelong consumers. It takes a great marketing AND sales strategy to create this seamless consumer habitat. Be sure to get these two arms of your business development in sync as soon as possible.

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Article by Andrew Johnston

Designing a Funnel for Lead Generation - 5 Steps to Getting More Leads

Your leads aka ‘potential customers’ are the lifeblood Step 1: Create a Consistent Message of your business. Once you have created a funnel, then Your message needs to be consistent across all traffic the only thing you should be asking yourself is “How do platforms and your funnel. I get more leads?”. For example: Pretend you’re a dentist, and you’re Why? posting content around the benefits of flossing and Because more leads = more customers, and more telling people to click on your link to learn more. When customers = more profit. Simple as that. someone clicks on your funnel, you don’t want the headline to read “7 reasons why you should invest in Now, I’m not going to tell you a ‘perfect’ traffic source getting your child braces”. to use, because there’s a ton out there (social media, paid traffic, organic traffic, etc), and they’re all good if Instead, it could read “7 reasons why flossing is crucial used correctly. However, you can have the best traffic to your health.” source in the world, but if you’re leading them to a In your message, you had been talking about the funnel that isn’t relevant or isn’t properly designed for benefits of flossing, and now you’re offering them them, it’s not going to convert. a complete guide or report, on the why flossing is so You might even have a life-changing product, and important. The message is consistent. a million followers on Instagram, however, if you’re Whoever your target audience is, make sure you are guiding all those followers from Instagram to a continuously giving them relevant information based funnel that doesn’t match your message, isn’t mobile on what your message is stating or teaching. optimized, and is off-brand, then most likely, you won’t be making very many sales. Step 2: Optimize Your Branding If you want to make sure your traffic is converting into leads, then you need to follow these 5 steps to designing a funnel for an optimal lead generation.

Now that we have a consistent message, we want to make sure that when your potential customer goes from the traffic source to your funnel, it’s a seamless transition.

In other words, we want them focused on your message and your offer. They should know they’re still on your site and no one else’s even if you’re about to lead them

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When you share value with your ideal audience, you build authority. You build trust. And they see you as a For example, if the colors of your website are dark blue relevant choice in your niche. and white, and your customer clicks off your website, into your funnel, then the colors shouldn’t be pink When you drop links before building rapport, before and lime green. That would most likely cause them identifying someone’s pains and desires, before giving to question if they’re still on your website or someone value, then you are wasting yours and their time, else’s and all the pre-framing and consistent messaging because people don’t buy from people they don’t trust. would go right out the window. And the way to build that trust, is to take the time to get If you have a logo, add it onto your funnel pages, to know your audience and build a quality relationship however, don’t let your ego get involved. Your logo with them. I guarantee you’ll have more leads after shouldn’t be the most eye-catching item on your opt-in doing that, rather than high jacking someone else’s post or spamming your link to as many people as you page. can a day. Step 3: Call to Action (CTA) Step 5: Test and Edit I talk to clients every day who say, “I don’t want to come No one creates the perfect funnel the very first time. off salesy”. That’s why it’s so important to split test (A/B test) your A call to action doesn’t have to come off as a sales opt-in page. pitch, however, without a call to action, no one is going This way, your audience will tell you if your headline to click on the link to your funnel. sucks if the colors you chose don’t work, and where you Just because you put it on your website, or under your need to make the necessary changes. IG profile, or in a Facebook post, doesn’t mean people are going to suddenly click on it. Sure, 1 or 2 people Building a funnel can be a humbling experience. I’ve may click on it out of curiosity, but they’re most likely not spent hours designing what I thought was the ‘perfect’ funnel, just to see it convert at 20% or less. going to be your target audience. somewhere else after collecting their information.

Give your audience value, build up curiosity, and give a call to action. If you give value first then you can give a subtle, yet powerful call to action such as “check out the link in my bio for more tips” or “if you want to learn more, click the link here”.

However, I didn’t scrap it. I tweaked it. Then I tweaked it some more until I got that funnel to convert over 90%!

It ended up being one of my most successful funnels, but if I had never chosen to pay attention to what my audience was telling me, and had never edited it, then By giving value, you have eliminated the idea of being it would’ve been one of my least successful funnels. “salesy” in your leads’ eyes, plus you have built enough As you get to know your audience, you’ll learn more interest around the subject, that if a person reads your about them, and it’ll be easier and faster when it comes call to action, they’re sure to click on your link. to getting things right, however, never assume you know what your audience wants or likes. Let them tell you. Step 4: Quality vs Quantity Be strategic when it comes to placing your link. Don’t Having a successful funnel that brings in more qualified leads isn’t always easy to create; however, it can be drop it anywhere. simple when following these 5 steps. One of the worst things you can do it to constantly drop your link in front of people who aren’t in your target audience and who will see it as spam. You don’t want to be known for being a ‘spammy’ marketer, especially to your audience. For example, I’ve seen people drop their funnel links under other people’s Facebook ads, in the comments on a YouTube channel, or messaging them in Facebook messenger. Doing that is a sure way to failure. QUARTER 3

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Article by Charly Wigstrom

WHY Chatbots Became My Best Friends When We Talk About An Increase in ROI ?

In just a few months, Messenger bots have exploded onto the digital marketing scene. Not a day goes by without a new article, or a new opinion, about how they’re the Second Coming. And while the initial results are incredibly promising, chances are, you still probably should avoid them for now.

But they’re getting smarter.

In the not too distant future, low-level artificial intelligence will be baked to infer and predict what you’re saying. Both Facebook and Google are reportedly investing in developing virtual assistants. There are also companies like Magic+ springing up to help people solve complex It’s unsurprising, given there are 900 million users on problems through a unique mix of machines & human Facebook Messenger, to begin with. And Messenger capital. Bots have already been successful on other chat-based The future is incredibly bright. Currently, nascent, no platforms like Slack. doubt. Yet promising as hell. There’s only one problem. There are so much hype and excitement that they’re You already have enough on your plate. expected to “eat the web.” But that hasn’t stopped many Here’s What to Fix Before Developing a Facebook companies from already doing interesting things, Even Chatbot the Army and Alaska Airlines are considering enlisting (corny and obvious, I know). Half of the companies using digital marketing don’t have a digital marketing plan. Only ~35% of which Chat platforms are nothing new of course. They’ve have a content marketing plan. literally been around for decades. It seems like a lifetime ago when my high school algebra homework Some facts: was neglected because I was spending too much time • Content marketing is 62% less than ‘traditional talking to girls on AIM. marketing’ (which I’m assuming means offline However, the promise of bots added to the mix has advertising. Which ain’t marketing FYI.) changed the game. Currently, most the chatbots are • It also generates 3X the number of leads, too. actually kinda dumb. Many interactions are pre-built, with bots able to only kick back It’s unanimous. It works. relatively primitive data. Then. Why. Does. Your. Content. Still. Suck?

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sign up now that they’re ready) Only a dismal 12% are optimistic. And 68% say their • Move #2. Try testing the offers, or using a efforts are “basic” or “inconsistent”. ‘product splintering’-like a one that helps you Sound familiar? Here’s how to move to reality your separate the buyers from the triers. efforts: • Move #3. Still nothing’? Start by messing with your combination of Research + Lead Magnet • Move #1. Make sure you have a mix of + Ad copy first to boost relevancy or message commercial and unbranded content to bring match. in visitors who’re searching for solutions to a problem or pain point (and not your services yet). • Move #2. Liven’ up your tone to inject personality, humor and – gasp! – entertainment in your content. That will give it a leg-up on the other 2+ million posts getting published daily. • Move #3. Always focus back on the problem (i.e. the hole) and not the tool (i.e. the drill you sell) when creating content. That keeps the message on-point from a customer’s perspective, giving Or take marketing automation for example. The fastest growing CRM trend over time. Proven; capable of delivering a 451% (!) increase in qualified leads. I dare you to almost find any negative report about marketing automation & personalization in emails. And yet… 85% of executives using it aren’t satisfied with their effort. So try this: • Move #1. Setup a dedicated workflow for each of the three ‘funnel stages’ you created above. • Move #2. Send nurturing emails every 3-4 days, for a ~30 day period with a specific action or goal in mind (e.g. sign up for something, click something, purchase something). • Move #3. Create a ‘re-engagement’ campaign you the chance to eventually show them how after that 30 days (like a discount, promotion, your widget can solve this problematic pain or even an unsubscribe notice) to make sure point. they’re still interested in what you have to offer How’s your Facebook ad funnel going? Are you and ‘win back’ these peeps to inspire action. targeting fans, running multiple campaigns and consistently testing images? Have you set up Canvas I’m not blaming you – it ain’t your fault. Simply securing yet? Dynamic product ads? a budget for these activities is still a problem for most. Or, like 75% of marketers, are you still struggling to But we haven’t even scratched the surface yet on prove ROI on mobile ad spend? organic search, mobile, conversion testing, etc. Remember, ‘Likes’ ain’t the goal. So try these tips The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on instead: and on and on and on and on and on and on. (Wow, • Move #1. Make sure you have campaigns set up that was annoying.) to target the Top of the Funnel (like a content Throwing up a chatbot will deliver a piece to draw in visitors), the Middle of the nice little PR boost no doubt. But Funnel (target those website visitors with a lead then what? And at what magnet) and the Bottom of the Funnel (like cost? sending those new leads an offer to purchase or QUARTER 3

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Conclusion

line from ad spend to ROI.

Facebook chatbots have an incredibly promising future. Even in the small sample of early examples, it’s clear how compelling and ultimately useful they will be to your marketing plan.

Those things ain’t easy. They take time. Attention. And money. In other words, they take a lot of the stuff that would otherwise be sunk into developing a new chatbot.

You shouldn’t ignore them. But you shouldn’t rush to join them quite yet, either. Because chances are, you’ve got enough to deal with already. You need to get a content plan in place. You need to start utilizing marketing automation and other personalization techniques. And you need to right-size your advertising efforts to make sure you see a clear

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Article by Tod Holland

How Facebook Sold Our Clients’ Data

How Facebook Sold Our Clients’ Data and Why They Should Be Thankful For it Privacy.

I’m the farthest thing from a Zuckerberg fanatic. Politically, morally, street-jivedly; I’ve never found a single action taken by that man to be anything short of disagreeable.

The latest hot topic for international business conduct That is until I saw him testify in front of Congress a few and the thing most forgone when stepping into a public months back. restroom stall. Now I know I’m writing about this a little later than One thing I know I don’t need to tell the readers of this everyone else. That’s because I wanted to digest the magazine is that while privacy may not be something news, put on my utilitarian economics hat, and really you’re particularly concerned about, the preservation try to decipher whether Facebook is doing something and definition of it absolutely affects your day to day morally wrong by sharing third-party data. activities as a marketer. If you’re tired of reading, the answer is I don’t agree that If you think about it, all of Facebook’s eight hundred it’s immoral or even in bad taste for Facebook to share and thirty-four jillion interest parameters represents and purchase consumer data, and to be quite honest some breach of privacy or another. They’re tagged as and speaking purely as a consumer, I wish they’d log such because they did what they thought was a private and transfer more of my data. activity on their private computer. Yes, the man who previously complained about the lack And in comes Facebook, teeth bared and salivating, of privacy in public latrines is making a case for higher ready to just tear that privacy away from the consumers availability and transfer of data. and sell it to the highest bidders, effectively treating the general user base as chattel that exists purely for us to Back to Zuckerberg’s hearing, though. Some of the try to pawn our crappy digital courses onto. questions were laughable, and we all got a kick out of it. Many of us wondered how these reincarnated Or at least, that’s what everyone would have fossils from the 1800’s got elected to preside over our you believe. nation’s technology. Others still questioned the efficacy of having a group of Senators who received sizable campaign contributions from Zuckerberg chastise and scold him for whatever made him profitable enough to VOLUME 2 lobby politically. FUNNEL MAGAZINE

The consensus across our communities, though; the ad forgiven for having a few doubts. buyer communities was closer to mortified. Doubt causes hesitation, which creates a shift away Some of the questions asked were genuinely against from uncertain marketing to other forms (incidentally, some of the core principles of personalized marketing, almost all also owned by Facebook). which I believe to be one of the greatest inventions in Especially when this is all under the misguided goal of the past 18 years (yes, this includes hardware like the protecting the consumer. iPhone, which I can get into in another article). Protecting us from what, exactly? For example, one Senator asked if Facebook can track activity on other websites to custom-create People are going to see ads no matter what. So they ads for people based on how they interact with a might as well be shown ads that resonate with them. particular webpage. Those of us in e-commerce is Ads that make sense in the context of the person’s probably nodding our heads as we set up our sixteenth interests. Abandoned Cart Event Tracking pixel of the week, which we use to remind potential customers that they It’s either that or another Tide ad. You decide. didn’t complete their purchase. Quotes: Another asked about custom audiences and marketing directly to users on Facebook, as opposed to a search based protocol like Google, as if it were on par with burning witches in Salem or microwaving last night’s tuna in the office (we know it was you, Adam, and we hate you for it).

Many of us wondered how these reincarnated fossils from the 1800’s got elected to preside over our nation’s technology.

People are going to see ads no matter what. So they might as well be shown ads that resonate with them. Ads that make sense in the context of the person’s These types of things are the only real Quality Of Life interests. improvements for our potential clients. It’s either that or another Tide ad. You decide. The reality is that if we’re going to be on the internet, someone has to pay for that, and advertising revenue has historically been the bridge between “hey, I like this website” and “hell no I’m not paying $4.97 a month to use Facebook”. And if you suddenly take the clear bottled jug of water we’ve been buying for all these years, put it in a black bottle and tell us “trust me, it’s still water,” we can be

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Launching A Product In Literally 4 Hours Article by Andrew Hall

It was a crisp Fall afternoon in Southern California Here is the exact overview used to create the Sales and we had been talking about creating a product for Funnel: Facebook Ad Training and Done for You services for over three weeks. The original plan was to create some content, get the sales funnel up and running and get the membership site up so that once people bought, they would immediately enter into the members area and be setup for some live webinar training and one on one consulting. The problem was procrastination… Every day thinking about ALL the different steps and then putting these steps into action… and then creating the content… and then the Facebook Ad Copy… and then building a list… and then creating a presentation… and then get people to the sales funnel. We had to come up with some pricing, actual product delivery, how much content was going to be delivered, when would it be delivered, and the duration of the course plus one on one coaching. What we did know is the majority of the delivery would be live and recorded videos so those could be created The Sales Funnel Plan – this is how from 8 leads per on the fly on a daily basis if need be. These aren’t all day, one can make literally one million or more in a the steps but it’s a great start to having the product year. created and ready… There are some important steps, though – Daunting tasks for most until this one Fall afternoon where it was agreed that we would just mail to my 1. Have an opt-in page for a free giveaway that existing list, and Andrew was going to deliver targeted traffic can click and get to know more about a webinar…. you and the information they want.

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2. Register the opt-ins for webinars. From the webinar, some will buy if the content is worthy and the value of 3/

the product far exceeds the price. Testimonials always buyers who believe that YOU are the solution to ALL of help. their problems. Your price will determine your workload as well. So these are all things to take into consideration 3. Send the attendees to a sales page to purchase your when it comes to how you can deliver your products products and services. and services. 4. Offer a higher priced service or product. This allows It was 2:00 noon PDT on a Tuesday and I said, you to leverage time and effort. $1997 is an easy price “Andrew, the webinar starts at 6:00pm… let’s do this!” point if the value of your product/service far exceeds Andrew obliged and while I started on the “Here’s the price. What You Get” items and the “Here’s What You are 5. Have a downsell offering to a lower priced product Missing Out on if You Don’t Get In” items, Andrew was people can join if they simply can’t afford your Big designing the sales page. Packages. In just two hours, the Sales Page was up, Buy Now 6. Offer a Bigger package to those whom you have Buttons were in place, the email follow-up sequence earned trust and helped to achieve desired results. This was written, all the sales copy was complete… Now can be a Live Workshop, a Streaming Event, even to the presentation. This was not going to be easy more intense One on One Coaching. Make sure you but between Andrew and I we created a 90 minute value your time. Some of my clients won’t get out of presentation that included Live Demonstration bed unless the buyers are paying 4 – 5 figures upfront plus lots of valuable content and just 2 minutes before the webinar starting… for coaching. We were ready. Your best clients are those who are not investing their last bit of credit card on your program hoping you can “save” them. You can’t be their savior, so do not accept QUARTER 3

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This was the first ever webinar for Andrew. He had never seen the admin dashboard of Go2Webinar before, but we started the webinar with over 70 people on and Andrew was in his zone!

business consultant. He’s done personally over $100 million in revenue and shared his strategies via stages, workshops, and one on one consulting in 84 countries around the globe. He’s an award winning speaker with his specialty in targeted traffic from Facebook, The presentation went off without a hitch and $21k LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, and Facebook later, Andrew was off to the next part of the plan… Ads. creating live training webinars two days a week and some 20+ recorded webinars inside the members area. Now he had the money to reinvest into Facebook Ads, paid off a few debts, focused on creating content and more sales webinars, and he’s well on his way to over a Million in revenue in 12 months! Andrew Hall is an award winning marketer who earned a 1968 Camaro from a Shopify contest for top sales in first 30 days. Jim Graham has been an entrepreneur for over 37 years from car washing, to online marketing, to online QUARTER 3

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In Business, How Do You Differentiate Yourself? ARTICLE BY Seth Greene

In a crowded marketplace, how do you differentiate yourself? If your prospective clients can buy essentially the same products or services from anyone else who does what you do, why should they choose you?

snarky, I said, “Hang on, doc. Let me call everyone in my contact list on my IPhone. I will ask them if they still have teeth, and if they do, I will tell them they have to call you!”

If everyone says they give great client service and does a good job, how can they tell you apart? 80% of the adult driving population says they rate themselves a better than average driver, and we know statistically it can’t be true, right?

You see the problem? If you are trying to be everything for everybody, you are really nothing different for nobody special. So what’s the solution?

We analyzed his patient base, and found out the truth. His ideal patient was an affluent, suburban woman, How do you answer the Dan Kennedy question, “Why age range 40-50, who had gotten divorced in the last should I do business with you, as opposed to anyone 6 months. She was starting to date again, and terrified else who does what you do?” of competing against younger women. She wanted to do something to make herself more confident in her With a magical marketing proposition that makes appearance, but didn’t want plastic surgery. Is that a them want you and only you. defined market or what? When someone asks you what you do, how do you We remade his entire practice. It now looks like a answer? spa. You get your $25,000 (cash only) divorce smile makeover sitting in a massage chair (not a dental chair), I will give you an example from a client of ours. while getting a mani-pedi at the same time. They pick He is a dentist, and my first question during any initial you (and a friend) up for your appointment in a limo, consultation is, “Who is your ideal patient?” He said, serve you champagne, and make you feel like a million and I am quoting verbatim here, “I’m a dentist. bucks. We have now fired all of his other patients, he I can help anyone with teeth.” So feeling only does divorce smile makeovers. He makes four times as much money, and works 60% fewer hours. How do you stand out in a crowd?

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Does that change your marketing message?

product, you just need to put a new wrapper on it.

You think that starts a conversation? You bet it does! You don’t have to want these examples as clients, but I All of a sudden you have other women asking you hope this gets your mind spinning as to the possibilities questions, because they want that experience! We of market differentiation. have had women offer to leave their husbands just to get this treatment! It’s an advanced strategy, but it helps to not only know exactly who your target market is, but it works even better if you can offer a solution customized for them as well. Don’t worry, you don’t need a specialized

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Warm ‘Em Up & Weed ‘Em Out ARTICLE BY Darryl Turner

for marriage on the first night. Yet we do that in our advertising all the time. We spend very little time wining & dining our prospects, and focus so much energy on getting them to say yes on the first click. If we can step back and make sure to warm our audience up to what we have, who we are, or what we’re about, we have a great chance of sealing the deal.

Many times in our own marketing, or the marketing for our clients, we get so focused on getting the lead, or making the sale, sometimes we forget that decisions aren’t made so quickly. It’s very easy to create direct response ads to try and run traffic to the perfect site, or the perfect funnel, with the perfect sales copy. But, sometimes we need to remember the context of our marketing, and sometimes you just need to warm the prospects up, or at the least weed them out. Here’s a shift in mindset & strategy that should help your marketing efforts.

There are several ways you can warm up an audience, all of which work in the right context. Free video content, free opt in content, awareness ads, or just stacking your ads in layers, so you know who’s interested. Here’s a quick list of ideas you can use to warm up an audience before you send them an offer: An ‘About Us’ Video Awareness style video, with no specific sales message A blog post related to the product or service you’re trying to sell A testimonial from a previous or current customer A walkthrough of your service or tour of your building

Those are just a few ideas to get you started. Take advantage of retargeting and now pitch your products We hear this all the time, marketing is like and services to people who have first interacted with dating, you’re not supposed to ask something else. It’s not uncommon to see your click through rates (CTR) double when you make sure to warm up your audience first. Ultimately, you’re trying

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on your ads, then the goal should actually be to get the least amount of clicks possible. What you actually want is the lowest cost of the right people. With this idea, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re creating top of funnel ads that only your ideal prospect will click on, and focus more of your energy on retargeting. The goal isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t to make a sale or capture the lead outright, but to separate your ideal prospects from the rest of the general market. From there, take advantage of retargeting, and really focus your sales efforts. These are just 2 shifts in your marketing approach that you may have not used, or forgotten along the way. Have they worked for you? Leave a comment down to find the people who may want what you have to below with your experience using these ideas. sell. This leads to the next point, you may need to weed them out. In pay per click marketing, whether it be on Facebook or Google, it can be pretty easy to try and cast as wide a net as possible to get the most people into our funnels. But, sometimes you just need to weed prospects out. Consider this mindset shift - if you are paying per click

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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.

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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 QUARTER 3 a liability. The same brash disregard to public safety

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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.

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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.

SOCIAL

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MEDIA

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How You Can Adapt PR Tactics to Use on Internet & Social Media Platforms Article by Michelle Ciantar

your marketing and funnel lead generation strategy – 1. Understand Your Audience

Public relations practice in the 21st century has adapted to using social media applications for research, writing and delivering messages to communicate with stakeholders and target the public online. Almost every aspect of this profession relies heavily upon the use of the internet to achieve their outcomes. Articles, products, services and marketing materials can all be accessed and shared via the net; feedback from customers can be accessed in real time; links to sales funnels are published to divert traffic to a website; and blogging, photo sharing, newsletters and press releases can all be posted through websites and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The digital era of using these communication tactics has become so mainstream and effective that they have been used successfully in political campaigning to win elections. Activists, corporations, government departments and not-for-profit organisations have used applications such as Facebook and Twitter to organise rallies, sign-up thousands of members to support a cause, raise thousands of dollars for advertising campaigns and to express their opinions and views to influence audiences. So, how can you adapt and use PR tactics to grow your audience, generate leads and convert more sales? Here are three simple tips to implement into

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This one gets thrown around a lot: ‘know who your audience is’. But do people understand how to do this effectively? It requires digging a little deeper than, ‘business owner who wants more leads and sales’. If you look up your country’s national statistics or the public records of the national parliament or congress library and search for data that reveals the number of internet subscribers in the last 5 years, how many household and businesses have internet access? Are they using the internet for ‘personal, private, business or educational’ purposes? What age groups use the net and social media and for what purpose? All of this data is important for planning a public relations campaign that uses social media. The demographic details will help determine which social media and internet applications are suitable for different audiences. Because no matter how often you are posting on social media, not everyone is your potential target publics and the way they use Twitter is different to the way they use Facebook. Understanding your audience in more detail lets you know why you are using social media accounts. Is it to generate dialogue? Is it to alert people about a new product and direct them to your main site? Is it to sell something? When you answer these questions after researching your audience, you will have a deeper understanding of why these applications are necessary, who is using them and why. 2. Cross Promotion Social media changed the dynamics of how people find and receive information through the evolving features they provide to communicate messages. If you have a product offer that you want to promote on your website, you can use multiple channels across social media and the web to cross promote to different publics and target markets. The key to successfully cross promoting a product is to ensure each social media application is being used appropriately to inform, influence and educate people according to its specific

features. Each message, post, video, image you use to promote the same product has to be altered in some way to maximise its effectiveness. Simply copying and pasting the same message across all platforms would be a waste of time and resources because you are not implementing a different message delivery strategy within the context and suitability of each application.

professional media outlet by posting quality content on a consistent basis with a strategy of achieving goals and objectives in your business. It needs to be used as a more serious undertaking than just using it to share with your family and friends. If you have product or service you are selling, you can post about the results and success stories your clients are getting; create brand awareness about you and your programs and network with potential partners and influencers. Utilize social media as a tactic within the context of a public relations practice to deliver on an â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;interpersonalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; communication strategy which will enhance your results. For example, having a website is a tactic that is then linked to an objective and a message strategy. Use social media in the same way.

3. Treat Social Media as a Professional Practise Remember to use your social media posts as a

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The Sales of Social Proof Article by Ken Rochon

Have you ever done a search for where you are going to eat on Yelp? Or purchased something on Amazon and made a decision on the amount of stars instead of the price? Or bought a book because everyone is talking about it? Perhaps someone you admire is holding the book in their hand with the author or they wrote a testimonial on their social media page.

write reviews and as a bonus meet them and get a video review. Use www.SoTellUs.com 4. Start your sales presentation off with have you seen our reviews?

We are living in a credible and critical time for proving you are the one to work with. Having the most social proof, will give you an edge that is difficult to compete with. Here are some tips to make sales with social proof: 1. Turn on the reviews on your business pages (Facebook, 5. Ask your prospect how you would earn a 5 star review Amazon, etc.) when you work with them 6. Go to www.BIGeventsUSA.com and look for top events you can attend. If you purchase tickets through this site, you are guaranteed the lowest price and you get a photographer that will get your social proof pictures as an added value to your ticket purchase. 7. If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a book, and you want to be considered an expert, start writing down your ideas and contact www.AHAthat.com and they will help you get your book done in a very short time. Their system works! 8. Carry your book with you and as often as possible give it to influencers and prospects as a gift. If appropriate, get photos with the person you are gifting the book to so you can remind yourself to follow up and send 2. Have your family, friends, employees, sub-contractors them a copy. They are also reminded to give the book write reviews on your character a glance and connect with you. 3. Have your best clients and most influential clients 9. Want to get reviews, then write them. If you can set up a time each morning to write a review, this will be a great exercise in gratitude. Share your review and tag the person if possible. 10. Give thanks to every review, and comment your appreciation. Then share your review as a post.

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11. Whenever your business volunteers to help a non-profit, or cause or community, make a request

immediately following the event or help you provided, and send the link to your business page on Facebook so they can share their gratitude. This is not an exercise in being acknowledged, this is an exercise in being committed to your social proof and your desire to do good.

Being an influencer is the product of having the highest social proof. So be relentless in making sure you are going to the best events and capturing the experience you are part of. Here are some sample reviews to socially prove how impact causes gratitude and more impact.

12. Invite influencers and prospects to events you are Keep Smiling! attending, and they will appreciate you more for the gesture even if they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t attend. And if they can, make sure you get wonderful photos to share during the event and after. These tips will dramatically increase your conversion, your opportunities and most of all your value proposition. In other words, you will be able to raise your prices because you have proof you are the best, and that means you can work less and meet less prospects because they want to work with you a lot more.

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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!)

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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.

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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

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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

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How Every Business Owner Advertising on Facebook Can Create Ads That Convert Article by Tish Luka

Before advertising on Facebook, knowing your audience is important: understanding their demographics and location, what they like and don’t like, their spending behaviors and much more. And while most businesses realize targeting the right audience before running an ad on Facebook or Adwords is a must, too many companies start with an ad and not a campaign. This strategy causes them to panic when they fall short on conversions and stop the ad too soon. The first ad in any campaign will likely be the most Here’s what I mean: if your business is selling an expensive and that’s because it’s the lead acquisition informational product and you’re targeting an audience who’s never heard of you or your business, it may be stage. difficult for them to connect with you or your brand. Knowing who Your Audience “Might Be” Isn’t After all, they are only seeing your sales ad and they Enough! haven’t made any kind of connection with you before. What’s just as important in an Ad campaign is where Your brand and your story means nothing to them and YOUR audience is on their buying journey. There your sales ad isn’t going to convince them to buy. are 3 core stages to a typical buyer’s journey and if So How Do You Connect with an Audience in the your ad is targeting the right audience at the wrong Commitment Phase? stage, then your ad is sure to fall flat. You may end up overspending on a website conversion ad because you 1. Custom Audience with Engagement haven’t taken your buyer through the first two stages, a. Let’s say you were to create a video, and that video or worse you are spending money on the first stage and gave away a portion of the information from the product never getting to the 2nd or 3rd stage. you’re ultimately selling as a “how to” or a “DIY”. The video would attract your audience, grab their attention Here are the 3 Core Stages of the Buyer’s Journey: and push them to engage. (Like, Comment and Share) • Commit By giving them valuable information first and not being • Consider too salesy they will probably want to like, comment and • Convert share the video. And, you’d also be setting them up to The First Stage of the Buyer’s Journey is the Commit be part of your next ad campaign, shifting this audience from the “commit stage” into the “consideration” stage. Stage or Attraction Phase. I’ll explain more about targeting video views later... During this phase, you or your business should be introducing yourself, your business or ideas to your new b. When it comes to likable, shareable videos, don’t audience and the goal is to interest them by getting just stick with educational value, people love to engage them to notice you and even engage with you. Your with all types of content! Creating a video that is focus should be on just getting noticed, liked and empowering or entertaining will also capture those likes, comments and shares and help you to connect shared but not on converting a sale. with the right audience!

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a. The second option is through Facebook Lead Generation. Here you can offer your audience

something with a “call-to-action” in exchange for their You can target your audience with an ad for product email. Offers can be a free consultation or evaluation. sales using retargeting when you set up your next ad using engagement on Facebook b. Using Facebook, you can create a signup form that connects to your ad and Facebook automatically • Choose engagement gathers the information you are requesting on the form • Choose Video Views - Choose Video Views to (emails, questions, survey, etc.) target the audience that watched your original video. You can also filter this into sections like c. Or, you can link your ad to an “Optin Sales Funnel” watched the video for more than 20 seconds where your ad links to a landing page that houses your or 1 min views to really find out where your free content: a download, video, or whitepaper, in audience peaked and what they were most exchange for their email address. interested in. This first ad campaign can really help you narrow your audience and determine who’s ready for the next stage. Once you’ve collected the data, you can use it forever. Using Your Data in the Consideration Stage or Advertising to Your Warm Audience: The consideration phase, often referred to as the “warm audience”, is when your audience has shown some interest in you or your business by engaging with your content previously. And, on Facebook you can target this audience with an ad you are promoting in the conversion stage. Facebook Allows You to Retarget Your “Warm Audience”

• Lead Ad – Choose to engage anyone who filled out the form on your Lead Ad. Your warm audience is anyone who’s shifted from the Now, your audience is ready for the promotion. “commit phase” to the “consideration stage.” Facebook rewards you for targeting an audience whose shown *Facebook also lets you create “lookalike audiences” to interest in you or your product previously by dropping target this same type of audience using the cost to advertise to them (more impressions for less their data. $). Facebook knows that this audience will more likely be interested in seeing your next offer than someone who has never shown any interest in you before. And this is where using Facebook’s video views becomes a great tool!

So How Does This Help You Determine Your ROI? For the commit stage or lead capture stage, you can determine your cost per lead (CPL) which is the total ad spend divided by the total of leads. And to determine the VALUE of that lead, you will need to know the total revenue divided by the # of leads.

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CPA-COST PER ACQUISITION: Total ad spend divided by the number of sales: $4000 by #20 is CPA $200 If you’re only calculating the cost per lead, then you will never really understand the value per lead, and to determine the value of a lead, you must understand the total revenue. You can only calculate the total revenue by closing a sale. Using all 3 phases of the buyer’s journey and creating a sales campaign vs a sales ad in Facebook is the best way to determine your ROI and have a winning ad campaign strategy. Start your campaign today! Example: COST PER LEAD: Total Ad Spend divided by # of Leads: Spend is $4000 by #500 is CPL $8 VALUE PER LEAD: Total Revenue is $40,000 # of Leads is 500 the VPL is $80

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Simple Methods to Skyrocket Your Facebook Organic Reach Article by Daniel Veiga

With over two billion monthly active users, Facebook is one of the best social media platforms for your business. Unfortunately, it comes with a huge downside: complications in finding out how to reach your target audience and lead them back to your website.

See How Your Competitors are Doing

You can gauge what your audience likes to see more of by referring to post performance. However, it’s worth noting that you are not limited to checking your own content. Similar to any other form of digital marketing, It’s much more difficult than ever before, considering doing some competitor research is an effective way to the declining organic reach on Facebook. Do you want improve your strategy. to see your hard work pay off in 2018? Then maybe it’s Facebook makes that process easier as long as you time to explore and adopt new techniques. can identify your competitors. Do your research and In this article, I’ll share with you a collection of ideas investigate which post types are working well for other on how to get greater organic reach and beat the businesses in the same industry. Of course, you can’t Facebook algorithm. copy another company’s business strategy, so just use what you learn as inspiration on planning your own Interact with Community Members approach. One effective way to convince more users to support Share Your Ideas with Statuses and Emojis your business is by offering true testimonials. You do this by having your customers participate in a live or video In every post you make, the goal is to catch the reader’s interview. Storytelling is an important part of boosting eye as they scroll furiously through their feed. If you can’t organic reach because you connect with your followers even make them stop for a beat to see your post, you on a deeper level. have no shot at engaging them. It helps if you include an emoji and make each post as compelling as you Use the power of word of mouth. Search for customers can. You must do something that will make your post or community members who love your products. If stand out from the usual content people see in their they have a story to tell, they may be willing to take news feed. the relationship a bit further. Put them in front of the camera and let the world hear what they’ve got to say. Not a fan of emojis? Maybe now is the time to love them. Emojis and statuses like “feeling wonderful” seem There’s No Need for Many Links to be more eye-catching compared to ordinary and Too much of anything can be bad – and the same boring posts. thing goes with links. Facebook wants us to get more Less is More people into the platform and not the other way around. Therefore, the website’s algorithm favors posts that are Most people think that posting more equates to more originally found on Facebook instead of the ones that engagement. While this may be true for some, it’s not lead people to other sites. effective for a lot of people. Allowing your schedule to dictate your content can also be bad for your brand. This means if you post content directly on Facebook, chances are it will consistently resurface in For instance, if you decide to post four times per day, more news feeds. It also leads to a larger you must come up with content even if it’s of a mediocre Facebook organic reach, boosting your quality. Any post that’s “just okay” is obviously not good engagement significantly. because all your content needs to be top-notch for a wider organic reach.

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Instead, online marketers recommend posting no more than once a day or a few times each week. This lets them give emphasis on high-quality posts – which results in an increased organic reach on Facebook.

of more people. Since they can’t see the entire post because of its length, they need to click the “See More” button. This is a smart way to get more clicks on your posts.

Tag Relevant Pages

It’s All Up to You

Are you tagging a place or business in your post? Don’t forget to tag them – or anything that has an official Facebook page. It helps by expanding the reach of your post to the feeds of anyone who are followers of those pages.

There’s no solid formula to skyrocket your organic reach on Facebook. The only way to increase engagement is by digging deep into your audience. What are their frustrations? What motivates them? What are their goals?

Facebook will show them your post even though they’re not following your page. This method works great because the chances of your page getting more likes increases as well.

Keep in mind that no user is the same. But if you have a clear picture of who you’re trying to reach, it’s easier to point out which content and formats are suitable for getting that message across. Good luck with gaining more Facebook followers!

Focus on Longer and Better Words Captions play a big role in every post. Have you tried writing longer captions on your Facebook posts? Captions that are long enough to trigger the “See More” link are actually effective engagement boosters because readers are compelled to click them. If your content is interesting, it will capture the attention

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TRACK

EVERYT

HING

// Kate Mikado

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people to ask questions and search his name on the major search engines. He talks about those ads and the results from those ads in his interview with Hawk! Are You In the 92-93% of Businesses that don’t track conversions?

TRACK EVERYTHING Intro by Tricia Wilkes

Who Is Neil Patel? Have you seen the “Who Is Neil Patel?” Ads on Instagram? Were you wondering who this guy is? How is he getting all these beautiful models? Why is his name on that guy’s pecs? Were you wondering, Why can’t I find him when I search for him on Instagram? Most everyone in the Digital Marketing World can tell you who Neil Patel is! He is a New York Times Best Selling Author. He was also recognized by President Obama for being one of the top 100 Entrepreneurs under the age of thirty! He was introduced to the Digital Marketing World at a very young age of sixteen. When he first came onto the scene as a digital marketer he realized he had to learn and make adjustments. At first, no one visited his Job Board but he didn’t quit he learned SEO and he kept moving forward!

costly. The statistic of 92-93% of all businesses do not track conversion goals that Neil Patel is finding to be true is mind-boggling to me. When Hawk asked Neil about creating Ubersuggest, he says “There are these big companies that get a lot of traffic. MOZ, SEMrush, AHRefs, Why can’t I start creating similar products as them and instead of charging for them, releasing a lot of features away for free. That, of course, helped with generating visitors as well.” Neil Patel is not a stranger to creating software. He has co-created Crazy Egg and other tools. The Crazy Egg tool includes a Heat Map, Scroll Map, Overlay tool and, Confetti tool. All These tools to analyze where people are leaving your site, find out where people are scrolling and clicking through your website.

Neil Patel says that out of 100 businesses he talks to, about 9293 percent do not have a goal and conversion tracking plan set up. He continues on to say “If you don’t have your conversion tracking set up how do you know what you can tweak to improve and grow your revenue.” Tracking and tweaking are essential parts of growing your revenue to the level where you want to be, and that’s why you need to track everything! Do you want to compare what you’re tracking plan looks like compared to what Neil “Amazing” Content Patel tracks? Neil Patel says in the interview “I How To Track Everything am not saying that my content is An essential part of success is Amazing I am just saying that’s tracking conversions, analyzing the what other people think based on data, and making the necessary data. I am really black and white, changes to grow your company and numbers driven. So I am always and achieve revenue goals. There trying to survey people to improve are a lot of different plugins, tools, it! When I say Amazing, and I and software out there to choose think amazing is a bad word! I’m from leaving the entrepreneur’s creating content that solves people’s head spinning with so many problems, so they are willing to options. Implementing and testing share it on the social web they are all of these tools can also be very willing to link to it, they are willing

He had an idea to run this strategic campaign to get his name and branding out there but at the time I’m sure he didn’t expect to increase his traffic by 51% in three months. Even though most of the people those ads reached were not his ideal customer, those Instagram ads got his brand out there and encouraged

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Neil: No Problem, Thank you for having me Hawk: Absolutely! What got you started as an entrepreneur? Getting Started in SEO? What are you up to Today? Neil: Well I got started as an entrepreneur because I was trying to find a job! I couldn’t find a job! I was 16 at the time, so I created my own Job Board. I was like might as well start off trying to help other people find a job because I couldn’t see one. The logic wasn’t really there! That’s how I got started. From there I started a website on the job board went up. No one visited the site, so I had to learn SEO to talk about it! That’s what built the traffic. That’s really the majority of the traffic!” I think the goal when your writing content is for it to be valuable. Ask yourself would you share this? Neil put Infographics and Videos throughout his content marketing to create a more significant personalized impact than just using words aiding him to great an audience of 1.1 Million blog readers between two blogs. Lead Gen Neil Patel tells us in the interview “My homepage is an opt-in for the agency, I have call to actions throughout my sidebar and my blog posts, and it all helps us generate more leads.” Additionally, he goes through all of his trackings when it comes to lead generations and conversions. Learn how to get results like Neil Patel!

for Slybroadcast! Additionally, Hawk provides a sample voicemail transcript to encourage potential leads to call back when you either can’t reach them directly yourself or don’t have the staffing to reach back after five minutes of getting the lead! Conquering San Diego Neil Patel is conquering San Diego like he captured the Digital Marketing World with his new agency office. In the interview with Hawk, Neil says “Most people don’t go from 0 to 30 people being selffunded and bootstrapped in less than a year.” Neil’s new San Diego office has gone from 0 to thirty people in 10 months. Neil continues to tell Hawk “Technically we have 10 more job openings just in San Diego!”

Hawk: Cool! You have since progressed you have become one of the most influential people on this planet. Neil: I doubt that but continue, there’s no way that I am that influential, I know a decent amount about marketing, but still there are so many more important people! Hawk: From what I read Obama, said you’re one of the most influential people on this planet! Neil: I think it was the Top 100 Entrepreneurs under the age of 30, I am old now. That was nice of him. I didn’t meet him though, It was just an Award. I do appreciate it! Hawk: Awesome how did you grow your company? How did you grow your influence you were able to get awards from presidents?

How many of our readers would Neil: Honestly It’s funny! A lot of want an opportunity to work with people will tell you that they did Neil Patel? this amazingly well, or they are smart, or they’re great! We got The Interview the award because there’s this Interview with Hawk Mikado organization that helped the way I Hawk: We are here live at Neil house, called Impact. They base it Hawk shares an opportunity with Patel’s office. Thank you for having purely on entrepreneurs who started Neil Patel and all the readers to me! companies who are under the age get a code for a hundred credits of thirty and based on the amount Neil Patel and Hawk also discusses the best time frames for reaching out to a potential prospect and so that they can convert that prospect into a paying customer.

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of revenue. I was just selected because of my revenue figures. Not necessarily because I am smarter than anyone else. Just being quite frank! Nonetheless, I am grateful for it! There’s a lot of amazing companies and entrepreneurs, and there are way more Influential people out there. I’m blessed! I am not saying that I don’t appreciate for what I got! Just saying that being on top is only based on revenue numbers Hawk: Cool! Being Funnel Magazine, We love to look at the funnel, traffic and follow up the process. Which you are the king at traffic! You’ve successfully created new software that allows you the figure out the best SEO ranking called Ubersuggest. Tell me about the traffic side? How you were able to a massive amount of traffic?? How were you able to get almost 200% increase without spending a dollar in AD SPEND?

am not saying that my content is Amazing I am just saying that’s what other people think based on data. I am really black and white, and numbers are driven. So I am always trying to survey people to improve it! When I say Amazing, and I think amazing is a bad word. I’m creating content that solves people’s problems, so they are willing to share it on the social web they are willing to link to it, they are willing to talk about it! That’s what built the traffic. That’s really is the majority of the traffic! And on top of that, I built that tool you were talking about Ubersuggest! Where I said hey there are these big companies that get a lot of traffic. MOZ, SEMrush, AHRefs, Why can’t I start creating similar products as them and instead of charging them, releasing a lot of features away for free. That, of course, helped with generating visitors as well.

Neil: They don’t have to switch! SEMRush is a great tool! The current version of Ubersuggest is you just put in a keyword, and it gives you more keyword ideas. September 2018, you will see a version that’s more similar to SEMRush. Where you can put in a keyword, and it shows other suggestion. Which it already does. It will even show all the sites that are ranking, their social shares, their domain ranking. It will show you whos ranking for that keyword in the top 100. You can even put a domain name similar to SEMRush to see how much traffic they have, how many backlinks they have, their top pages, their top keywords. People don’t have to switch. Ours is a useable friendly version with fewer features and, its free! Hawk: Very cool! One of the things I have read you have an unconventional strategy to increase traffic by 51% over the course of three months Can you tell us about that unconventional method?

Hawk: Absolutely! We use SEMrush Neil: Sure. The way I have grown we use a bunch of other tools. Can Neil: I have done so many traffic my traffic by just creating a ton of you tell me why and how someone hacks, Are you talking about the amazing content! I am not trying would switch from SEMrush to one about Branding? saying my content is amazing! I Ubersuggest?

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Hawk: Yes! Neil: So, What I did is. I realized if you can have a lot of people talking about you. You will do well! If you look at the companies like Nike, Coca-Cola, American Express, Range Rover Mercedes, It’s not just about ranking on Google, it is about people recognizing your brand! I had a ton of people fitness celebrities, models, makeup artist. I had this really buff dude. It was hilarious he wrote on his pecs Who is Neil Patel? And it was an Instagram video. He was shaking his pecs, and my name was bouncing up and down, that did really well. It caused a lot of people to research me because I made sure there was not an Instagram profile for me. So everyone was like he’s not Instagram, but everyone is talking about him! And yeah a lot of people who found out about me was irrelevant from the perspective when it comes to potential clients, but it helped get my brand out there,

for your agency or to downloading Hawk: Awesome. So One thing your software? we have seen interviewing and Neil: Yes! I do a few things. I create working with our clients as you a lot of custom stuff. I used free scale your company Automation tools like The Hello Bar. Where I and delegation is very important? can get people to put in an email What have you found the impact of in an exit pop up or slide or any automation and delegation on your other form of email collection, and business? I drip people and say check out my agencies. That’s one way. You can use tools like Lead Quizzes to do Quizzes, and you can collect leads that way. That’s another way. You can use tools like Subscribers to get push notification subscribers and then from there I drip them. So that way after a while, they will get drips that will mention my agency and consulting services. My homepage is opt-in for the agency I have call to actions throughout my sidebar and my blog posts, and it all helps us generate more leads.

Hawk: Awesome. One thing you mention you do a lot of this traffic using SEO. Are you driving Paid Ads? Do you use Instagram? Hawk: Very cool, One of the things Google? that you also talk about is that you Neil: I do paid ads, very little! I have all this content out in the world. spend four hundred dollars every How do you take that content and Tuesday. drive it towards your funnel applying Hawk: All of your posts? Neil: No just the new post. I release a blog post every Tuesday. That’s why when the new post goes out. Right, when it comes out, I notify people by email, push notifications, etc. I also boost the notification on Facebook for four hundred. The ad also goes out on Instagram, but I only get like 1000 or 2,000 clicks from it if that Hawk: Awesome, Why did you choose four hundred dollars? Neil: It’s Just Random

Neil: Yes it’s huge! Just makes things more efficient. People forget that when there’s automation, there are more things that break! But it’s huge, more efficient and allows you to scale faster. Such as you can use a lead qualification to automate, to figure out which leads should get passed to the sales reps and which don’t! So they don’t waste their time calling people that are just junk. The person is not junk. Just the lead is junk, for that product! Also at the same time are we trying to waste time for our sales reps but we don’t want to call companies and to waste their time pitching them for a product or a service that’s not a good fit for them. What we do It’s not perfect but we, but when we get people on the phone who are not a perfect fit like people Andrew, who is just walking by right there in front of us. We give them advice and help them out for free. You have to make sure your providing value even if you are not selling anything. But we do automation. I know I got sidetracked. I wanted to try to make a point that if something doesn’t work out that way you want. If you are still dealing with leads or people that you don’t want to. Yeah, You should fine tune it At the same time you need to provide value to those people who you are in contact with. If they took the time and energy to get to know you and fill out a lead for your business. You should at least take the time and energy to provide help to those people out.

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sure you have a business that is Hawk: What do you guys do to thriving and growing? follow up? You’ve talked about your sales team? What else do you do Neil: Yeah I don’t know. We don’t besides your emails drips? have a percentage. We try to automate as much as possible. And Neil: Nothing really. We have so we try to add people wherever they much traffic and so many leads that are needed. We look at automation we are really not too worried about not to replace people but to make it! things their jobs more efficient Hawk: Not too worried? I’ve read Hawk: Love that! That’s awesome. somewhere that 4500 people want Do you guys use your own funnel to work with you each month? building software that you built Neil: Yeah! Some months. It ranges internally? per month! It’s a lot less now. Because Neil: No everything is custom. Yeah, we don’t put the others in Hubspot. you could say there’s no custom Like if someone says they have a software that we can package and 0$ to a 5K budget we just take the sell off like Clickfunnels. It’s more so lead, and they go to the Abyss or a we make what we need for our own Black Hole. And the reason being sites. When we can use products like is we don’t have the time to follow Hello Bars or the Subscribers, We up with everyone! We started to use them. Wherever we need very filter more heavily. We were always custom stuff, we build them! filtering. But we are filtering what we are putting in our CRM. Because

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it starts to get cluttered and messy and your also paying per contact for the CRM. So it’s cheaper not to add them in. Hawk: Just out of curiosity. I see you have Affiliate Offers for Bluehost. Neil: That’s the only one Hawk: That’s the only affiliate offer? Neil: Yeah The only reason because they hit me up and I was like Why Not? I know the Bluehost Guys, I used to do SEO for Hostgator a long time ago. I used to help them out. I don’t really care about that affiliate commission to be quite frank, I just do it for fun! Hawk: You’re in San Diego, Which is awesome, We are in San Diego too. What Brought you here? Neil: My business partner Mike! He runs the company he’s the CEO of

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and operate my business, do what’s best for my customers, best for my team members, and best for us all is an overall company! You keep adapting and improving, and you never stop! Hawk: That’s really interesting Neil: It’s just like when a funnel when you build a funnel once, and it’s not converting you haven’t failed, No, you keep tweaking. It’s the same thing Hawk: How did you get to a place where you don’t care what other people think about what’s going on? Neil: I don’t know I been in business for over sixteen years. After a while, you just stop caring Hawk: That is true! Neil: Over silly things! I care what my team thinks! I care about what they are doing in their personal lives. I don’t care about what a random competitor thinks! I had a call the other day from someone who got really pissed off. They started cussing at people. Because they missed their time for their call! It wasn’t even on my end. I was like What could you do? I even called them and said alright. I said sorry and moved forward. Of course, You want to make people happy, but you can’t fix everything Hawk: Absolutely! How big is the team you have so far? Neil Patel Digital Data Agency. Hawk: Awesome, As you grow as a company I’m sure you have had multiple situations that others could have looked at as a failure, what are some of the failures or challenges that you turned around and made an opportunity that helped you scale your business even more than you thought you could VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Neil: I don’t know! The Neil Patel digital business is quite new! I don’t really look at things like you failed, you’ve failed if you quit and gave up! I look at more so if things aren’t working out, you adjust and keep tweaking. When people have the mentality of other people think you’re failing, I’m like I don’t care, I don’t pay attention to what people think! I just go on

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Neil: In the office in San Diego. Team-wise I don’t know it’s quite a bit a larger. In San Diego alone I know we have about 30 people in San Diego Hawk: So you have other people working virtually? Or in other places? Neil: Yeah but that 30 people here in ten months. So from zero to thirty in ten months.

Hawk: That’s awesome. That’s really Hawk: That is very true! I was talking good! How far did you scale the to a friend of mine that does high ticket sales. He is having a problem company? with clients. I was trying to explain Neil: yes we have hit seven figures to him what he should be tracking. a long time before, and we haven’t What are the most important hit 8 figures yet. But soon! We hit tracking conversions that you focus 7 figures in the first two to three on? months. Neil: Every business will be different! Hawk: How did you hit 7 figures as We focus on the Last touch, the first an agency? touch, leads where they came from, Neil: We have tons of inbound leads the value of each leads, we look at the ones that close, out of the ones Hawk: that’s true that close where they came from, Neil: I have a track record in the how they first hear about us. Which space. So when I start a new channels drive a higher lifetime, company. It’s like cheating! It’s not value than other ones. We look at like I’m starting from scratch. I’m not everything saying people can’t do better than Hawk: That’s an intense amount of me. But, they shouldn’t expect those tracking results in a few months. Most people don’t go from 0 to 30 people being Neil: We even look at how many self-funded and bootstrapped in leads come. Out of those leads how less than a year. Technically we many schedule calls. How many do have 10 more job openings just in we follow up with? Out of the ones that we follow up with how many San Diego! actually pick up the phone. Is it Hawk: Wow I know a lot of people better to call in the first five minutes looking for a position or the second day? We have been Neil: Everyone move to San Diego! testing email templates, email Tell them to hit up Neil Patel Digital them? What is working whats not working? We Track everything! Hawk: Last Question, You have amassed a massive amount of Hawk: Awesome, What have you knowledge and experience. If you found out is it better calling them can give listeners and readers one after five minutes? thing that they can implement in Neil: It Is! their businesses today What would Hawk: Pretty much right as soon as that thing be? the lead comes in we call Neil: Set up tracking correctly! Especially if you’re an online Neil: By, Far as soon as the lead business. Most people don’t have comes in we call We are not there their goal and conversion tracking yet. We are trying to get there set up. As shocking as that may Hawk: Have you guys use tools like seem, it’s really bad. If I talked to SlyBroadcast that let you drip out a 100 business, I would say 92 or Voicemails Immediately 93 don’t have a goal tracking and conversion tracking set up. If you Neil: We haven’t tried the voicemail don’t have your conversions set up yet! What is it called? how do you know what you can Hawk: SlyBroadcast, if you use the tweak to improve to grow your word Invert, you will get a 100 Free revenue

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Credits Neil: SlyBroadcast, Invert, Alright Hawk: It’s really cool, You can integrate Zapier. Neil: They don’t get a ring, it goes directly to your voicemail Hawk: You can drip out a voicemail that says “Hey, It’s Neil, we have seen you opted in! Give us a call Back” Then you have them calling back, and you can get the inbound lead too It’s a powerful way to reconnect. Do you guys use SMS and Chatbots Neil: Yes we do! We use Mobile Monkey here and there. We like them! We use Trello for your text integrations it will send a text reminder saying hey you have a remind in fifteen minutes or an hour, we do all that stuff Hawk: Do you use Chat Bots too? Neil: Mobile Monkey is a Chat Bot with Facebook Messenger Hawk: I have not heard of Mobile Money. Are they better than ManyChat? Neil: I haven’t played too much with ManyChat, I prefer I like Mobile Monkey. The founder is a marketer. He’s the founder of WordStream. I think they sold to The Gap. for 100 something Million. Larry is Awesome. He adapts really fast. So if you need a feature that’s really good for marketers. He will figure it out. He can code! Hawk: Very cool! I love it! I will check it out! Neil: Sounds good, thanks for having me! Hawk: Absolutely Man! I Appreciate you!

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sought-after hair stylist. She took a bus ninety minutes to school each way every single day. When it was time to apply for hair stylist jobs, she applied to all of the top salons. She went on four interviews out of the four or five salons she applied to. She found her perfect fit and started to work at a top salon. While working at the salon, she kept her eyes open for constant improvement and a brighter future for her family. Small Chicken Restaurant Rachel Pedersen Interview by Kate Mikado

The Secret To Creating 7 Figure Viral Marketing Campaigns Single Mom In Minnesota Five years ago Rachel Pedersen was not the queen of social media we all have came to know and follow, she was a struggling single mom in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Before she was successful and highly sought after Social Media Strategist and an educator, she was at a point in her life where she was struggling to make a better life for her and her daughter. The story isn’t that she was a single mom on welfare, living in a shared bedroom with her daughter, the story is that she decided to wake up every day and push through those struggles and the accomplishments she has achieved since. Most of us can relate to similar daily ongoing struggles that either we are fighting to push through currently or have or had someone close to us push through in the past. Being able to connect to similar struggles, having the same dreams of a better life for our loved ones makes us want to follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Youtube and her training.

Rachel was working full time as a hairstylist when she stumbled across an opportunity with one of the hair clients that had her tumbling into the future of entrepreneurship. “One of my clients came in she asked me If I could run some social media for her husband’s company,” Rachel says. She noticed Rachel’s Facebook presence. At that point, Rachel was running social media to bring in some extra clients for the salon but, was nowhere near an expert. The important thing was that she knew more about social media then they did. Who would’ve thought that her client’s husband and his “small chicken restaurant,” would have turned out to be Mrs. Winners, a popular fast food franchise in the

Southeast? Also, till this day one of Rachel’s Biggest clients who grew, as she grew within her social media business. Google University! Rachel has been featured on top publications such as Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Mail and more, as well as on top podcasts such as Entrepreneur On Fire! All of those accomplishments without a marketing degree. She put in a lot of time researching and learning from Google, YouTube and podcasts until she felt she knew enough about social media to be able to make it. She was six months into her side gig hustle when she put her one month notice into the hair salon! The very next day, her biggest client brought all of their social media management entirely in-house, and with that decision, Rachel lost fifty percent of her income. She made the decision to leave the hair salon because she knew she wanted to become a marketing professional, but as she lost her biggest client, she began to ask herself What If I Fail? What If I Succeed? Rachel was feeling overwhelmed with the decision she made to put in her one month notice in at the hair salon. So she asked her husband,

Before she was capturing real life with her brilliant ads, she was studying hard on becoming a

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“What If I fail? “ and his reply was ingenious he responded with “What If You Succeed?” Rachel didn’t want to forget those What If questions, she decided to post a piece of paper on the wall of her dining room that said “ What IF I Succeed?” so she can look at the paper every time she asks herself What If I Fail? “I wasn’t ready, but sometimes you just have to make it happen,” Rachel said. The fear never goes away, and if you’re waiting on a sign or a specific dollar amount before you quit your job to do your side hustle full time, something could always happen.”I had to mourn that, The idea of never living a life of security ever again, It’s going to be risks here on out” Rachel Says. I’m sure when she looks back, at the success she has and realizes she could of went back to that job

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and not have had the exponential that process from LinkedIn. success she’s currently experiencing, Leveraging the Spot Light she’s glad she took that chance on herself. When you have ONE ad reach 11,347,759 people, with only sixty Linkedin- Like an Online Digital dollars in AD Spend you know you’re Networking Party! doing something right! Rachel has Rachel’s first job in the industry was demonstrated the ability to leverage at a local digital marketing agency her (and her clients) everyday realas a Marketing Professional. She life moments and thoughts that we eventually moved into a higher all have and make them go viral. We position as Director of the Marketing have seen Rachel on the treadmill, Department with a technology sitting in her bathtub, even in labor. company. The problem was Rachel In the interview with Hawk, Rachel is an entrepreneur at heart through talks about how one of her ads and through. She didn’t want to that she was featured in, she was stay in a cubicle or have to income holding expert secrets while in labor in at the same time every day. So contractions and all and, how that with only having one client: Mrs. ad has helped launch her brand. Winner’s, Rachel goes to LinkedIn Rachel says “ Something about real to reformat her profile. She had to life is so refreshing, and it stands out, take her profile from hair stylist to and an ad that demonstrates real Online Marketer and Social Media life makes people want to engage Manager. She optimized her profile and click just out of admiration around her skill sets so business and respect.” She has her audience owners viewing her profile would engaging and clicking! know what she had to offer their The Relationship Funnel business so they could improve their social media presence. Rachel has mentioned the relationship funnel in other Facebook Rachel calls LinkedIn a “Digital Live Videos and on podcasts but Networking Party,” and it doesn’t in this interview with Hawk she make sense to go to a networking goes into the relationship funnel. event and only talk to the people Relationships with your customers you already know, right? She are the cement that can mend any started networking on a huge disconnect between your funnel scale, reaching out to members and your customer. Relationships recommended to her by LinkedIn’s are crucial in every aspect of a algorithm, and by using advanced successful business from the funnel searches to target specific job to social media. titles, locations, and industries. She reached out to Presidents, CEO’s The Three E’s and, Owners of companies and once they connected she made Rachel is BIG on the three E’s of sure her profile was reflecting on marketing and advertising. The optimized skill sets for that specific Three E’s are Engage, Entertain client. She then sent cold connection and Educate! “ They are incredibly requests to them, and she then powerful,” Rachel says! She goes followed up with a personalized into the Three E’s with Hawk in the message to build relationships by interview and which questions to trying to figure out the companies ask to engage really and how most needs. Rachel generated over people are doing it wrong! Rachel $32,000 worth of contracts using has fun with her social media, and it reflects in her video’s and marketing,

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it has her followers waiting for the Rachel is the founder of Social next video she publishes excited to Media United, a leading online watch! university for those aspiring to become successful social media Money Printing Machine managers and strategists, like her. On Rachel’s facebook, she has Rachel says her Ah ha moment was a video called money printing “If I share my expertise and work to machine where she talks about her help others achieve the same types four-phase process to get more of dreams, especially social media raving, engaged customers that she managers, that is going to leave used for her client to target for future a bigger mark.” That makes Social launches. Her client went from a Media United an excellent platform couple of hundred followers to for her to reach that more significant fourteen thousand followers without mark on an extremely high level with having to pay for likes, and this many people who are in the same client also had a 1.3 million reach. spot as Rachel was five years ago. You want to build your audience Side Hustle to Two Comma Club so when you are ready to launch, your audience is already raving and “I felt like I was drowning while ready to take action, and purchase! holding a laptop over my head trying not to get the keyboard wet.” Rachel Social Media United describes her journey through side

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hustling and trying to keep her head above water. I’m sure everyone reading this magazine has felt the drowning overwhelmed sensation on the journey of entrepreneurship. The difference between staying in the side hustle mania and building a thriving, successful business with accolades is to keep making steps in a forward direction, Rachel says she makes lists and takes action to complete those tasks. This March Rachel was accepted into the Two Comma Club. The Secret! Rachel’s secret to creating seven figure viral marketing campaigns is to make it entirely about your fans, customers and, followers. “ Everyone always thinks that making a million dollars or going viral is about them,” Rachel says! In the

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interview with Hawk. Rachel shares her secret sauce of being customer focused. “The more important part of this is helping your customer being customer focused” Hawk adds. Social Media To Pursue Your Dreams Rachel overcame struggles and continues to inspire thousands of people daily in her social media groups, her students, and clients. Her videos and social media posts encourage them to overcome their struggles as well. As more and more individuals see her ads, hear her on a podcast, look at her videos, and hear accounts of her interactions with her clients and get to know her backstory her reach will advance to billions. The World will know Rachel Pedersen’s name! Rachel Pedersen & Hawk Mikado Interview Transcription Hawk Mikado: Hello and Welcome this is Hawk Mikado the Funnel genius and publisher of Funnel Magazine. I am so excited because

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today we have Rachel Pedersen who is an absolute genius when it comes to social media viral marketing. She has helped five people make a million dollars with social media and Facebook ad marketing. She has done it all while having a husband and kids to manage. She is also training people to do this for themselves. Which is really cool! Thank you for being on and sharing your brilliance and wisdom with everyone! Rachel Pedersen: Thank you so much, Hawk! This is truly an honor. Hawk Mikado: Thank you, Can you share a little bit about how you got started? What inspired you to join Internet Marketing? Rachel Pedersen: Absolutely! The funny thing is I accidentally stumbled upon entrepreneurship for most of my life I always thought that certain people had businesses and, was passed down from family member to family member and then there were the rest of us the “normal people” who didn’t have businesses. I didn’t realize that entrepreneurship was a thing that people could really do. I accidentally became a social media manager actually when I was working as a hairstylist full time. One of my clients came in she asked me if I could run some social media for her husband’s company. And that was the start of my online marketing journey. So I started reaching out to look for people who were doing what I was doing. And found a couple of people. I really found that people who talked about social media, wasn’t doing it. They were teaching it but, not still doing it. As I built my clientele, other people started to reach out to me asking for help and support. I decided to do both. I was going to run an agency of my own and teach people. It was kind of interesting. It naturally became a pretty successful business.

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Hawk Mikado: That’s Awesome. So far you helped five people to become millionaires, and one of them is becoming a multi-millionaire. Can you share a little about what is the secret sauce behind helping people create not only viral content? But making it actually produce and generate an income for them? Rachel Pedersen: I love this question! Everyone always thinks that making a million dollars or going viral is about them. Their company, their product, their brand! And the crazy thing is, that the moment you reverse the whole process and, make it completely about your fans, your followers, your customers. That’s when you find true success. Now I know that sounds really cheesy by itself. The reality is when you start to identify what moves a fan, a follower, a customer to take action whether it’s to share a post, to comment on it, to like it, to engage, and to wholeheartedly follow a brand, as you go through that process you develop waving customers. Who can’t help but want to purchase absolutely anything and everything you put out there. It’s that process of reverse engineering the emotions and diving into psychographics behind social media that I realize it’s not about the brand it’s not about the product it’s a one thousand percent about the customer Hawk Mikado: That is so key! I see so many people that are out there sharing you have to build your brand, you have to do all this, I love that you’re saying, that’s obviously important, the more important part of this is helping your customer being customer focus. I remember when we were starting, and we were helping our customers, and they were like how do we get our brand and I want it to look like this! And I was like how do we know it’s going to convert. And they said because I like it. And I was like Are you the

customer? And the Answer is NO! So focusing on your customer that goes the same for your funnels and, all of your products. That’s Brilliant! I love that! You built two businesses, you built them while you were pregnant. You have two kids now? Rachel Pedersen: I have three kids now! Hawk Mikado: Three kids Awesome. I’m sorry I am a little behind the times apparently. We just had our first. I was completely incognito. You spoke at Funnel Hacking Live. You spoke while being pregnant. You built this incredible business while being pregnant. Can you share a little about the experience of building a business while having a baby and not taking maternity leave? Rachel Pedersen: Absolutely! Hawk, you experienced this yourself! Having a new baby whether it’s your first, second, third or seventh it’s like your whole world gets turned upside down for a second. While

I was pregnant, I knew that I only had nine months to get everything figured out before the next era. Everything was going to change drastically. Now as I was building, I decided I was going to be very, very intentional and recognize that this was basically a nine-month sprint. I had to get as much work as humanly possible in. And build sustainable systems. And that sounds like a Buzzword. When I discovered how powerful, sustainable systems are. I realized I will be able to have time with my baby and recover from labor, delivery and all those things that go along with having a new baby. As I built up my team, we built exhaustive systems. Everything from handling customers, clients, chain of command, bringing in my husband in as my director to handle all the pressure when I knew I was going into a season where I will not be able to. Now What I didn’t expect is that when I had my third child, about three months ago. He was kind of like a reset. Like someone hit a reset on my life and

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suddenly I didn’t want to work 70, 80, 100 hours a week, and pull tons of all-nighters suddenly I wanted and craved systems It sounds so weird. But that was the only reason my businesses kept going without a hiccup as soon as I had Dominic. So we started building up more and more systems. And I became kind of obsessed with them. As soon as I created an action step or a new product or a new offering I quickly built up a system so we can plug someone in to handle that. And I have to say that having a rock-solid team is an essential part of building a thriving business especially if you plan to have kids. Hawk Mikado: I can completely attest to that! A quick story, I guess both our kids are the same age. Because my daughter is almost three months now. And as soon as she was born. And I became back to work. We need these systems. We need to automate even more than we already have automated. I already had a business that ran for

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six months without me even being in it. That was awesome! Then I was like we have to scale this. I figured out how much money children cost. You’re talking about implementing all of these really high powered systems. Out of Curiosity How much of your business have you automated? So you can make sure everything runs smoothly? Rachel Pedersen: on a day to day basis I can be completely uninvolved in the business which is crazy. Right before I had Dominic, we finished automating everything. We either automated or augmented the process with my team with systems. So not everything is fully automated, but it’s definitely augmented with teams and systems. So I would say probably 90 % of my business is automated. Now I can jump in at any point and take over as much as I want. Sometimes I like to do that. I really like to jump in and handle a new strategy or set up my own Facebook ads. I enjoy those things. I find them really fun, and they bring me to life. When I completely automated it. I was like wait I want back in I want to do a little more. Now I can choose how much I want to do literally on demand. And If I were to go on Vacation next week nothing would be interrupted on the workflow from my week to week. It’s pretty powerful. Like I said about 95 % of my business is automated or augmented. Hawk Mikado: That is awesome. That is brilliant. You have done it for the consulting side! Have you also done it as well as for your social media training side where people come in, and they learn and go through the process? Rachel Pedersen: The training side was actually the side that was more automated and put together with the systems. That side was easier for me to figure out. Especially VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

since I had hired from within my community. Every person on my team was a raving fan. They knew what I believed in what I stood for what I didn’t like what I didn’t care for. And they came in and just brought the community to life. While I was enjoying my new baby. But the consulting and agency side that was where it was a little bit trickier. When it comes to social media and Facebook ads. It’s a blessing and a curse I‘m naturally very talented at both. As much as I wanted to pull away, I had to make sure there were 8 players in place. And literally, the week before I had my third child. I realized my team was ready. That was an amazing feeling. If that had not happened I would still be sledging away every single day every minute of the day working on ads and social media but the reality is my team is as good as I am if not better. I come in I come up with the strategy I hand it over to them. I know exactly what they’re going to put together and there are this immense trust and respect built on that side of the business as well now.

relationships. I have this belief that relationship fills in the cracks. I am not a funnel builder like you are. I can build funnels they suffice they are not beautiful sometimes they convert sometimes they don’t I believe relationship allows people to see past what’s missing in a funnel at least for me that was the case. That’s where I discovered this power of relationships. Was the relationship funnel. That carries people from step to step product to product and for business to business. Hawk Mikado: That is absolutely true! Even as a professional Funnel builder it took us 6 or 7 funnels to get Funnel magazine the funnel converted and were profitable by day one. The current Funnel is profitable by 1pm almost every single day right now. Whereas before the very first funnel we launched it took two months. We invested two hundred dollars, and it took another two months to regain the difference of that. Whether or not you’re good at building funnels there is always that component. Relationships are the key absolutely without building relationships the remainder of the cache flow that missing gap of cache can’t get filled there’s just no way could that happen.

Hawk Mikado: Awesome! You talked a little about creating these obsessed fans, these hyper fans, that really get engaged they are connecting they are building relationships with other people in Rachel Pedersen: Absolutely to be the community. How do you create totally honest one of the craziest things March of this year I accepted engaged hyper fans? my first two comma club award Rachel Pedersen: I love that which means for anyone not question! Engaged hyper fans familiar I made a million dollars in come from authenticity. One of the my business. And I am pretty new things I did very early on my social at Entrepreneurship I have been media training. I let people see me. doing for this just shy of three years The good, the bad, the ugly, the for me that’s a massive success, but tears, the frustrations, the wins, I what most people don’t know my let them see everything that wasn’t funnel didn’t break even, it wasn’t just a polished, perfect product. By profitable even close. I actually building relationships with everyone didn’t make money until month over Facebook live, zoom calls, two or three. That hustle involved in the community, engaging with was insane it was exhausting. I just every single comment for at least a decided I am going to be successful. year I began to build really strong And now today I have a profitable

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funnel, and it’s so much easier I can go all day every day lets do this. Those couple of years were a lot of legwork and a ton of relationships. Hawk Mikado: You recently spoke at funnel hacking live sharing some of your brilliance! You were also featured as an ad you were holding expert secrets while you were in labor. Can you share the components of that? How has this helped your brand? How has it helped the Clickfunnels Brand? Rachel Pedersen: absolutely! One of the things that really interesting about a picture of me in labor holding expert secrets it’s in the face of conventional online marketers ads most online marketers have ads in front of their Ferraris and Lamborghinis and in front of mansions. Maybe it’s not even there’s, maybe it’s rented. Let’s be real! For many people, it’s just a photo shoot. There’s something so different about bringing real life into ads. Labor is as about as real as it gets. And Yes I was really was reading that book as I was going through contractions. Something that is such a pattern interrupt. People aren’t used to seeing real life not just highlights on social media. I think this is the might quite possibly be part of the reason why I been so successful in social media for myself and for my clients. Something about real life is so refreshing, and it stands out, and an ad that demonstrates real life makes people want to engage and click just out of admiration and respect. I know Clickfunnels has shared with me that every time they ran my ads for example for Funnel Hacking Live My ads performed the best so I knew that If I gave them those images, I knew those would perform well for clickfunnels. I thought absolutely why not let’s use real life to show other people what’s possible even if you’re not renting an Airbnb

that’s a massive mansion, or renting a Lamborghini this is the reality of my business I birthed a business as I birthed a baby, That’s what it did for clickfunnels. And for myself, the same experience has been similar. I like to show people the lows. I know that sounds weird. I like for people to see behind the scenes I like for people to see the before part of the reason for that if people don’t see who you are. If you don’t let them in on the journey, they are never going to be rooting for you when you win.

Hawk Mikado: Now I make $12,000 per month for a client. Before And After is so powerful. Before And Afters are so common in the fitness industry, not so common in any other industry, where probably it’s even more powerful in the other industries. One of the things you cheer is the three tiers of organic social media and adding in Ads. Can you share a little a bit of that? And how it can be implemented in somebody’s business right away?

Rachel Pedersen: Absolutely I am a Hawk Mikado: That is awesome I huge fan of the number three when actually just find a tax return I made it comes to advertising and social 12,000 dollars in 2012. media. Two different things I like to do. The three types of social media Rachel Pedersen: That’s astonishing posts that I use are

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under the 3 E’s. Which is engage, entertain and educate. They are incredibly powerful. What you will notice are missing from those 3 e’s is your brand, your product, you. It’s not about you. It’s not about your product once again. It’s about getting into the Psyche of Your ideal fan and follower that person who’s going to tell all their friends and family all about your brand. Right? You’re going to engage with them! Ask them questions as crazy as that sounds. Ask them questions that make them want to respond because you actually care! Now I have seen brands do this right and do this wrong I have seen a lot of people that say which Of our products are your favorite? That is not an engaging question that is a You, You, You. Ask them questions ask them what do you first thing in the morning? How do you get yourself pumped up? The next E is Entertain. Have Fun with Social Media. That’s a huge part of it. I see it missing so much. People take it so seriously they get so into sales mode. They forget that part of the reason people are scrolling through Facebook feed is to be entertained they are bored, they are waiting in line , they are at a dinner they wish they weren’t at give them something

they can laugh at, to give them something they can share with their friends at that dinner party. The third E, of course, is Educate. This is the place where the opportunity to tell someone wow here’s a different way, there’s something that’s totally you didn’t think about Not even diving into your own products but talking about the key philosophies or the key foundations of your brand and how you can educate the market without even selling to those people. Now what I like to do is combine organic social media with the power of paid traffic. This case Facebook advertising. Once I create an organic post, I actually turn them into ads. SO we can turn people into raving followers they are being engaged, entertained and educated and now we are able to remarket to them in the future. Because they know we are a brand that just doesn’t care about selling. So the three tiers come down to 3 tiers the first tier to get people into your sphere. The goal is to have that touch point I recognize that brand I have seen them on my feed before. So your goal is to get them into your sphere. Then you want to is to get them closer Get something into of value maybe it’s a lead magnet maybe it’s intro offer a podcast something that gets them engaged into your business and brand and ultimately involved what you do and then from there that’s where turn you them into raving customers. And now they’re going to be open to purchase whatever you offer from this point on. It’s pretty powerful Hawk Mikado: Absolutely! You talked about using organic post and turning them into ads. Are you referring to boosting the post? Or are you doing something different to turn them into Ads? Rachel Pedersen: While I personally am not someone who preaches against Boosting. I know there’s a

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lot of hubbub in the market about boost don’t boost What I do is go into the Ad manager and turn into an engagement ad, so it’s similar to a boost only you have significantly better options and insights inside the Facebook, Ad manager Hawk Mikado: We pretty much do the same thing. We boost it first, and then we take that boost to go into ad manager and change everything Rachel Pedersen: Exactly what I do I am a huge fan of a quick initial boost because I always have seen that it gets the ball rolling every single time. Hawk Mikado: Absolutely! You’re talking about an actual engagement ad vs. a boost ad which is almost the same thing but the functionality is a little different. Am I sure you teach all about that in your social media training? Rachel Pedersen: I teach all about that and so much more Hawk Mikado: Of course Rachel Pedersen: We go into everything about organic and paid traffic and how the two can come together and create massive fan pages, Hawk Mikado: Awesome how does a fan page actually function? Obviously, Facebook is your front end If we are talking about Funnels Facebook is the front end. It’s the most important component if you’re using Facebook to drive your traffic or Instagram or Pinterest or any social media platform that is the front end of your funnel and I see this happen all the time where people look at it, and they have their traffic, and they have their funnel but they are integrated components. Can you share the importance in the strategy around of having an effective page that actually converts and brings

them to the funnel pages? Rachel Pedersen: Absolutely we have paid traffic, and we have funnels, and the relationship between the two is really important. Right? We can’t have one successful and not have the other being successful and still have success. You really need to have both to Perform. I personally believe that the relationship is the same between organic social media and paid traffic. It’s very difficult to have a stagnant or dead Facebook page that hasn’t been tended to or put together have spammy links and then to have successful traffic. I personally believe that so many people look into your page to see if you’re legit to see if your walking walk and talking the talk they want to make sure that you’re legitimate and people always keep going back to your Facebook page. To check you’re out and see what you’re up to. I also believe personal profiles play a big part of paid traffic, how many times you have seen an ad, and you go look for that person’s profile to see if their life resembles their ad life? Have you ever done that Hawk? I totally do, all of the time! Hawk Mikado: I had seen one from Dan Henry yesterday, and it was a picture of him with his baby, I guess all social media geniuses do. I went to his profile, and you can see the same thing. There was this speaker it was ad to come to his event San Diego, and it was two vastly different profiles. Ok not interested I will do the same thing I will look up people to see if they’re interested in writing or to be featured article in the magazine if you got good ads then you’re probably a good person to be in the Funnel magazine. So you should probably target me if you wanted to be in the magazine. That’s probably one of the fastest ways to do it. Absolutely if you see a personal profile especially, and

you go to their personal page and if it doesn’t resemble its completely inauthentic and turns people off and even if someone does become a customer in my experience if you see someone do that and you realize they weren’t who their persona was and that relationship ended very quickly when that happens Rachel Pedersen: The same is true with personal profiles and pages. Just like what you experienced and shared. If there’s a lack of congruence between the page and the profile or the page and the ads I feel it leaves the person with the lack of trust. Especially in this game of online marketing. And building brands online the last thing you want is to have your potential customers sense the lack of congruency now people say well how I build the congruence into my profile and into my page. The best way to do it is to make sure your running ads that are in congruence with who you are. That’s a huge part of it. Your values are the same from profile to page to ads. Then you don’t have to spend this long to cover up your tracks of several lives or a double life Hawk Mikado: Absolutely I have a Sub Question to Congruence If someone runs an ad where they misspell something, or they misquote something, and then they get called out on the ad, but the ad is converting better than any over an ad they have out there what are your thoughts and insights? Rachel Pedersen: I am so happy I am talking from experience on this one. I definitely had typos mistakes things that are not quite right in my ads in the past. If it’s just as simple as a mistake, something is a typo something that’s grammatically not correct something doesn’t quite make sense but that Ad is converting well you better believe I am going to leave it on. Because

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that is in congruence with who I am, I am a very chill person I like to have fun I am not an uptight person I will let it run. Now I have clients on the other side of the spectrum. Where if there were a typo in their ads it would be detrimental to their brand. For example, some of my white collared clients who teach things have to do with professional services. That would not be good for their brand; I would simply make the change. Now when it comes to a let’s say something that changed maybe a term and conditions of a course or your program. Or it was something that wasn’t true, and someone called you out on it. If that’s something your running then you absolutely should consider shutting it down. I am a big believer either you call it out and recognize it and say hey update this isn’t longer the case but I wanted to share this with you I think that it’s important to shut it down. I actually had this happen recently. Where I have an ad that says closing soon. And it’s an ad that continues to perform. People ask me about it, how do you still run this ad that says closing soon it’s been running for the last year, Well I do close it sometimes. So it

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might be true. A month from now my program is going to close for a while then you won’t be able to get in. Once I turn the ads back on, as long as the ads are turned on you can get on it. I think there’s a fine line. I think you need to have that sense of urgency and scarcity. You have to try your best to make sure everything is a true representation of where your brand is actually at. Hawk Mikado: absolutely awesome Cool There are so many ninja secrets that you as the Social Media genius are well more in tuned to then me as a funnel genius. What are some of the ninja secrets that you have been able to implement to automate or to scale yourself and 5 clients to over VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

a million dollars? Rachel Pedersen: I love this question So one of my favorites tricks that we used. And it’s not tricky at all it’s just like a hack a little bit. I have one an ad for my social media training, and it runs 24/7, but that ad was my top performer so what I did I shared the link to my ad with all my students and I said hey guys people don’t know if what I do is legitimate. They don’t know if its a scam or if it was so if you had an experience with my training with the way I operate with everything that I say you can learn can you go on to this ad and share your experience so people know this isn’t a scam and people went and flooded this ad with the

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just the most glowing testimonials you’ll ever see in your life. And that was my top performing ad hands down that was one of my favorites hacks for getting an ad with just amazing social proof. And it’s not fake. It’s obviously socially manufactured because I brought people in and asked them to leave their comments. But you’ll notice I didn’t say only give your good experiences. And I didn’t delete. And I would never delete if someone said they had a bad experience. I would reply to it and try to make the best scenario for it. Socially Manufacturing your social proof is massively powerful. Anything this is huge is the funny motto I have I

want everyone to know my name and my face. And I believe that if everyone knows my name and my face, My brand will always be successful So I make an extra effort to be on podcast interviews, video interviews, interviews anything I can do engage in different groups, support other people. Comment on other peoples status. Because I know The more people see my face, the more they are going associated with the brand I run.

funnel magazine. My husband and I actually own a window washing company that he works on with his dad. This is the year that we are putting my marketing skills behind their business, and it’s about to take off, so I’m very excited about that! Hawk Mikado: You have a client who’s going to be a multi-million dollar brand Can you share your journey and experience that you brought your clients through?

Rachel Pedersen: Absolutely Hawk Mikado: Awesome do you my client that is closing out on have other brands other than your her second million. It’s been an Social Media Consulting and Social interesting journey when I first took Media Management? her on I have never helped someone Rachel Pedersen: I actually do. make a million dollars before, and They are all in funny places. I had that was not necessarily the goal an e-commerce website. And it was the goal was to run a great ad and my first experience in E-commerce. do some great social. And see what Brand new I did everything wrong happens, and I was so intimidated except for the Facebook ads. I by this client she was a very strong turned my Facebook ads, and we personality I always thought she was were making 1-2 dollar acquisitions. yelling at me when she was voxing So before you know it we scaled I me. But the reality is she speaks very was doing a thousand day in sales. intensely, and she’s a very polarizing The problem was I set it up as a figure just how she is she presents dropshipping website. So as soon herself with so much strength that the products went out we started a lot of people either love her or getting refunds massively the hate her. So I realize early on that products were not what we thought what if we could get her in front of it would be. I heard so many great more people (tier one) people who things about dropshipping. But the could love her and say wow that’s good news we had success for a little someone I want to learn from. She bit. We had sales coming in. I know can be massively successful. She’s how to drive the traffic. That’s where naturally polarizing. So What I did my confidence in E-commerce is we actually set up a lot of mini came. As long as it’s a good product chat campaigns the reason for that I can make an e-commerce site is she’s in an industry that is heavily thrive. We have a couple of other regulated by Facebook, and we brands as well one of them that are weren’t able to send traffic to her being developed that are called landing page. So we started to run Bread Winning Women, and it’s the traffic, and her very first launch a movement that features women which was in November of 2017 we who are ultimately the breadwinners did just shy of 150,00 dollars with in their household kind of a different very minimal ad spend less than dynamic one that I experience, 5,000 dollars in ad spend. So a and it’s little tricky to navigate. To phenomenal launch so we then be honest. Another brand and I started building up her social for don’t know if I am ready to share the next launch, and in January she this but maybe I will for the sake of did a launch that was 200,000

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dollars in that launch obviously with revenue trickling with in between the launches. The most recent launch we got to reach her first 400,000 dollars month as this happened I was like Oh My Gosh her audience we built engaged a crazy raving audience that loves her so now we need to offer more things they want it they are begging for it, they are buying everything she puts out there. I actually came in and helped her with some of her strategies, adding some oto’s adding some order bumps. Just because I knew that’s what her audience is asking for based on seeing the comments I see from them. Just today I spoke to her, and it is halfway through the month. And she’s at 260,000 this month, so she’s going to have an over 500,000 dollar month. And I’m telling you right now she’s going to have a ten million dollar business by the end of this year it’s exploding faster than I know what to do with. It’s So much Fun! Hawk Mikado: That is so cool. I love it. You talk about being polarizing I know that’s very difficult, especially for Americans. We are taught in school to be liked by everyone. Can you talk about How do you get somebody who’s not polarizing to become polarizing? And how do you average that polarity? Rachel Pedersen: I love that question! So one common misconception about polarity is that it has to be controversial. Polarity is not necessarily controversial for example I don’t ever speak about politics I rarely speak about religion. You’re not going to catch me talking about sex drugs and rock n roll like those things aren’t good things that I talk about because they are controversial and that’s not my nature. However, people either love me or hate me and I realized quickly that polarity wasn’t the same as controversial.

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Kind of interesting distinction now what it means to be polarizing is to be 100% unapologetically yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to drop the F-bomb and doesn’t mean you have to do something that turns people off. Just being unapologetically yourself the version you are of yourself with your with your best friends, your family, the people you trust you’re going to get people who say they can’t stand this person and you’re going to get people that say wow, I Love who this person is. So the journey for me, for example, I had to learn how to become, so that means it’s going to be goofy, quirky, I am going to make mistakes, It’s going to be real, I like bathroom jokes I think they are really funny, I am going to talk about those things without any apologies and I am going to upset some people along the way, but it yet doesn’t have to be controversial. So what I recommend tap into who you are with your best friends and allow then allow the world to see that version of you. And you will naturally be polarizing.

everything is very family based. So they decided to babysit my baby and my dog. And they were doing such a great job, and they were other kids here too my niece and my nephew and my kids. ]\ doing such a great job, the night was going great and all of a sudden they looked in the kitchen because our dog was being quiet. And they discovered our dog had torn apart a blowout diaper and it was everywhere all over the cabinets, all over the walls, the dog dragged it through all around the dining room, so it was all over the carpet it may have been a couple of diapers the carpet was covered in poo everything was covered in the poop. And at that moment this is where we draw the line. They said we love you Rachel but not that much, so they sent us a video of all of this poop all over our house and they were like we’re sorry we are watching the kids, they are alive and well good luck. So we brought someone to clean it because I didn’t want to clean it either but it was so funny that I was laughing until I fell over.

Hawk Mikado: I love that perspective. That’s giving me the chills! I like the difference! It’s an Aha moment. Can you tell me a bathroom joke?

companies I have experienced that the success one of the craziest things I have experience at the end of the rainbow there’s not a pot of gold it’s not what you think is waiting there its 100% as cheesy as this sounds it’s the journey. Where the gold is being found along the way. For me that was finding amazing hires that feel like family, having a ton of freaking fun with everything we do, and being a good mom and a good wife along the journey it’s so crazy but when I got to the end, which is the end is just a beginning of the next journey there wasn’t that massive I made it feeling it was wow look at all the memories we made look how much we have grown. Look how rewarding that journey was, what better people we are now. So my best advice, as cheesy as it sounds, we have seen it on posters. To truly enjoy the journey because that’s what makes the destination worth it. Hawk Mikado: Thank you. That is powerful and beautiful, and I appreciate you for sharing. You have shared some incredible insights and wisdom you shared your three tiers and all of the different components to really connect with your audience to build your relationships, utilizing relationships in your funnel that is right there alongside with enjoying the journey. If you take those things and implement them into your business today, you will see massive success. Thank you guys all for joining us if you are watching the video or reading the article. Thank you, Rachel, for sharing your brilliance with the world!

Hawk Mikado: That’s hilarious. We are coming up at the end of the time here One thing that I love to have our guests to leave our audience with if they learn nothing from up to this point in the interview and you Rachel Pedersen: For Real? are to leave them with one thing to do it doesn’t have to be in business it Hawk Mikado: Sure could be in their life, the bathroom, Rachel Pedersen: All of mine are anywhere. What would that one stories though thing be that they could implement today in their life that they could Hawk Mikado: cool sounds good improve their life, business, increase Rachel Pedersen: Okay there are all their health, wealth and happiness? so inappropriate oh my gosh One Rachel Pedersen: Thank you, Hawk. day my sister and my assistant. So Rachel Pedersen: It would definitely It’s truly been a Pleasure. long story my assistant was actually be this that the journey of success is one of our best friends growing up something that most people to start so she was in the family for ten years out on and we expect that at the end and I hired her as my assistant, and of the journey is what we are looking my sister works in my agency. So for. Obviously, I built successful

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was privileged to up to that point was spiraling out of reach from him quickly banking and farming to a poverty-stricken apartment complex. His parents’ marriage was crumbling apart, and at the age of six, his father disappeared not to see his father again until he was almost an adult. Ryan’s mother was shortly remarried to a guy who was abused as a child who completed the cycle to emotionally and physically abuse Ryan because the stepfather didn’t know any other way of raising a Look For The Struggle child. Ryan’s stepfather adopted The stepdad put Ryan to work And Focus On The Win him. at the local Car Wash at a young Intro by Tricia Wilkes age to pay for his own shoes and necessities. Ryan dropped out of The Hardcore Closer school at fifteen, with an eighthRyan Stewman The Hardcore grade education. Closer If you don’t know his name, his polarizing personality, his He was pushed out into the real magnetizing closing skills, you must world at such a young age which be living under a rock! A six-time led Ryan to start using drugs: Best Selling Author, a contributor marijuana, LSD, and the first time of not only our magazine but also, he tried cocaine he overdosed. He Forbes Entrepreneur, Huffington woke up after being saved from Post publication. He has half a overdose handcuffed to a hospital million followers throughout his bed. Ryan was facing felony social media platforms! He has a charges for possession and intent to raving fan following throughout the distribute. His family had nothing, Entrepreneur, Internet Marketing, no money for a lawyer, he ended Mortgage, Banking, and Sales up with a public defender convicted industries because of his fight and and spending two years of his life in ability to push through and close eight different prisons. sales when most would give up! Three divorces, Two felony prison sentences, foreclosure, bankruptcy and, a mentally and physically abusive traumatizing childhood, yet he’s still giving the corporate business world the one, two punch!

Three Out Of Four The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that three out of four former prisoners will return to prison within five years of release. The first thing Ryan tells himself once he got out of prison was that he will “never ever ever in his life, put himself back in this situation, sell another drug, do another drug, never break another law,” and he will move on with his life. He went back to the Carwash where he spent his childhood determined to be the best car washer he could be. He worked his way up to manager with hopes of one day owning the car wash. One day he was working at the car wash and, one of his usual customers noticed him. She offered him a position in the mortgage industry, he skyrocketed into the mortgage industry within the first sixty days. He wrote and followed a business plan that leads him into a 700,000 dollar a year income. However, somehow that downward spiral found him again. Ryan Stewman was facing felony gun charges. Gun charges not only on owning a gun with his past convictions but also on charges against the clip size. His lawyer at the time, became the first Democratic, African- American

His childhood started off pretty prosperous with his family being in the booming banking industry. Until’ The Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980’s reached his family’s Texas bank Ryan Stewman was only five years old. His grandmother was sent to federal prison for trying to protect the local farmers of their small town and the bank’s books. Everything he

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District Attorney in the state of Texas but, before transitioning into the District Attorney, he bargained to have Ryan’s charges dropped to fifteen months in a Federal Prison instead of fifteen to twenty years for having two strikes against him. Before, leaving for federal prison, he married his girlfriend, gave her control of his entire estate. Which included thirty-three properties under management, a massive bank account, a successful mortgage pipeline. She took everything and left with the gardener. Fifteen months after entering the federal prison, Ryan Stewman was released with twenty-five dollars given to him from the Federal jail system. He was forced to move back into the house he bought for his mom and stepdad. As an adult, his stepdad forced him into compromising situations that could have put him back into the prison system for life. He decided he had to make a change. So he went back into the Mortgage industry. In 2009 he went to the largest privately owned Mortgage in Texas company and became the Top Producer of that bank. He was in the one percent of top originators in the World! He got married in 2010 to his high school sweetheart who was his third marriage. The Frank Kern Video What also happened in 2010, was that the Obama Administration signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In 2010 Ryan had only been released from prison for one year, The Dodd-Frank Act required seven years time period between federal prison time and being able to obtain a financial mortgage license. He needed to make another change! Ryan says “I said listen I need to figure out a job that doesn’t require a license, doesn’t have a boss, and I can start my own business” to a VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

friend in the real estate business. This friend introduced him to Frank Kern, Internet Marketing, and Word Press. In the interview with Hawk, Ryan tells us about his first impressions of Frank Kern and the video that inspired him to nose dive into the Internet Marketing Industry. Ryan went on to be mentored by Frank Kern as well as speak on stage in La Jolla for his event.

and internet marketing to the sales world.” The Break Free Academy

Ryan’s very first funnel was built in Word Press using templates. Ryan in Hawk’s interview says “I built this funnel to sell an energy drink, of all things. And I had this domain. The Energy Producer.com I am Ryan Stewman the Energy Producer.” And, He goes on to tell us a story about making his first Energy Drink Sale and calling his customer at 3 AM. Ryan says “If you can sell it once you can sell it a million times, You just need to find out what you did right.”

Eights years Ryan updates us in the interview with Hawk and says “I built an eight-figure year, this year for the first time. In one of my companies. I have eight companies that do seven figures” Ryan also started teaching seminars called The Break Free Academy. Ryan explains “The Break Free Academy When I started teaching these seminars at first it was all organic marketing. And then I started Teaching how to build sales funnels, and it went from one-day event to a two-day event.” These seminars target entrepreneurs and salesperson in mortgage companies, real estate companies, roofers, painters, plumbers, consultants, and coaches. He continues to do these seminars, four times a year. This is a get it done now before you leave implement now seminars! You leave with all the technology to implement what you learn and, close sales.

The Hardcore Closer

The Entourage

That first sale was eight years ago and led him down this pursuit which he created The Hardcore Closers which started out as a sales training program. He quickly came to realize that closing the sale is step two in the process. That Lead Generation had to come first. Ryan explains to Hawk “ If you don’t have anyone to sell to, then you could be the best salesperson in the world if you don’t have anyone to sell to your going to go broke because you don’t have any leads.” Getting your message into the right audience always has to be step one! He saw the need for teaching Lead Generation to the sales community and stepped right in, making it his Niche. Ryan says “They didn’t know this internet marketing world. So I have been this evangelist for LEAD GEN

The Entourage is Ryan Stewman’s mastermind program! The cost is five thousand dollars for the year up front. There is a lot of value within his mastermind program. There’s a massive networking group of seven hundred people within that group! Two events per year. He provides Mindset Training Mondays and Q & A Sessions on Wednesdays. His Marketing Autopsy once a week where he will deconstruct submitted not working funnels to help find out why they are not converting to give solutions. Additionally, a Facebook support group and a monthly newsletter to all in his mastermind’s program! Continue on to read Hawk’s interview with Ryan to hear about the story he went out partying in Texas with Billy Gene and these Mastermind events.

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with Clickfunnels or Infusionsoft. He wants to go after a different market of people not the Tech-Savy Internet Marketers but any salesperson or entrepreneur whose business can thrive using sales funnels marketing campaigns. You can check out more about Phonesites at https:// phonesites.com

Clyxo is a social media bookmarking software Ryan created for his own personal use. It’s free software! This tool is used by linking all your different social media platform accounts to your site. You can also use this ONE search tool to connect with someone on every platform Keeping it Simple, Sells! they are on. Phonesites Phonesites is a simple funnel building software that runs through your mobile device that Ryan created to solve an issue he was experiencing during The Break Free Academy. He was experiencing issues with everyone participating in the seminar getting connected to the internet, being able to understand the technology, and being able to broadcast their message to the appropriate audience. Ryan says “I want something that can be done from a phone in the palm of their hand without a desktop. I know the world is going more and more mobile.” He also explains in the interview with Hawk that this software was not meant to compete

In the interview with Hawk, Ryan says “The Navy has this saying Keep it Simple, Stupid. I think it’s a little degrading. It’s the Military, that’s how they talk to each other. Like Locker Room Talk, So I say it; differently, I say Keeping it Simple, Sells! And it’s true! When your monkey brain can make decisions! That’s really where the decisions come from, is the subconscious primate brain. When you get the monkey brain to pull the trigger. That’s how you get rich!” Throughout the interview with Hawk, The trend is simplicity. Ryan mentions a lot of successful millionaires and billionaire’s who use simple funnels. Ryan says “ So people would spend all their time making these fancy funnels, and then they would launch

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and ask where’s there two comma club Plaque. This thing had every flashing widget that Clickfunnels offers Why didn’t I make a million dollars?” In the interview, he goes that funnels are simple things, that they only need three components to be successful. Continue to read the interview for the answer to what those three components are. The Force Of Average The force of Average is Ryan’s algorithm of the planet. He says your focus needs to be on all of these four areas: Faith in Yourself, Finances, Fitness and in Family to level up beyond the average person, to be successful. That the force is going to try to make you fall back down to average continuously. The video of The Force Of Average is very enlightening and motivating. He puts a real perspective on how to deal with daily struggles and overcome to succeed as he does. I would recommend every person to watch this video. You can find the video at https://www. breakfreeacademy.com/p/force-ofaverage. It’s a free video!

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Look For The Struggle And Focus On The Win Ryan says in the interview “Every day when we wake up if we own a business or even if we are a salesperson or whatever we are going to have a struggle that faces us. An employee is going to get mad, A client is going to get mad, a funnel is going to break, an ad isn’t going to work, we are going to be banned from Facebook, Our server is going to go down, stuck in traffic, miss a meeting, get sick. Things are going to happen. There’s going to struggle” I find this advice from Ryan so powerful to keep moving forward and not wait for the struggles but get a foot deep into the struggles and find a way to overcome these every day struggles that everyone faces and prevail! The Interview Interview with Hawk Mikado

Hawk Mikado: Hello Everyone, Hawk Mikado Funnel Genius, and Publisher of Funnel Magazine. We have a Brilliant marketer and salesman on with us Ryan Stewman, he’s an absolute genius when it comes to sales by the way. Love your hardcore closer stuff. You’ve been up to some incredible things. You spoke at Funnel Hacking Live a couple years ago. You’ve written multiple articles for the magazine. Now you’re on the cover. Can you share a little about your journey? How did you get started? How did you get to where you are today? Ryan Stewman: Awesome First Thanks for having me here. You know It’s always awesome to hang out, and I like writing for you guys, I obviously write on my own blog gives me a different angle to write. And it’s something for your publication.I appreciate you guys doing that I actually sent yall quite a few talented people to write articles for you too. I really like giving back VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

to you guys, You been awesome to me. My journey is really simple for a complicated guy. I was in the Mortgage Business. We will just flash forward past a lot of things. I was in the Mortgage Business for the almost ten years. And I was really good at it! Something’s happened to me, and I was ready to get out of the Mortgage Business. I went to meet a real estate buddy of mine. And I said listen I need to figure out a job that doesn’t require a license, doesn’t have a boss, and I can start my own business. I am really burned out on real estate I don’t want to do anything with mortgages anymore. And I didn’t leave because I wasn’t good at it. I was one of the best in the nation. It was just time to go. Long Story Short! And the real estate agent said Man you have to check out this internet marketing thing. And he shows me this guy named Frank Kern, And I thought at the time I don’t smoke weed anymore this was almost ten years ago at the time I smoked a little weed, and I don’t think Frank Smokes anymore, I talked to him on the phone yesterday, but we don’t talk about those sort of things. but I thought this guy was cool, he’s a pothead surfer dude You know? And he seems like a cool guy! I’ll check him out. I watched this video. It totally changed my perspective on a lot of things. I am sure there is plenty of people that have to listen to this show, watch this video, read your magazine. That have seen stuff by Frank have opened their eyes as well. I know I am not the only one, this guy changed a lot of lives. Including People like Tony Robbins. And I thought that if this guy, he’s one of my closest friends if one thing I can say about old frank. He’s the best in the world playing dumb like a fox. You know what I mean? He’s one of the smartest people out there. But he’s really good at playing dumb! And if he watches this, he’s

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going to say Damn it! Why are you telling them my secret Stewman? He’s really good at playing this dumb old guy who kind of stumbled into things. It really intrigued me so I thought if this guy can do it, I can totally do it. I ended up looking at internet marketing. And I bought the program called mass control or list control one of the programs he put out there.and I dove right into it. I thought I was going to get rich. Kind of like when you sign up for Multi-Level Marketing. I am going to have a Ferrari in a week. I am just going to sell enough of this lotion to people I don’t know. I don’t even know anyone who uses lotion, I am going sell a bunch of it, and I am going to be rich! It was just that kind of situation. I built this funnel. Back in the day where you had to use WordPress site, and you had to use a template that worked just right. It wasn’t the world we live in now. And I built this funnel to sell an energy drink, of all things. And I had this domain. The Energy Producer. com I am Ryan Stewman the Energy Producer. I put it together. We are Done. We are going to be rich! I kind of waited, and I wasn’t rich, a couple days later, and I still wasn’t rich. I set it up to where my computer would make a noise. When I made a sale. I would get an email from this particular email address saying I made a sale. And I had that email having an alert on it. Very complicated Tech by the way. And so I would know I made a sale. Three or Four days went by I’m sleeping and its 2am, and I hear that noise. I woke up as if the house alarm was going off, I live in Texas, so when your house alarm goes off, you run and grab your pistol because you have an intruder. It startled me in the middle of the night. Oh, that’s the sale noise. I made a sale! Its like 3 in the morning. I waited til like 4am. And I called the person that bought from me, I’m like how did

you find my site. My buddy was like This is Internet marketing you’re not supposed to call anyone. I wanted to know How he found me! At that point I knew this was real If you can make one sale, you can make a million. I tell that to salespeople all the time. If you can sell it once you can sell it a million times, You just need to find out what you did right. From that point, I went on a pursuit to find out what I did right. And that was eight years ago. I’ve been on that pursuit all along. I built a company called hardcore closers started off in sales training. Then I started realizing that sales are step 2 in the process because if you don’t have anyone to sell to, then you could be the best salesperson in the world if you don’t have anyone to sell to your going to go broke because you don’t have any leads. So I realized there are all these great sales trainers, Grant Cardone,

Brian Tracy, Jordan Belfort, but none of them teach LEAD GEN, and that’s a crucial part of sales training that wasn’t out there. I wanted to be the guy that taught LEAD GEN to the salespeople. There’s a lot of people that teach LEAD GEN, but the sales world look at these LEAD GEN people as the marketing guys down there that make 30,000 a year think they are above them. They didn’t know about this internet marketing world. So I have been this evangelist for LEAD GEN and internet marketing to the sales world. And, if you flash forward eight years from that, I built an eight-figure year, this year for the first time. In one of my companies. I have eight companies That do seven figures. With high margins it’s not like we sell 10 million dollars and keep a hundred grand, we have high margins. I built this thing up. We have the largest sales

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group on facebook. I have half a million followers on social media. My website is viewed a few million times per year. And I built up like a rabid following of actual buyers and people who are true Tribe Members. I have over 11,000 clients in the last five years alone. And I only gave 54 refunds. Fifty of them took your money back this shit isn’t going to work for you, kind of deal. I have an amazing Track Record! I write for you guys, Forbes, Entrepreneur and I just started off from a guy from the Mortgage Business, that was forced out of it. Long Story Short! And I didn’t come from a rich family, I was adopted. I have every disadvantage. If you want to go in it, We can, But it would take forever to go through all the crap that I been through Every disadvantage you can think of, I overcame it because of internet marketing, sales funnel and everything else. I own a

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technology company, a coaching company, a real estate company. I have looked at these sales funnels, and I think of it as a hub. Ok I know how to build sales funnels, we can flip houses using these things right? And I got a little money we can buy some houses and flip them, we do a million dollars a year in flipping houses. Then I say How Can I make some things and build software that bolts onto this stuff that makes things a little easier. Ok, How Can I teach this? So I built my entire life around Internet Marketing and Sales Funnels and changed my life. Today I drive, I have a collection, It’s crazy to say this I have an entire collection of exotic cars, Friday I close on a house that’s 8,000 Square feet. My life has totally changed from being a dude that’s a paper pusher behind the desk of the mortgage company all because of the internet and Sales Funnels Hawk Mikado: That is an incredible story Man I love it! One thing that you said, really resonates with me is you said if you can sell once you can sell a million times and that’s very similar to something I say “If you know how to make a thousand dollars, you do just that 10 or a hundred times, and make 10 or 100 grand. Once you figure out how to do that you can 10x you can make a million. Obviously Man! You invested in multiple streams of income, the big hundred dollar bill on your wall back there. Can you share a little about why you surround yourself with amazing art like that? And the right people? The right mindset? Right away you can have 8 businesses 7 of them making 7 figures, and one making 8 figures? Ryan Stewman: I think you become what you focus on. Your parents don’t like you saying this, but I grew up poor my parents hate to admit that because they feel like they weren’t doing something VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

right, I didn’t grow up with any money. We grew up in the poorest neighborhoods in the city we lived in. Then I left home at an early age. And when you leave home at an early age, you don’t have any money so you end up living in the poorest neighborhood in any city or become homeless or whatever the case may be. When I had my first 30,000 dollar month, which would be a days worth of work now. Back then it was a really big deal in the internet world. I had done it in the Mortgage world. But that was a few years prior. I finally had a 30,000 dollar month in the internet game. I saw this on, and Floyd Mayweather had it at his house. And I went Money Mayweather got it. That’s a badass piece of art. I look it up. And found out from this dude MR. E and I hit MR. E up on Instagram. And I’m like Hey I want to buy this Benjamin… they call it Benny. I want to buy this benny painting that you got. He said Man, I got an original or I got a print I am like Dude I want an Original and I don’t know nothing about art. I said who else has an original. He said Floyd Mayweather and you. He sent me an invoice. I was thinking about how much can a piece of art cost? If I remember correctly, this thing 20,000 dollars they sell the reprints of it for 2,500 dollars. At the time this was the most expensive thing I ever bought outside of a car and a house for myself ever. At that point, I have committed this point. It just made me work harder to go make more sales to make money back. So this painting is in my office. We are in a building were google in on the floor above us we have about 4,000 square feet, we got a studio, podcast studio, a newsroom a bunch of employees around here, we are in one of the nicest buildings in Dallas. That’s always on the wall because when I do things like this, I am obviously seeing it in the corner

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of my eye. Most of the time I am turned around at my desk working and looking at it. To remind me where I came from. To remind me why I do this. It’s about the money. Second of all, it’s the first big money purchase I ever did. I have had that painting from my home office, my penthouse office now in my corporate office here. It’s just a reminder where I came from. That at one point that was a lot of money to me and at one point that I gave all I had to the almighty dollar in all reality. Still today I and Floyd Mayweather only people who have the in particular print they have some others where they switched things up print are the only ones who have the original. As far as surrounding myself with the right people you know. I spoke on the stage at Russell Brunson’s event, I been at Russell Brunson’s house! I have been a member of his stuff. Frank Kern Is a good friend of mine, I been to Frank’s house several times I just spoke at his event about a month ago in La Jolla. Dan Kennedy same thing spoke at his event last year. I just spoke at Dan Henry’s event a few months ago. Pretty much at any BIG player out there other outside Gary Vaynerchuk, Cardone or, Robbins. I haven’t spoken on their stages yet. I probably will. Matter of fact I just joined a mastermind with Andy Frisella and Ed Mylett Who I became good acquaintances with both of those guys. I like them a lot. I just paid 50,000-60,000 dollars to join their program. Part of that program Tony is in it, and Grant is in it. Vaynerchuk is not but the other two guys are, and it will be a matter of time before we are buddies too. And the reason why I surround myself with those kinds of people. I grew up with losers. When you grow up in the poor part of town, Everyone in that part of town for a lake of a better phrase is a loser, they don’t know any

better. They lost their way, or they would be in the rich part of town. And, I don’t say that to degrade my parents or degrade other people’s parents, and the lifestyle kids go through if they were winners they wouldn’t have us in that particular neighborhood that’s just it is, what it is! And I surround myself with that kind of people, and I find myself doing what losers do Drugs, Getting in trouble with the police, breaking the law, I never was a thief. I have never broken into anyone’s house, I never stole anything. For some reason, I was born with honesty bone in my body, so I was never a thief. However, I watched Losers do Loser Stuff! And that’s how who I hung out why. While I realized after watching the first video from Frank Kern. That if I started surrounding myself with people like him and people that are in traditional business like Andy Frisella is not an internet marketer he obviously has a traditional business Then things would get good. The first time I hired a coach was in 2004-2005, And I hired a coach in the mortgage business, and I quickly became the top producer in a rather large company. And I started to say this person is successful how I can be like them? So I did the same thing in the marketing world. At first, I started to hang out with people were making a million dollar or so. Right? I paid them, I joined their mastermind and joined their program, learned their stuff. And I became a millionaire. That was awesome I will never forget the day That I officially made a million dollars in a year when I say million dollars a year, I got to keep it. It really my money, wasn’t made a million dollars, I got to keep 10 thousand dollars because of the cost of doing business, and then I Remember the first time I made 5 million in a year. And I’m like wow this is insane Now I’m going to start hanging out with people who make

10 million. Then I Thought Why would I limit myself Why don’t I just go straight for people who make 9 figures, So this year Andy Frisella company does 300 million a year. Ed Mylett he has a net worth of 400 million. I spoke on the stage of Marshal Silvers, and I stay at his house once or twice a year, he is a good friend of mine. He’s worth 250 million dollars. I met Jeff Bezos five weeks ago now at an event at a college. I paid to go and actually meet Jeff Bezos There was a dude who did a Q & A session with him.

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It was two thousand dollars per ticket, took my 6-year-old son and me. Two tickets I bought. I wanted my son to meet the world’s richest man at 6 years old. Because at 6 years old I was meeting the world’s poorest people right? Just about 4 weeks ago I flew on a private plane for the first time ever up to Omaha Nebraska, to Virtue Hathaway Shareholders meeting. I own 35 shares of Virtue Hathaway now. I have been investing in the stock market since 2006, it’s not

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something I teach or Talk about, but I got a really good portfolio. And obviously, if you are doing anything that long, you’re going to win a little a bit. And went to the Virtue Hathaway meeting up there in Omaha And I got to listen to Bill Gates because he’s in Virtue Hathaway and sits on the board. Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and a bunch of other people who are 9, 10, 11 and 12 figure people. And I always wanted to surround myself with people who have. It’s not about the money. If you can sell one thing, you can sell a million things. Look At Amazon and Jeff Bezos world’s richest man he figured out how to sell books and went like shit I can sell whatever, Whatever I want. He learned how to sell one thing, you can learn how to sell anything. It’s about the way they think. Let me give you a good example Hawk. When I was at Jeff Bezos meeting, they said so Elon Musk is going to Mars, and You’re going to Mars too. You guys are Essentially your in a race to getting a human to Mars. Jeff said let me interrupt you. I am not really interested in sending humans to Mars. See Elon wants to colonize Mars that’s awesome, that’s great for him. What I want to do is I want to Remove our Carbon Footprint from Earth, and I want to outsource shipping and delivery for Amazon to Mars. So your Amazon packages would actually come from Mars to Earth from Amazon And, I’m like See you have to be a Big Thinker, I’m trying to figure out how to leave this event fight traffic to get home and this guy is talking about delivering packages from a planet that’s 10,000 light years away or whatever the distance is. Those people cause you to level up on your thinking. And of course I’m not thinking how to sell sales funnels on Mars unless that’s an opportunity that presents itself to me But at the same time those guys are thinking VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

big that reminds me the box that I am in is so small that’s why I think you want to align yourself with people who are doing what you want to do or things you think your not capable of. Hawk Mikado: That is brilliant man! I love that you surround yourself with so many incredible people, that’s an awesome story from Jeff Bezos, just thinking about, order now, wait 18 months. Ryan Stewman: Probably at first, but It probably won’t even be like that. Just seeing how he operates, I feel like he’s smart enough, to where you’ll push a button, and you’ll be like how did it get from Mars so fast. How does that even happen? Hawk Mikado: Pay like 10,000 dollars shipping and handling? Ryan Stewman: Right?! Hawk Mikado: Awesome Man! You’ve been using Clickfunnels and some of the other platforms, you mentioned to me before this, that you have a platform that allows you to literally click buttons on your phone, for someone who is a complete sales funnel novice they don’t want to know how to build, they don’t want to know how to code, they don’t want to know how to do any of those sorts of things. Can you talk about your platform? Ryan Stewman: Absolutely, I want to preface this with I know Brunson pretty well I have for a few years now, I use Clickfunnels, I am an internet marketer that’s what I do by nature. I use Clickfunnels for a lot of our stuff. I use INFusionSoft as well, and I use LeadPages. I didn’t want to create something to compete with those guys. A: they’re giants in the space. They have a shit ton more money than I do. It would be pretty futile INFusionSoft is backed by Goldman Sachs, and Russell has got 35,000 users already on

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clickfunnels and is doing a really well he has a nine figure sales structure. That they have done in the last five years. They are doing amazing things. Leadpages I love them too I am an affiliate all things said. I’ve been promoting them for years. I’ve been promoting Clickfunnels for years. There’s was a couple of snapfoos . I was never able to comprehend Clickfunnels I always hired someone to build for me.it was just too complicated If I can’t get something done fast, Then I am not going to mess with it Right? Since I had to deal with WordPress templates back in the day. That was it for me. After that I know what needs to be done, I am going to outsource it. And I never really got good at clickfunnels because it was pretty complicated. Without taking anything away from it. We use it! I have people on staff that build them for me, We use clickfunnels and everything else I have two comma club awards hanging on my wall not one but two. I could have five, But I stopped applying for them because I would be running the score up but and defeating the purpose. So I stopped at Two. I have five funnels that have done 7 figures with clickfunnels. So I am a huge fan of their platform. When I first started in the business Clickfunnels didn’t exist yet. But LeadPages was the first on map and Leadpages was so simple you could build one in an hour. No training Without any videos it was so intuitive, And Clickfunnels showed up and at first was a competitor for LeadPages. But then Russell I guess, and this is documented, you can tell what he has done he decided to go after INFusionSoft. He calls them ConfusionSoft Killers and all that stuff they got their shirts that say that. But because of that Clickfunnels got really confusing. Well than LeadPages looks at over at Clickfunnels and They say Dude are competitors are doing all this

stuff so, we better to do all this stuff too and, LeadPages got really hard for people to understand. For me, I can build Lead page. I never built a Clickfunnel. I have people who do that for us. For me but I can build a LeadPage I built 1500 LeadPages over the years. We sold a lot of funnels we built for people in the Real Estate and Mortgage World. But I teach these seminars called The Break Free Academy When I started teaching these seminars at first it was all organic marketing. And then I started Teaching how to build sales funnels, and it went from one-day event to a two-day event. When LeadPages was really easy to make, it was pretty easy to teach people to do that. There would be a few people in the room that would get frustrated. I was only taking ten people at the time or so. Then One time we tried to teach Clickfunnels, and I brought someone from the outside to teach, and it frustrated a lot of people in the room. And you know when your in these funny hotel rooms when you get a hotel room there might be ten people who can’t log into the WIFI so all these wildcards that can happen when you throwing a LIVE event but I am charging these people 5,000 or 10,000 dollars to come to this event So in my mind I got to deliver results to them. They better be leaving with a funnel. At these things got more complex, which was needed to happen in the marketplace. I am selling to Novices I’m not selling to Internet Marketers, I’m selling to people who are owners of Mortgage companies, Who own real estate companies who are roofers, who are painters, who are plumbers, who are consultants, who are coaches, not necessary internet marketers these are people who have never built a funnel before or they wouldn’t be coming to my event.When I would start to try showing them this TECH they would be like you’re killing me,

Stew, it’s over my head I would give them homework for the night they would show up the next day, and they say I got confused, and I didn’t do the homework, and I don’t like letting people down. I have 11,000 plus clients in the last eight years I have only given 54 refunds Dude, I don’t let people down. And 50 out of those 54 people I was like here take your money back you’re not doing what you’re supposed We don’t want you in this program to here take your money back.the majority All but four have been my decision to remove the person from my program. That’s how I work, that’s how I operate, that’s the kind of person I am. I continue having these programs, I do four a year. I make a million dollars a year from these events. Sometimes I make a million dollars from this event with the upsell with what we do. I am actually doing the last one for this year tomorrow and Friday. I am getting ready for that this evening. We were always running into the same problems. Everyone is trying to build a sales funnel on their computer, they can’t get on the internet, they’re not able to finish their sales funnel it kind of frustrates them. Which frustrates me. About a year ago I said I had created some software before its called clyxo. It was a social media bookmarking thing, it’s still out there it has great SEO it’s a free tool for people. I built this for myself.I let people use it for free. Just to be Honest. I never Marketed it or anything like that. I know that I can build software I knew I had the connection to get it done. I called the person who built clyxo up for me, And I say I got this idea to build a sales funnel in 5 minutes from your mobile device without needing a desktop here’s how I can think it will work.Do you think you can build that for me He made the typical dodgeball move, that’s a bold move Cotton,

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I was like I don’t want to compete with Clickfunnels, and I don’t want to compete with LeadPages! Let those guys keep evolving. I want to dumb this whole thing down. For the person who has never built anything before because If there are 3 hundred million Americans. Maybe a million have built a sales funnel before then there are 299 million people out there that haven’t built a sales funnel that don’t have TECH skills, And I want to cater to those people. The car dealers, the mortgage people, the real estate people.I want something that can do from a phone in the palm of their hand without a desktop. I know the world is going more and more mobile. A lot of times You don’t see people carrying a laptop, and you go to events five years ago everyone was brought a laptop. Nowadays you go to an event or seminar, and everyone is taking notes on their phone. Things have changed a lot. So we developed something called Phonesites. And on Phonesites, it’s actually like your ninety-year-old grandma that has zero TECH skills would be able to build something in ten minutes. Someone like you and I who have built a few sales funnels before we can build one in three minutes. The average person after they build their first one, they would be able to build one in five minutes. Once they see where all the buttons are.Basically, You don’t download an app or anything you just log in on chrome or safari on your phone depending on which browser is downloaded on your phone. Log onto your phonesites account you create a new page you scroll down you fill out all the blanks, you go through, and you add your picture or your video and integrate with your CRM and bing bang boom the technology elves do their thing. And you have a sales funnel that

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you can share to social media and I don’t have a plethora of templates. I got one sales page, which is your opt-in page and I have either a video thank you page or a regular thank you page, that’s it! To have TECH skills like me or you, that you can customize all this stuff, we don’t tell people that you know because we don’t want to confuse people. The secret is you can customise all you want if you’re a funnel builder You can Embed anything you want on there But the average person can literally fill this out I have studied I don’t know how many thousand of funnels over the years I am sure you have too, I have made thousands of funnels myself. I look at Agora who do a billion dollars plus a year in sales. And I look at people like Dan Kennedy and John Carlton that do massive amounts of millions of dollars of sales. Stansberry and Altercher who do billions in sales. Frank Kern’s is another one. One thing that all of these top guys have in common. Their funnels are really simple they rely on three things. And VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

I’ll get back to that And three things only. If you look at the internet average marketer they think they have the flashing offer, the oneclick upsell, and all these things which are great but the average person can not build that stuff. The average person doesn’t care if you have a countdown timer or not. It’s been proven. People know that it’s BS these days anyway. You see a countdown timer it’s still available when they send all 100 emails to you tomorrow. We reopened the cart for you. We are not falling for that anymore. You look at places like Agora, they don’t use that technique, and they do more than all of us combined. So I started studying them heavily. Because I never heard of Agora. But I had two copywriters who quit working for me to work for Agora at different times. One Quit to go work for Agora, I hired another copywriter, and then he quit to work for full-time Agora. And I was like who in the hell is this Agora place. I started looking into them. And I was like Damn they offered more

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money than I can. And I started to see how they work they have real these simple funnels And they rely on three things they rely an offer the copy that you put on the page you can have the world’s worlds greatest product, but if you have a terrible offer, you won’t sell anything. And they rely on putting that offer in front of the right audience.You can have the greatest offer in the world but IF you’re offering financial advice to people in the hood, they ain’t going to take it. Or if you are offering fake Louie Vuitton bags to people who are Millionaires, they aren’t going to take that either. So you need to make sure you have the right offer that’s aligned to the right audience and the technology that will capture the leads. Those are the only three things you need to be successful And Agora, Stansberry, and Dan Kennedy and all these other places proved that. So I built these templates for Phonesites based around that theory, that you just get good at making an offer and you put that offer in front of

the right audience which would be on social media or running an advertisement through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Youtube, Google, Twitter, or wherever you want to put your ads. I even have billboards up all the stuff we have here, this technology. A lot of people try to act Like the technology to be the missing piece to it. The Technology should be the simple piece you should be able to put the technology together about 5 minutes to 10 minutes. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Frank Kern taught me for eight years now, Every day Thou Shall Work On the Offer, You need to get better at making offers, every single day. That’s how you get rich in this industry or any sales industry. Is by perfecting your offer. In the sales industry, we say by getting better at your Elevator Pitch! That’s what your offer is it’s your elevator pitch! So people would spend all their time making these fancy funnels, and then they would launch and ask where’s there two comma club Plaque. This thing had every flashing widget that Clickfunnels offers Why didn’t I make a million dollars on this funnel when they had a terrible offer, they didn’t need to spend all there time on technology, the technology is the easy part. They should have spent their time on getting an offer to get it in front of the right audience That’s what Phonesites does, it makes it to where that I’m working at the seminar that no one needs to log on to the internet they can build it from the mobile device and its super easy they can do it 5-10 minutes, they don’t have to go home and study a bunch of videos and learn how everything works, and I get to spend those days with working with my students and clients teaching them about the value of offer creation. And get in front of the audience which is truly crucial and more important of the

three parts that matter. I just really wanted to simplify my life of the byproduct of that. We launched this product in Beta came out of the Market in Beta last Friday, It hasn’t been a whole week, in the open marketplace, we launched into beta and charged an introductory price right now 47 bucks a month or 447 dollars a year. Significantly priced less than the other competitor’s price as well we launched the beta price at the half at that when we first came out. This week alone we stole 600 units of it. When we were in BETA for 45 days, we moved 1600 and something units. Right now we have over 2,000 members that are already on our platform. Today I have a painter a direct message this morning saying hey man, I got a 3 thousand dollar paint job yesterday. I never built a funnel in my life. It changed my life. I got a car guy in Atlanta that says dude I have 700 leads in the last thirty days from the one funnel I made, and it’s out there collecting leads every day I don’t even know how it’s working, but it’s working. I had a young man in life insurance salesman he works for multi-level marketing company for Life Insurance agencies recruited seven people in the last two weeks from his Phonesite he never built a funnel ever in his life, never even watched a video how to do it, He got on it and said it’s pretty simple! It’s literally changing lives. We are just now about to start running ads, I haven’t even messaged my list yet. I just posted in the sales group, which has 80,000 members a few times, My Facebook sales group, and we got the numbers we have. And now that people are getting results. People are becoming raving fans. I’m excited it’s a much-needed solution for the marketplace I didn’t want the compete with my friend Russel, or Clay over at LeadPages I respect those guys, I think what they are doing is absolutely awesome!

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This is what a salesman does, they see a huge need in the marketplace, and they go after to fill that void. Hawk Mikado: That is absolutely true. Your group is awesome, I am part of your group. I have seen your webinars, pieces of training. You also mentioned earlier The Break Free Academy as well. You can share a little more about how you created it? And Designed it to help salespeople and marketers to level their game? And Connect with their audience better? Ryan Stewman: Again I saw this need, You know there are already sales pages creation platforms out there. The World Didn’t necessarily need another one, they needed a simpler one. There were already seminars out there, Frank Kern, Tony Robbins Grant Cardone you can go to any one’s seminars out there. What I noticed. When you go to these seminars Because I was paying to go to them. I spent over half a million dollars on mentorships and Seminars. Plane tickets, hotels and everything else to get there. I am just talking about in fees to join these things over the years.I think Earners are Learners. If you want to earn a lot of money, you need to continue learning. I read a book every couple of days, I Listen to audiobooks. I am always watching educational videos. I am a lifelong learner Even though I dropped out of school. I realized they just weren’t giving me the education I want, I went to these seminars I realized I would go to these seminars, I would leave there I would be on cloud 100 I would be pumped, I’m going to be rich. I’m going to take over the world. And you got to do the work, you learned all of this stuff,. And then you turn around on Monday you have to do the work and what happens on Monday Life hits you,

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and you have to do work the work you didn’t do the two days you were at the seminar. Then you have to do the work your behind on. The work you have to get ahead on, you have to do podcasts, videos, blog posts, get on social media, got to makes sales, build a funnel, you have to do all these things plus the things you learned to optimize your life. All of this stuff. Dude, What am I am going to do? Nothing That’s what people do when they are overwhelmed, nothing. Well, I spent ten grand. The Seminar made me feel good, and now I’m depressed again, and I’ll buy another seminar. And they repeat that process over and over again. And they never get results. We hear the term seminar junkie all of the time rights? So What I wanted to do Was create a workshop where someone can come in and spend two days with me and the things they learned they left with. So it was already done by the time they walked out the door. So they didn’t just come and learn about sales funnels, they came a built a sales funnel went home with it The first time I did this. I realized why no one does this. That shit is frustrating. When you try to help someone with no TECH skills, get tech skills. You want to bang your head into the nearest sharp thing you can find. This is why no one guarantees results. This is difficult. Everything seems easy until you know enough about it. At this point, I was committed. Because if I am all in something I am all in. I will start off with five people. So the first one we had five people, the next one we had three. That’s usually how it works so on and so on. But when I got to 90 people these cost 5-10,000 dollars per seat. When I got 90 people, I got frustrated because I couldn’t scale it. Even with a team of people helping. I couldn’t scale it because there was Always with an audience that size, 5-10 people who don’t do the work VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

or get it. It’s not what I want that for people If you give me money I want you to get results. I don’t want you just to feel good. I am not Dr. Feel Good. I want you to get the results. It’s just one of my core values, So I started to feel the whole. So when you go to work On Monday You already have your funnel up, you already had your ad running. You’re going about your life. And your ad is just adding leads and value to what you’re already doing. So basically you came in and got the work done. So I’m up to 27 of these. And once I got up to 90 people I had to scale it back down to 30 because I found 30 people is the number that works. We have 30 coming here tomorrow and, and this will be the first time to use Phonesites. So if this works the way I think it will. We will be able to go back up to 90 people. Because now everyone will be able to do it on their mobile device. A lot of people don’t understand this you can run Facebook ads from your mobile device Facebook ads has a facebook ads app you can create a fan page from your mobile device. You can upload photos videos all that stuff into Facebook to create a fan page. We will See! I think I can get everything done by a mobile device and actually, everyone gets results. When everything works for my test group. They don’t know they are my test group until they show up tomorrow. When it works for them tomorrow. Then I will be able to scale back up to a bigger event. Where it’s a workshop full of people again that actually gets results. It all started because I was tired of leaving something and going Shoot then going back and not having time. Now I feel like a loser because I don’t have time for the things I’m supposed to do. I wanted to relieve that anxiety and tension from other people’s lives.

key. I know when I go to Seminars I’m the person who has their laptop out and working on what they’re teaching because most people don’t. We don’t do any feel-good workshops or pieces of training We only do get it done implement now workshops. It’s powerful! You also have your monthly mastermind as well its an incredible group. Can you share a little bit more what you guys do in there? And how you support your clients with that? Ryan Stewman: We have something called The Entourage, and we used to do it monthly. Now it’s just 5 thousand dollars for the year. So it includes two tickets, we do two big events called the Million Dollar Masterminds where they are two-day events. The next one is in October I got Billy Gene. Me and Billy Gene we were out at the club until 2am last night here in Texas Do you know Billy Gene? Hawk Mikado: Yes I do

Ryan Stewman: Dude he shows up in cowboy hat and boots. I live in Dallas this is a big city. It’s not rural Texas, everyone has this preconceived notion of how it is. He shows up in a cowboy hat, leather vest, and boots. It was a spectacle last night. We were buying bottles of champagne like they weren’t making them anymore. It was a Tuesday night, and I totally shouldn’t be at that scene. But Billy is a good friend of mine. So we party when we get together. He will be speaking at the million dollar mastermind, Katrina Ruth, Marshall Sylver, Myself, Chris Evans, Setema Gali. A bunch of others super popular internet marketers and motivational speakers so like that. We have two huge events like that every year. Every week we do two calls. On Monday we call it Motivational Monday I work on people’s mindset Hawk Mikado: That’s absolutely that’s a big deal for me. I realize if

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you don’t work on your mind, you won’t keep your money. You see people make it to the NFL, and they don’t keep their money they leave the NFL two years later, and they are broke. Or a Lottery winner that spends all their money it is because of the NFL people and The NBA people or any professional sports player.it’s Because They’ve been told they are a natural, it’s so easy for you, and it’s like you’re not even working. They get all this money, and they like they do not even have to work for it. Therefore they don’t feel like they deserve it it’s a psychological disconnect that causes them to blow all their money and go broke for the most case. So I work on people’s mindsets because it’s the same for entrepreneurs, are the same way. So if you tell an entrepreneur that sales are easy for you, a salesperson will blow all their money because they don’t think they deserve it. They feel they didn’t work for it, I work on people’s heads on Monday, we do an hourlong motivational Monday called to start the week out right first thing in the morning, Every Wednesday, Matter a fact I just got off before we recorded this we do a Q & A Session. So everybody who wants to, can log in on a live call and ask questions for an hour and I answer them all. We have a Facebook Support Group, We have online training that has 350 or so different training videos, We record every single thing that we have done for years now, and it’s all in one place. If people want to go into an informational mode. They have tons of access to information. And Once a week we do something called Marketing Autopsy, where everyone who wants to submit their not working funnels, and then we yell at them, and we show them why they didn’t listen right and why their shit isn’t working right. We demean them, degrade them and then destructure them. We really support

our people a lot, especially at the price point that we have. We send them a monthly newsletter to them and all that; The Idea is to take a somebody who’s already making 6 figures a year in a business, or salesperson or manager or coach or consultant or entrepreneur or someone of that nature and help them triple or quadruple that money sometimes even more. Yesterday I had a guy who’s a loan officer out in South Carolina, he said I’ve been a part of your program for two years now. So he invested 10 thousand dollars When I first met you I was making 8,600 dollars a month that’s 100,000 dollars a year he showed me a check stub yesterday for 81,000 dollars that’s for May that’s life-changing. That’s a million dollars a year! He went from 100,000 dollars to a million dollars in two years. While those results are not typical and all that typical legal disclaimers stuff, That’s what we are aiming for. Plus we have 700 people in that program. It’s one hell of a network. Good Ol’ Boy Network! That you can’t get in. I make it rain. I give people referrals and hook people up, and introduce each other. I am not like your typical leader in this industry. Where I take your money, and you never hear from me, and you hear from all these different coaches, other fill in people. I like my people. I want to meet you. I throw these live events. Not because we have to, We already provide enough value Because I want to meet them, I want to fist bump them, I want to hug them, I want to drink a beer with them, I am just that guy, I am not your typical Internet Marketing Introvert, I am an Extrovert! I want to go all out and have a good time with people. Plus we are committed. We help people write books and do all the other stuff they want to do! There are all sorts of training back there! We have had a little more

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than 2,000 people come through that system in the last two years. We had that system up since we started in December 2016. Hawk Mikado: Powerful! Can you share one major thing whether it was mindset, strategy, or tactics? That can be implemented in their business or life today to increase their sales or their business? Ryan Stewman: Yeah! It’s two-fold you want to look for the struggle and focus on the win. A lot of us, we try to complicate stuff! We are smart people. Smart people listen to podcasts like this, smart people read Funnel Magazine, smart people listen to my stuff, The average Dumb person is listening to Nicki Minaj. No offense to Nicki Minaj. I like Nicki Minaj The Average person Listen to things like that, not a podcast The smart people are trying to get smarter and more educated. The thing with Smart people tries to over complicate things. We don’t believe in simplicity. Even though our monkey brain operates on simplicity. The same thing with Funnels, we try to complicate these funnels over, and we make a million dollar off these funnels. When there’s Agora has this stuff so simple, anyone could build them. They’re making a Billion dollars from them. Because of simplicity! The thing I would say if you want to Look for the Struggle but Focus on the WIN! Every day when we wake up if we own a business or even if we are a salesperson or whatever we are going to have a struggle that faces us. An employee is going to get mad, A client is going to get mad, a funnel is going to break, an ad isn’t going to work, we are going to be banned from Facebook, Our server is going to go down, stuck in traffic, miss a meeting, get sick. Things are going to happen. There’s going to be struggles We look for

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this happily ever after. I’ll just make a million dollars, and I’ll live happily ever after. We see it in movies, We read it in books, We have been lied to about it since we were young. So we spend our whole lives looking for this Happily Ever After, this thing that doesn’t exist. We focus on try to find this Happily Ever After that isn’t real! It’s a trick! A Force of Average it’s an algorithm of this planet. We don’t have time to get into that. You can go watch the free video on that at Forceofaverage.com There’s a free video, and I educate you on how that works. Again That’s Forceofaverage.com. This force of average on this planet tricks you into getting focused on Happily ever after and we stay distracted because it doesn’t exist. So What I tell you to look for the struggle and focus on the winning. You know this struggle is going to come up, and you’re aware of it. But how can you go to win? Dude, that how you really take over in business. It’s a mindset thing! Because if you master your mindset first, you’re going to make money. If you let struggles get you reactive all day instead of you proactively being aware that it’s going to be out there when it shows up instead of panicking, instead of freaking out, instead of letting you ruin your day, instead of allowing you distract you. You focus on how to turn that struggle into making into a strength somehow. Man, I lived the last two years of my life with that ideology, and things have changed tremendously for me! Because when something happens like why are they mad about this? Why are they hating on me online? Or Whatever? It’s just part of the struggle. How Can I turn this into a Win? Right now it’s impossible for me to lose because all I’m focused on is the Winning Like the Law of Attraction. What they don’t tell you is the mind is the most powerful weapon on this planet. It gets VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

what it focuses on. But we walk around saying we have A.D.D, or I can’t seem to focus, Or I keep getting distracted. I don’t say any of those things. I am one focused individual because I get what I am focused on! I wanted to become a millionaire. I surrounded myself around millionaires, do I focus on what millionaires do. Here I am! My goal is within the next twenty years is to have a Half Billion Dollars, I am focused on what people who have a half billion dollars do. And I don’t do anything else. And I’m going to win! Because I know that the Law of Attraction as Hokey as that sounds on this planet as long as your focused on that thing you have to do the work too obviously it’s not going to show up because you stared at something. But I’m focused on doing those things. And doing those things only! I don’t let outside things distract me and if I do I get out of that reset period, really fast. Man, as simple as that may sound to me. And if they thought I was going to give them some closing line or something like that. This is more important if you really grasp it and go after it! Hawk Mikado: That is, powerful Man! I’m going to check out this Force Of Average thing as well. That looks pretty cool! I really appreciate you for being on, sharing your wisdom and insights, you really dropped some incredible knowledge today, Incredible Insights! You went above and Beyond! You’re a genius in sales and Internet Marketing! Ryan Stewman: I appreciate That! Hawk Mikado: Absolutely Ryan Stewman: I really do! You can tell, Maybe you Can’t tell! I am a little passionate about this Stuff! I have a little bit of energy and effort that comes with me behind this stuff. I really do care! I

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really do Enjoy it! I roll out of bed in the morning even after partying with Billy Gene last night till’ 2 in the morning! And I’m excited to come to the office in the morning! Not too many people are like that! But I know that through podcasts like this and through my Q & A I get to change someone’s life even if one person watches ForcesofAverage. com or just one person signs up for Phonesites, and they get a few leads and makes a sale, and it leads to changing their life. If just one person Implements this stuff. My job is done every day! Hawk Mikado: That’s an incredible point of view! That’s one of the reasons why we do this! We wanted to get real intelligent, real geniuses who are actually producing. That are getting real results with their funnels or business to share what they are doing. Instead of listening to some other person in a facebook group telling you what to do is Frankly either outdated or complicated. Over the Last Year, I realized how much simplicity and I’m going to go funnel hacking Agora Now because right? The simpler, the better! The easier you can make it the Better! Ryan Stewman: It is! The Navy has this saying Keep it Simple, Stupid. I think it’s a little degrading. It’s the Military that’s how they talk to each other. Like Locker Room Talk, So I say it; differently, I say Keeping it Simple, Sells! And it’s true! When your monkey brain can make decisions! That’s really where the decisions come from, is the subconscious primate brain. When you get the monkey brain to pull the trigger. That’s how you get rich! It really is! When you’re on Amazon and you order a book from Tony Robbins book, and they say Do you want to Order this Ryan Stewman book that’s similar To? And your one-click upsell it. And that was triggering your monkey brain, you

didn’t have to think about it you went Oh Tony Robbins Ryan Tracy that makes you go there you go it makes sense! That’s really how you get it rich! Agora is a master at it! Because when you keep it simple. When you over complicated there are too much to think about. You can’t make a decision Like I teach my sales staff you sell one thing at a time, you don’t pitch two ideas at a time. You don’t say well we have a 5,000 deal, you have this deal, or that deal, you need to pinpoint what it is! And you need to stick with that and never mention you have anything else because if you give them multiple decisions, they will never make a decision because they will go into overload mode Hawk Mikado: absolutely, One quick question on sales calls, do you have to talk about, that you have 25,000 dollar sales how long should it really take if you keep it simple? High ticket low ticket any ticket? Ryan Stewman: Our Average sales

call is about thirty minutes, But the average person watches me, and this is important, Now I am a little over the top I toned this down a lot because this is Hawk’s show here. And I didn’t want to be over the top hardcore closer here! The average person watches me for about six months before they even give us a dime. Because people are like is he just another douchebag? Is he a windbag? Or is he really have done this? Does he think he’s cool because he has a car? People have to go through those phases. Just like a Young man you meet the Quarterback, and you’re the linebacker, and you go I can’t wait to get this guy into practice! He’s such a douchebag And three months into playing the sport together with your best friends and spending the night at each other’s houses. And it’s not just guys it’s women too! They are like look at that purse those nails. She better go back to Walmart or whatever It’s just how we are. You first need to end up being best

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friends. People have to go through those phases. Some people they are a lot more likable a lot quicker, A good example is Ty Lopez the first time people see him they hate him. But if they check him out for a little bit, you realize that he’s not what he appears to be at; first, he’s a very intelligent, you just have to go through what he uses to draw them in, he’s alright fella he’s really smart. I’m the same way! People have to go through those phases until they can make those decisions. People are not going to buy from you, till they can trust you. First, they are going to judge you! Right? And I put myself out there to be judged! So the Average person watches us for 6 months, and when we make a sales call its usually thirty minutes but usually at the sales call at that point they put their hand up, and they said I just need to know how much it is and what I get for it! Hawk Mikado: Absolutely! I agree Ty Is a Brilliant Affiliate Marketer I see him out there. He is absolutely

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brilliant. Model Success! I absolutely Love that you know that someone has to watch you for 6 months before they jump. Any Last Words? You know, Yes two last words. Definitely, if you are tired of the over complication technology come over and check Phonesites. I’m sure they will have a link somewhere for you to come and check it out! Definitely, if you are struggling with anything in life like your adopted if you are abused if you been on drugs, anything you have to check out the Force Of Average. I haven’t

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talked about it on this show, but I have been through hell in my life I got to go from shit to sunshine using this formula. It’s absolutely free, I didn’t go that if you give me two hundred dollars, I’ll explain it all day out all out there and tell you. For many of you. Even dudes it’s going to be hard for you not to cry watching. I did this on purpose it will be hard. It’s a game changer. I just recommend you check out those two things out depending where you are in life. I appreciate you having me on!

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Hawk Mikado: absolutely thank you for being on and sharing. Awesome guys, We just heard from the genius of internet marketing and hardcore closing Ryan Stewman! Absolutely blessed to have him on! Stay Tuned make sure you watch the other stuff if your not a lifetime member of Funnel Magazine yet go to Funnelmagazine.com\lifetime and sign up to be a lifetime member or just subscribe.

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All business owners and entrepreneurs need more time in the day to focus on what they do best! But, Instead, most are multi-tasking, thrown entirely out of their element, and unable to concentrate on their why! Some have lost sight of that original why and are just going through the steps of daily routine, living and running their company by default! If you’re reading this and this is you please know you’re not alone! Hawk goes over finding your genius in this article he says

Right NOW! These seven you can delegate all but one.” There is a better way. Continue reading to his featured article to find out what those seven S’s are and the only way to delegate and automate without having many of the risks in your journey of scaling your business. There Has To Be A Different Way For those that are fighting the uphill part of your journey because there are only twenty-four hours in a day and all the other tasks on your to-do list are taking up twentythree of those twenty- four hours in a day, You’re not alone! Have you tried hiring a virtual assistant or an employee and, it didn’t work out?

“What’s your genius? Are you the master at everything? Are you the Automate The World person who is getting their hands Intro by Tricia Wilkes dirty? Are you the person directing everything? Are you the muscle? What is Your Why? You have to find your genius and Why did you start being an hire out the rest. I know Delegation seems to be a entrepreneur or business owner? I used to be the person who checked scary conquest. Hawk, gives us this Did you find that One thing that all of my emails, Made all of my disclaimer you do better than anyone else? Did phone calls, I booked all of my you see an opportunity to present meetings, managed all of my social “Outsourcing is not the easiest a solution that has revolutionized media, I made all of my sales, and thing to do. Hiring is not the easiest the way that thousands or even probably about a hundred other thing to do! 9 out of 10 Virtual Millions of people live their lives? tasks that I don’t ever want to Assistant’s Don’t Work But, 9 out of 10 Managed Teams do!” Did you discover a Niche that needs remember! your voice to transform them into a There is a NEW way, a much much Even if you have tried hiring a virtual Culture? better way. The Seven S’s of a assistant and it didn’t work. Maybe The answer to those question is your CEO these are the things you need some of these things happened: you calling and the reason why you chose to focus on. The only seven things would have to redo all of the work to continue on this rollercoaster ride you need to focus on. Everything they did, you were paying by the of Entrepreneurship! Somewhere else you DELEGATE immediately hour, and the work could have taken on this journey, you get shoved down by having to answer emails, worrying about generating traffic, follow-up phone calls, trying to figure out social media and posting on a daily basis on more platforms then you can count. Does your to-do list get longer and longer with every new campaign or idea to scale your business? Do you have pieces of paper or sticky notes with the same ideas and the same lists from years ago that are going to make your business a million dollars all over your office?

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⅓ of the time, you didn’t connect at all with the virtual assistant, you had no control over when they worked, and nothing was ever finished on time? There are Pros and Cons to hiring virtual assistants versus employees versus managed system. Hawk, broke down the Pro’s and the Con’s he says “Employees What we found in our business that employees cost more, they require you to pay more taxes. Loyalty is, unfortunately, is lacking because if they are able to find someone else able to pay them even a dollar more per hour or an extra few thousands of more dollars in salary, they are off to the next job. Contractors and Freelancers What’s great you don’t have any taxes. You don’t have to pay for payroll Taxes, all that is taken care of by the Contractor/Freelancer. The Drawback is that you have basically no control!

you would with a contractor and freelancer. Plus you would have loyalty and control because they function as an employee. They are working for you as a contractor under a team. Which is why you would hire a company that has these teams built. You’re able to scale without having to pay for payroll expenses without having to deal with all sorts of crazy things that come with having employees. If you ever experienced having employees you know all some of the challenges that come with it.” There is definitely a different way of outsourcing using a managed team! Who Is Hawk? Hawk has been bringing us Funnel Magazine since January 2017. This featured article was written by our publisher of Funnel Magazine, Hawk Mikado the Funnel Genius.

“I didn’t coin this myself, but I got called The Funnel Genius, and I Managed Team decided to own it, and now I’m The Funnel Genius. So, if you need The benefit of a managed team anything with funnels like you is its tax deductible. The same as can literally type my name into Facebook, and in certain groups, if you type the word funnel, my name will show up on the top of the list even though you’re not typing my name, it’ll show up.” Hawk says on his blog. Hawk retired at 28, however, read the feature article to find out what sign that he saw while driving made him come out of retirement and continue being The Funnel Genius! Additionally, find out more about the man behind the title Funnel Genius! The Three Key Systems Plus One Thing That Brought It All Together “In 2012 I was only making 12,000 dollars a year. Something had to VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

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change, and had to change fast! One of the first things I started looking at was What was the Fortune 500 companies doing, What were the Inc 5,000 companies doing. What were all the seven-figure companies doing that I wasn’t doing? I found three key systems, and there was still one thing that was missing after the three key systems.” Hawk went through the same struggle as many entrepreneurs do while they try to automate their systems and scale their revenue. Hawk went on a mission to figure out what we’re all these Fortune 500 companies doing that were making them scale their revenue. Hawk went one step further after finding those three key systems and continued on that mission to discover what could he implement to have all the systems in place to automate and be able to scale any product or any service for any business. Have you ever asked yourself What’s stopping me from scaling to seven figures? What could you accomplish with an automated business? What would you be able to accomplish in your business if 90 percent of your business was delegated or automated? How many of those items on your to-do list can you scratch off? How many of the sticky notes would be balled up in the trash? Would you be able to get back to your Why! How much time would you get back if you didn’t have to worry about lead generations, lead follow up, social media management, sales, and the other hundred things on your plate? Continue on to read Hawk’s article on Automating The World and think about what if one day you absolutely could not work on your business because of an emergency, could your business handle your absence?

AUTOMATE THE WORLD By Hawk Mikado

Do you want to know how to get your time back? By turning your business into a fully automated money making machine without having to spend extra hours or struggling to figure out how to automate all the software that’s out there in the marketplace. If I can show you how to automate your business with Traffic, Funnels, and Follow Up so you can add an extra seven figures to your business within the next twelve months and having it run on autopilot, By hiring a managed marketing team Would you invest $500,000? Now Realize you’re going to make a 200 % Return on your Investment! The answer is Of course Yes! The first thing you need to know is that automation can go horribly wrong. Or, If you have the right tools, systems, and team in place your automation can be a money making machine for you. Now If you want to make an extra million dollars in your business because you

want to travel the world, or because you want to spend more time with your family, or you want to make an extra million dollars in your business because you want to focus on doing what you love. Or you want to make an extra million dollars in your business because you want to be financially free.

calendar. I can spend that time making sales. And I would make an extra 5,000 dollars a day in sales. Which by the way are seven figures. At this time I am currently only working an hour to two hours per day in each business that I have running. Each one is making me anywhere between $1,200 to 25,000 or more per day. Some Then this is going to be powerful days we actually do 160,000, for you! 250,000, to 350,000 dollars in I have a disclaimer that I want to sales in one day. This is all because share. Outsourcing is not the easiest the systems and tools we have in thing to do. Hiring is not the easiest place. thing to do! 9 out of 10 Virtual This is not for everyone. Assistant’s Don’t Work But, 9 out of 10 Managed Teams do! Virtual I want to share who this is for first. Assistant companies have sold us on This is for companies and this ideal. I fell for this too! that we entrepreneurs who are selling high can hire this superhero this person ticket offers. that literally can do everything for us! At first, I did it too! I believed in This is for companies and this false idea because I wanted to entrepreneurs who are selling high get some of my time back! I figured volume offers. if I all I did was stop reading email, all I did was stop following up. And This is for companies and I had just ONE person who could entrepreneurs who are tired of doing help me with that one thing. That everything themselves and don’t I would get back 160 hours every want to go through the struggle and single month into my time in my pain of trying to hire someone and it can end up costing thousands and

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thousands of dollars in the end.

automated money making machine automate everything. As we started is by using a managed marketing to grow and as we started to scale Now, who this is not for the people team! our business. We did something and companies who don’t want to crazy! It was kind of a challenge invest in their marketing. My name is Hawk Mikado! for us. We put everything we did, This is also not for people and I am the Funnel Genius and The Everything we have ever done in companies that do not want to use publisher of the Funnel Magazine business was riding on a one core social media or use technology to and over the last number of years, I service, one core product. One day support and scale their business. had some of the biggest blessings of one of our team members he was being able to interview some of the working on every single client project The other component of the systems World’s Leading Entrepreneurs and that we had. He messed up! Plus in and strategies that I am going to experts in the industry and asking addition to that, we had some other share are useful, However, There the hard questions. That we do not challenges that were coming out are a lot of things that you have to hear from other podcasts or inside because LinkedIn basically slapped be aware of. Which is why this is not of other magazines. We asked us in our faces with You can’t do that for Highly Regulated Industries! them the exact, step by step, tools, anymore! Almost overnight within systems, strategies, and tactics that three weeks, we lost three hundred What’s a Managed Marketing Team? And, Do I need one for my they are using to scale their business. thousand dollars of our recurring We also interviewed, researched revenue which is 99% of our monthly company? and learned from some of the recurring revenue. That’s The Goal! I’m going to answer world’s largest Fortune 500 and these questions for you today! INC 5,000 companies to identify Which sucks because we lost everything! exactly what they’re doing. This is powerful for you! We had to figure out what we really This is also the only way that you can Over the years, I have taken all of wanted to do. We had to go back exponentially grow your company that knowledge I was able to put to the drawing board! We had to Utilizing Traffic, Funnels and Follow it together and put it in a really powerful, really effective system. look at everything that we did. We Up! That helped me to scale my business started to map out every single And the only way to turn on the and, allow me to completely step out product, every single service, every of my business for six whole months single thing we have ever created without ever having to worry about and we started to come up with stepping back in or do anything. some new ideas. As we started to do It’s crazy! I was cleaning my this, we started to look at different house because we are remodeling, ways that we could be successful redoing our house, I actually found with clients. We noticed something my tax return for 2012. In 2012, I that was really really key! Every just made just over 12,000 dollars. single client that had been massively I was working over a hundred successful with us had three things in hours per week! That’s 430 hours a common! month, I was getting paid pennies They had Traffic! and a lot less if I would have worked They had Funnels! a minimum wage job. When I met my wife, who obviously They had Follow Up! wasn’t my wife at the time! We As we went back and looked at all partnered up. We started to look at these different things we were able different ways we could scale and to create Funnel Magazine, we grow the business. She helped me created what is now Traffic, Funnels, step up! The first thing we did, we and Follow up and, being able to hired a team member. We got some offer this as an agency. And now as of the old systems that we had in just purely as Managed Marketing place, we got rid of them and got teams. new systems that helped us fully

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It’s crazy We actually have a waiting list of six months long for some of the types of team members that we have to offer. So much so that we continue to scale and grow, scale and grow no matter what we do. We can’t keep up with the demand because of what we are offering. If you go on my facebook you would see multiple of posts and post after post after post. And each one of them I am offering access to one of our team members. People are saying I want it, I want it. And we have literally 30 to 50 posts and request to hire one person. As we scale. We are doing this over and over again. This is just one of the strategies that we utilize to drive unlimited amounts of traffic to our business. It is possible.

I discovered this after doing it the The List goes on and on. hard way for ten years. I have a silly question, Would you have your web developer make If you are struggling, you’re probably doing this the hard way sales calls for you? too. Would you have someone who is The hard way, by the way, is having inherently an introvert someone who one person or even doing this all hates talking to people which is why they are sitting behind a desk go out yourself: and make sales? • Respond to emails The answer is NO! • Data Entry • Generate Leads Another question • Manage your social media • Research Product Ideas Would you have your salesperson • Research Prospects go out and do a coffee run for you? • Build Funnels The person who literally makes you • Create Graphics a shit ton of money, go out and buy • Make Phone Calls you coffee. • Take Phone Calls • Get Customer Feedback No this is ridiculous! • Do Customer Service Right? • Take Orders over the phone This is absolutely ridiculous

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Yet this is what Virtual Assistant companies sell us! This is what all of these programs out there sell us on doing. You can do all of this yourself or you can hire a person to do all of this for you! It’s not true You can’t do all of this be successful, Scale and, Make a Ton of Money There are three secrets that I found to Automation 1. Is Automation Delegation: How I discovered the four-step fail proof automation system that keeps the ball rolling for my clients and doesn’t compromise the quality 2. How the Seven S’s of CEO allows you to double or even triple your business pretty much overnight. Even if you have previously hit a revenue glass ceiling 3. How you can implement the automation secrets of eight plus figure companies without having to work an extra ten to twenty plus hours each and every single week Automation

to Florida. Up through Chicago into Canada. Back across from Vancouver over to Calgary and back home over the course of six months.

without having to pay for payroll expenses without having to deal with all sorts of crazy things that come with having employees. If you ever experienced having employees There were some incredible people you know all some of the challenges we have met. We went to events, that come with it. spoke at events, sponsored events, Delegate The Easy Way had client meetings, stayed with friends and family and, had some of This saves us tons and tons of money. the best experiences of my life. Plus This saves us tons and tons of time. I had a baby! Hire a Traffic Team, your traffic The first step to this is you need team to figure out if you want to hire • Can respond to emails an employee, a freelancer, or a • Do Data Entry managed team. • Generate Leads First of all consult with your tax • Manage Social Media Marketing attorney or your tax advisor before doing any of this and doing your Hire a Funnel Team, You’re Funnel taxes. team will Employees • Product Research What we found in our business that • Research Prospects employees cost more, they require • Builds Funnels you to pay more taxes. Loyalty is, • Creates Graphics unfortunately, is lacking because if they are able to find someone else Hire a Follow-Up Team, Your able to pay them even a dollar more Followup Team will per hour or an extra few thousands of more dollars in salary, they are • Takes Phone Calls • Makes Phone Calls off to the next job. • Gets Customer Feedback Contractors and Freelancers • Takes Order over the phone.

What’s great you don’t have any How I discovered the four-step fail taxes. You don’t have to pay for proof automation system that keeps payroll Taxes, all that is taken care the ball rolling for my clients and of by the Contractor/Freelancer. doesn’t compromise on quality The Drawback is that you have As a Matter of fact, This is pretty basically no control! cool! My wife and I spent six months Managed Team traveling. We got a bigger house, we got a bigger car, we got to go The benefit of a managed team and do more fun things. We even is its tax deductible. The same as had a baby. We definitely didn’t you would with a contractor and cut our expenses. This was all freelancer. Plus you would have while we weren’t working a single loyalty and control because they hour because of the systems of function as an employee. They are automation we have in place. working for you as a contractor under a team. Which is why you We got to travel around North would hire a company that has these America. We traveled from San teams built. You’re able to scale Diego all the way across the country VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

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The List goes on, with each of these three areas The total investment for delegating just these three tasks is five grand a month. But the thing is if you were going to spend five grand a month and you were able to get back an extra five hundred hours every single month. What would you be able to do with that? The reality is you’re not even spending that much time because you’re not able to focus on all of those things, as it is!

So having this team in place is so key, and so powerful The next thing is being able to delegate properly! We use Teamwork. Which is a powerful team management platform. That allows you to scale your team, that allows you to connect and collaborate with your clients. It’s a really powerful resource that we use for that. That last component is automate the rest! We say…. 10% Delegation 90% Automation We use ClickFunnels with Actionetics and Backpack for our funnel building, our email marketing, and affiliate management. We use Twilio for text messaging Zapier for pretty much everything else! We use Hubspot as our CRM and our private sales. The Total Investment that we spend on just these platforms every single month is over five hundred dollars per month. We are also grandfathered in. If you buy these same platforms now you’re going to be spending close to a thousand dollars each and every month just on these tools and systems. started to look for our new home. I These are the components and asked my wife Are you pregnant? systems that we used to scale and She said no, I’m not pregnant! It’s the heat! I told her I’m pretty sure grow our business. you’re pregnant! I went to the store We had all these things in place. We and found the cheapest Pregnancy got home from San Diego, the cool Test I could find and, I bought three thing is that my wife and I got to of them because they are cheap! retire at 28! The first one was positive, the second one was positive, the third one was I obviously came back to work, my positive. wife is still retired. Because of these systems I say maybe I should buy a real one. I go back to the store and go We got back to San Diego, we

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buy the most expensive pregnancy test I could find, and that one was positive. They aren’t still completely positive. So we go get a blood test, and that one was positive. Then we get an ultrasound scheduled and sure enough lo and behold, it was positive she was pregnant! We buy our new house, and we have our new baby, Baby ATM was born on 04/27 Alliwin Taya Mikado, by the way, which is her exact due date. She is prompt. The crazy thing is we

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got out of the hospital, and my wife went back into the hospital on May 3. She was in the hospital for Severe Preeclampsia, which is pretty much severe risk of stroke and heart attack, I was able to give one hundred percent of my attention and focus to my wife and daughter. I didn’t have to worry about being able to pay my bills while being gone from my business. how I was going to deliver to my clients because I am worried about my life and my wife. What I had to do to delegate or outsource my business succeed so it didn’t fail! I didn’t have to worry about any of those things because of this system. This was the most powerful thing that we have. Now you’re probably wondering as I mentioned before I retired at 28 Why did I come out of retirement? We were driving to the hospital, and as we passed the hospital we saw this private school.The sign on this private school said inspiring leaders for a better tomorrow. It’s something that both my wife and I were really inspired by, we wanted to see what it was about it. We went in and scheduled the meeting, we got to look at everything, started to read everything. Lo and behold we knew for a fact that we were going to send our daughter there, and every child we have is going to this school. So I was curious how much would a private school in one of the most expensive parts of San Diego, In one of the most expensive states in the world costs? I found out it’s going to cost me a million dollars over the course of fifteen years to send her to private school. That is awesome! I love it! This such a powerful community that she is going to be in. This is only possible because of automation because of these systems because of the team that we put in place. VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

How do you Automate your life?

to a Messenger Bot which is fully automated and had them booking You can also automate everything appointments for twelve dollars in your life too not just your business each. you can automate. How would you like to have your We use Amazon’s Prime Now calendar booked solid for twelve to automate grocery shopping, dollars per appointment? deliveries, pretty much everything So powerful right? You can have we need on that side. these systems in your business too! We use Amazon Echo to be able to Where do you find a good team to listen to music, set alarms, turn on do this? How can you communicate and off lights all that sorts of stuff. with them to make sure this works Everything! It also integrates with for you? Are projects done on time? Baby Stat’s which helps us figure And on a budget? out when our baby eats, drinks, We use Teamwork. One of pees, poops and sleeps. those things we have in place Automation is all around us! are the systems and checklists. I have seen this work and made Communication is by far absolutely this work with supplement 100% hands down the most companies, coaching and important thing! consultant companies, information That’s why we use Teamwork product companies, E-Commerce Chat which allows you to literally Companies, Network Marketing communicate LIVE with the team companies, Affiliate Marketing instantly. You can get responses companies, Real Brick and Mortar within seconds of asking a question. businesses, and this actually worked You can collaborate with the team. with every single type of business we You can post projects. You can post ever implemented it in. ideas. It is Key for you to go through and The Next thing is to have Checklists! figure out how you can implement this in your business starting Today! Every single time you come up with a process or an idea or a We have a coaching client Jessica system you create a checklist for who we helped her set up systems it. So Powerful! in her business, driving traffic! That was the first and foremost thing that The next thing is having a dashboard we were doing. She was getting that you can see what is actually ten dollar leads and she was taking active, what is being worked on right those leads having them fill out now, what is going to be worked on, applications and turning them into 5 What’s already been completed and 10 thousand dollar clients. She and, what is in review. Having these did all of this in about three months. dashboards in place where you can She got ten clients made six figures see the step by step progress of in three months. Now she travels everything that you have going on the world with her daughter three is so important and so powerful. months out of every single year. Time Tracking Errol who has cryptocurrency The next thing is time tracking products he shares, teaches, works because you should know where with people on making sure they every single moment of your day are making the right cryptocurrency is going. If your sending emails, investments we used a Facebook ad

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you should be tracking your time. If you’re writing a sales letter you should be tracking your time. If you are on Facebook or Instagram you should be tracking your time. Then you need to figure out what is actually generating revenue for you. This is so powerful. By doing this it will create massive awareness for you and your business and create massive results for you and your team. Overview The last is a Big Overview to be able to see your projects stats easily and quickly. You can see how many tasks that are done. You can see what’s working and what’s not working. You can see what’s past due. If anything is past due Who’s been working and on what. All of those things are really important Automation Is Awesome Who thinks automation is Awesome? If you think automation is awesome all you have to do is write the word Yes in this book right now. This is going to transform your life. This is going to transform your business. This is going to create massive impact for you and scale your business quickly. If you want to learn the Seven S’s of a CEO that allows you to double or even triple your revenue even if you have previously hit a revenue glass ceiling. You can just ask my client Mike, who tripled his revenue in just three short weeks. After he let our team take over the work and set up the right systems for him. What’s your genius? What’s your genius? Are you the master at everything? Are you the person who is getting their hands dirty? Are you the person directing everything? Are you the muscle? You have to find your genius and hire out the rest.

I used to be the person who checked all of my emails, Made all of my phone calls, I booked all of my meetings, managed all of my social media, I made all of my sales, and probably about hundred other tasks that I don’t ever want to remember!

putting better systems in place. Putting better team members in place. You are putting better training in place so you scale your business.

Steering: Steering the ship! This is where you actually hold the vision. You are the visionary in your The Seven S’s of a CEO company. You have to be able to There is a NEW way, a much much steer your company towards the better way. The Seven S’s of a CEO direction you want the company to these are the things you need to go. This is the most important thing. focus on. The only seven things you need to focus on. Everything else The only thing you are responsible you DELEGATE immediately Right for are these seven things. Now! These seven you can delegate The only thing you should be all but one. doing is Steering and Scaling your Strategy is one of the most powerful company. and most important things. You Mike who has a real estate have to know the systems and company. strategies to be able to actually scale your business. Also if your We were able to take his training providing strategies for clients you product. We doubled the price have to understand that too. from 37$ to 67$. Then we added a fifteen hundred dollar program on Delivering the Service itself actually the backend. providing the service, giving the products, delivering everything to Then we had the team that called all the clients. the leads that watched the webinar but didn’t buy and scheduled them Sales: Getting on the phone, for a sales call with the sales team. speaking to people one on one, sending people messages, following He already had the traffic going to up with them, taking a credit card or the webinar but we were able to put a check and putting the money in these two things in place. Optimized your bank account. the funnel and had the phone team follow up for him. With that, he was Going Out And Speaking in front able to triple his business in just three of An Audience! Whether you’re short weeks. doing this online, podcasts, webinar, or actually speak live in front of Akbar Sheikh people at conferences or networking events. This is a big and powerful I was on the phone with Akbar Sheikh who’s going to be on the way to scale your business cover of Funnel Magazine. This was Socializing: We think of socializing before he was on the cover. I was mostly in terms in Social Networking. asking him about this topic. He was Going on to Social Media and sharing a story about a real estate connecting with the right people. investor in a small town where he Spending the right time in the right grew up. This Real Estate investor places Going to network events did one thing differently. He was and talking to people not being the able to own half the town, in this speaker. little small town because of the fact that he did one thing. Instead of Sharpening: This is where you are

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going out and fixing the toilets and managing the properties himself. From Day One he put people in place who manage the properties, who fix the properties, who took care of everything. As a result of that, He was able to scale his real estate investment and literally own half of the town of real estate Out of Curiosity How much is your time worth?

selling high 5,6, to 7 figure offers. All the way up to 50% for really low end offers all the way as low as 50 dollars.

go in and steer your business in the direction that you want it to go. Except for you! This is literally the only job that you actually have.

Speaking: You can have someone go out and speak on your behalf as low as 10% of the sale all the way up to 75% of the sale. Even if you were giving them 100% of the sale on a front end offer you can still scale your business because you have the credit card.

Who wants to have their own managed marketing, team?

Do you get paid a hundred dollars per hour or more? If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you Socializing: Have someone else really should. go out on social media for you and managing those network Even if you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. If you only get relationships and building those paid fifty dollars an hour as an relationships for you and then pass expert in your industry. them over to your sales team. You You can still hire out pretty much can have someone doing that between 10-50 dollars per hour everything on this list! Strategy: You can hire someone to do strategy for you and your clients for as little as 50 to 100 dollars per hour You can hire someone to delivers the actual services to your clients anywhere from 10$ to 50$ per hour You can make sales on a percentage basis. Anywhere between 3% if your VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

If you want to have your own managed marketing team, then Write Yes in the book right now! How to Scale Fast!

How you can implement the automation tools and secrets of eight plus figure businesses without having to work an extra 10 to 20 hours per week. The reality is automation is all about not working! If you had to work extra because of the systems that it would completely 100% defeat the purpose of having the freedoms of having these Sharpening: There are training systems provide you. you can do, You can pay someone as little as 20 dollars per hour to In 2012 I was only making 12,000 train on systems you already have dollars a year. Something had to in place. Plus if you want to buy change, and had to change fast! systems. You can buy training for One of the first things I started as little as 2 thousand dollars where looking at What was the fortune you can plug in and play into your 500 companies doing, What was business Inc 5,000 companies doing. What were all the seven-figure companies Steering is priceless! No one can

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doing that I wasn’t doing? I found three key systems, and there was still one thing that was missing after the three key systems. I am going to share the Three Key Systems and the One that still was missing! The Three Key Systems Plus One Thing That Brought It All Together!

Zappos, we spent an afternoon at Zappos. One of the things that we learned was that every single person in their company spends a week in every single department. Regardless if that’s going to be their job or not. They want everyone to have an understanding of what the other team does and have respect for what the other teams do. That’s one of the reasons why our team goes through eight weeks of training to make sure they understand every single area of the business. So they can focus on what they do and be able to communicate effectively with the rest of the team. The first week is a company overview. The second week is a company and department systems. The Third week is learning traffic and Lead Gen. The Fourth Week is learning funnels and design. The Fifth Week is learning all about Funnel and follow-up scripts The Sixth Week is learning sales and making offers. The seventh Week is learning all about copywriting. The Eighth week is learning all about scaling to seven figures. We invested thousands and thousands of dollars over a hundred thousand of dollars at this point, in making sure our audience and clients get the best results. We make sure that every single one of our trainees goes through all of these systems. To make sure they can scale you as your business quickly.

1. Invert formula: We call this the Invert Formula but it’s the same system that companies use whether they are at 6 figure, 7 figures, 8 figures, 9 figures, 10 figures and even beyond. The first part of the system is impact know the impact you want to have on your audience. The second thing is to know your audience, who you want to target your niche. Next, know the vision and the value that you provide to your core audience. These are the three internal components of the system. Once you know these three things marketing becomes easy. From there you have to understand how and where you can engage your audience. When you know who you’re talking to, when you know what you’re talking to them about, and you know where to target them. Then recommending the right products and services, selling to them becomes simple! Recommending the right thing at the right time based on their needs, wants, and desires are how you scale your business fast. The last 3. Traffic, Funnels, and Follow-Up: thing is to deliver transformational This is the final system that you will services. Deliver transformation to need to be able to scale quickly and their business and to their life. successfully. Traffic, this is how your 2. Step by Step Training System business gets all of the leads. If you that allows you to replicate yourself don’t have leads, you can’t make instantly and have no mistakes as sales, if you can’t make sales, you you scale. One of the things we can’t make money. If you can’t make discovered. There are eight trainable money, you don’t have a business. So areas that we found. The rest of you have to understand the traffic. the areas are areas that you need This is so powerful. So many people to hire someone who is already an look to marketing agencies and look expert, those areas are basically to Facebook and these tools and just Finance and Law. We were at systems to drive traffic but they don’t

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understand the key fundamentals. We were working with Shimon who runs a sales training company called the VSR Council and within six months we were able to generate more than ten thousand leads for him and booked 345 appointments with executives and director levels of fortune 500 companies for him and his sales team, and resulted in 154 of them investing and working with him on a small or large scale. Most of them invested in them attending an event and at that event, we offered consulting services. His consulting services range from twenty-five thousand to multiple millions of dollars. One deal pays for everything! The Next step is Funnels You need a way to convert your leads. You have to be able to take people through the process. If you have ten thousand leads, but if you have no way to convert them, then you have no sales process. A funnel is both online and offline. This is not just online funnels. A funnel is a universal term, comes from a long time ago. Just recently became an online marketing term. You have to have both offline systems as well as online to drive sales. We were working with Jason from Costa Rica Yoga Life and he has a yoga retreat in Costa Rica he was looking at getting new customers. We were able to launch a Free Plus Shipping Offer to his audience scale it. Literally, on day one he got thirty-one new customers, he had a hundred and fifty new leads all interested in spending multiple thousands of dollars at his retreat and we were profitable on day one before he ever picked up the phone. That is the power of a proper funnel. Follow-up The last and final step is the follow-up we discovered that seventy percent of our sales come from follow up. As they say, The Fortune is in the Follow-Up. They say that for a reason. Following up is so Powerful and is so Key! I

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am not just talking about email marketing and automation. You have to actually pick up the phone, you have to send Direct Mail, You have to send text messages, you have to build engagement you have actually create a relationship with your audience. Lisa T. has worked with us and she had an event she made fifteen thousand dollars. At this event, she has done before she never sold more than about seven thousand dollars during the event or after the event. We were able to put the right follow up systems in place and within a couple of months, she was able to add an additional fortyfive thousand dollars in her revenue 4Xing her revenue from that one event. She has continued on to scale her business and has incredible success. Something is still missing

“Hey, Hawk we are going to launch a product and we are going to make five hundred dollars, we are going to donate the whole thing to charity, and we are going to do it by 8 am” I said, “ I’m in Sounds like Fun!” They said “Hold on! There’s a catch though” I said, “Okay whats the catch?” They said “The catch is… None of us can use our email lists, none of us can use our facebook business pages, none of us can use our facebook groups, none of us can use any business assets that we have created up to this point, we have to assume that we are starting with zero dollars and zero list.” So I said “Alright Challenge On! I love this!” we started to Strategize this, and look at all these different things. I jumped in and said “Here is how we can do this, this is the launch process that we need to do” We all discussed, we had a working product within three hours that was profitable. We were already at over a thousand dollars in profit within eight hours. We made over 2,700 dollars in profit all of which was donated to charity. And the cool thing is up to this day, we never spent a dime on ads. Out of this one of the things we realized was that all of the people in place had a key role. Out of that Managed Marketing Teams were born. We started to set up a three-person team with each one of our clients. We set up one person to do traffic, one funnel builder, and one phone person who can actually call and follow-up with people. While it used to be really hard to scale, it wasn’t anymore. We were able to instantly scale our clients and instantly scale our business. We didn’t have to think about what needed to be added, or what needed to be done. We put the strategy into place and, put the right person to do it. With that, you’re able to scale really fast.

There was still something that was missing, We figured out these three systems. Then there was still that one thing. What is going on? How is it I was successful but we were unable to step out of my business. So we went back to the drawing board and we looked at everything. There were a few things that we realized needed to be done. First put all three of these key systems together as one. Put them together and implement them all together. Second, 90% of needs to be automated. Third and the last thing, 10% should be taken care of by people. As a result of doing this and soon as we implemented this, on my road trip. One of the things that we did. We attended an event and I was one of the sponsors there. This is really cool. I left my laptop in the room. I never do that. We went to dinner and I left it in my room. I come back and it’s midnight at this point. We walked in and five of my internet marketing friends were sitting around talking. I walked into the room and they say These are the three secrets of VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

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Automation that we went over. How I discovered the four-step failproof automation system that keeps the ball rolling for my client and doesn’t compromise in quality. The Seven S’s of a CEO that can literally allow you to double or even triple your revenue even if you have previously hit a glass revenue ceiling The Third One… How You Can Implement The Automation secrets of 8 plus figure companies without spending an extra 10 to 20 hours in a week working I want you to ask yourself this question. If I modeled what works, If I were to go in and I was to put in the right systems, get the checklists, get the components, and the software, and all of the things that needed to be in place. And I was to focus on delegating everything except for scaling and steering my company. If I was to put the three core systems together that allows scale rapidly. Would I be successful? The Answer is, Of course, you would. The answer is Yes Absolutely! Because having these three things together as a whole system is what drives your business forward. Is what creates business success. So let me ask you a question Are you ready to fight against mediocrity? Are you ready to fight against spending the rest of your life, trying, wishing and hoping that you can a have a successful business? Are you ready to take action, put in the right people in place, get the right systems in place, so you can automate to have the right tools in place? And create a business that actually serves you and works for you?

If So you can get the entire version, the entire training on how to scale your business at http://automatethe.world/

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The Two Most Important Metrics In Any Paid Acquisition Funnel

ARTICLE BY Filip Merdic

When it comes to any funnel marketing, knowing your High-level overview numbers is very important. From a very high level, when you look at the paid However, when it comes to paid funnels (using online acquisition funnels, there are two main metrics that you advertising to generate traffic) metrics and knowing continuously need to be aware of: your numbers is of critical importance. • Cost per visitor (CPV or usually Cost Per Click) You need to know how much money you are putting in • Revenue per visitor your machine (sales funnel) and how much money your These are essentially telling you funnel is giving you back. • How much money are you paying to get one visitor. Your quantitative analysis will give you some vital • How much money are you making per each information: visitor. How well your funnel is performing. • Where you should focus your attention. • How much money you are making (revenue/ Cost per visitor is a showcase of the effectiveness of profits). your advertising. • How can you improve the efficiency of your efforts (making more money from the same There are two things that you can do to improve this amount spent). section • How can you scale your funnel (how much 1. Decrease cost to get each visitor can you increase the volume of traffic to your funnel). a) Depending on the ad network, this will usually mean increasing your Click-through rate (percentage of people clicking on your ad). 2. Increase the quality of those visitors

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a) Focus actions on improving the visitors that you are irresistible offer? getting on your funnel so that they are more likely to The usual industry standard is that anything above buy. 3-5% is good. b) You can do this through targeting, bidding, and ad AOV - average revenue from one paying customer. creatives. Revenue per visitor metric is all about your funnel. This could vary depending on your price points and This is the holistic overview of the funnel performance, payment plans. If you only have one payment option, but you will need to break it down into components to you will be generating steady AOV, but probably going to be leaving money on the table. FAQ about metrics and numbers in funnels When to start thinking about the numbers? see where you can improve your funnel.

Actually, to get maximum success, you will need to Let’s take for example a straightforward webinar funnel: map out those numbers BEFORE you run any ads or traffic to your funnel. You can make a prediction and map out what numbers you need to hit to break even, what numbers you need When you break down the webinar funnel you usually to hit to be profitable or 2-3x your ad spent (here’s a great tool for mapping out your numbers in webinar have four important metrics: funnels.) • Registration rate What do those numbers mean? • Show up rate • Webinar Conversion rate When you have a prediction and an exact mathematical • AOV formula of what you need to achieve to make your funnel profitable - you know exactly where to focus Registration rate - or landing page conversion rate. your attention to improve. This is the number of people that become leads (or webinar registrants). They have qualified themselves as interested in your offer. Your landing page and type of traffic is what is going to make your registration rate.

If you improve only one of those metrics, you will improve your ROI (Return on Investment). However, if you improve 2 or 3 of those metrics, you will exponentially improve your ROI.

Usual industry standards are that anything above 20% How do I go about optimizing those metrics? is good. With 20% CVR, you can have great ROI CPV - This depends on ad platform you use. funnels. Show up rate - the percentage of registrants who Registration rate actually show up on the webinar.

• Traffic - maybe your traffic is misled by your ad, and there is a mismatch in expectations These are people who are even more interested between ad and the landing page. in your offers. There is a big difference in show up • Landing page optimization - the first thing you rates depending on whether you are using a Live or want to optimize is your headline and copy as Automated webinar. this has the biggest impact on registration rate. Live webinars benchmarks are 30%+ The automated webinar is 60%+

Attendance rate -

Webinar conversion rate - the percentage of attendees • Webinar viewing time - is it automated or live? that convert to paying customers. (Automated webinars have a much higher attendance rate.) This is the number that is telling you the effectiveness of your webinar presentation. How engaging is it, how much hype does it create, does it make a really

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• What incentives are you giving them to show up on the webinar? • Pre-webinar email sequence. Can you add more content between the registration point and the webinar? • Confirmation page video - you can place a video on webinar confirmation page. Use this video to create a deeper relationship with your prospects. Usually, it’s the best to add more value with that video and create more hook and curiosity for people to show up on the webinar Webinar conversion rate • Where do people lose interest and drop off? • How many of them are actually clicking the offer? • Do you need to change the webinar pitch?

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Checkout page • • • •

How many cart abandoners? Do you have trust certificates and badges? Do you have testimonials? Are those testimonials addressing common sales objections?

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

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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.”

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Why Metrics?

ARTICLE BY Janice Means

numbers, you really should have more than doubled You’ve probably heard you should track your marketing/ your revenue. Your Ad Clicks have gone up. Better advertising spend, track your clicks, track your leads, copy? However, the percentage of clicks that turn into track your conversions, track your sales, track your leads has declined by 10%. What changed on the sales repeat business, and … track…track…track. But, WHY? page? If the tweak that improved the number of clicks The short answer is, so you know if you have made on the Ad remains and the originally leads to sales ratio would remain, your overall revenue would go up. progress in your business or not. The long answer is, so you know that the progress that you are making is in the right direction. Not only do you need to track the data but you need to do some analysis on the data that you have collected. So, what changes need to be made to gain the potential revenue? You may want to do some A/B testing on the Sign-Up copy and determine if it’s a color and wording or the offer? Again, measure these. At the raw level, let say you’ve collected the following What do your numbers tell you? Have you looked at metrics from your data collection and overall you feel them over time? very happy that you have doubled your revenue. Please note, there are more metrics that are valuable At first glance, this looks like you doubled your to your business than just these. We selected this small Facebook spend and directly doubled your sample to demonstrate the value of reviewing the revenue. However, if you look closer at the numbers. Janice R. Means, MBA, and President of Marketing

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with JR â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Common Sense Marketing with Extraordinary Results. Janice spent years in Corporate IT interwoven with various Marketing stints. Janice brings her Fortune 50 experience to you with a focus on traditional offline marketing strategies. However, she is pretty savvy online and likes to make sure that the online and offline strategies complement each other.

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IP H ER S AD

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Leadership: Tactics - Opportunities That Yield a Winning Advantage

Opportunities That Yield a Winning Advantage Article by Jim Eagerton

Leaders not only need to use powerful and effective thinking, they need to be aware of opportunities that become available in their situation. Previously, we established one word definitions for strategy (choice), candidate moves (possibilities), strategic thinking (analysis), and tactics (opportunities). This issue continues the series of skills successful leaders need and that is their ability to see, evaluate and take advantage of opportunities called tactics.

employees as a way of keeping salaries in check in their industry. They had to abandon the practice once it was uncovered by the government. Businesses go after each other through pricing mechanisms by stealing competitors’ customers. Recently co-working companies attacked each other by handing out flyers for free rent while in the doorway of their competitor’s establishment.

Tactical Opportunities Can Make or Break a Business Tactical opportunities occur at various levels in the competitive business world. Businesses play tactics against each other (B2B), businesses play tactics against their customers (B2C), customers play tactics against businesses (C2B), businesses play tactics against their employees (B2E), employees play tactics against their companies (E2B) and employees play tactics against each other (E2E) forming the basis of “office politics.”

In (B2C) situations, businesses take advantage of their customers. They may issue a coupon for a rebate and then make it difficult to redeem the coupon. A major bank was hit with substantial fines for forcing mortgage In (B2B) situations, businesses play tactics against holders to take out insurance they didn’t really need. each other. One company may raid another The bank is now issuing refunds after getting caught. company for their employees. Tech In (C2B) situations, customers turn the tables and take companies made a voluntary advantage of a business. Typical situations are when agreement not to go customers boycott a business that is not up to their after each other’s standards. A cereal company bowed to pressure from VOLUME 2 customers to eliminate artificial dyes and flavoring FUNNEL MAGAZINE

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in their cereal. Now a subsequent backlash has the aware of the situation, the boss was fired as well. A company putting the colors back in because parents classic desperado, I’m going down and I’m taking you want the cereal to look and taste like what they had with me. when they were children. Yep it’s the cereal that says Tricks are for kids. In (B2E) situations businesses take advantage of their employees through reorganizations and layoffs. In Chicago a “unicorn” tech company laid off 51 employees to make sure the right people were in the right positions, yet the company admitted they were still hiring. Companies go into bankruptcy to avoid having to pay extensive pension costs for their employees yet after they reorganize they continue to operate as usual. In (E2B) situations, employees attack their companies many times by becoming a desperado whistleblower and suing the company successfully. A major airline had a scheduling glitch that left many holiday flights without pilots. Pilots managed to cover the flights by Tactical opportunities require “being in the moment” getting concessions from the airline for their mistakes. to evaluate and, either pass or take advantage of the In (E2E) situations, employees attack each other and situation. The skewer tactic occurs in chess and business. form the basis of office politics. In the case of a big In chess, an important piece, usually the king or bank, an employee was terminated from the company. queen, is under attack from an enemy piece Shortly thereafter, the fired employee contacted and has to step aside and allow a lowerthe bank and told them that his boss had made ranked piece behind it to take the disparaging remarks about the government overseers ‘hit’ or be captured. In who were screwing up the retirement parachutes the business, it is the QUARTER 3 company could offer. Once the company was made

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phenomena of a high-ranking official looking for a scapegoat or underling to take the blame for a situation or “to throw under the bus.” Can you find the skewer tactic here that wins the black rook? (…Ke7, Rh7+)

Since tactical opportunities require “being in the moment” business people and chess players must react quickly to take advantage of the opportunity when it exists or it may pass and not happen again. In companies that trade stocks, commodities or currencies, they monitor their specialty waiting for an opportunity to become available. But when the opportunity occurs, they need to act or someone else will take the trade you didn’t. In business, companies take advantage of the situation because they have the opportunity to do so. One company cannot fire another company’s employee because they just aren’t in a position (or have the opportunity) to do so.

Another chess/business tactic occurs after companies undergo a layoff; the survivors are often required to pick up the work from those who departed. This can lead to an overworked employee or an overworked piece in chess. It’s management’s job to determine when and if an employee has too much to do because there will be consequences when that happens. The SEC was clearly overworked in pursuing white collar financial crime which allowed the biggest Ponzi scheme to run for years before getting caught. Can you find the Next Issue: Leadership – Good Decision-Making Drives overworked piece in this position? Better Bottom Line Results

(Ne3). If the knight doesn’t capture the knight on g4, white gets checkmated with Qh2. If the knight captures the knight on g4, white gets checkmated with Qg2 or Qg4. So the knight calls the home office and asks them what he should do, and they hang up on him since they don’t have an answer either.

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J.K. Egerton is the CEO and founder of Business on the Board™, a leading-edge talent development company that uses a game-based approach with business strategies and tactics. His book, Business on the Board, is a #1 management self-development bestseller that reveals how business and chess are related. It’s available nationwide.

FUNNELHUSTLERSUMMIT.COM

Getting S.M.A.A.R.T. About Accountability Article by Jeffrey Klubeck, M.A.

I’ve been talking a lot about Accountability for years… and, all over the world lately. Accountability is a concept or a “thing” I like to compare to driving, parenting, or having integrity: Everyone thinks themselves to be really good at it while easily accusing others of being really bad at it. A point I have made painfully clear for my audiences

recently is that while they THINK they know what Accountability is and while they THINK they themselves are “Accountable”…the truth is that very few of us REALLY know what Accountability is and even less of us know how to hold ourselves or others Accountable. Here are my Top 3 Tips to getting on the road to Accountability:

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1. When you set goals, be S.M.A.A.R.T.– If you’re not crystal clear about your goals, it is harder to achieve them! Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “if you have no destination, ANY road will take you there!” So, Specific is very important, but you also want to make sure you set Measurable goals that are Achievable and Ambitious… for totally motivating Reasons AND that include a Timeline of when you want to meet each goal. For accountability, your goals really only need to be specific, measurable and time-bound…but a Coach will make sure you believe you can achieve the goals (achievable) and support you in any behavioral changes that make the goal “ambitious.” I usually cover S.M.A.A.R.T. Goal Setting in great detail during the first Complimentary Coaching Session I give someone. 2. Make your goals even S.M.A.A.R.T.E.R.– When we evaluate the progress we are (or are NOT) making towards our goals, we are embracing the accountability that lets us make the tough decisions…to renew our faith in our strategy (if it’s not working “yet”)…to revise the strategy (if it simply isn’t working) or revise the goal itself (if we are ahead of schedule or doing better than we originally projected). These are the decisions successful people make all the time! Still, there are way too many business professionals that spend time creating specific goals, but once they start working on those goals, they forget to check in to make sure they’re on track. I get it, life gets busy, but reviewing progress needs to be business activity that receives just as much priority as say, invoicing clients and prospecting for new leads.

3. Tell someone as S.M.A.A.R.T. as YOU!– One benefit of having a business coach is that you always have someone to share your goals with. I realize not everyone has a coach so if you don’t have one, share your goals with a friend, co-worker or family member. JUST MAKE SURE you only share with someone who also sets and pursues goals! If you share your ambitions with someone who has none, you can expect them to defend their egos by trashing your goals before they ever hunker down to create their own. Sometimes, the simple act of telling someone what you will achieve and knowing they might ask you about it will motivate you to be more diligent in working toward the goal…just make sure you only share your goals with someone who themselves is a goal-setter or someone you know to be accountable in their own lives/careers.

For readers of Funnel Magazine who know Accountability will make a difference to your Team Building and bottom line, I have created a free download that teaches you skills on how to be and hold others Accountable. This program will teach you how to keep your clients, employees and team members Accountable, at the same level that a professional coach like myself would. To Your Success! Jeffrey Klubeck, M.A.

There you have it! Those are 3 simple tips I recommend following to get on the road to start keeping yourself and others Accountable.

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Are You In Full Control Of Your Data? Article by Eric Luis

For most companies, the main asset you have is control of your data...

to do this and thus enable you to take control of your data. If an associate of your workforce leaves their notebook in a taxi or their cellular phone was stolen, However, members of personnel need usage of your your data could be wiped. It has two benefits - your company data to allow them to do their task at times. industry data is secured and you adhere to data Some staff members may invest their overall career into protection legislation. your company. However, these days so many people only stay for a brief time frame and whenever someone What exactly are your policies on info storage and leaves, what info do they have on their cellular phone, management? laptop, tablet or even have access to in the Cloud? Can personnel bring their own device? (BYOD) Instead How will you protect your computer data in this con- of using company provided cell phones or laptops? If nect anywhere community? so, can you demand that apps or software products and services are installed to permit for the security you Your data could be on a safe and sound server in will need in order to keep control of your data? What an undisclosed location, but more regularly today is happens when they even unwillingly install a virus? anywhere ‘in the Cloud’ that can be accessed from (and downloaded to) laptops, cell phones, tablets - actually, If you provide your employees a phone, notebook or it’s obtainable from any net enabled device ever...safe? tablet - are they clear on what these can and can’t Or even worse, do you have control of your data? be utilized for? Not to mention, you backed everything up including How will you monitor data, telephone calls, or texts? It your unknown sensitive data tracking keylogger virus? might seem to be like YOUR GOVERNMENT, but if Regardless of where your computer data is stored, it’s you are providing a mobile phone for your staff, doesn’t necessary to make sure it is properly secured. it make sense to have the ability, and right, to know Encrypting the info and having robust passwords is precisely what that phone is being used for? After all, certainly an important first step. the device could so easily be used for things other than work otherwise. The next thing is the option to secure and even wipe data remotely. There are many Then there is the duty of care for your own member services available that permit you of staff.

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tracking of an employee’s mobile phone, and whilst some might accuse you of being controlling, isn’t it essential for your employees’ welfare that you know where they are? Especially if they are out on their own? Your lone worker plan could even include having the ability to monitor where they are during working time, so tracking their mobile is a perfect way to do this.

by commenting below or giving us a share or a like ...... Do you need more secure data protection? Website design or hosting? Or maybe just have a question? Why not contact me today or say hello in the live chat at the bottom right of my websites www.topleveltraffic. com or www.bestcomputerrepair.co.uk Stay safe! Eric

Summary So, between the policies you have in place, along with the solutions and applications that are set up such as above on the products you provide along with those belonging to your workers, you possess a robust plan to protect your employees along with your business data. Did you enjoy this post on “ Are you in full control of your data? “ if so please consider showing your support

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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.

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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. QUARTER 3

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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

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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

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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

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Does Your Mission Feel Like Punishment? You Might Be Doing It Wrong. Article by Mike Caldwell

We have a responsibility to be an instrument of abundance to our team members...as they are to us.

Our purposes do not just involve us. They are not onedimensional paths to success or gratitude. They involve ensemble players; each of us serving the other and when you are becoming an opportunity hoarder, you So many people start working in their passion when lose your purpose. they finally identify what it is. And it is a terrifying step to take. For one, you need to realize that you are in a Cycles are funny. We get into them like we circle the comfort zone and roll around in your mind what that drain. This is where we live; this is where we should stay discovery means to you. close to; this is my supposed comfort. But we evolve out of each one and when we remain open to what our true Are you blissful in the comfort zone? How does it make jobs are, we move into another cycle. you feel? Do you see other people working in their purpose and it flips on a switch inside you to change In case this is clear as mud, let me explain. When I your life? first opened the doors of my digital marketing and editorial agency, it was out of necessity. I wondered, Then, it is time to make the leap. what amount of money do I HAVE to make to survive? Let’s say you figure out making the leap and you even I lived in this cycle for a long time like a hungry catfish manage to assemble some sort of common-sense on the bottom of the ocean, seizing anything that came processes. You are open to receiving your abundant my way. gifts and the easy opportunities (the ideas that find Then my mind cracked, light flooded in, and I realized you and that you can reap some sort of currency from. that service and commitment were my brand and that Time, money, lifting someone else up. In other words, a people were responding to that. meaningful conversion.) I shifted internally: What can I do? How can I become Yes, you are pounding away at the pavement in your limitless? factory. Grinding every day, as the saying goes. We can’t traverse this journey by ourselves. We need Stop and sit in your moment. help. I accepted that truth and my mindset shifted Contemplate where your energy is going again. It wasn’t my purpose to become everything and ask yourself if you are living in to everyone, but to identify how I fit into the cast of your purpose or becoming characters. To find people who were gifted and able to serve as I loved to do…so I could still go ham in my enslaved by it. strengths. VOLUME 2

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And as this new idea set up shop, I also realized that when we work alone, and when we accept abundant gifts and manifest that THAT is only the beginning. If we are fortunate enough to be busy and work in our beloved passion, then we also have a responsibility to grow as large as we can in our mission, but we need help. Obviously.

And that is when the real blessings begin to show up, in the form of people you have been waiting to meet. Who are working in what captivates them, in the most reciprocal relationship you didn’t even know you needed. You WILL blow each other up.

Echoing relief, you will also learn some jobs are not yours in the time it takes to snap, they are gone. Given When we take on help, we avoid grueling work; we to their rightful owner, a team member wallowing in joy avoid burnout. We avoid being a person who can’t turn over the hand off. any opportunity down for ourselves, but who instead, accepts it knowing it is ours, but only to share. It is Protect your passion. Plan for its continual evolution. If ours, but only to give since we are an instrument of this is what you want to do, you WILL succeed. And abundance for people. We are supposed to be in this when you do, I hope your team is ready for you. Your team carries on with the elements you cannot manage place offering an assist. We snap into place innately. anymore, that they love, and you will have your true You can work in your passion and your drive may be mission returned to you, but better. hijacked as you ply your loving energy, but as you swell with the possibilities of blessings, then you need to make plans to handle it. You need to sit back and say, “I need help. I want to help. I am grateful for this landslide abundance but it is not meant for me alone.” Living in this space is such a trip and knowing we are here for a greater collaborative reason is heady and simply beautiful. Selfishly, it is so much more rewarding than seeking only to fill our own hunger. We kill for the pride.

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Fail Forward, or Die Tryin’... Article by Loren West

went a little something like this: You climbed onto the seat, nervously (or excitedly) gripped the handle bars, pushed the pedals down as hard as you could, then slowly started to move forward… Just as you begin to pick up speed, all of a sudden, you feel yourself starting to lean dangerously to one side. The next thing you know, you fall off the bike, slam into the ground and scrape yourself up for the first time. Once you’re done crying and wipe the tears from your eyes, you’re faced with a choice: Either stand there, Have you ever met a person that was so good at upset and discouraged… or get back on the bike and something it’s like they were born that way? Or someone try to ride again. so knowledgeable in their field, hobby, or interests, that people from all walks of life seek them out for advice Eventually, the more you “fail”, but continue to practice, your skills will slowly but surely increase. Over time, and direction? you’ll be able throw away the training wheels, and ride My guess is you know at least one person like this in smoothly into the sunset. your circle of peers. Truth be told, you may know several people who fit this description, but you’ve just been This, for many people, is the first conscious and memorable experience we have with determination. oblivious to it... until now. More simply put, this is the start of building While your subconscious mind works silently in the WILLPOWER in your life. background to identify these individuals, I want to take So, what does this have to do with marketing and you back to your childhood for a moment… building businesses online? When you first start out, Remember the first time you tried to ride a much like learning to ride a bike, or with any skill you bike? Did you sit down, put your foot on wish to acquire, it’s important to understand one very the pedal and take-off down the simple concept… street? No! Of course not… I’m guessing that YOU-WILL-FAIL… sometimes horribly. experience It’s a hardcore fact you just can’t escape. And the more VOLUME 2

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you try to avoid it, the more likely it is slowly creep up like I had just won the Superbowl! from behind and make you its next casualty. And yes… it was THAT EPIC for me… I’ll never forget it. The good news is that you have the ability to recognize your mistakes, analyze what went wrong and what went Although that may seem like a small victory in the as planned. Then, take stock of where you are now and grand scheme of things, I now have larger, much more AWESOME stories that produce similar feelings. gear up to take another crack at it! Whether it’s affiliate marketing, ecommerce, scaling Because as the rapper Meek Mill would say… “It’s Levels paid traffic, or just getting a solid understanding of To This $h%t”.

the basics of entrepreneurship, it’s going to take some But I would never know or even imagine what those determination to push through the roadblocks and levels of success could be like if I wasn’t determined avoid the pitfalls that lie ahead… enough to fight my way to the top! Like forgotten land-mines in the jungles of Vietnam, I’m not saying I’m some phenomenal 8-Figure guru or a poacher’s trap in the forests of Africa, if you walk sipping champagne on a yacht in the Caribbean… yet. around long enough, something’s going to catch (or ;-) explode on…) you eventually. But I AM saying, it’s possible. On the flip side, the more you move forward, take calculated risks, and make sound decisions when faced As long as you know something is attainable and you’re willing to accept varying degrees of “failure” with adversity, eventually… you-WILL-succeed! at some point, and most importantly, you have an When I first started on the path to becoming an online undying willpower to move forward and breakthrough marketer, I was so clueless it was comical! I didn’t know the challenges that stand in your way… how anything worked and the worst salesletters & VSLs on the planet would have me maxing out my credit cards Whatever desires you have in your heart can be yours. to buy all kinds of courses, programs, and “reports” on Don’t think you have what it takes to succeed? Think making money, and living the “laptop lifestyle”. about it like this: This caused two things to happen:

If you’re lucky enough to work a fulltime job in today’s 1.) I went broke on infoproducts that taught outdated world, you already have the indispensable trait of strategies & tactics which produced zero results and determination. You’re just focusing that energy on a 9 to 5 instead of building a business… zero ROI for the money I spent. 2.) I quickly learned what not to do, what doesn’t work, Think about it… and to not trust every person claiming to be an “expert” • You have to show up, ON-TIME, every day. just because they said so. • You sacrifice 35-40+ hours weekly… plus overtime. Unfortunately, this was a MAJOR setback for me at • You make sure the work that’s done is correct the time. I was constantly between jobs, and could and up to standard (hopefully lol). barely afford to put gas in my car to make it to the next • You offer suggestions on how to improve the paycheck. workplace. At that point, I was faced with a choice… give up on • And you’re always looking for ways to get the my dreams, and focus on getting a “stable” career in job done faster, better, & easier. the job world (which ironically is not stable at all) or continue to pursue my goals despite what so-called Did I mention all this has to get done with a “smile” on family & friends had to say about it. your face?! Thankfully, I chose to listen to my own inner-voice, and through the power of DETERMINATION, I eventually Well, the beauty of doing your own thing online is that found someone who was actually making a full-time you get to use all these traits on a daily basis and not have to put on a front for people at the income online. office (or wherever it is you work). I ended up purchasing a 1-hour phone session with this guy, which led to me making my first sale through Or kiss-ass to management PayPal within two weeks of our conversation! The first in the hallway to QUARTER 3 time I got a notification of a payment in my email I felt get some

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lousy raise that won’t put an extra $20 in your pocket Just pick up your bike (goals, dreams, desires), unscrew at the end of the month.If you feel like crying in the those training wheels and ride like the wind! corner because “life is so hard…” you have that privilege. Because no one will see you, so no one can judge you. Thanks for reading… :-) As long as we wipe those eyes, stand up straight, and decide that we’re going to make things happen no matter what, everything will be ok. I promise. ;-) Life will get better…. Even when it’s hard on us.

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Level Up! “Facebook” is changing the game of Business Article by Reekita Shah Alias Gala

Level Up! “Facebook” is changing the game of Business and Marketing in 2018 with Augmented Reality

What exactly is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality is not just for gaming. It’s the 4th wave in technology similar to all our past technologies. In fact, AR has shown the highest ROI of any technologies to date. It is a new way of communicating and engaging with your audience and if used strategically for business and marketing, it can increase sales, engagements, enhance brand value, and provide better shopping experiences along with many more benefits.

I am sure you know about Pokemon Go released in the year 2016 or may have even played the game at some point. Many of you may be unaware of the technology used to create this game and those of you who may be aware of it, may not be aware of what exactly it is and how it works.

We all have heard, known or maybe experienced “Virtual Reality” by now. But many of us are still Facebook is giving its Messenger Bots a new power: unaware of what “Augmented Reality” is and its “Augmented Reality” potential.

AR is providing promising results for top brands and gaining more popularity in the consumer market in 2018. Brands like Amazon, Ikea, Wayfair, ebay, Nike, Sephora and many more topmost companies have integrated AR (Augmented Reality) into their business and marketing strategies. A Deloitte survey found that almost 90 percent of companies with annual revenues of $100 million to $1 billion are already leveraging AR or VR technology. In fact, you are currently using “Augmented Reality” in your life on daily basis, in one form or the other. For instance: Your Facebook Filter, Snapchat Lenses or Google Maps are all some form of Augmented Reality.

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What is the difference between “Augmented Reality” and “Virtual Reality”? “Augmented Reality” is a mysterious sibling of “Virtual Reality”. Unlike “Virtual Reality”, which requires you to inhabit an entirely virtual environment, “Augmented Reality” uses your existing natural environment and simply overlays virtual information on top of it. As both virtual and real worlds harmoniously coexist, users of augmented reality experience a new and improved natural world where virtual information is used as a tool to provide assistance in everyday activities. What is Augmented Reality (AR)? An enhanced version of reality where live direct or indirect views of physical real-world environments are augmented with superimposed computer-generated images over a user’s view of the real-world, thus

enhancing one’s current perception of reality. Simple Explanation of AR The origin of the word augmented is augment, which means to add or enhance something. In the case of Augmented Reality (also called AR), graphics, sounds, and touch feedback are added into our natural world to create an enhanced user experience.

What are the Hardware Requirements for creating “AR experiences and viewing AR Content”?

Social Media Platforms and Brands have taken “Augmented Reality” to Mainstream in 2018… Starting currently, a handful of brands will certainly be able to incorporate AR effects right into their automated messaging bots-- those automated replies you get when you engage with brands on Messenger. The brand-new AR abilities are similar to Snapchat’s recently-launched “shoppable” lenses: brands and services can produce AR experiences suggested to obtain you to buy stuff. Yet in Messenger’s situation, the function isn’t linked to animated face filters. So while Sephora’s bot could guide a potential client to essentially try out various sorts of makeup, Nike can display how a new footwear looks from any angle, and Kia might make cars and truck appear in your driveway.

To create AR content like adding images, videos, audio, text or many other forms of content all you need is desktop and decide which platform you want to use from various easy drag and drop options available today. For more advanced AR development like games or animations you may need some programming skills. In order for you to view AR content you need is a smart phone or pads, which is available in each and every person’s pocket today. The future of AR within next five to ten years will be smart glasses and contact lenses Source: SiliconANGLE enabling mixed reality features combining virtual and augmented reality technologies. The idea, of Facebook, is to integrate these sorts of experiences right into the kinds of conversations already Source: Popular Science occurring by means of Messenger bots. However, the company won’t be able to message the customer until the customer does not allow access to the camera and opt in to view the products in AR experiences. The AR feature will be available if customer has actually previously connected on Messenger with your brand or they click an ad from their News Feed. AR features are restricted to a handful of business for now-- including Kia, Nike, Sephora, and also Asus-but Facebook prepares to ultimately make it offered much more widely. As of now they have a waitlist open for brands who want to integrate AR into their bots starting summer; however the official date is not yet released for making it available for all brands.

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• It opens a whole new world of opportunities to create new business models • Provide more valuable content to customer and stay ahead of your competitors • Above all it can be useful for creating your own blue ocean Level Up! Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook’s Messenger head of Product, says that augmented reality is the next natural step for advertising. “If worldwide previously, brand were all into, create advertisements to get individuals to our shops,’ in today’s world they create ads to get Source:Adage individuals into the augmented reality experiences Messenger is simply the latest system to begin trying out where they could engage with the product in the closest branded augmented reality. Instagram additionally just method to the physical world possible,” he claims. opened its AR effects to third-parties, and Snapchat Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is here to stay has actually lately gone all-in on it, too. with us for long coming years and to take full advantage List of how VR/AR adds value for brands and of these technologies, the key is to hire an expert and consumers start working on integrating these technologies into business or marketing strategies to provide more value • It opens a new channel to communicate with to your customers and enhance business operations. your customers Start reading and learning about VR/AR to understand • Your customers can now try the product even how you can incorporate these technologies to solve before they buy them problems faced by your business .The future is now, if • Your company can take first mover’s advantage you wait for too long it will be much harder for you to to create new strategies to acquire customers get started in 2019 as its already very hard to catch up and generating sales which your competitors with all the advancements happening in the market in may not be using 2018. The early you start the better are the chances to • This technology can help your company build sustain in the market in coming years moving forward. personal relationship with your audience and stay closely connected Tags: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, • With the assistance of augmented reality your Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, AR, VR, company can provide better customer support MR, Marketing, Sales, Customer Engagements • It enhances buyers shopping experiences and helps customers make better decisions • Augmented Reality can also help customers retain and recall your brand once they engage with your products which can result in brand loyalty and increase sales • This technology can also be useful for increasing brand awareness and creating a buzz for your products and services

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The Latest Innovation In Privacy Invasion! Article by Seth Greene

If you’ve been around the “funnel” world any length of time, you know it’s all about two things: traffic and conversion. Russell and his amazing team have created the world’s best software suite around conversion. Of course, I am referring to ClickFunnels and Funnel Scripts. Knowing you need the right traffic to those awesome resources, Russell created Traffic Hacks, a program that is an amazing resource for everything you need to know to drive the right traffic to your funnel.

Why Android? One – believe it or not, they have 60% of the smartphone market, even though you and I both have iPhones. Two – Android is an open operating system, whereas Apple is closed and much harder to penetrate (though our manufacturer is working on it). How can you use this to drive targeted traffic to your funnel (and those of your client)?

What if you could stalk your prospective client’s customers and patients within 100 meters of wherever One of the sections of Traffic Hacks talks about geothey went? targeting, one of the latest trends in marketing. Geotargeting is marketing to your ideal prospect based on where they physically are. In this article, we are going to take that concept to the next level. I want to introduce you to Stalker Tags! Stalker Tags are a Bluetooth powered geo-stalking beacon. Here is how it works. The tag is a device the size of a quarter. Anyone with an Android powered smartphone who comes within a 100-meter radius of the tag gets a push notification on their phone. That 40-character notification can say anything you want, and when the smartphone user touches the If you are a chiropractor, that means your message notification, it can take them to any web can pop up on their smartphone as a push notification address you want. Pretty cool, huh? when they get within 100 meters of a gym, CrossFit box, pain clinic, pharmacy, or martial arts studio!

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If you are a financial advisor, you can advertise to We have a Pilates studio that has gotten 54 new anyone who walks within 100m of an accountant or students over the last three months. Her tags are attorney’s office. outside pharmacies, chiropractor’s offices, and gyms. If you are a realtor, you can promote your business to Is this legal? Yes, for right now. It’s so new the laws anyone who goes into any neighborhood, apartment haven’t been written yet. Will it be outlawed? It is building, subway, airport, or taxi! entirely possible. If enough smart marketers start using it, we could get the privacy people up in arms. When We are hiding the stalker tags inside of a fake rock (the that happens, we will do something else. For now, let’s kind that holds your emergency house key). Then we make some money with it while we can. put the rock in the landscaping of the business whose customers we want to target. What is the investment to start stalking? Currently our manufacturer is producing them in lots of 10. So, ten What if you are a speaker? Put one (without the rock) tags are $500 a month - $50 per month per tag. That in your pocket, and ping everyone at the conference includes the 10 tags, the 10 fake rocks, the account rep you are attending. Take one with you to your next to program the tags for you, the copywriting of the networking event, Chamber meeting, or BNI meeting. push notifications, and monitoring the tags every week What if there was an event you wanted to go to, but to optimize their performance. couldn’t? Have you ever wanted to be in two places at Want to get stalker tags working for you? Go here to once? Now you can! Hire someone from Craigslist for watch a short video explaining how it works in more $10 an hour to go walk around the event for you! Take detail https://goo.gl/ArjtqV one to a sports arena and walk around the luxury box floor and target all those high rollers! Heck, take it to a casino and walk around the high limit area. As you can see, the possibilities are limited to your imagination. I have used them to drive attendance to my speaking slot at a conference. I have used them to drive people to my booth at a trade show. One of my best performing tags is hidden near the ATM at a bank. Think about places your ideal prospects might be sitting, or waiting in line.

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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

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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 will be lost. drop the data, however, you would need to create an account to use it as well. This would be the best secure Storing Files in Cloud Servers option. However, there is still an “if,” you will have to There is another option that I often do, to have easy trust the person who is managing your encrypted cloud access to my files on any devices and I also use the storage. cloud servers to have my files as a backup in case my If not using the secure file box, you can use the cloud hard drive fails and for file sharing as well. It is safe to storage service to upload the file by using the build in store your files in the cloud; however, you would need to file sharing features to send your receiver a link. This know little more about the security of the cloud service is safer than sending the files as an email attachment that you choose from. even though the receiver may not have a strong There are many popular file-sharing services such as security. Sharing the file thru Dropbox would be a little Dropbox, even though you encrypt your data, it won’t bit safer since you would be using their https, so others make your file completely private. The Dropbox service would not see the files over the network and would allows accessing files to do things like previews and remove your files as soon the receiver receives it and downloads, however, Dropbox can still see your files. allow other users to share and collaborate your files. There is another service SpiderOak One Backup, is in favor of added security for your files encryption, however, you are still giving them control over your files to their service. And the service can choose who can 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.

It is your choice what you choose to do with your files and taking the chances, as this is the reality of this technology world. At least you can keep your sensitive information with some security and pray that others do their part.

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