Andrew: Hey there freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warmer. I am the founder of Mixergy.com. I have some got very serious face on. I have got to relax. It’s just an interview. It’s not, I don’t know, it’s not school. All right. You know what this whole site here is about. I bring about successful entrepreneurs to talk about how they did. Usually it’s tech entrepreneurs who build software. But I also would like to bring on people who teach. Because, I think that the legacy that teachers leave is one that will long outlast them. Anyway, I have had people on here to talk about how they built businesses that teach software. How they built businesses that teach Business.
But, can you really build a business online; I mean digitally that teaches something physical. Well, today’s guest shows that yes you can. So I invited him here to teach how he did it. His name is Tim Larkin. He is the founder of Target Focus Training, a self-defense system that shows regular people how to protect themselves. And the social bang here is sponsored by, well a site that I had a hand in creating. It’s called AndrewsWelcomeGate.com. If you are in the business of getting email Addresses, I will tell you later why you have to check out AndrewsWelcomeGate.com. But first Tim, welcome.
Tim: Hey, Thanks for having me.
Andrew: Hey, I am on your site right now, TargetFocusTraining.com. What kind of revenues are you doing teaching people off the fence?
Tim: We are doing anywhere between, like last year was a pretty good year on our products, on just our product sales. We did five and half million last year.
Andrew: Five and half million dollars in sales. You are actually selling DVDs right.
Tim: Yeah, we sell DVDs. We sell, we started doing digital DVDs last year and half. And that’s been very successful.
Andrew: And I see from the upper right corner, you have got a membership site. That’s on 5secondsurvival.com
Tim: That is one of our joint ventures that we do. And we are launching. We have just launched. It’s not announced yet. But we have just launched a virtual training center.
Andrew: Where people can subscribe on a monthly basis. But that’s not even where the bulk of the revenue is coming from because that’s new. It’s not even the digital downloads. It’s the physical DVDs so far and now you are transitioning. Wow. And you have been doing this since before the internet, right.
Tim: Yeah. That’s where I learned most of it. And may be Internet made a lot easier for my work too.
Andrew: You know, I talk sometimes about a page that I have that was especially good at converting. Do you remember old world, old world like papers old world. Do you remember one of your paper based long formats that was especially successful that you are proud of it and remember to this day.
Tim: Yeah, well, you know, that was the beauty of learning. You know I am very thankful that I was able to learn direct marketing prior to the Internet. Because when it was paper and [??]. When it was mail, when you had to actually pay, you have to be very careful of what you wrote, where was it and you knew. I mean you didn’t have the immediacy of the Internet, But you quirkily knew by your bank account whether or not something was successful or not. And it is very different. One thing I have been noticing about the Internet marketing have become riser or loser with a copy and a lot lose here with the results. But you can still kind of get marginal results with a sub-standard copy.
Andrew: You know what. Yours seems so crisp and not formal. I wouldn’t have even thought of it as copy at all until I saw your pre Interview notes. I didn’t think of you as a copy writer. Now I understand why it sounds so crisp and so natural. It’s because there is good copy writing experience behind it.
Tim: Yeah. I mean I have a terrific partner that we write that and he and I have been doing this for Twenty years. And you know, you really have to. You have to make sure that in a competitive market that you are clear with your message and clear with what you are offering, because there is just so many options out there. And
Andrew: I am sorry to touch you off. I remember talking to one entrepreneur who used to be in old direct mail business. And he said when he discovered that he can create the illusion of somebody having left the coffee stain a coffee mug stain on an envelope that he sent out. That increased open rates and got him more results because people would see an envelope, looks like somebody in the family had already put a coffee cup on it and it just felt like it was touched and handled , then they have to open it. Do you remember anything if not that gimmicking necessarily but anything back from those old paper days that to this day remember worked and we could learn from.
Tim: One of the biggest things was the personalization, the using of [??], you know, you are banging out on a type writer, you know, you are writing a letter to your mom. And also with us the big thing for open rates was the envelope itself looked like somebody had type written your letter. We took it one step further and we actually bring it in. The biggest thing for me was I had probably about seven women at one time all handwriting the addresses to everything. That was huge. That increased us. Probably sometimes upwards of another 5% of open rate.
Andrew: Oh. Wow. And you know what’s interesting about you is you’re not a guy who comes from that background. You have a military background.
Tim: Absolutely.
Andrew: What did you do in the military?
Tim: I started out … I wanted to be a Seal officer and I was injured. I was injured a couple of weeks prior to graduation and it crushed all my dreams. They switched me over and they kept me in the Seal community but I had to be an intelligence officer and that got me involved in the hand to hand combat things. The command that I was at and it was a very different path to where I wanted to be. It worked out very well for me but it was not planned out.
Andrew: What does it mean to be an intelligence officer? What kind of intelligence did you do in the Navy?
Tim: I did special operations intelligence and for the Seal teams, it was particularly target holders and when I was in, it was called low intensity conflict. And basically we would gather intelligence on potential targets and make sure that the teams had all the information they needed should they be called to do the mission. And so it was really good. It was a lot of research but researching it from a very specific aspect of special operations so.
Andrew: Example? Do you have an example of something you researched?
Tim: Yes. Well we would research . . . I went into Panama probably seven or eight times prior to the actual time when we went into Panama and our target folders were such where we were constantly updating things as to what type of cars were coming in. What the guard profile was. Movements. It was fascinating.
Andrew: Guard profiles. So who potentially would be guarding?
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: And then what would you have in there? What would you have in the guard profile?
Tim: You would watch their demeanor. You’d know obviously when they changed guard. Were they alert? Whether or not they carried different weapons because often times it wasn’t standardized. You’d see some guys would have some weapons and other guys would have different weapons. And then the alertness. We found that the profile might not have known who was inside the building but we could tell by the integrity or the expertise of the security personnel around we’d know, hey, wait a minute. This is somebody serious because these guys are on top of it. They understand what they’re doing.
Andrew: I see. And then from there you started training large corporations in self-defense. How did you get into that? How do you make the leap from military to that?
Tim: Well when I was in, I came in contact . . . We were doing hand to hand combat. We were looking at hand to hand combat or redoing it for special operations community. The Seals that were there brought me in. I had a martial arts background and I had no business, no business, being there other than I was a young guy and I was confident and I made a really good kind of meat puppet for these older guys to knock around. And they liked me so I was very, very fortunate to be involved in this.
Andrew: So they’re using you for training. These Seals who, they have the job at these Fortune 500 companies. They’re bringing this guy Tim in. Hey, Tim. Will you spar with our clients?
Tim: No. This is actually in the military itself. And what happened was we trained, we ended up changing the way Special Operations looked at the subject matter. We trained over 250 Special Operations personnel and those guys went off and so afterwards I became an instructor with the guy that put the original program together and all of the sudden he started getting requests from a lot of Fortune 500’s and that’s when I started training them. Essentially at first it was just for typical corporate protection. Guys going in to remote areas to protect pipelines. Things of that nature.
Andrew: I see. And their companies pay you to train them so that they’re a little prepared.
Tim: Absolutely. And the CEOs and the corporate executives started getting training because they were worried about kidnapping and things like that. They went through the training and then they wanted their families trained and that’s how we started to get into the civilian market. It was really an indirect path to the civilian market.
Andrew: And this is the early to mid ’90s.
Tim: Yes. This is actually late ’80s to very early ’90s.
Andrew: And then how do you go from that to creating information products?
Tim: We came across a group that was doing supplements. They were doing direct marketing of supplements. They came by the Seals program because some of the Seals were using their supplement products and they saw what we were doing. They saw the hand to hand combat training that we were doing. They thought it was fascinating and they asked us if we had ever put a product together and we hadn’t. They said, “Well, hey, would you mind doing one product.
And so we did one product. The deal we had was a one-time deal. We owned all the intellectual property. They could market it once. Once we saw that people actually responded to this, and the whole direct marketing was opened up to me at that point and I realized that something that I thought was very specific to the military, very extreme needs was actually a huge interest to a good portion of the civilian clients that are looking for self-defense. So it was a really amazing marketing education.
Andrew: What was in that product?
Tim: It was just basic information on injury to the human body.
Andrew: A DVD?
Tim: Yeah. Well no, back then it was VHS tape.
Andrew: It was a VHS tape where you taught people how to injure others an protect themselves from being injured.
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: I see. Okay, and then when they marketed it I imagine the magic for you must have felt like it came from the marketing. They took this thing that you created and they suddenly turned it into dollar bills.
Tim: Well what’s interesting is you quickly see… Marketing gets a very bad rap especially when you hear direct marketing. A lot of people associate it with substandard products, but what you realize is if you have a quality product you have to get your message out and direct marketing messages are fantastic because when you look at the most successful people in the past in advertising have been direct marketers, and it’s very important that those skill sets are used. And it’s even more important today with the technology options that you have that you realize those principles and you put those principles into your market.
Andrew: Do you remember what they did, what these original marketers who came from a supplement background did to turn your VHS into sales?
Tim: It was the story. It was the who we were. It was incorporating that, and it was a very powerful story. My partner at the time had a very good background. He was from the Vietnam era and it was a good story. So they wove the story in to say how this system was developed. It was pretty sexy when you think about it. A Vietnam vet gets discovered by an intelligence officer who Green Zoned into the most elite unit at the time, gets adopted, they create this secret fighting program and it sounds fascinating, but it was all true.
Andrew: I see where a non-marketer might say here is a great VHS that will teach you how to protect yourself in case somebody attacks you even if you are not an experienced person. They said no, that’s not where it starts. It starts with the background. It includes telling your story. I got it. That is interesting and it’s helpful. You then take that back. You have your own DVD back in your own possession, the intellectual property. It’s time for you to start selling. How did you start selling?
Tim: We just started to do the same thing. We realized that in the [inaudible 2:55] the market, everybody was doing one-off products. So you do this type of fighting, that type of fighting. Nobody actually developed a true system of instruction, and so what we did was we just instead of going shallow and having multiple instructors with their own systems, we took our system which was a very dense system and we started doing multiple products. We would do basic hand-to-hand. We’d then look at weapons training which was extremely important. We’d look at all aspects of self-defense where people had concerns. And we would do products, just go deep on those products and deliver a training system with real straightforward information.
Andrew: And then how did you start selling it? You didn’t have any experience in that.
Tim: No, not at all. What I did was I started reading ads that I really liked. I did the basics. Well to me, back then they were basics. Today, a lot of times… I just heard a podcast yesterday where they were rediscovering The Robert Collier Letter Book, which is a fantastic marketing book. It’s an old book. It will teach you a hell of a lot about how people think and how they respond. But I started reading all the texts, the Ogleby’s [SP] texts, Scientifically Advertising, all these great old tools that really teach you how to tell the message, sell the story, and really make a compelling offer to your clients. But I didn’t have the skills sets then.
I found one ad in particular that I read in an airline magazine. I really liked the way the writer wrote it. It was a very straightforward, great content piece, but it really good call to action. I contacted the guy who owned the product. He gave me the contact at the copywriter and I called the guy up directly and we’ve had now about a 26 year relationship.
Andrew: Oh, you’re still connected to the writer?
Tim: Still connected, yeah.
Andrew: Who was that writer?
Tim: He is my partner, Ralph Tralton [SP].
Andrew: Ah, okay.
Tim: Yeah, he’s a great guy.
Andrew: And you had a different partner at the time when you started?
Tim: Oh, the partner that I had for the physical training was…the instructor’s name was Jerry Peterson [sp]. He was a great guy, he was my original instructor. We parted ways around ’99, and he’s gone off and done his own thing. My focus was more about, kind of being more open source, I guess is what you’d say. I’m a big believer in sharing a lot of content, and making sure the client has a real good understanding prior to that sale of what’s being offered.
Andrew: So, now you did your own campaign, you got to finally test some of the ideas that you’d been reading about copywriting, you hired a great copywriter to give you what you liked, and your orders started coming in, right?
Tim: Right.
Andrew: What was the next step in developing the business?
Tim: Well then you realize is, I mean, I don’t, you know, most of the people that are out there that probably had their business, I mean, you still have, you go through that original amazement of your first sale. You know, when money actually comes in. You know, back then it literally came in your mailbox. You know, people were sending in orders, and not credit cards. And then you realize, ok well, hey, people are interested in this, so now what do we do?
Well, you know, back then I had to set up our own direct marketing setup. I needed my own [??] shop. So I had, thought, we would print all of our, we would do all our own printing, but we had a printer. But we’d print all our own stuff, and we would stuff all our own envelopes, and we’d control our mail. All the way to dropping it off, literally, at the post office, watching them put it into the right bins, and do the right thing.
Because, you know, that was a whole education in itself, whether you would send it first class or third class. I know this sounds like ancient technology to everybody, but you’ve got to realize, every word we wrote, we were betting real money on it. Meaning, we weren’t just throwing it out there to see what the response was like you can with the internet a lot of times.
Andrew: So how do you test it Tim? Because I know now, if I have an off-the-wall idea for an e-mail, I can send it to a small portion of my list, and see by the afternoon, if I send it in the morning, how effective it is. What did you do back then to keep from wasting money?
Tim: You’d usually go to your house list, you’d get a small mailing. And back then, like, a small mailing back then was probably 1000 people. To really, to get real good numbers you wanted to go about, like, 5000 people. And, you know, you’d rent a list, if you didn’t have a house list, you’d rent a list of interested buyers, and you’d test. You’d test your headline.
Andrew: I see, so you do 1000 tests, 1000 person test, I don’t remember what postage was at the time, but let’s say 25 cents, so you’re talking about 2,500 bucks?
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: Right? To send, wait, 1000 is $250.
Tim: $250.
Andrew: 250 bucks, plus some paper, for under 1000 bucks you have your test and your, and you know whether it’s worth blowing it out to the rest of your list, and then maybe even renting similar lists, and expanding to there?
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: Got it.
Tim: Yes, a very disciplined approach, you were extremely careful how you wrote your copy, how you positioned things, and your call-to-actions.
Andrew: How long was it before you created a second product after that first one?
Tim: We created that within, it was a $99, I remember, our first one was a $99 product. And it was doing great, and we were really worried because the next product was going to be $200, I think $257 it was. And I remember, me, going, oh my gosh, that’s, you know, nobody’s going to buy something for $257. Even though it was a great product, I just thought, you know, it’s that fear for asking what you’re worth, you know, and the product really was worth money, and…
Andrew: What made it worth that money?
Tim: It was such a unique approach back then to how you dealt with weapons, basically, in this world. You know, in my very specific niche, it was…I basically gave you a very FedEx approach to protecting yourself. You know, you paid more for it but you got it right away. We cut through to direct principles that people could understand. And we were able to verify it because, of course, we had the luxury back then, we were testing all our material with the military, and so we had real results. Coming right back in to the points…
Andrew: You mean that the actual training worked because it worked for the military?
Tim: Not only did it work for the military, but we had guys, at that time, this was prior to the wars that we have going on now, but guys were still going out doing action, and they’d come back with feedback of what worked and what didn’t work. And that was great.
Andrew: At what point did you start going after regular people, pregnant housewife, for example?
Tim: Where it really started to happen was after 911.
Andrew: I see, so before then it was mostly guys who were physically fit, wanted to get better training?
Tim: It was mostly straight martial artists. You know, it…if there were civilians they probably came through the martial arts community to martial arts magazines at the time. The USC back then wasn’t as big as it is now, the mixed martial arts. So it was more traditional martial arts magazines that were out there. Those were where we were doing most of our advertising.
We’re also doing some in the gun magazines, you know, firearms enthusiasts. And a couple in the, how do you say it, like, survivalists modes, like Soldier of Fortune, and groups like that. The ad costs were reasonable, and we could get a really nice return on those. And that’s where we really cut our teeth.
And then after 911 there was a general global awareness that violence, essentially, could enter your life. And people were far more interested in looking at the topic, people who never had had an interest in self- protection or self-defense. And we started to get influx of those types of people coming, and we started providing products that really spoke to those needs.
Andrew: When you were aiming towards guys in the martial arts magazines, was the ad the sell, or was the ad a call to action, or a call to request more information, and then you had them on your list, and then you sold to them?
Tim: We did, really, it was a multi-step process. So it was a call to action for a special report. So we’d get them, there would be a, say, a one page ad, where there would be an 800 number and also…an 800 number that sent them to a voicemail, recorded voicemail, gave a short message to them thanking them. And then they left their information, we then sent out the report. I think that first report we sent out was a 12 page report, and then that’s how we’d ask for the sell. And then we could call you…back then it was either an 800 number or we had to send it by mail. And, you know, a call center or that, as prior to, obviously, you know, being able to buy online. So that was it.
Andrew: I see, and then when 911 happened, and I remember there was a general fear. I remember, actually, the New York Post scaring me with a cover about how Saddam Hussein is sending people to New York with bombs in suitcases. And I thought, whoa, this is the next thing that going to hit us here in New York? So I get it, the atmosphere changed, and people were becoming more aware of the need to defend themselves. How did you…what did you do about that? How did you change your focus?
Tim: Well, for me, it really was a very personal situation. I was training in New York, literally, you know, blocks from the World Trade, World…
Andrew: World Trade Center.
Tim: Thank you, World Trade Center, September 8th and 9th. I flew home to Vegas on the 10th, woke up the morning of the 11th, on Tuesday, and where I had been training was no longer in existence. It literally got wiped out in that. In that, I was training a bunch of Wall Street execs, and I was showing, a lot of them were international travelers, and I showed them all the things you could bring onto an airplane, you know, box-cutters, I was telling them all this stuff that you could do, that people implement for self-defense tools.
And I also showed them the potentiality of what could happen on an airline, and they were shocked by it. I filmed it, and it was only being filmed for them. It was a thing just for those individuals, it was going to be their own thing, I never intended on releasing it. They came to me after that, and they said, “You’ve got to release this. You’ve got to show people. We can’t believe what you were telling us, literally, two days before this happened.”
And so it was what we, it was really our 911 product. We didn’t release it obviously. It was really, you had to be very careful after 911, to try to capitalize on anything, and that was not the intent at all. But when the requests started coming in, that was the product that we went out with. We called it the New York tapes, and that’s where the real response started to come in from the civilian community.
Andrew: How did you promote it? How did the civilian community even know it existed?
Tim: That’s where we started really doing a website. That’s where the website really started to take off. People went online a lot more looking for information. I had a really, you know, I’d done a lot of interviews in the martial arts magazines, people knew of me, I would speak out on certain self-protection issues. So it’s pretty easy to find, and all that came back. All that groundwork that I laid during that time doing interviews and being available for these things really came back to help me. Because when people are searching for the information, you know, they liked what they heard from me. They liked the message, they liked the approach…
Andrew: …This is…was the original site also a target, FocusTraining.com?
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: It was?
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: I’m actually on there. I thought you started it, the orig- …I’m on the archive version of the site. I thought you launched in 2003, about two years after 911?
Tim: No we actually had a site before that, that became, that was like a three page site.
Andrew: Also on the same URL?
Tim: Yes. That one…
Andrew: …Okay.
Tim: We’ve been going since then.
Andrew: And so people were searching, and they found you on that site?
Tim: Yes, they found us. They found me originally on that, and then we also had a list from my old company that we were mailing to, and those people of course were called back, plus, you know, for more information.
It was interesting, a lot of the guys that were kind of, you know, just the martial artists, started sharing information, they started saying…because all their friends who normally weren’t looking at self- protection or self-defense, they were looking for information, a lot of them would say, “Hey listen, if you want to save time, and really get the real information for what you’re asking, you want to go see what these guys are all about.” He goes, “Their really set up for people who don’t have a lot of time, but really want the information that’s pertinent to them.”
Andrew: Let me do a quick plug here, and then come back and ask you about what happened with your co-founder, and about, maybe, the first million-dollar sales year, and then how you built from there.
But first, you guys out there in the audience, you heard me talk to Tim about how, what his sales process was, first offer a report, then allow people to buy from you. Well we kind of do that online too, except we don’t offer a report in, well, on other people’s sites, we often offer it on our own site. We collect the e-mail address, and then we try to sell, or we introduce people to our product.
Well, we have a great page here internally here at Mixergy that allows you to collect e-mail addresses, we believe, faster than any other page, certainly faster than any other page we’ve ever tested. And it took me a couple of years to get it together, it works now, and I want to make it available to you. It’s a template that is based on our best converting page, and I want to introduce it to you and allow you to use it on your site.
Here it is, just go to AndrewsWelcomeGate.com. So, if you want to turn your traffic into e-mail addresses, into leads that you can then follow up with, and build a relationship with, there’s no better page that I know of than AndrewsWelcomeGate.com.
And when you go to that you are eligible, you’ll see we did in partnership with a great company, with LeadPages.net, so they know conversions, they’ll power it up and make sure it works for you, even if you don’t know the first thing about software, they will make it work for you. I know because I’ve seen them do it for so many people in the audience now.
And the cool thing is, even though others in the audience are using my page, they’re getting the high conversions, and so am I, it’s not reducing my conversion rate. The page just works. Go to AndrewsWelcomeGate.com, sign up and check it out.
Tim, losing your co-founder was a tough challenge for you. Things were going great, and then what happened?
Tim: Yes, you know, it’s funny, sometimes I think people believe their own advertising, you know, their own hype. He got very paranoid with some of the people around him. I think he was a, I think it was almost a fear of success. And for me it was a real quandary because I was the guy, I wasn’t the front guy, you know. Like I said, I told you, I got injured, I don’t have this amazing military record of combat, you know, combat history or anything at this point. I’ve done a couple of things, but nothing compared to what he had in Vietnam, and gravitas that came from.
Andrew: And so when you guys were promoting, it was mostly him being promoted? More…
Tim: Yes, him… [??]…
Andrew: …so than you?
Tim: Yes, it was mostly him being promoted, and so then I realized that the…I was freed up at that point, because there, he was not training. Like, the original products that we put out, he would always leave some information off, you know, that way. Because his whole thought process was, well, the products will interest people, but I don’t want to give them all the information because I want them to come to me and pay money for a high- priced seminar, and that’s where I’ll give them more information.
Andrew: I see, because, that is something that I noticed when I was looking at the 2003 version of your site, which I’m checking out right now. Under products training, there are a lot of in person events, maybe more even than DVDs.
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: Right?
Tim: Yes, back then that was the big deal, and it still is, don’t get me wrong. I mean, I treat it as a very, as a separate business on the live training aspect of it. But what the reality is, you know, for every person that can come and train with me live, there’s 1000 people that want the information, and that’s why we have to put out really good…[??]…
Andrew: …I see, he wasn’t willing to put it all out there on DVD and digital format, you were. How did you guys separate? It’s hard to separate from a partner?
Tim: Yes, well it wasn’t pleasant, it was…I’m thankful every day I met him, he gave me amazing skill sets, and he’s the reason I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s sad that we’re not, I mean, he’s not enjoying the success that we’ve been able to build with Target Focus training. But it was one of those deals where, literally, he decided that he just wanted to focus on him and his family members running the business, and he gave, basically gave me a check for 15-…we were doing, at that time we were doing millions, and he gave me a check for my 30%, for $1,500. And…
Andrew: …That’s it, and then you were bought out of the business?
Tim: Bought out of the business, yes, I didn’t have any voting rights or anything. I inherently trusted, you know, the individual for that. But he knew I was going through a divorce at the time, and I didn’t have a lot of assets to fight at that thing. A lot of things were tied up. And so he just kind of did a power play and we parted ways. I was not going to really get into business. I was going to give it to him, and then, all of a sudden, a lot of people started contacting me saying, “Hey, he’s not training as much. He’s not responding to these requests. Would you train? Would you [??]”
I contacted him, said, “Hey, can we work out some kind of a deal where I can still use [??]. We built this together. It’s ridiculous for me to go call it something else.” And he basically told me “No, and as a matter of fact you can’t even tell people that you need me.” We were very childish, but we moved past that and I moved past that and I realized, “Okay, if the slate’s blank, what would I do?” And really, the only difference that I would really say that I took to the whole approach was client focus. I want to train people the way I wish I was trained. I want to give them the information the way I wish I had seen –
Andrew: But was the original business called Target Focus Training also?
Tim: No.
Andrew: No. I see. So you re-named it. What was the original business called?
Tim: It was SCARS –
Andrew: SCARS.
Tim: – It was called, yeah.
Andrew: And he still owns SCARS to this day and he still runs SCARS right now.
Tim: Yeah, he still does it and I’ve been very open about it. He just doesn’t like when I talk about, you know.
Andrew: [laughs]
Tim: Yeah. But I think probably the biggest change is, we were very client-focused, meaning I wanted the clients to have the information exactly the way I did. We’re constantly with the methods. Our principles are always rock-solid and we stayed there. But I think what people appreciate about our products, and why we’re so successful is because we constantly see that, if we find a better method of getting you the information, we put it into our products. If you look at my products from the early 2000s to now, you can see the progression of methods. With information, as far as principles, has always been the same information. But you can see that, “Hey, wow, they are showing this differently now.” The clients are getting a better –
Andrew: Yeah, one thing that I noticed is, over the years, you went from using the site as a way of selling exclusively and directly, right down to those old ‘press “play” to hear the sales pitch’ widgets that were popular at the time with info products, to today you have a blog that’s fully engaging, that has an audience, that has people who read it, I’m sure without any intention of buying, and it’s more about that even. In fact, it took me a little while to see, where are the sales pitches? How do I find those?
Tim: On Target Focus Training?
Andrew: Yeah. It’s not as big a sell-directly. Obviously I can see on the right, yeah, I get the free report, which I understand will lead me to a closer relationship with you and over time you’ll sell. But the blog is more engaging, I think, than anything else and I can see that change.
Tim: Yeah. And that’s been a highly effective approach for us, because in this market place people are very savvy. They know what’s out there and so you can’t lead them to a quick sale anymore. You have to let them know who you are. You have to give them real information. I give away probably 90 percent of what’s in the products.
Andrew: Here’s one post that I think shows the way that you write. There is one called “Flipping a Coin or Surviving by Choice.” And you have a video in there of a woman who works at a copy center and, suddenly, a guy comes in and just looks like he’s reaching in his pocket, and wham! Punches her in the face, knocks her out, and goes and robs her. That is more about sending out a message about what you stand for and the way you [??] your world view, that it’s a dangerous world and we need to know how to protect ourselves, then it is about selling directly.
Tim: Yeah. I find that the biggest thing for us is, we use as much objective video of real acts of violence to show people what we’re talking about. I don’t believe in just trying to make people fear for fear’s sake at all. What I try to do is I try to say, ‘Hey, there’s
a pattern you probably are participating in right now that can put you at risk.’ And my main goal is to make sure that people avoid the avoidable. And then when you can’t avoid the avoidable, when violence is imminent, that’s where the products come in.
That’s where I can help you as far as what to do when you are facing grievous bodily harm and you have to fight. But you can share a heck of a lot of information for people and tell them how to behave better, how to live better lives, and really minimize their chances for violence. We do that through the blog, I do that through interviews like this even though our focus is a little bit different here. I try to get all that out there and what I found is, by sharing that information, boy, people go out of their way to support you. It’s been really, really rewarding that way.
Andrew: What’s another post? This one was written by Kathy on staff, right? Actually, who is Kathy?
Tim: Kathy knows our operations.
Andrew: I see. So what’s another post that shows the way that you explain your message today?
Tim: Well there’s another way. Visually. I found YouTube to be really, really good. I did one on a shooting in Las Vegas, a [??] shooting on my YouTube channel and that’s really great because I do two things. I show an incident and then I go in studio and actually show people and walk them through it and so it gives people an idea to see how do I look at a subject and how do I share information and I give them a really relevant take away and there’s a comfort level. They can say, “Okay. This is how this individual delivers the information”. This is how I go because I really feel the more you share that type of information the more people will want to seek you out and say, “Okay. I want to train with this person. I want to get one of their products. I want more information”.
Andrew: Are you a numbers guy to the point where you’ll know how many orders you get from a blog post like flipping a coin?
Tim: No.
Andrew: No. You just know we put this out there. Your biggest source of customers, from what I understand, doesn’t come from there. It comes from paid ads?
Tim: I do. I do. Paid ads we get and then also joint ventures are huge. That’s why I can afford to be a little behind the times when it comes to my website. My website could be slicker. There’s some things that I probably would improve image wise and do things but it’s a very functional site for what we do. We get great results and again, often times when we try to improve the visuals, the sales have gone down and it’s just one of those things and you cannot argue with results. You have to be okay with that idea.
Andrew: It’s a site worth looking at because I mean, even if someone’s not interested in self-defense, because it is just a functional site. Not ugly. Not slick, just functional.
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: Just feels like I know what I’m getting when I’m on there and I like that about it. What about these joint ventures? Is the Blaze a joint venture of yours?
Tim: Blaze started out as a request for training and . . .
Andrew: This is Glenn Beck’s company. He and his company asked you to come out and train their people?
Tim: No. Glenn actually had a situation that he did experience and he found out me through I think Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is another client of mine. Tony had another situation and these guys came to me personally. I train a lot of people in that area. Most of the time you have to do it through confidentiality.
Andrew: What’s the type of training that Tony Robbins had? That you helped him.
Tim: It was a situation of violence.
Andrew: Somebody attacked him?
Tim: Not him. He was more worried about a family member.
Andrew: I see. Where they attacked or did he think they might be attacked?
Tim: It was close.
Andrew: I see. And he said, “I’m hiring you to” . . .
Tim: Well both . . . Yes. Glenn was the same thing. What’s interesting is what I try to tell people all the time. Often times people will look at the surface and they’ll see a Tony Robbins or they’ll see a Glenn Beck and then they’ll look at the image or they’ll look at the politics behind the person. I see everybody as a person and one thing I know about violence is it goes across all demographics and it affects everybody from the very poor to the very rich. From somebody on the right to somebody on the left. So my client is coming to me for those needs and that’s how these guys originally came. Glenn became a very big supporter and really wanted to get it out to his people and we’ve had a great association with him and Blaze. It’s been wildly successful.
Andrew: I see. I bet because not only is he sending traffic to you, he’s also on your sales pages. It’s him in the video. Often at the top or otherwise close to the top. What’s that relationship like? How does he . . . What’s his financial compensation?
Tim: We just do it through a [??] . . . He gives a really good deal on the advertising just because of the training. I trained his family.
Andrew: You mean you buy ads on the Blaze?
Tim: Yes. Through the Blaze, yes.
Andrew: And that’s how he gets compensated. He doesn’t get a share of sales that originate from sales pages on your site where his videos appear?
Tim: No. It’s not like a true joint venture on that. It’s just more of an advertising but we get a lot more than your traditional advertising. Say I wanted another show. Say I wanted like, I don’t know, Rush Limbaugh or something like that. I wouldn’t get the personalization that Glenn . . .
Andrew: No. Rush Limbaugh is not going to shoot a video for you that you could then put on your website. Not likely. But Glenn Beck, because of your ad spend, does do that.
Tim: Not only that. He just does it because he believes in the product. He really does. He’s invited me to participate in events that made no sense, no financial reward to him. So that’s kind of cool on that aspect.
Andrew: I saw that. And on the video he says, “This is the guy who helped my family”, something like that. So what is the best joint venture that you have?
Tim: We have two fire arms groups that have been really good for us. Front Sight is one of them and then United States Concealed Carry. They’re very large organizations. People in the firearms community, especially people that are in concealed carry, are very aware when they don’t have access to their gun or they’re also very aware that things can happen so fast that they can’t get to their gun.
And so they’re very exposed a lot of times and we specialize in dealing with situations like that and that message has really resonated. And those joint ventures have been fantastic. We probably do four or five events with each group a year and they’ve all been just great promotions.
Andrew: And the way it works is you help them at their events. They send people over to you and they get a cut whenever someone buys.
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: Who sets that up at your organization? Are you the guy to do that or is there someone else who does that?
Tim: I’ve made all the initial contacts with everybody because I know everybody in the industry.
Andrew: But the software that goes into running it and making sure that they get paid, that’s not you?
Tim: I am involved in all of that but not in a day-to-day. No. That’s what my staff takes care of. I have some really great people that I turn that over to who make sure that . . . We use Infusionsoft right now. We have really good affiliate programs that track everything.
Andrew: I see. So you’re just using the built in Infusionsoft affiliate program for Front Sight and U.S. Conceal and Carry.
Tim: On some things that we’re doing. Often times the one thing that I think the reason people like working with me is I make sure
and I are really good about, making sure that we make it as easy for our partners as possible meaning we do the bulk of the work. We’ll make sure that the contact … I will think through. Okay. What message do I want for this group and what do I want to share with them?
So I’ll get the videos together. We’ll create all of the email aspects of it. We’ll do that. We also make sure that they get paid on time. We personally make sure that we sign checks, send them to them and do that because these relationships are very important to us but we go that extra mile to make sure it’s really, really easy to work with us. I would say that to everybody. Affiliate programs can be okay but they are kind of half-assed. It’s that personalization of actually having the result. If you want to do really well you find out who your good JV partners are and you really court them and you really make it as easy
Andrew: What’s one thing that you’ve done that no one else would do to court an affiliate or to court as you say, a joint venture partner?
Tim: Usually what we do is we, from what everybody tells us is, we are completely transparent. We share any information that they want. They know exactly what sales come in. Where it’s at. We also let them participate in up sells. We let them participate in other projects. We are extremely fair along the way and
Andrew: So you’re saying if somebody buys an up sell from you the originating source of that traffic will get a cut of that up sell.
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: Do you do anything like send them handwritten letters or hire someone to hand write letters on behalf
Tim: I have personal relationships with all these guys. I call them up. I literally call them up and give . . . And they are actually friends of mine. I’m in a couple of business groups with two of my partners. We just run into each other that way. And I think it’s really, really important that you have those relationships with people because I think egos can get in the way a lot of times.
I think people are kind of surprised that I’m not the typical self-defense, martial arts guy where I’m thumping my chest all the time and I’m the guru and all of that. I’m very focused. The same way that I treat one of my clients, I treat my JV partner the same way. I want to make sure that I am focused on their needs; that they’re getting what they want; that they’re getting a return and we get them huge returns. They are very excited to do projects with us.
Andrew: What’s the number one page on your site for getting customers?
Tim: The number one page?
Andrew: Yes. What’s the one that we can take a look at together here?
Tim: I would probably say if you want to see, it’s really a landing page so I would say go to http://www.5secondsurvival.com.
Andrew: Okay. I’m on it. The number 5secondsurvival. It takes me to a page with Glenn Beck’s video at the top. You use Wistea like we do. Scroll down. It has a letter written on behalf of Glenn Beck. No. It’s not. This is one with a letter written by you, isn’t it?
Tim: Yes. It’s [??] it takes you through. Glenn talks about us and then we get right into who we are, what we are and this is what we do. This is for most of the people that come in through Glenn Beck.
Andrew: I could see how this could work for Glenn Beck. I take it back. It’s not written by you or at least it’s signed by Glenn Beck. It’s his letter and I can see how that would be powerful for him. What else should I be noticing about this as someone who is interested in copyrighting and good sales letters?
Tim: It is getting . . . What’s really important, especially when you do any sort of a joint venture or you are utilizing even a paid advertisement, if you can get the personality to write about you, it will just sky rocket your things because he already has the trust of that particular group and Glenn’s people, if you like Glenn Beck, you really like Glenn Beck. And you get that same thing . . . I had a non-paid situation with Tony Robbins. He wrote the forward to my last book and Tony has gone out and promoted me a lot of times but it’s the fact that Tony talks about me and says things about me, that his people really respond to it.
Andrew: And then you’ve got him too on the bottom of this sales page somewhere. There it is.
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: Do you have a more generic sales page that we can look at to try to understand you process?
Tim: Let’s see. Which one would you pull up? If you go to my main site you can go to where it says Live Training.
Andrew: I’m going back. If anyone wants to follow along, it’s just http://www.targetfocustraining.com and Live Training is, where is that on the page now?
Tim: It should be under . . . Let me pull it up real quick. It should be right there under Training probably and then there’s Live.
Andrew: I see. Okay. So there’s Training at the top and then there’s a section under that that says Live Training.
Tim: Yes. And then you click on Live Training and you’ll see the letter.
Andrew: This is the one by Bryan Knack?
Tim: That’s his testimonial.
Andrew: Got it. Okay. So that letter, if I’m looking at the right one it says, “Now, attend the only self-defense training in the world that 100% guarantees you are the one who safely walks away from a life-or-death confrontation. Discover the amazing program anyone can learn in less than 18 hours. What is it about this that we can take away? That we can learn from?
Tim: There’s a couple of things when you look at it. First of all we clearly state at depth with the headline. And that headline we worked on for a long time and so far this is our control. This is the one we get the best results on. It’s a little bit longer than what a lot of people tell you but again you just have to go with results and then you’ll notice we are able to embed the video testimonials, the customer video testimonials as they come down and that really, really helps when you do that.
One we have, if you click on the video Customer Comments, it starts out with all different demographics. It goes on for about ten minutes. Some people want that. Other people will just read the headline, they’ll read the sub-head and then they’ll go right down to the order. Where can they order? Right there. And you have to make sure that you do that. The whole idea is that I want to give people all the information they need to make that decision whether or not they want to attend.
I want to make it really easy for them so that they can just sit there and see, hey, here’s all the different
where you can do it. And then at the top where you’ll see is really popular is the No Location. There’s a lot of people that said, “Hey I know I want to attend but I don’t know when or where so I’m going to choose No Location”.
Andrew: Got you. You’re talking about the top of the section that allows people to pick the date and the location of the event. Las Vegas, for example, is January 18-19. Another one, February 8-9. That one is sold out and a lot of them seem sold out but we can email you for the standby list. You close them out pretty soon just so you can create the sense of demand.
Tim: No. We close them out because they . . .
Andrew: They really do just [??] like that.
Tim: Yes. I know that’s a thing. Listen. I use a lot of direct marketing. Here’s what I feel. I have a product that I truly feel if you’re interested in self-protection, self-defense, I really feel like you have the best stuff. I really feel I should be much more known than we are because I know what people are paying somewhere else so I’m going to use the direct marketing methods that some people can call it hiking.
Some people can call it whatever but you know what? If I don’t use these methods I’m going to lose out to a lesser program. People are going to go to a lesser program. So, yes. When you go down and you see . . . I’m like a lot of people. When you see “sold out”, all of my stuff sold out and that’s what cracks everybody up. When they see pictures of my seminar
Tim: It cracks everybody up. When they see pictures of my seminars and the numbers. I really have the numbers to do that. Even in, you know, I have got a lot of my friends, that, not just in the self-defense business. But they’re having a hell of a time putting people into seminars. And we basically fill our seminars. We usually do it. We usually offer our release-everything for next year, normally in December. We do a promotion, and we’re booked for the year on this.
Andrew: I saw, I did a view source on that page. And I saw you’re using visual website optimizer. That’s how you know that this control so far is the best performing. Another thing that I saw somewhere is you use Site Scout’s cookie. Site Scout allows you to do retargeting. Is that what you use them for.
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: So if someone comes to your site, you run ads somewhere else to bring them back if they don’t buy?
Tim: Yep.
Andrew: What other paid ads have worked for you?
Tim: Well let me see, trying to think. We’ll we’ve done the text ads on the blaze. Those have been very successful. We’re really experimenting right now. We’re having great success with Facebook.
Andrew: Facebook ads?
Tim: Yeah. Facebook ads. Google has been a little tough. We had trouble really making Google work for us. Facebook, because it’s so targeted, it really is a no-brainer for us.
Andrew: What kind of targeting do you do on Facebook?
Tim: Just, say we’re going to do something with a [inaudible 00:01:26]. Now those people say it’s a concealed carry. We want to find all the concealed carry people. We want to find an age demographic, of say 40 to 55 year olds that like this.
Andrew: I see.
Tim: You can narrow down in Facebook to just a really specific demographic. So for different offers, we can go to different demographics.
Andrew: I saw you on the Art of Manliness, on their podcast. Would you then follow up by buying Facebook ads towards Art of Manliness fans?
Tim: Yeah, you know, it’s funny. I’m doing some of those podcast for more awareness. I didn’t realize that Art of Manliness is big. I was surprised by the response. They’re huge. I mean they’re a big deal.
Andrew: They’re huge! Go figure!
Tim: Yeah, yeah. They’re great. I’ll tell you what, they are a passionate group. And it’s funny you’re saying that, because it got my attention. And I’m looking to go back there. I’ve been invited back just for informational purposes. But yeah, I’m looking at that as a really good source and a potential EJV [SP]. Because I think that demographic would really respond to what I offer.
Andrew: It’s not just there. I think as I was searching for you, I came across post in their forums. So this is Ryan Holiday that introduced me to you. Is he also the guy who’s making sure you’re aware of the Art of Manliness, and some of the other sites out there?
Tim: Ryan’s been great. You know, we have a lot of mutual friends. I had a really bad experience with my last book. Utilizing public relations people. And-
Andrew: What was the bad experience?
Tim: It’s just, they’re trying to do the traditional stuff. They try to pigeon-hole you. I don’t have the ability, I’m not somebody that can be sound-bited. You know, if you sound-bite me I could sound like a maniac. You know, with some of the things, when I talk about violence, you know? I need time to tell the story. And the new media basically allows you that time. And if you find the right group and the right demographic it’s amazing. It’s like the old direct marketing days. You know, people used to complain. One time we had sales report. you know, a free report that went out to people. And it was I think 47 pages long. And people were like, Oh my gosh! Nobody’s going to read 47 pages! And I literally had a guy call me up one time and say, he said, you know, that was way too long. I bought the product, but I had a question. On page 32 you said, you know.
Andrew: [Laughter]
Tim: And then that’s the whole thing. If people are compelled, if it’s interesting. If what you have to say is interesting they’ll listen. So Ryan understands that and-
Andrew: And so he found you locating where the message can take some time. Did he also get you into Life Hacker? I saw you on there with a link. How do you get on sites like Life Hacker?
Tim: No, um. I’m trying to think. What was the, I’ve done so many things [??] I’m trying to think what Life Hacker is?
Andrew: You know it was just an article, it was a roundup of ways that you can protect yourself. Here’s we go, self-defense moves anyone can something or other, I can’t see it. Moves anyone can do.
Tim: Yeah, I saw that. So I’m circulating, yes, yes. That was Ryan. The other thing that’s great is contents never my problem. And so what I really realized was the blog wasn’t as widely distributed as it could be. And so now what I’m doing is I’m actively going after, you know, taking my content and putting it on areas where I can get a lot more eyeballs. And that’s really having a nice effect. We’re having a lot more people signing up for our newsletter, you know, online.
My list is building, which is fantastic. That list is…every name on that list, you know, you’ve got a proven amount that that person worth.
Andrew: Anyone who’s listening to me right now, who hasn’t heard my interview with the founder of the Art of Manliness, has got to listen to it. This is a blog that just gets, not just incredible traffic, but incredible attention, incredible love from the audience. I had a guy in my audience who did a guest post on there, he had more shares, more Tweets, Facebook likes, etcetera, more of those kind of shares on that article than he would’ve gotten on, frankly, more hits to his site in a month, I bet.
It’s that popular, people share, people read it. But it’s an incredible story of how he built up the Art of Manliness. There’s a search bar on Mixergy, just type that in and listen to the story of how the Art of Manliness came about.
You know, we asked you in the pre-interview, if you could teach entrepreneurs anything, what would it be? And you told April Dykeman, who pre-interviewed you, it would be communicating, for entrepreneurs. What’s the problem that entrepreneurs have when it comes to communicating?
Tim: You know, it’s funny because I hear a lot of the guys right now, and it probably, I’m a little bit older than a lot of the people that are really popular right now. And what’s interesting is, there’s this real aversion to marketing. It’s almost like they really feel bad about it. They literally angst about things that are sitting there, and I’m sitting there thinking, you know what, you have such great information, whoever the person is I’m listening, because obviously I’m listening to what they have to say. I love what they’re doing, and the fact that they are reticent to actually put it out there.
I think what people don’t understand is, people are going to put their money somewhere. If somebody has $100, and they’re interested in your subject matter, they are going to go put that $100 somewhere, and if you’re not compelling in communicating to them why it’s important that they don’t waste their money elsewhere, and they put it back to you, I don’t see anything more important. [??] great care of you [??]
Andrew: What about your list, Tim? The feeling is that everything is free online, and if you are giving something free with a back of your mind goal of getting that audience to buy from you, then it takes away from the free. It takes away from the generosity of it. And I think that’s the feeling that a lot of people have. I know I do, when I do an interview like this and it’s time for me to promote something, I think, “Ooh, I just offered something for free to the audience, and now it’s going to look like I had an ulterior motive the whole time.”
Tim: Now I guarantee you that they…what I get back from my customers is this. I have found them information that they wouldn’t have found on their own, and I’ve saved them a lot of time. You’ve saved people countless hours by having on the guests that you have, and asking the questions [??]. Quite frankly, I wish, I don’t think people understand the value. If I had had this 25 years ago, when I started, the access to the information, it would’ve saved me countless hours.
And then, what’s really funny is I have no problem coming to the high-priced seminars, doing all those things, because, yes, I already know you gave me a lot of free information, but now I have a live event with you.
Now I have an ability to actually work and get that last little bit, you know, that you can only really get live. And that’s it, it’s building this relationship.
I think it’s ridiculous for people to worry about the fact that, you know, you’re asking for a sale, or you’re asking for them to support your products, because you’re going to continue to give great information, and they want to support you.
Andrew: You know what, I get that, it did take me a long time to get to that realization. And frankly, what helped me do it was interviewing people like the founder of Lynda.com, who was teaching via video, and one of my first questions to her is, “How do you sell this, when there’s so much free education on YouTube?” And she started to explain it, and then I started to realize, you know what, there is a value to buying something that’s organized, that’s created, not to sell you something else, but to teach you something.
One more question, actually. [laughs] You know what, two more. And then we’ve got to end the interview, but I have so many questions, I’m going to limit myself to two. I see that you are somehow using something called Kenshoo.com, adquant by kenshoo. What is that, and how are you using it?
Tim: All we’re doing is, we’re trying out a bunch of different ways for us to figure out what advertising vehicle gets us the biggest bang for our buck. That’s really all that’s going on. We have, I’ve got a group right now that’s looking at putting a lot of different types of widgets on the site to see what people are responding to, what they want more of, and just qualifying where our efforts are. We’re going to change the look, we’ve got a couple of things on the site that we’re going to be changing, we’re going to be upgrading a couple of things. Not necessarily change the methods we’ve been using, but to just respond to how people actually interact with the website.
Andrew: And it tells you, it’s an analytics package, it tells you how they’re using the site? And also tells you how your ads are performing?
Tim: Yeah.
Andrew: I see, one of the key features is campaign management, that’s what you mean.
Tim: Yeah, no free ad campaigns after that. The biggest thing for us is we’ve got ads in so many different places that we want to know what’s working every time that we put something out. If I put out a new text ad over here, and then I’m doing a Facebook ad over here, we want to make sure we have all the data back on what’s working here. Because something that’s on Facebook isn’t going to work on another platform, and people just don’t understand. A lot of times I see generic advertising across the board on all platforms, and that’s really dangerous, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Andrew: We talked at the top of the interview about how many millions you guys are generating in revenue now, it’s one of the cool parts of my job I get to ask that question instead of trying to be polite. Do you remember the first year you did a million in profit?
Tim: Yeah.
Andrew: When was that? I see the smile, tell me that story.
Tim: Yeah, that was with my old partner, and it was probably 199… Yeah it was the close of ’95, was when we hit that. It was just us, I think it validated proof of the concept of what we were doing. We had a lot of success in the military and law enforcement community, but when we went into the general martial arts community a lot of people said “Oh there’s no way you can take such ‘hardcore’ information, the general public will never respond to it, you won’t do it.” People not only really liked what we did, but they bought a tremendous amount of product.
[??] high price point then you can get. The market at that time was like 19 dollar VHS tapes, our cheapest product at the time, I think was 99 dollars for the cheapest, but our average sale on a [??] was 280 dollars, and that was huge for the market.
Andrew: How’d you celebrate when you finally hit that number, or did you?
Tim: I’m a little more conservative, my partner at the time showed up with two Land Rovers.
Andrew: One for each of you, that was the celebration?
Tim: Yeah, he was really excited like “Look what I got you!” and I was like Oh Jerry, okay. I looked at it like hey, we can put more money into advertising over here, and that part of the partnership was great because I wouldn’t have bought myself a Land Rover.
Andrew: Well congratulations on all the success over the years, thanks for breaking down how you got here, anyone who wants to check out the website I should just give you the guy’s URL, it is targetfocustraining.com, for some reason every time I say it I have to enunciate every word, I think it’s because I want to make sure I get it right, targetfocustraining.com. Thank you for doing this interview Tim!
