The Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide

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All right, let’s get started.

Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. And this is the place where real entrepreneurs come to tell you how they built their businesses. Give you the stories behind their success so that you can learn from them, build your own success story. And do what increasingly more and more entrepreneurs are doing, which is come here and tell your story so you can teach others.

And in this interview, I’m going to be attempting to answer this question: How do you use webinars to drive sales? Lewis Howes does it. He is the author of “The Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide”, the book that teaches you how to connect with your audience, build your list and use webinars to sell.

This is the guy who came on here and did a Mixergy interview where he happened to say that he uses webinars to sell. And that’s something that people kept asking me over and over about. And I’m glad that he wrote this book and, of course, you can find it just by going to Amazon and searching for “Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide.”

Lewis, welcome back.

Lewis: Thanks for having me, man. Good to see you, Andrew.

Andrew: So, today you were walking around, I saw you at a conference. You’re the guy everyone is trying to emulate. You’re the guy that a lot of people are looking up to. But, life wasn’t always like that. What was life like before for you?

Lewis: Well, before I was playing professional football and I was living a good life. But, I ended up getting injured in my rookie season. And, basically, a turn of events made me have to give up my passion of playing football and being a pro athlete. After that, I had surgery. I was in a full-arm cast for six months. And spent about a year trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was sleeping on my sister’s couch because I didn’t have any income. And I didn’t have a job and I was trying to figure it out.

So, I went from being kind of on top and wandering the streets to having no clue what I was going to do next and being broke.

Andrew: Being broke and on your sister’s couch after being the guy that everybody wanted to be. I mean, everyone it seems like, except for me, wants to be a professional football player.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: I am such a non-fan I can’t even follow it. I don’t even want to be in the audience for football. But, I see the way women look at football players. I see the way guys look at football players. And there you were at that height, and suddenly you were brought down by an injury. Living on your sister’s couch.

Lewis: Yep.

Andrew: And then, it turned around. Webinars helped you turn around. Can you give me an example of one webinar that helped turn everything around for you?

Lewis: Yeah, it was my first webinar, I would have to say.

Andrew: Your first one, right out of the box? This is the thing that does it?

Lewis: My first webinar. I’d never been on a webinar before. And my first webinar, I think I probably got really lucky with the situation I was in. If it would have happened any other way, I might have gotten discouraged and said, “You know what? Webinars aren’t for me. I’m not going to try this anymore.”

Luckily, I had a guy, Joel Comm, who’s an internet marketer. He came out with a book called “Twitter Power”. And this was three years ago or something. He came out with this book and he was doing a free social media boot camp for four weeks, one webinar a week with different experts on social media. And no one was talking about LinkedIn at the time. I was really the only guy who had a book out there and was really talking about it. I met Joel at a conference and he said, “Lewis, why don’t I bring you on and you can talk about LinkedIn for an hour, to my audience, during this free, promotional thing?’ I said, ‘Perfect, I’d love to.’

But, never knowing what a webinar was, or how to do it, or being on one, I threw together some janky-looking slides. I was, like, crackling in my voice, I was sweating profusely; I was so nervous. He asked me to offer some type of a product that he could get a commission on at the end, so he said, ‘Why don’t you give some free training for about 50 minutes, and then give them a paid or advanced training on LinkedIn.’ I said, ‘OK.’ Not knowing, again, how to create a product, or what I was doing. I had a friend throw one up for me, and basically, long story short, after the webinar I had $6300 in my PayPal account instantly, right after that hour. And that was the moment I said, ‘I could do a webinar like this every single day.’

Andrew: I bet you could, actually, I bet you could. And, actually, it seems like you pretty much have done that; a webinar every single day. As Sean Malarkey, your partner on some of the products, has told me, you guys have now an automated system that can basically do a stealth webinar that seems like you guys are on there live every minute of the day.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew. All right. Let’s go down and break this exactly. I’m actually going to do this so good, that the book will almost be useless to people, because we’re going to break down all the tactics.

Lewis: Let’s do it.

Andrew: Well I’ll attempt to, and the sad truth is that there’s a lot that I won’t be able to get to, and people will have to go to Amazon and get the book. First tactic: choose a product to promote, or use someone’s else product. How do you decide? Should I start to create my own product the way that you did? Should I look to you, and at the end of my webinar, sell your product?

Lewis: Right. Now, it all depends on where your goals are at. If you’re a company, you’ve probably got a product already, or a software or service. So if you’re already an established company, then you want to promote your own product. Because, you’re looking to get more sales, and build your business that way. So you definitely want to start with your own product, if you have one. If you don’t have one, if you’re like a freelancer or you’re trying to figure it out, you want to promote someone else’s product.

Now, again, if you have an expertise about something, you could create a product live. You could do what I did my first time, which is, I didn’t have a product, but I said, ‘I’m going to give you guys three hours of live training on LinkedIn for $150.’ And, so I just gave them my expertise over a live training period. I recorded it, packaged that into a product, and then sold that separately, later. So there’s a couple things that you can do, but if you don’t want to create your own product, then you can just sell someone else’s. And there are lots of products out there that have, you know, 50% commissions for affiliates that you can promote.

Andrew: OK. I’m going to come back, and, actually throughout, I want to ask you about how entrepreneurs who are selling software or web apps, how they can use webinars to promote their stuff, in addition to information. James Wedmore, he’s a guy who you’ve worked with; you introduced me to him, got me to land him as a guest here on Mixergy. He promoted someone else’s product, and he got 120 people to register. 22 people came on the call, and he got $600 in sales. That’s what he started off with, right? Where is he now, roughly?

Lewis: He’s doing a lot more than that right now. I mean, if he doesn’t do, probably $5,000 a webinar, then it’s probably a bad day for him. His list isn’t as big some of the others, but he’s learned how to communicate with that list to over-deliver on value, to get them on the webinar, and then to offer great products and services that he has, or that he’s promoting. And you don’t have to have a huge list, but you’ve just got to learn how to do it the right way.

Andrew: How big? Actually, is a list one of the key components here, to have an e-mail list that you can promote the webinar to?

Lewis: A list is huge, yeah. I mean, if you can get 500 or 1,000 people to show up for a live webinar, and do than consistently, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to build a million-dollar business from that, a year. Easily.

Andrew: If you have how many people, can you get to a million-dollar business?

Lewis: If you can get 500 to 1,000 people on. Let’s say, every two weeks. Two to four webinars a month, if you can get 500 to 1,000 people on live, whether it be through your list or buying ads on Facebook, whatever it might be, you could easily build a seven-figure business a year, by doing that model.

Andrew: And, how many people would I have to get on my list, in order to get to 500 to 1,000 people dependably?

Lewis: It depends on the topic and things like that, but roughly I’d say 25,000 to 50,000, again, depending on who you are, your personality, your marketing style, things like that.

Andrew: All right. You know my personality; my audience knows my personality. Using me as an example, how many people would I have to have in order to get to a million dollars in sales?

Lewis: I think you could do it with 25,000 to 40,000 people.

Andrew: 25,000 to 40,000. You got 30,000 people from LinkedIn. How do you get 30,000 on your personal mailing list through LinkedIn?

Lewis: See, a few years ago, LinkedIn allowed you to create groups and export the emails from those groups.

Andrew: Okay.

Lewis: And they don’t allow you to do that anymore. They allow you to build the groups and then message them through LinkedIn. So, you can message them once a week. So, it’s pretty much similar. But when I did it, I was able to export the emails from the groups and that’s how I built my list. Now the groups still continue to grow and I mail them once a week to webinars. So, it’s basically like an email marketing list for free still.

Andrew: I see. So, you can’t export them and move them over to MailChimp or your own email system. But you can still message them through LinkedIn groups.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: So, as long as I can build a group online of, I don’t know what. Let’s say I’m doing conversion optimization software and I want to build my list using LinkedIn. I might have this group of conversion optimization fanatics or online sales people. And everyone who I get to join that group, I can message them on LinkedIn. And it’s as if they’re my own customers.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: I see. And I guess I still have to get to 25,000 to 40,000 people on my list . . .

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: In order to . . . Okay, and so on.

Lewis: Yep. Yeah.

Andrew: All right. You did a whole course with us on Mixergy. This is one of the most popular courses on Mixergy because people can actually pause the course and go do what you told them. And then come back with the results and go, “Alright. This guy knows what he’s doing. I’ll keep

listening.” You talked about how to build groups. Do you have a quick tip for people for how they can build their groups on LinkedIn? If that’s the way that you’ve grown, if that’s your sales channel, how can they do it?

Lewis: Yeah. And I still get emails every week from people on LinkedIn who are like, “I just saw your course on Mixergy. Loved it.” So, I’m glad people are liking it. But, best way to build a group is first, you need to create the group around a specific community. So, you wouldn’t want to make it The Mixergy Club. You want to make it more Smart Entrepreneurs, Smart Online Entrepreneurs. So, you don’t want to make it your company name or something like that. You want to make it around a community or an idea.

Andrew: I see.

Lewis: It could be around a city, it could be around a state. It could be around online marketers, whatever it may be. But, you want to make it more on the community and tribe that you can build, where you can share resources and information for that community. And that’s going to help them. So, it first starts with the title of the group.

Then, after that you just want to start sending all your friends there as quickly as possible in the first month. If you can get it to 1,000 people in the first month by adding your friends on LinkedIn, promoting it on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else. Sending it to your email

list if you have an email list. Get people in there that first month to 1,000 and it starts to grow organically after that. LinkedIn starts to share the groups to other groups. That’s kind of like recommended groups to join when people join other groups in that same sphere.

Andrew: I see. All right. You built up your list but you also partnered, as you said earlier, with Joel Comm, and he emailed his audience about you. So, that’s another way, too, if you can’t get your list up to the, what you told me, 25,000, 40,000. For other people, it might be more. Maybe they’ve got better personalities than me. God knows many people do. And it’s fewer people on the list. But, if they can’t even get to that 20,000 threshold, they can partner up with others. What was your deal with Joel Comm? How did Joel do this for you?

Lewis: Yeah. So, and again, I didn’t even know how to promote my list. I wasn’t doing anything at the time. You don’t even have to have a list. If you have an expertise or a great product or great content, you don’t need a list. You can just partner with other affiliates or JV partners and have them promote you to their list.

So, I do a number of webinars every week where I don’t even market to my list. We only promote maybe two webinars a month to our audience. However, I’ve got 20 other people that I’m reaching out to or that I’m doing stuff with where they’re promoting me every day to get on a webinar to learn about LinkedIn or social media for business, where I give content and then offer my product at the end.

So, what I ended up doing was going to networking events. Going to places like Underground, where we hung out recently, and meeting other people who have great lists without products or sites that you can partner with. And say, “Hey, I’d love to make you the champion of your list.” What that means is, I’m going to come on a webinar and give free content to your audience. They don’t have to sign up for anything. It’s going to be worth a couple hundred dollars for them to get on there. But, it’s going to be free. At the end, I’m just going to offer training or my course, which has raving reviews and here’s all the success stories. And you’re going to get a commission, a 50 percent commission.

By doing that, if you can prove yourself a few times to a few people, you become well-known in the industry and everyone wants to bring you on a webinar.

Andrew: This was Yanik Silver’s Underground Conference. That’s the one that I was talking about. Where everyone was starting to pay attention and start pointing at you. One of the reasons, I think, that you get a lot of attention in situations like that is you’re a tall guy. Who, in a room full of very skinny people who are shorter, the attention goes to the tall, bigger guy in the room. And then, of course, everyone knows this guy took LinkedIn when we all thought Facebook was where it’s at.

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: And we all thought he was going in the wrong direction. He took LinkedIn and he built it into this whole thing. And so, they’re all paying attention to how you did it.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: And the other person who I met there over drinks is . . . Actually, I met several people who work with Ryan Deiss. Who is Ryan Deiss?

Lewis: Ryan Deiss is an online marketer. A really, really smart online marketer. I don’t know how big his company is, but I’m assuming it’s well over $15-20 million a year. He creates educational, online courses for people looking to get mostly more leads, traffic, and sales. How to maximize different social networks or add campaigns, things like that. He’s got a great team, and some really good people that work there with him as well.

Andrew: He’s got to be huge, just considering the conversation I had with people about the people on his team. It wasn’t just, ‘Hey, you should meet Ryan Deiss; he’s impressive.’ It’s, “You should meet the guy who works for the guy who works for Ryan Deiss; he’s over there.’

Lewis: They’re all rock stars, yeah.

Andrew: I know. So, did Ryan Deiss ever sell any of your stuff?

Lewis: Yeah, he’s promoted a couple of our products.

Andrew: How do you do that? I don’t want just the small mom-and-pop affiliate; I do want them, and you want them, and you’re doing well with them. But, how did you get to a guy as big as Ryan Deiss, and how can the rest of us get them to promote our stuff?

Lewis: Something I did early on is, we ended up promoting Ryan’s product about a year and a half or two years ago, and was one of his top-ten affiliates during his launch contest. So we kind of got on his radar early on, by saying, ‘Hey, we can get a lot of people on, and if you’ve got a great product, we’re willing to promote it.’ Now, some of his stuff doesn’t make sense for our audience, because it’s a little different, but some of his stuff’s really, really good, high-quality. So when we have the chance, we promote it. We want to do really well for him, because he’s willing to reciprocate if we’ve got a great product. And as long as we continue to create great products and stay top-of-mind awareness for him, then he’s willing to promote, if it converts.

Andrew: And, I guess you guys met in-person at a conference, is that right?

Lewis: Yeah, we met a bunch of times. He has a private mastermind, where he brings some of his top affiliates together for a couple days in Austin, so I’ve been to a few of those. Just building the relationship with him over the years, and other top affiliates, is what allows you to get them. But in the beginning, it’s kind of tough to really to do, because they don’t want to promote anything, really. It’s really got to be a great product, that they know will convert. Otherwise, they’re not going to promote.

Andrew: What are some conferences where the guys like Ryan Deiss, or the people like Ryan Deiss’ employees would go to? Underground Bionic Silver seems big.

Lewis: Underground, there’s Affiliate Summit, which is really big. There’s the blog world, where you can find some big bloggers who have lists. There is Traffic and Conversion Summit, which is Ryan Deiss’s even. So, go to the events that these guys are hosting themselves, and get on their radar there. Those would be a few of the good ones right there.

Andrew: OK. In the software world, what I noticed is, in the information product world they call it JV partners, joint-venture partners. In the rest of the world, they call it affiliate partnership, where you get a commission when you sell something. What I’ve noticed is, in the clubby world of online software, they don’t do affiliate relationships, where I promote your software, you promote mine, and we collect an affiliate commission on it. Because their investors aren’t looking to see the top-line commission number grow,

What they do instead is more like, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. I will e-mail my list and say that there’s this great software that we’re a part of, or here’s a blog post on your site, and you’ll do the same thing,’ and it doesn’t even have to exactly even out, if we have the same investors or same friends. We’ll do it for each other, but it does happen a lot more than I expected. And I’m noticing there are some people who are especially good at it. What I was pausing there was to think, “Do I talk about who’s especially good at it or not?’ And, frankly, if people tell me about it in private, I won’t talk about it. But, in software, it does seem to work that way; you just need to know what the lingo is.

All right, I want to also make sure, as I’m going through these notes, people know that now when they buy Mixergy Premium, the money goes toward me building an infrastructure here, so that it’s not just me with the weight of the world on my shoulders. And, thankfully we’ve got Jeremy, who is the producer here of Mixergy. You gave him the book; you met him on accident at Underground. You gave him the book, and I guess, in a matter of hours, he put together these notes for me, that I’m now feeling pressure to make sure we get everything in there, because I know how hard he worked on it. And I just wanted to also remember to talk about content of the course.

You are especially good at making those webinars fun, interesting, and you have those gauges of whether people are paying attention or not. I’m going to come back and ask you about how you get people to pay attention. But, let’s go back to the stuff that you do before you get people to even come in, and pay attention, and that’s getting people to respect you enough to want to come in and watch. How do you become an authority, that people say, ‘That guy Lewis, he’s going to teach me something that’ll impact my business and is worth stopping everything in the middle of the day to watch his webinar.’ How do you do that?

Lewis: You know, I’m not that bright, I’ll be honest with you, but I learned a couple years ago, the power of social proof. And I know you know this extremely well, because Mixergy is amazing at this. If you guys go to the homepage on Mixergy.com, you’ll see at the top what I mean by social proof. Because, he’s got featured all the best logos and brands of the people he’s interviewed, and their pictures, right at the top. Amazing social proof.

In January 2009, or late 2008, I got an email from a writer at Details magazine who said, ‘I’m doing an article about the top internet marketing gurus that can make people rich in Details Magazine. I saw your site and I wanted to feature you. Would you be interested?’ And I said, ‘Yes, of course.’ This article was a two-page spread with me, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and a few other people. Tim Ferriss was featured heavily in the article, as well. It was a two-page picture spread in the middle of Details Magazine, and I’m right in the middle. Because I’ve got height advantage, they put me in the middle of the picture.

This was a time when I still wasn’t making a lot of money, to be honest. But, I had a decent brand because I’d put myself out there. I emailed the guy after the feature and I said, ‘You know, I really appreciate you adding me in this. Just curious, how did you find me and why did you decide to do this? Or, why did you choose me?’ He said, ‘You know, I found a guest post you did that someone retweeted on Twitter. I went to your website and right at the top of your website I saw that you were featured in Time and Business Week and Fast Company and I figured if you were good enough for them, you were good enough for Details Magazine.

So, I emailed you right then and there. Because I saw those logos.’ And I thought, ‘Holy cow. All I have to do is show some social proof and people are going to come to me like this?’ So, after that I started doing guest posts on every different site I could about LinkedIn, at the time. Mashable and Topiblogger [SP] and [??] and so many other sites that I found and I just said, ‘Here’s some free content I’d love to share with your audience on how to help you become a champion of your list and your network.’ And that’s kind of how I got started. [pause] You’re, for some reason, you’re muted for a second.

Andrew: There we go. Do you have a few ideas for how the rest of us can get logos on our sites if we don’t have any of the social proof? What can we do?

Lewis: I mean, the best way is to do guest posting. I mean, that’s what I started doing, I said, ‘You know, I’ve got to get more social proof, so where can I be featured?’ So, I just started writing articles for all these different sites. A lot of people worry that they’re not a good writer or wonder how they can get in touch with sites that will feature you? What I did was I would go to conferences and events and I would find the writers and just become friends with them.

That’s all it took for me. I would become friends with them and then I’d just say, ‘Hey, do you guys ever take guest posts and would you want one on LinkedIn?’ I’d find the specific social media sites that I knew had written about LinkedIn or who could use more LinkedIn content and then I just said, ‘Here’s an article. I’m either going to give it to you or Mashable. Would you want it?’ You can play a little game: I’m pitching this to a couple people, do you want first dibs?

Andrew: I see.

Lewis: I just started writing more and more. I’m not a great writer by any means, but if you have an expertise you can definitely put some stuff together and get it featured on a number of different sites. A lot of sites are looking for free content. So, if you can give them great stuff, it’s game over.

Andrew: You know what? Tim Ferriss actually said that he did the same thing. That he would go and meet people in person. If you guys are the site right now, on Mixergy, go look for the Tim Ferriss interview, the early, early one. Back before I even had video. He was really good at that and he did the same thing you do, which is go meet people in person. He said that’s the least crowded channel.

Lewis: It is.

Andrew: By the way, before I continue with this list, you’re an expert at getting people to pay attention online. It sounds like I’m kissing your ass, and I don’t like when I sound like that, but I’ve got to tell you, it’s tough to get people to watch video. God knows I’ve done it, and I’ve wrestled with it, too. And it’s tough to get them to show up at a certain time for a webinar, even television shows will not get people to show up at a certain time. And then, at the end of it to get them to whip out their credit cards and buy something…

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: You knew where I was going. It’s not easy. So, can you give me a little critique of how I’m doing so far? I’m obviously paying attention, because I’m talking to you. How am I doing? Is there something I could do better? Should I be addressing the audience more? What would Lewis Howes do if he was here?

Lewis: On video or on webinars?

Andrew: Just this conversation here. Based on what you know about presenting yourself well on video. And really, hit me hard so that the audience can learn through my failures.

Lewis: You do a great job, I’m not going to lie. But, since you’re looking for some feedback, what I would do is, in the very first 20 seconds, give them an aha moment. ‘Hey, we’re here with Lewis Howes, and in this video he’s going to teach you the shocking results he got from a 200-person list that got him 1 million hits.’ Something that’s shocking or awe inspiring. And then say, ‘Also we’re going to be covering these 5 main things. Here’s the agenda.’ Let them know what’s to come.

This is what we do in webinars, at least. Let them know what’s to come so you’re covering a few main points. ‘He’s going to cover a story first and then he’s going to talk about three simple strategies that any new beginner can use with webinars to make them six figures plus a year, then it’s going to cover the advanced strategies on how to speak like a pro even if you tremble when you get on stage, and all these different things. You’re giving them cues that are going to show them results based on their fears, based on their concerns and their questions, so seeding the agenda very early on, what they’re going to get out of this entire video.

Andrew: Seeding the agenda. Do you have a little more time here? I mean can we go past the top of the hour?

Lewis: Of course.

Andrew: Oh, all right, great, so let me practice here. Let me see, what we have coming up later is how to get 50 to 60 percent opt in rates with standard Go to Webinar page, so I would promo that by saying, ‘you’re going to discover a shocking way to get 50 to 60 percent of people to actually sign up for your Go to Webinar page, and you don’t even need fancy images and you don’t need a graphic artist. In fact, with no images at all, you’re going to be able to get this.’ How did that sound?

Lewis: That’s great, yeah.

Andrew: You would probably have been able to do it shorter. Was that too long, the way I did it?

Lewis: No. Yeah, maybe you’d say something like, ‘how to get double the conversion rates of everyone else by using a simple strategy on your (?) page.’

Andrew: OK.

Lewis: (?) 50 to 60 percent, is that good? So maybe they don’t know if that’s good, but how to get double the experts’ conversion rates on your webinar registration page.

Andrew: All right, how about this next one. Why all those people who are, man, this is tougher than it seems when you’re actually having to do this. When you started out by the way, would you just sit down and write these seeding lines out so that you can find ways to make them more intriguing and more…

Lewis: Yeah, on the webinar, I would write it out so I could see an agenda, and it’s hard to make it like a headline, and I’m still learning how to do it even better every day. I’m not by any means, the best in the world at it, but I mimicked what other people in the world were doing early on. I had no clue what I was doing in the beginning, so I would just see what other people were doing and kind of mimic them. OK, they’ve got a little (?) topic that talks about the bee who’s featured. They blow them up a little bit, then there’s some bullet points that are really compelling of what they’re going to learn, and then there’s a final sentence, so I was just like, ‘I’m going to copy what these guys do, mimic it, make it my own,’ and it’s evolved over time when I’ve learned how to optimize things.

Andrew: How about this? The big mistake that marketers who have facts on their side make, and the one thing you can do to, shoot…

Lewis: I know you’ll come up with this.

Andrew: How would you do that? Do you know which one I’m trying to go with?

Lewis: The powerful lesson of sharing, no, something like, why sharing stories will triple your conversion rates or something like that.

Andrew: OK, and you would even say sharing stories. I was thinking of doing something like, ‘the one thing you need to do to triple your conversion rates, and it’s not facts.’

Lewis: You could do that, yeah. You could do something like that too, that’s good.

Andrew: All right, so would it just be you practicing?

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: All right, let’s see, you did actually practice. This brings me to the next point on the list here. Josh Blue, who was a constant at Last Comic Standing, and here’s the guy who with Cerebral Palsy, joined the local Toastmaster’s…, you joined the local Toastmaster’s? I’m reading my notes here from…

Lewis: I joined Toastmaster’s, yeah.

Andrew: You did? How helpful was that?

Lewis: It was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done for my life, because I used to be terrified of speaking on stage. I was so nervous that, if I knew I had to speak, for weeks in advance I would freak out. At night I couldn’t sleep. I would start getting the feeling of sickness, just knowing I had to be on stage in front of people and I just had no confidence on stage, so I said to myself, if I want to influence people or impact them in a positive way, whether it be in a board room or in front of a large audience, I need to become a great speaker. I need to, it’s a necessity, and I’m the type of guy that’s going to overcome my fears no matter what, take on any challenge, so I said I’m going to join Toastmaster’s. A friend recommended it to me.

I went to five different Toastmaster clubs. They’re all over the world for those who don’t know, so they’re speaking classes basically. I went to five different clubs in one week as a guest to see which one was the best. I ended up going with the one where all the students were all professional speakers. I said I’ve got to go be where the best are, and in the first year, I went through my ten speeches. The first three speeches, I typed out all five pages of the speech…

Andrew: Word for word?

Lewis: …word for word. I was behind the podium and never looked up at the audience once. I was so terrified to look in people’s eyes. I read word for word, my head down, five pages, said thank you and sat down. I was so nervous, I was sweating profusely. But getting up there, each time I went up there I said let me take less notes. Let me go in front of the podium. Let me just take cue cards. So I just pushed myself each time to get better. So now I can go up and have no notes and be fine with it.

Andrew: So going to toastmaster did it. And I’ve got to tell you, I was a member of several toastmasters clubs, and it worked but not enough. And the reason it didn’t work enough was you get to speak once a month if you’re the aggressive person who goes, can I get on the agenda. And you go once a week and watch other people speak and that just doesn’t feel like enough.

Lewis: You went to the wrong club.

Andrew: Oh, really, you went to a club that like you speak more often, every time?

Lewis: Whenever I wanted to, they let me speak. And I came in there saying, and they even met weekly as opposed to every other week which most clubs do. So I was like, I’m going to speak as much as I can, and I had mentor. I was speaking outside of Toastmasters, so I was really aggressive with it. But webinars allow you to speak, even if you’re afraid to speak in front of an audience in person, they allow you to practice still by being just in your underwear in your apartment or house or your office.

Andre: You don’t even do video do you?

Lewis: No, the video isn’t really software and the technology isn’t really fast enough yet for it to be a great stream. So I haven’t incorporated it yet. But when they do allow video, or when it’s caught up to the technology I will definitely add it.

Andrew: I hate that I do video. I’m present in this conversation, I think you’ll agree with me, and at the same time I look at my own video, I’ll go what the hell is going on. You finally look good in person and now this is what you look like? And then I go, you don’t even look good in person any more. You’re not paying attention, you’re not getting a hair cut.

Lewis: You look great man, you got a little vest on, I like it.

Andrew: It screws with your mind. Vest, me and Rick Santorum are the only ones wearing a vest, but what I do is I work out of a t-shirt, and then on the back of my door I have a few shirts that I don’t wear (?). This is it, it’s not even tucked in.

Lewis: Great, yeah, exactly. I would stand up, but I’m in my underwear, so I won’t do that.

Andrew: Meanwhile, you and I are the best dressed people I feel in tech right now. Because most of my friends who are in tech. They don’t care about the way they dress. It’s great, in fact, they’re better off not dressing well. I’d love to come in in flip-flops. But that’s not even about the camera. The flip flops is because this office is very professional, very conservative. I didn’t actually get this in Jerome’s notes. Josh Blue was a contestant in Last Comic Standing, that’s from your book. What’s that reference?

Lewis: A lot of people come to me and say, Lewis, I’m terrified to speak. I can’t speak in front of an audience, just like the same thing I felt a few years ago. I was terrified, and this guy named Josh Blue, if you guys go on YouTube and search his name, Josh Blue, Last Comic Standing. Watch a video of him. This guy is amazing, he’s got cerebral palsy, and he walks around very funny, he can’t control his limbs sometimes, and he stutters sometimes, but he embraces it, and he goes with it. He makes jokes about it, it’s hilarious how confident this guy is with his own, it’s not a set back, it’s the only thing that he has.

And there’s other people like my friend, Chris Garret. Who’s a popular blogger as well, ChrisG.com, this guy is terrified, he’s willing to admit it. He’s terrified to speak public-ally, he’s terrified to speak on webinars. But when he gets on a webinar he embraces it. He says, you know what guys, I’m not going to lie, I’m a little nervous, and that’s why I’m going to be a little soft spoken, because this is who I am. Hopefully you guys appreciate my style. So he embraces it, he doesn’t try to be loud, and out there because it’s not (?). So whatever speaking style you have, embrace it, and let other people know, this is my content, this is my information. You’re either going to like me or not.

Andrew: All right, this next topic if I were going to seed I might say, the one day you should never run a webinar, and what is that day? The one day you should never run a seminar, or maybe the one day period, and then I’ll move on to the next point that I will seed. That’s the way I should’ve done it at the top of the interview. Sense I didn’t, what is that day, and why not?

Lewis: The day is probably going to be a Monday, just because every one gets back to work on Monday, (?) busy, and they’re trying to catch up from the weekend. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and the reason I’m saying this is because my audience is on Eastern standard time. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, from 12:00 to 4:00, and 8:00, Eastern standard time are usually the best times. Because you’re hitting most of the east coast from 12:00, 2:00, and 4:00, and you can get some of Europe in those times, but also after noon, 2:00 and 4:00 you’re hitting the West Coast. It all depends on where your audience is. If you have an international audience, obviously, it’s much different. But, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days for us. Sometimes, Sunday nights work, it all depends. But, Mondays are usually not that great. And Friday afternoon, obviously, is usually not that great either.

Andrew: So, if I were a guy who was going to start a webinar for the first time, didn’t know anything about when I should do it because I don’t have any data, I’d probably want to start off on Tuesday at noon, Eastern time?

Lewis: Tuesday or Thursday at noon or 2:00, Eastern standard time, would be the best.

Andrew: And that would mean 9:00 a.m. Pacific time.

Lewis: Yeah. 9:00 or 11:00 Pacific.

Andrew: All right. And I can’t believe that people at 9:00 a.m. would be willing to get into the office and watch a webinar.

Lewis: Again, it all depends. If you have a list that’s in Pacific standard time, then you want to make it at noon Pacific if that’s the majority of your list. But, with most people, they’re East Coast times.

Andrew: All right. I like that. That’s a good rule of thumb. That’s the kind of stuff, when I watch, I like. Because I feel like I can act on that. It solves . . .

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: . . . a point that I would be very nervous about.

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: Following up. How do you do that? Before or after?

Lewis: Yeah. And this is an entire sequence I talk about in the book. But, a lot of people will do a webinar and will go through the content. They’ll deliver great information. They may give something at the end, they may not. But, then they don’t follow up with something. We tend to not offer replays anymore because it trains people that, “Hey, I don’t have to show up live. If there’s going to be a recording, I can just go watch it any time.” They end up never watching it. So, I try to steer away from showing replays. Sometimes, we’ll do a live encore.

But, basically, you want to follow up with whatever you say. Either way. You want to send them an email reminder saying, “Hey guys. If you missed the webinar, make sure to register for the next one. Because here are some of the feedback and the comments. Also, the special opportunity, the offer or whatever you’re giving them, the product is still available. Here’s where you can go and sign up.”

We tend to get a lot more people buying from the follow-up than we ever would because they didn’t have their credit card. They had to ask their boss. They had to do whatever. They didn’t get paid that day. So, make sure you follow up with people because you’re going to get some extra sales and people signing up for whatever you’re offering.

Andrew: All right. So, when you get started, do that. Replay later on, you might not want to because you’re going to just train people not to do it.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: Was there a guy who was on the fence who found a way using, what am I trying to go for? What’s the word here? Where you got someone on the fence to come and buy.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: You’re nodding, so you understand.

Lewis: Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew: Even though I didn’t use the word.

Lewis: So, we get people all the time who come to our webinars and they really, really want to buy. But, for whatever reason they’re not ready or maybe they’re on the fence about it. And this happens at almost every webinar we do. Whenever we keep promoting to them and letting them know that here’s another offer, here’s another opportunity, sometimes people buy later.

We had one woman who was on the very first webinar I did with my partner, Sean Malarkey. And I remember getting an email from her saying, “I’ve been on basically every webinar for the last year and a half.” This was probably a year ago when I got this. So, “I’ve been on every webinar for the last year and a half. And I could never afford and I never really saw the point in signing up for your products. But, this webinar, there was something you said or something you did where I said, ‘Now it makes sense.’ And I bought.” And that was a $1,000 customer at the time.

So, for us, continually to follow up with people whether it be the same webinar or different contents and just adding value to their business and their lives. You never know when they’re going to buy. People don’t always buy right away. You don’t just say, “Here’s something. Buy it,” if they don’t know you. They’re not going to buy. They say it takes like 7 to 12 touch points for someone to actually buy a product from you, depending on the price and the offer. So, you’ve just got to make sure you follow up with people. And continue to offer value.

Andrew: OK. Why are you so comfortable giving this stuff out? You know that you’re here because you’ve got a book. You want, and I just said in the beginning that I want, people to go to Amazon and type in “Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide.” And here you are, you’re giving so much. Isn’t there any concern that, “Hey, you know what? These guys really,” as Andrew was kidding at the top of the interview, “are going to do it without the book. They don’t need to go and buy the book now.”

Lewis: All right. This is what we do in our webinars. We give away probably 90% of our best stuff on our webinars absolutely for free. We could charge people to get on the webinars. But, we give away significant amounts of great content. Some of our best tips where they could go and implement . We want them to and implement because we want them to see the results for themselves. But, there’s so much more we offer in our advanced trainings that they can’t get from a 60 to 90 minute webinar. And there are more step-by-step processes and details and examples that show them exactly what they need to do.

So, you guys can go out there right now and create your webinar. I’m giving a lot of great stuff. But, there’s more great stuff in the $9.99 e-book on Kindle that you’re going to get. And if you’re watching us whenever this goes up, it might even be free the day it’s up. But, the more you’re able to deliver, people are going to keep coming back. And they’re going to buy when they see the value. That’s pretty what it’s at.

Andrew: And when it is free, you’re going to put it online free for a small window of time on Amazon. You’re not even getting people’s email addresses there. Amazon does not say, “Hey, we’re giving away your e-book. Here’s the list of all the people who bought and their credit cards in case they buy in the future.” No, it’s just they grade. They’ll vote, they’ll give it a high rating.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: Even if you love it and you don’t love it a high rating, fine.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: We’ll get you in our world somehow in the future.

Lewis: Exactly. Exactly.

Andrew: All right. I did say this earlier when I was trying to seed it, and this was the point about how to get 50 to 60% opt-in rates with what?

Lewis: Right. So, GoToWebinar is the GoTo platform that I use and that Sean uses, my business partner, for webinars.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Lewis: And they’re actually a sponsor of the book. We’ve been using them since day one. And they said, “You know what? We love the stuff you do.” They’ve done case studies around us. They said, “We’re going to support anything you do.” So, when I christened this book, they said,

“We’re in. We’re sponsoring it. We’re behind you 100%.”

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Lewis: We’ve used other platforms to try adding cool videos, to adding images, graphics, on your registration landing pages. And whenever we do that, it never converts as well as the basic, simple text of GoToWebinar. With maybe one image sometimes, but just clean text on the page. That always converts better than when we created our own.

We did a webinar with Brian Tracy, who’s a really well-known speaker and best-selling author, sales training coach. And he did an intro, a 60 second video that said, “Hey, it’s Brian Tracy here and I just wanted to say thanks so much for coming to this page. I really want you guys to get on this webinar because Lewis, Sean and myself are going to show you some great stuff.” He was talking about us to our own audience. And the conversions were like 20 or 30%. I was like, “This is the number one sales trainer in the world and we’re only getting like 20 or 30% conversions.” When we tested it with just a simple text, it was back up to 50 to 60%.

So, just testing those different things, we learned a lot about what converts and what people are used to seeing. And when they see something different that might be confusing or they have to watch a video, for whatever reason, it just doesn’t convert as well as the plain, simple text on a GoToWebinar registration page.

Andrew: I wouldn’t have thought that their GoToWebinar pages would do that well. I thought they neglected it. I thought it was one of those pages that did well in the past but now the font looks a little small.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: No.

Lewis: [??]

Andrew: So, they’re used to it.

Lewis: Every time we do it, it still converts. It’s around 55% every time we do it to our list. From people that click on the link to signing up, it’s 55%.

Andrew: This is another big tactic that we seeded earlier. This is the one about telling stories.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: What do you tell stories about? And, by the way, before we even get to what you tell stories about, why not facts? What’s wrong with facts? Don’t people . . .

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: . . . mistrust story tellers and trust the credibility that comes with facts, facts, facts? ,

Lewis: You want to have facts and you want to have sources that back up those facts. Definitely in your presentation. Because that adds credibility and social proof However, you can’t just have only facts because that gets boring. It’s like, show me something that’s going to keep me hooked and interested.

When you think about it, if you’re watching this screen right now, you want to be either on the edge of your seat, so excited to hear what’s going to happen next. Just like you were when you were a kid in class and the teacher was reading you a book about Dr. Seuss. You were like, “Oh, my gosh.” You were like, “What’s going to happen next?” when she flips the page and seeds the next thing. That’s what you want to have people feeling when they’re on a webinar.

You’re hearing this story about an experience or about some results or about some case study, as opposed to, “Amazon says that 55% of people do this and this and this.” You want to have that in your presentation, but you can’t just have that. The more you can share stories that speak to the audience, that make them feel like, “That’s just like me. I feel that same way. Oh, my god. You’re speaking right to me.”

Whenever you speak to the audience and share a story that they can relate to, then they can’t wait until the page flips. Until the next slide. It’s like, “Man, I’m hooked on this story. I have to see what happens at the end. I have to hear how the story ends.” If you’re just giving facts, it’s like, “Uh, I can get this later in a report.”

Andrew: How do you tell stories like that? Sometimes, when I tell stories, I think, “People are waiting for me to get over with this because they want to get to the next one.” And I do that because I don’t always know how to tell stories well.

Lewis: You know, I’m still learning. I’m still a newbie at story-telling, I think. But, [??] has really helped me a lot in sharing stories. I would listen to other people’s stories and be mesmerized at how they share these vivid experiences. And the more I practice, the better I’m getting. I’m still definitely a beginner, so it’s just a matter of practice, and reading the right books, and story-telling, practicing writing stories. I do a number of those things.

Andrew: I shouldn’t keep putting myself down, but I don’t want to put anyone else down so if it’s all right I’ll use myself as the bad example, but I have learned, actually through doing these interviews, the value of storytelling. We started to coach guests to come on here and tell stories. It’s really a challenge. What I learned from doing Del Carnegie, I still volunteer for them. Del Carnegie used to say, ‘Even the most ignorant drunk driver, if you whack them on the knees with a two by four is going to be able in an articulate way he’s indignant.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: What they would do with their students at Del Carnegie is look for that one thing that you really care about, and get you to tell the story by starting with the action. No back story, no nothing else. Just I woke up in the morning and I looked around, and suddenly my wife was gone. Not, my wife and I get up in the morning every day at the exact same time, and then we do our stuff. It’s just good for the action.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: You work with someone named Steve, am I pronouncing his last name right?

Lewis: Cloida [sp]

Andrew: Cloida [sp]? What happened with him? What was the before and after for him when he was doing this stuff?

Lewis: Steve is a really advanced sales coach. He teaches people how to do telephone sales, basically. He’s gotten or twenty years of practice on teaching people one on one, and teaching people, groups, our companies. He’s got a lot of expertise. He had done dozens and dozens of webinars teaching people the strategies to cold call on all these scripts and everything. We never made any sales. He was doing dozens of these.

Andrew: Dozens of webinars and still didn’t make any sales?

Lewis: Never made any sales. He wasn’t really pitching it hard, and he wasn’t really setting it up in sequence to sell at the end. It was always kind of like a training webinar but it wasn’t really a good sequence of why they should buy. We came out with a course called magnetic webinars, which is a new training course on webinar marketing. About a year ago, he signed up for it and went through the entire thing. So much action went through it. He thought he was an expert on webinars but they didn’t know how to sell. He had done so many. He borrowed the exact same model that we gave them in the course, which is very similar to the same model in this book.

His first webinar, I believe he did over $6500 in sales with about 150 people on. There was a very small audience and he did exactly what he said, and he converted. Now, he’s been doing a lot of webinars ever since then, and tweaking and testing, and optimizing. I remember him e-mailing me afterwards and saying, ‘I can’t believe that if you just apply the stuff you talk about, if this works, I can’t believe I never knew how to do this before.’

Andrew: That’s the kind of story that you tell. You want the people who are listening to us, who are doing webinars to tell stories about their own lives and to tell stories about their customers to get those success stories out there.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: I say this over and over again, but Peros Choper [sp] from visual website optimizer, the software that helps you increase conversions, is really good at that. You listen to the guy talk and he’s got an accent. He’s from India and he’s calling in from India when he does a program here, but when he tells you a story of one of his clients who started out one way and then made a small change, and used this software to measure results, and got a big impact, and conversions and sales went up just because he changed the button, or changed the way he explained how to register, you’re on the edge of your seat. You want to know how I could do it to. What did this guy do?

Lewis: Yeah. You’re ready to buy.

Andrew: You’re ready to buy. Yeah. I’m a customer of his.

Lewis: That’s why flagstel (?) and stories sell. The more stories he shares, the more sales increase. If he’s just like, ‘here are the numbers,’ but he doesn’t get to the emotions of the story and how it can relate to you, I bet he’d still sell but it wouldn’t be as well as he’s doing right now.

Andrew: I’m still experienced on camera. I feel awkward on camera. What about people who say, ‘hey you know what? Being on camera is great for a guy like Louis. He’s really super comfortable. He’s an athlete. Or for these people who should’ve been in Hollywood, but Hollywood doesn’t have enough slots, so they’re going to make their future online. It’s not for me. Nor am I a developer. What do you say to people like me?

Lewis: The beautiful thing is that you’re not on camera on a webinar. You’re just showing your computer screen so usually we have a slide deck. We make it seem like a movie. For every minute you’re on the webinar, you want to have a slide for every minute, so if it’s a sixty minute webinar you want to have at least 60 slides. Not more, if you want to keep it moving like a movie. But, they never see your face. They never see your face unless you have pictures of you and things like that. That way you don’t have to worry about it.

As long as you’ve got an expertise or you can bring someone in who’s got an expertise, you don’t even have to speak. You can just bring someone in and introduce them. And let them go the entire webinar to your audience. If you’re afraid to speak, if you’re afraid to be on camera, you don’t have to be seen. That’s the beautiful thing for introverts with webinars. They don’t have to be seen, but they can just present.

Andrew: That’s a good point. And having somebody else on is a huge, huge help. All right, let’s see what else we’ve got. Engage the audience and keep them awake. Oh, you talked about that, I think, in the course you did on Mixergy.

Lewis: Yep.

Andrew: How do you do this? Tell the audience. This is awesome. I want this more for our stuff.

Lewis: So, you’ve got to break the trance. And if you’ve ever been to a Tony Robbins event or something, every 30 to 40 minutes they give people off their feet. They get them excited. They do something. They put music on. And then they get back into the next thing. Because after a certain amount of time, you’re just like, uh. You start falling asleep, start checking your phone or you start doing whatever.

So, what I like to do, and there’s a whole sequence, again, that we talk about in the book. Before the webinar even begins, you are creating an experience for them. And you might be asking this question later, but I’m going to go ahead and just answer it now. Have you ever been to a Cirque du Soleil show?

Andrew: Yes, actually. Yeah.

Lewis: Now, I’m not sure which one you went to. Some of them do this, some of them don’t. But, I went to one called, Zumanity I think it was called, in Vegas. I remember I bought the ticket and right when they opened the doors, there were two people dressed up as characters at the door opening the door for you and greeting you.

And then, as you went in, I suddenly realized there were all the people from the events who were going to be presenting for us from the show were there with us. They were doing little tricks. The girls in burlesque outfits were flirting with you or whatever may be. They were asking you questions. They were getting you engaged before the event even started. You didn’t even realize the event started when you walked in the door.

So, right when people walk into your webinar, they open it, you’ve got to start engaging them to make them feel like they’re part of the experience. So, what we do is ask them questions. “Where are you guys at in the world right now?” We’ll call out people’s names. We’ll say, “Thanks so much Anthony from Australia,” or Jeff from Georgia, or wherever they may be. We’ll say their name and engage then and welcome them in, making them a part of the experience. A part of the show.

Right in the beginning, we’ll do a little intro. Then we’ll go into some polls. So, we’ll ask them more questions and let them click on the screen to answer questions. So, getting all their senses involved so that they are a part of the webinar.

Then, halfway through the webinar after a big shocking moment, I’ll say, “Go ahead and type in your results that you got live on this presentation. I’d love to see your results.” I’ll screenshot the results. I’ll show an image of the results from people hosting live on the screen. I’ll ask them the question, “Do you see how powerful this last point is? That, if you applied it, how it could change your business drastically in the next three to six months?” I’ll ask questions that make them think, that get them engaged. That keeps them involved throughout the entire presentation. I do Q&A at the end.

So, you’ve got to make sure you break the trance as much as you can. And get them engaged and make it an experience.

Andrew: What happens if you do that and no one responds? By the way, what is it with me that I immediately go to the “what if everything falls apart” scenario?

Lewis: What if you suck and no one comes?

Andrew: Right.

Lewis: If people show up, they’re going to respond. I mean, if you throw up a pole, it pops up right in front of their screen. It’s like, “Hey, guys. I’d love you to just answer yes or no. Just click a button.” People will respond. I’ve yet to come on where people have not responded. And if that happens to you, email me and I’ll come on and help you. If not one person responds, I will help out.

Andrew: So, if one person responds at least, you acknowledge that one person.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: And keep encouraging the stuff that you want to see in others.

Lewis: Even if they don’t respond, you see the names of people on the webinar who are logged in. So, you can just say, “Thanks so much to Jeff, Sally and Lucy for coming on. I really appreciate you guys. Go ahead and type in if you can hear me.” That’s all you’ve got to do.

Andrew: I see. “Go ahead and type in if you can hear me,” I’ve seen really works well. That gets people engaged. One thing I learned at Toastmaster. Someone else in the audience once asked a professional speaker who came in to talk at our Toastmaster, “What happens if you ask for questions and no one has a question?” So, he said, “What you do is say, ‘Many people have asked me,’ or ‘A typical question that comes up after people have heard this is.’ And then you ask and answer your own question.”

Lewis: That’s good, too. Yeah.

Andrew: So, here are some of the things that Jeremy pulled from the book. Because, first of all, every 10 minutes you try to break the trance, starting with things like this. Here’s a quote: “Can you see how powerful this information is for you to grow your business?”

Lewis: [??] you want to have a slide for every minute. So, if it’s a 60 minute webinar, you want to have 60 slides. Not more, if you want to keep it moving like a movie. But, they never see your face. They never see your face unless you have pictures of you and things like that. That way you don’t have to worry about it. As long as you’ve got an expertise or you can bring someone in who’s got an expertise, you don’t even have to speak. You can just bring someone in and introduce them. And let them go the entire webinar to your audience. If you’re afraid to speak, if you’re afraid to be on camera, you don’t have to be seen. That’s the beautiful thing for introverts with webinars. They don’t have to be seen, but they can just present.

Andrew: That’s a good point. And having somebody else on is a huge, huge help. All right, let’s see what else we’ve got. Engage the audience and keep them awake. Oh, you talked about that, I think, in the course you did on Mixergy.

Lewis: Yep.

Andrew: How do you do this? Tell the audience. This is awesome. I want this more for our stuff.

Lewis: So, you’ve got to break the trance. And if you’ve ever been to a Tony Robbins event or something, every 30 to 40 minutes they give people off their feet. They get them excited. They do something. They put music on. And then they get back into the next thing. Because after a certain amount of time, you’re just like, uh. You start falling asleep, start checking your phone or you start doing whatever.

So, what I like to do, and there’s a whole sequence, again, that we talk about in the book. Before the webinar even begins, you are creating an experience for them. And you might be asking this question later, but I’m going to go ahead and just answer it now. Have you ever been to a Cirque du Soleil show, Andrew?

Andrew: Yes, actually. Yeah.

Lewis: Now, I’m not sure which one you went to. Some of them do this, some of them don’t. But, I went to one called, Zumanity I think it was called, in Vegas. I remember I bought the ticket and right when they opened the doors, there were two people dressed up as characters at the door opening the door for you and greeting you.

And then, as you went in, I suddenly realized there were all the people from the events who were going to be presenting for us from the show were there with us. They were doing little tricks. The girls in burlesque outfits were flirting with you or whatever it may be. They were asking you questions. They were getting you engaged before the event even started. You didn’t even realize the event started when you walked in the door.

So, right when people walk into your webinar, they open it, you’ve got to start engaging them to make them feel like they’re part of the experience. So, what we do is ask them questions. “Where are you guys at in the world right now?” We’ll call out people’s names. We’ll say, “Thanks so much Anthony from Australia,” or Jeff from Georgia, or wherever they may be. We’ll say their name and engage then and welcome them in, making them a part of the experience. a part of the show.

Right in the beginning, we’ll do a little intro. Then we’ll go into some polls. So, we’ll ask them more questions and let them click on the screen to answer questions. So, getting all their senses involved so that they are a part of the webinar.

Then, halfway through the webinar after a big shocking moment, I’ll say, “Go ahead and type in your results that you got live on this presentation. I’d love to see your results.” I’ll screenshot the results. I’ll show an image of the results from people hosting live on the screen. I’ll ask them the question, “Do you see how powerful this last point is? That, if you applied it, how it could change your business drastically in the next three to six months?” I’ll ask questions that make them think, that get them engaged. That keep them involved throughout the entire presentation. I do Q&A at the end.

So, you’ve got to make sure you break the trance as much as you can. And get them engaged and make it an experience.

Andrew: What happens if you do that and no one responds? By the way, what is it with me that I immediately go to the “what if everything falls apart” scenario?

Lewis: What if you suck and no one comes?

Andrew: Right.

Lewis: If people show up, they’re going to respond. I mean, if you throw up a pole, it pops up right in front of their screen. It’s like, “Hey, guys. I’d love you to just answer yes or no. Just click a button.” People will respond. I’ve yet to come on where people have not responded. And if that happens to you, email me and I’ll come on and help you. If not one person responds, I will help out.

Andrew: So, if one person responds, at least, you acknowledge that one person.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: And keep encouraging the stuff that you want to see in others.

Lewis: Even if they don’t respond, you see the names of people on the webinar who are logged in. So, you can just say, “Thanks so much to Jeff, Sally and Lucy for coming on. I really appreciate you guys. Go ahead and type in if you can hear me.” That’s all you’ve got to do.

Andrew: I see. “Go ahead and type in if you can hear me,” I’ve seen really works well. That gets people engaged. One thing I learned at Toastmaster. Someone else in the audience once asked a professional speaker who came in to talk at our Toastmasters, “What happens if you ask for questions and no one has a question?” So, he said, “What you do is say, ‘Many people have asked me,’ or ‘A typical question that comes up after people have heard this is.’ And then you ask and answer your own question.”

Lewis: That’s good, too. Yeah.

Andrew: So, here are some of the things that Jeremy pulled from the book. Because, first of all, every 10 minutes you try to break the trance, starting with things like this. Here’s a quote: “Can you see how powerful this information is for you to grow your business, or can you see how powerful your results would be by taking this action on this strategy?” Write this down. Are you guys awake out there? If this doesn’t excite you, I don’t know what will.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: Do you just have these ready in your pocket and . . .

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: . . . you’re ready to go with them?

Lewis: Exactly. Yeah and make sure you’re prepared so that you can [??]. It takes some time to really . . . after your first webinar, you really want to be prepared or practice a few times before you do your first webinar. For the advanced people that have already done webinars, just make sure you write this stuff down so you’ll have it ready.

Andrew: I’ve got to have this . . . I have these index cards when I do these sessions. I have to do this for myself, just have all these written down. I could even see how I would bring this up in a conversation. I’ll go, you guys listen to me, can you even see how maybe you’re never going to do a webinar, but you’re going to present in front of Ambassadors or present in front of a room of . . . [SS] . . .

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: . . . people. Do you see how this tactic is actually going to make you break the trends with them and get them to pay attention to what you’re saying?

Lewis: [Exactly].

Andrew: All right, that’s really good.

Lewis: Actually, that right there, that was like some energy.

Andrew: That is good, right?

Lewis: Really good.

Andrew: Go to the transcript right now, copy those quotes and steal them. Use the exact same thing that those [Lewis House] does. That’s really good. That’s a little action thing.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: All right . . . Have the audience take action right there. You want them to take action while they’re watching, to not just pay attention. Do you have little things that you want them to do? I’ve noticed really good speakers do this.

Lewis: In the beginning I [??] a slide that said, shut down all of your distractions; turn your phone off; get your kids out of the house, if you’re in the house or whatever. Close down distraction.. You’re telling them to do something. Then I’d say, make sure to take down notes. Really be honest. Get out your pen and paper right now and take down notes.

I guarantee you’ll have a least one page filled out within the first 15 minutes. I’m challenging them. If you don’t have enough filled out, it’s like get ready, I’m going to challenge you. I always tell them to write this stuff down what’s really important. People always at the end of the webinar will be like, man, I just took three pages of notes; this is unbelievable; I can’t believe this was free.

Make sure to always . . . people need to be told what to do. You’re not going to be forceful, just say, make sure to turn this off; do this; take notes. Get people engaged that way.

Andrew: Now, just talking to a great speaker makes doing this interview so much fun. I can imagine that one of the reasons why the people who are on TV are great interviewers are such great interviewers, is because of who they get to talk to, you know. They’re not trying to pull stories out of people or trying to pull information out. They’re talking to people like you who are experienced speakers and have their ideas organized in a way that they’re ready to share and engage people.

If I could interview you . . . Can you and I do a series of interviews over the next two months? [Laughs]

Lewis: Let’s do it.

Andrew: That would be like cheating for me, but man I would love it. Frankly, just for me to be happy, I would love it.

Lewis: Let’s do it then.

Andrew: All right, I’ll take you up on that. I’ll say once a month, if you want to come on here and do an interview on anything.

Lewis: I’m [down].

Andrew: All right, done.

Lewis: [Done].

Andrew: You have our top secret calendar link, so you can actually book yourself. Seriously, use it actually. I wish actually that when you came out to a Mixergy event in New York where the audience all knew you, and you and I chatted about this book and how it was coming [along]. I should’ve just told you back then, you have the link, here it is, this is a top secret link; go book yourself whenever the book comes out instead we’re scrambling to do this at the last minute.

Lewis: It’s all good.

Andrew: ‘m glad you’re here to do it. Well, one more tactic here. Finally, make sure you include . . . actually, here’s the last thing I want to know. How do you ask for the sale? I just talked to an experienced entrepreneur who says he let his partner handle that sale because he couldn’t ask for it. How do you ask for the sale at the end of a webinar?

Lewis: This is probably one of the most challenging things. Besides getting people on and giving great content and everything else, it comes down to are you going to be able to feed yourself and feed your employees or not. You’ve got to make money at some point. Companies have to make money to survive or else what’s the point of being in business, so you have to sale.

Whether you feel like you’re selling or not, you’ve got to sale [??] taking that transactions. A lot of people are afraid to do webinars because they feel like they’re going to be [saleszy]. They don’t want to feel [saleszy] and have people not like them.

Andrew: Right.

Lewis: I totally understand that. I’m there myself. Every time I’m very cautious about this, but in my opinion, you’re doing a disservice to people for them not having your [??] service or software if it’s great. I’ve been on webinars before where there are so many marketers who leave a bad taste for people promoting webinars. They’ve been on a webinar and they didn’t get any contents. The whole time it was the person talking about them self or their life, how great they are and selling the entire time.

It made everyone on the webinar want to [puck]. Maybe you’ve been on one if you watch the video, maybe you haven’t yet, but I’m probably sure that you’re going to come across one eventually where’s like that. People don’t want to feel that way. They don’t want to feel like they . . . can’t sleep at night cuz their sales [even] like that. They want to feel good about them self.

The best way to do this is to first blow them away with content, and let them know that, “Hey, you’re getting this absolutely for free. This could be a couple hundred dollars in itself,” however much it is. Second, is at the end, so after 90% of the webinar should be content. At the end, the last 5 to 10%, is when you can offer the advanced training, or the service, or the product, the coaching, but you just need to have a great transition slide. So, in the beginning, let me step [??] one more time.

In the beginning of the agenda, you say, ‘Here’s what you’re going to learn today on this webinar. This, this, this, this, and this.’ But at the very end, I’m also going to promise you where you can learn how to take all this information I shared with you, and take it to the next level. Whether it be software coaching service, whatever it be, but how to take it to the next steps, to the next level, whatever it might be. So your seeding in the beginning. You’re going to get all this great information, but there’s going to be some great stuff we could do, that I want you to take action on at the end.

Then at the end, you get into a transition slide, and you say, again something like, ‘Can you guys see how powerful this information is for your business, or for your life, whatever it is the topic is. If you can, would you like to learn more?’ And people, everyone’s like, ‘Yes, keep going, show me more, we want advanced stuff now,” like, everything. So, right from there, you just say, ‘Well, I just want to introduce you to what I said at the beginning of the agenda, the advanced strategies, or the next step, or the next phase, and it’s our course, our coaching program, here it is.

You break it down, here’s what you get, here’s what’s inside, here’s what’s involved, here are the results, testimonials. Give them the link, or how to call in, and that way, you do that before the ‘Q and A,’ and then you answer questions or objections during the ‘Q and A,’ anything that they have to ask, and it’s very smooth. You’ve got to learn how to do it in the right way, and I talk about it in the book, how to transition into that. Because some people mess it up and they’re very awkward. But if you do it that way, you’re not gonna feel ‘sales-y,’ and you’re gonna do a service to people as opposed to a disservice.

Andrew: I’ve got an email here from someone who took the LinkedIn seminar, the LinkedIn course that you did on Mixergy. His name is Cain Mar [SP], and I got his permission to use his name. And he said, ‘During the course with Lewis Howes, you asked for feedback on how tactics worked. When I started watching the video, I did a few industry-specific searches for the community I work in. For one of my searches, my profile was on page five, and another, my profile was on page two and three.’ This is way too long, I should have read this before I sent it over.

Basically, he just increased and increased. He became, ‘When I completed all the work for those same searches, I ranked seventh at the bottom of the first page and third at the top of the first page for another one. And he just was watching himself, while he did what you told him to. Not days later, not months later, not a year later after a lot of hard work. He just watched himself rise up. And he sent me a thank-you note, which I forwarded on to you.

I’ve seen so many results like this from people who took the LinkedIn course, and I know that people who’ve taken your webinar course got similar results. And now, you’re just sending people over to Amazon, where you’re not going to make nearly as much money, you’re giving away all this stuff, just to build your reputation with this community. Just to let people know you’re the guy who can be trusted, and when it’s time for them to finally buy something, they can trust that they can buy from you.

Lewis: And here’s the thing. We do have an advanced training course on webinars. People can sign up if they want to, where’s it’s in-depth videos and all that other stuff, but if they just want to get started and do the basics right now, they can get the book. I mean, it’s got a lot of advanced stuff in there, but there’s just no video training. So I don’t show as in-depth details as I could through a video course, which we have as well.

Andrew: By the way, I don’t do any affiliate stuff in here. People always think, ‘Andrew, if you linked over to Amazon, you’d be making a killing, because everyone is going to buy this book. And if you maybe even linked over to this course, you’re going to make a killing.’ I’m not going to do it, but I’m curious. What kind of revenue do you think I could make if I did affiliate links within my interviews?

Lewis: For all your stuff?

Andrew: Let’s say all of them. I got my assistant to go back and retroactively link everything up.

Lewis: Well, if it’s all Amazon books, all you would need to do is use Skimlinks, and it would automatically turn every link into an affiliate link for you over to Amazon, and they just pay you once a month for anyone that bought those books.

Andrew: All right, Skimlinks. I interviewed the founder, Alicia Navarro, she’s also been [??]

Lewis: She’s great, yeah.

Andrew: So you’re saying that system, that works, and you say, ‘Andrew, if you want to do this, trust them, and they’ll get it all done for you?’

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: Alright.

Lewis: Otherwise, you’re going to have to go back to every article and link them all to each one. It’s going to take you friggin’ weeks.

Andrew: Sorry, assistant, we lost a few hours of work together.

Lewis: But I would definitely. I mean, here’s the thing, I’ve never really promoted that many books on Amazon. You might make a few hundred bucks a month doing that, but I have no clue, depending on how many people would buy those books. Because you’re only getting a ten percent commission, I think, but if you were selling people’s courses, now, like, AppSumo, you would be making a lot more money. If you were doing affiliate marketing, selling training like I do for affiliate marketing, you’d be doing extremely well.

Andrew: Selling your type of courses.

Louis: Yeah, if I said “OK, I’ve got this advance webinar marketing course. Its $100 and you get a 50% commission; you get $50 for every sale.” I bet you’d sell a handful of them, at least. Depending on how many people are watching your past interviews and we do that for all people’s courses, we add courses, and you’d probably be making nice checks every month.

Andrew: So this is what I’m giving by just saying, go check out Louis’s courses. I know your stuff is good. We bought in internally. Bob Hyler, my mentor, who’s helping me organize the courses here on Mixergy and do these interviews better and make them more useable, he signed up, he loves your stuff, he’s one of your number 1 fans. He walked over to you at the New York event just to let you know he was a fan.

Lewis: Yeah, he’s great.

Andrew: I want people to buy it and not to just buy your stuff but also say “Andrew has no ulterior motive here. He’s just known Louis forever and he trusts the stuff and it’s good.” Now does Louis get enough sales that way? Or if I was getting a commission maybe I would sell it more aggressively.

Lewis: If you’re getting a commission, you’d be doing webinars and you would sell it hard on the webinars. Not hard but you’d offer a lot of value and sell it at the end and that’s something you can still do, I think. Once a month you say I’m going to find a top expert who’s got a great course that I want people to know about that our team has gone through and it’s trusted and it’s got the Mixergy stamp of approval and once a month you could a free webinar, you teach them something amazing and then here’s the advance training you can take the information for free and use it or you can sign up for more training. And yes, I’m going to get a commission.

Andrew: That’s the part that I’m a little disappointed in. Disappointed in myself that you’re right, maybe I am doing 90% by saying Lewis is a good guy and go get the book and so on but that extra 10% going from maybe 90% effort to 110% tapping into energy I didn’t even know was there for you and frankly also for other guests. Why shouldn’t Shawn Malarkey get the extra 10%? Why shouldn’t Drew of Drop Box, Drew of Drop Box doesn’t need it. I should make more of an effort for the guys who I believe have built good businesses, which have great products. Alethia from Skim Links, you see me in the comments telling people that the products good, that the business in great but apparently there’s an extra something that I’m not giving to them and to my audience and that disappoints me.

Lewis: Do you think it’s a little bit of fear, or what is it?

Andrew: It’s focus. Because really, I guess, I’m not that interested in selling your stuff. I love that. I’m not really that interested in selling my stuff, what I’m interested in is tapping into what makes you good. What I’m going to beat myself up on at the end of this, I’m about to get on a plane so I’ve got a lot of time to really think about this, this is the last conversation I have before, is what did I miss, what is it that the person sitting in the audience is going to do a webinar is going to get hung up on and I didn’t ask ,Why didn’t I put myself more into that person’s shoes or put myself in the shoes that I will be in when I do a webinar and come up with those nuances questions that tap into the fear and that’s where my concern is. I want to just make it really useful. And then not just here but in all of them, what am I missing in all of those interviews.

Lewis: Well you have different goals then most because you’ve already sold your company and you’ve got the focus, this is site, then somebody in the company itself. I think you’re doing a great job. You don’t need to sell. You can make more money if you want to but I don’t know if that’s a top priority.

Andrew: I say there’s nothing wrong it; I believe everyone should be pulling in revenue. It’s the people who are not pulling revenue I think that are causing problems for themselves but if people who are buying into the myth they don’t need revenues are causing problems for themselves. Louis Howe’s, go to Amazon, go talk to your friends and I bet you some of them has seen his stuff and you’ll get the same kind of attitude about his work from people you trust as you are from me, and if you like it I hope you’ll go in and not just get it but also give it the five star rating in Amazon. Alright, Louis thanks you for doing this interview. Thank you all for watching and being a part of this.

Lewis: Thanks so much.