Master Class: Copywriting
Taught by Dane Maxwell of Zanee

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Master Class: Copywriting


Master Class Toolbox

Course Cheat Sheet

Dane Maxwell’s Mixergy Interview (MP3 format)

Checklist Dane used in the course

Classic sales letters 1 (ZIP format)

Classic sales letters 2 (ZIP format)

Transcript

Download the transcript here

Andrew: Hey everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of a site
called Mixergy.com, where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built
their businesses. And one of the most popular interviewees is Dane Maxwell.
People got excited by his story of how he bootstrapped his company building
web apps and other products, mostly for the real estate business. And they
were especially interested in how he was able to grow his business using
copywriting.
And so I invited him here to teach copywriting. And the reason that I
invited him here is because we’re used to thinking a certain way. We’re
used to thinking that to grow our business we need this or that. And, well,
here’s some of the things that we’re used to believing, that we need an
army of programmers to grow our business and he’s shown that he doesn’t
need it. He doesn’t have an army of developers sitting in his office and
you don’t either.
And you’re going to see throughout this program that you can grow your
business without changing your business model, without begging for
mountains of investment money, without trying to find a way to grow a giant
ad budget. With persuasive communication, you’re going to be able to grow
your business. And I know it because, as I said, Dane talked about how he
did it in his interview. He gave his financials. He talked about how he’s
doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in his bootstrap business, in
revenue.
But it’s not just him, you’re going to be able to do this as other
entrepreneurs do it, right up to, even guys like Steve Jobs. In fact, let’s
take a look at how Steve Jobs uses two techniques that you’re going to
learn and be able to employ, right after we’re done with this program. Let
me bring up the video of Steve Jobs and play [??].
Jobs’ recording: “Tremendous breath, what should we price it at?
Well, if you listen to the pundits, we’re going to price it under $1,000,
which is code for $999. When we set out to develop the iPad, we not only
had very ambitious technical goals, and user interface goals, but we had a
very aggressive price goal. Because we want to put this in the hands of
lots of people. And, just like we were able to meet or exceed our technical
goals, we have met our cost goals. And I am thrilled to announce to you
that the iPad pricing starts not at $999, but at just $499, [Cheering in
background of video] $499. At $499, a lot of people can afford an iPad.”
Andrew: And there are two specific techniques that Dane is going to teach
you that Steve Jobs used in that video and then, as I said, you’ll be able
to use right after we’re done. And beyond that, Dane is going to teach you
multiple techniques that you can use immediately. My belief is, my
expectation is that you’re going to be able to use multiple techniques
within minutes of finishing this program and you’re going to start to see
results within days. But I also know that if you can just take one idea and
use it in your business, that it will have a measurable impact on your
site, on your business, and on your ability to grow it with the tools that you have.
So with that introduction, here’s Dane. Dane will be presenting this and he
actually has a unique way of presenting his ideas. And, let me pass the
privileges onto you so that you can completely control this presentation.
And now, there we go.
Dane: What I’m going to do is, I’m going bring you a little prop[??]. And
what I’ve been up to the past few weeks is putting together a copywriting
checklist for all of you to print out, and kind of use as a framework for
your copywriting. So, instead of sitting through a PowerPoint and not
really having an action guide at the end of it, I actually wanted to create
an action guide for you. I actually wanted to go through the actual guide
itself so you’re really comfortable with it, so you can get started
implementing. You’re all going to get a PDF of this within minutes of the
webinar finishing.
This is the copywriting checklist and right now I’m calling it, “How to
Sell the Crap out of Great Products and Services.” And I got a short bio
about myself and I’m going to skip through this but, just so you know in a
nutshell, 30 days out of college I was scammed for about $12,000 buying a
website for sale. And actually used the [??] that’s how I launched with
$12,000. I graduated without any debt from flipping websites. The last
website I ever bought for [??] grand. It was [??] me. I was embarrassed and
humiliated. I moved home in my parent’s basement and started working out of
a toy closet. I built a business with real value with clients who I can
friends, who I can [??] flatly ask for money for and they’re glad to pay
me.
That was kind of my entrepreneurial journey. It sparked for me. I built my
business without venture capital and without [??]. Let me zoom the screen
in here, so you can see this a little bit better.
Andrew: OK. While you are doing that, it looks like as you are scrolling
your screen, we lose your connection a little bit. If you can scroll it and
then talk, it will be easier for us to hear.
Dane: Great. OK. I built my business without venture capital partners and
I was able to do it because copywriting. That is the skill I want to share
with you now. When creating a new marketing website or better yet, editing
an existing website you already have. Make sure you have each of these
items for maximum sales power. Let’s turn the page and get to implementing.
The first item on your checklist is the instant clarity headline. There are
countless ways you can write a headline. I’m going to give you one formula
today. One formula that works very well. That formula is the end result the
customer wants in a specific period of time while addressing the
objections. How is my audio coming through so far, Andrew?
Andrew: Yes. Really well when you’re not scrolling. Dane: OK. Perfect. This is the formula. The real strict example for me or
my business, I help real estate companies recruit agents into their
company. For that business, one of the examples that I use in my business
is, ‘Recruit two top-producing agents’; that’s the end result the customer
wants. ‘Each week’ and that’s a specific period of time. ‘Without cold
calling or rejection’; those are the objections that brokers tell me why
they don’t recruit.
“Why don’t you like to recruit?” “Well, I don’t like cold calling or I
don’t like rejection.” You see I’ve tied all three of those into this
headline. ‘Recruit two top-producing agents each week without cold calling
or rejection.’ The rules for this headline, you don’t need all three, all
the time. If you only use the first item which is just the end result that
the customer wants from the formula, your headlines OK. In fact, it’ll
probably be light years better than most of the headlines on the internet.
If you use the first and second item which is the end result and the time
frame, your headlines even better. Now, if you use all three items, the end
result plus the time frame plus objections in the formula, then you’ve got
a really great instant clarity headline. Where the customer can come to
your website and instantly have clarity about as to what your business is
going to do for them.
Now, there are countless examples on how to do this. The first is, ‘Hot,
fresh pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or it’s free.” This is
Domino’s. This really illustrates something pretty fascinating. That is
that a single headline can build a $1 billion business. I think Domino’s is
a $1 billion company. The neat thing about Domino’s is the guy is a college
dropout.
He understood the power of a good headline. Hot, fresh pizza, that’s the
end result the customer wants. Delivered to your door in 30 minutes, that’s
the specific period of time. Or it’s free, is the objection or even a
guarantee.
Andrew: By the way, Dane, I’m sorry to interrupt you. As we were talking
about this program and you showed me this doc as you were working on it, I
kept doing Google searches on Domino’s Pizza and 30 minutes. A surprising
thing kept popping up. People kept expecting that the 30 minute guarantee
still existed. That this idea, this headline stuck with them so much they
weren’t even sure if it was gone. It’s been since the ’80s that Domino’s
ran that headline you’re talking about there. According to Wikipedia.
Dane: It’s fascinating. When this came out, people were so blown away by
it they actually called Domino’s when they weren’t even hungry just to see
if it would come in 30 minutes. This is the headline. Another example,
realtors use this all the time. That example is, ‘Your home sold in 90 days
or I’ll buy it.’ You can see there is a link example but I’m not going
click to it now. I don’t want any lag to slow my talking down. We will show you some examples.
For here, ‘Your home sold in 90 days’ that’s the end result that a home
seller wants. ‘Or I’ll buy it” is a guarantee or addressing the objections.
So ‘Your home sold’; what the customer wants. ‘In 90 days’; a specific
period of time. ‘Or I’ll buy it’. Even for the copywriting course that you
guys have signed up here.
Andrew used the same formula. ‘In one hour’; which is a specific period of
time. ‘Learn the copywriting system that will double your conversion’;
which is the end result you guys all want. You guys all want to learn the
copywriting system to double your conversion, to help sales, increase
interaction on your knee catcher pages and things like that.
Andrew: Let’s test the lag. How do you feel about clicking that example and
as soon as you do let me know and we’ll ask the audience if they can see
the page?
All right I can see it on my screen. Can you guys see it on your screen
right now? If you can we’ll be able to show even more examples as we
continue.
Yeah Justin is saying, “Fine”. Lenny can see it. Thanks, Lenny. Sam can see
it.
Yeah they can see it so throughout we will be able to show more examples. I
knew exactly the line formula you were going to teach in this program and I
only give myself a small amount of time to write the copy.
I said I’m going to use the formula you’re going to teach to test it out,
to prove that it works and also to speed up my time in writing this. It’s
really agonizing to write sales copy.
I know how powerful it can be and that’s encouraging but it also feels
like, “Well if I get it wrong I’ve missed a big opportunity.” Anyway I used
your formula so people can see exactly the in one hour learn the simple
copy writing system to double your conversions.
Dane: We even added the addressing the objections here in parentheses.
Even if you struggle with writing or have a limited budget.
Andrew, you said you had found these out when people submit kind of a
survey so we address your objections here as well.
Andrew: That’s right.
Dane: So that’s the instant headline [??]
Andrew: By the way, why do you emphasize the word clarity? Why do we need
instant clarity in the headline?Dane: Well my gut reaction is that clarity trumps [??]
Andrew: I’m sorry. Let’s wait for the scrolling to finish and can you
repeat what you just said?
Dane: Yeah. Clarity trumps persuasion. Also when you’re trying to get
people to take action, if they are not taking action it’s usually because
they are not clear and you’re not clear.
From a leadership perspective in general if people are not taking enough
action it’s usually because you haven’t done enough clarity. That’s why
clarity precedes action on the internet.
Andrew: OK.
Dane: What this headline does, the clarity headline, is it tells the
customer in seconds what your product will do for them not what it is.
That’s important because it forces the product creator to think about the
customer and not about your product.
Remember you’re not in the product business you’re in the end result
business. This is very liberating for some people if you had an idea that’s
failed.
It’s not about your product it’s about what you’re going to do for that end
customer so there is probably not a multitude of other ways to accomplish
that end result with a different product. If you think about the end result
of the customer that’s how I want you to think about your headline.
Remember the purpose of the headline is one thing. It’s to get your
customer to read the second line. If your customer reads the headline and
they don’t read the second line your headline has failed.
Remember to be clear and not cleaver. It’s easy to be cute and cleaver.
It’s difficult to be clear. Be clear not clever because clever does strong
persuasions.
The best headlines beyond this one formula . . . there’s tons of ways to
write a headline and this is just one of the best simple ways to get
started. I want you to know the best headlines stop, they jerk your
attention. They have greed, curiosity and unexpected surprises within them.
When you are writing your headline write to the individual. Sit down and
write to one person just like you talk to one person.
Do not write to the masses it’s not like you’re broadcasting. If you had a
gun to your head and the trigger was pulled if your target customer didn’t
clearly understand your headline would you keep it?Again it’s not about your product it’s about your customer. That’s the
first of 10 items we have on this checklist for copywriting called the,
“Instant Clarity Headline”.
Andrew anything before I move on?
Andrew: Actually two things and I’ve got examples from the audience. They
sent in their websites and I’d like to see your feedback on each of these
topics for the different websites I’ve selected.
First Sam in the audience is asking, “Can the time period be too
optimistic? Is it better to have a fantastic, impressive time period or a
realistic and less impressive one?”
Dane: Well you kind of want to border on the line of somewhere between
the two. I typically stick . . . I’m pretty conservative with mine.
Obviously the more outrageous can be the better. If you just want to think
of an example think about the four-hour workweek.
When you hear that you’re, “That’s not possible.” It totally gets you to
stop. It can be either or.
Andrew: OK. If anyone else has any questions on this section put it in the
chat box. And, Dane, people sent in their websites asking for feedback. I
wanted to send you their list of website and you said, ‘No, Andrew,
challenge me to give them feedback in real time.’ So, here I am with a real
time challenge. One of the websites that was submitted to us is a site
called gcexpediting.com. That’s g like george, c like capital,
expediting.com. It looks like you are going over to that website right now.
It’s time to say, ‘Thank you, keep submitting those questions.’ So, for
headlines specifically, what do you think of this website? And what advice
do you give gcexpediting?
Dane: Well, I am wondering if gcexpediting has a landing page. It looks
like they are targeting, it’s not clear to me what business you are in as
soon as I come to this website. First, there’s no real headline telling me
what you guys are going to do for me. I see, property owners, let us help
you get your construction project done right. Architects, engineers,
expediting services. We focus on customer service, what does that mean? You
are kind of being, I want to say, cute and clever but you are being (?)
instead of concrete. Contractors, save time and money, with our expediting
services.
That one may be a little bit better, but if I were to click on one, lets
just see how you are going to handle a specific party. And this is one of
those interesting things, where if you are targeting multiple groups, you
want to have different pages like this. And this one looks quite a bit
better. If I’m a property owner thinking about doing construction work
within the five boroughs of New York City, dealing with the Department of
Buildings and all the other relevant city organizations can be overwhelming leg GCX guide you through the permitting process and deal with the city on
your behalf. That’s great.
Andrew: Okay, so, you think that is a good headline. Not too long?
Dane: No, I think it’s not too long. Because it’s not wordy, it’s very
clear. I don’t think there are very many wasted words.
Andrew: OK. Someone in the audience is asking if you could specifically
look at his website. Related to the headline. It’s excessups.com E-X-C-E-SS-U-P-S dot com. And, guys, we are going to try to limit it to one sample
per idea. So that we can go through all ten ideas in a reasonable amount of
time.
Dane: Now, you are selling e-commerce product here. With Excess UPS.
Andrew: That’s power back-up systems.
Dane: Power back-ups, refurbished abc-ups, and new abc-ups battery backups. Well, I would encourage you to tell me specifically what can I get
from this. And what period of time, maybe, would it take to show up at my
office, or my delivery. And what are the typical objections in the back-up
industry space. Do back-ups fail a lot and you have to get them repaired?
What are the common objections that customers have?
I would actually try to get the clarity headline right here up on this. And
I would probably do it in a 20 point font. You’d say, ‘How to get battery
back-ups that never fail without any of the hassles of dealing with
whatever it is that you are talking about. And, that’s how I would approach
this. Other than that, I don’t know anything about back-ups and copy
writing is really 95% research. And, so, you really want to research what
those things are. And I would definitely apply the instant clarity headline
to this particular example.
Andrew: Okay, all right, let’s go on to the second one. And I do see that
some people want their sites evaluated. I know that we’ll have some time
after we go through the ten big ideas. To look at specific examples, too.
Dane: And maybe we can do all the examples instead of just going through
slide examples. The two people that I evaluated your sites, could you let
me know if that was helpful? If I provided any value for you there. So, I
can let you know if you either need to do something different in the next
few websites we review. I definitely want to help. So, let me nail you to
familiar sites. The next thing on the, let me slow down.
The next thing on this checklist is to declare the problem. So, you’ve got
my attention with the instant clarity headline. Now, you need to declare,
what’s my problem. So you need to tell me what my problem is. And this is
why the situation is rough right now, without your solution. And the
formula for this is, there’s a couple, three different ways you can do this. But, really, the formula, explain the current problem, using your
customers words.
So, this is really, really important. Declaring the problem is something
that I don’t see very many people doing, and it needs to be done because it
just completes the circle when you present your solution. And what it does
is, when you declare the problem, it gets the customer to nod their head in
agreement. It invites them to read the next line and it lets’ the customer
know that you understand them and the deepest human desire is to be
understood.
There is no deeper human desire. It’s not to be loved. It’s not to be
missed. It’s to be understood. If you have a family, you go to for
Christmas and they drive you crazy. You probably love them but maybe they
drive you crazy because you really don’t feel understood by them. It’s
because the deepest human desire is to be understood and leverage that
desire. Also, describing the problem, it creates empathy because it lets
them know that you can relate to them and empathy is the most powerful
sales tool. And most important of declaring the problem is that it sets up
your solution to be presented into the whole gap that you created by just
defining the problems.
So here’s some examples on how to do it. And let’s go to SendGrid.com. You
see SendGrid, these guys know what they’re doing. And here on the website,
you see right here, below the headline, declaring the problem. On average,
20% of legitimate e-mail never reaches the inbox. Then it goes on to say
SendGrid solves this problem by replacing (?) infrastructure. So they’re
declaring the problem and they’re saying how they solve it.
But right now, we’re just focusing on declaring the problem and just so you
guys know, I’m a customer of SendGrid the software company, and when I came
to this website, they got me instantly. I signed up in like 30 seconds when
I came to this website because they understood my problem of companies
saying I didn’t get my log in email, I didn’t get my forgot password email.
Andrew: I’ve gotten that with these courses and it’s so painful. Somebody
paid for a course and they don’t end up getting access to it. Not because I
didn’t send it out, not because they didn’t pay, not for any legitimate
reason, but because legitimate email doesn’t hit the inbox. And when I saw
that, I felt yeah, these guys really understand one of the big pain points
that I have. I manually then e-mail out links to these courses from my
gmail account because it’s such a painful problem but of course it doesn’t
scale.
Dane: All right. So that’s SendGrid declaring a problem and the next one
is Earn1K.com. (?) for safety. And here you see, earn your first $1,000 and
more starting with this free tool. And that’s kind of the first of the end
event, the end result the customer wants. But the second thing, declaring
the problem, here it is. I can’t free lance, I don’t even have an idea.
Immediately following the headline, you’re going to see the most persuasive type of marketing site. They all follow this. They declare the problem and
that’s exactly what you need to do.
Andrew: By the way, how does he know that? How does he know that that’s an
objection that people have? How does he know that he’s phrasing it in the
way that they would phrase it themselves?
Dane: Surveys. Asking people via surveys like you did when you signed up.
What are your challenges and what are struggles or what are your
frustrations when it comes to writing copy? What’s keeping you from
starting your own online business? What’s keeping you from starting a
freelance business and I imagine they say, I can’t free lance. I don’t even
have an idea.
Andrew: I see Jessie in the audience here is an Earn1K member and Jessie
said I had no idea that’s how he did it. I had no idea that’s what was
working on me.
Dane: Awesome. Well I hope you guys are going to have a lot more (?) as
we go through this. For DoubleForDating, which is a $20 million per year
information marketing e-course stuff for guys to double their dating with
women and if you go to this link, you’ll get this PDF. You can click on
this link and save it but as you see here, if you scroll down.
Andrew: Let’s wait for the scroll before you talk to make sure that we can
get it clearly out to everyone.
Dane: How long, do you know?
Andrew: Yeah, I can see it on one of my screens. There we go. I see them on
both now.
Dane: OK. Perfect. Well, look at these (?) the problem (?) is question.
Do you get nervous when you think it might be time to approach a woman? Or
maybe you’re out on a date and you’d like to kiss a woman but you don’t
want to screw up your chances by making a mistake. Have you ever felt
insecure because you’re not tall, handsome, young, rich, etc.? You feel
like attractive women wouldn’t be interested (?).
Andrew: Let’s hold out there for a second. In fact, it looks like the audio
is a little bit off, as (?) is saying. Let me read it out just to make sure
we have that we have it clearly out for people. You were reading his points
and it’s do you get nervous when you think it might be time to approach a
woman? Or maybe you’re out on a date and you’d like to kiss a woman but you
don’t want to screw up your chances by making a mistake? And he’s talked
about this. He pulls out these statements directly from the problems that
guys have and he uses their problems to explain to them their problems and
to show that he understands as part of his copy. I was going to say what he
was going to do next, but I’m going to let you say that when we get to that
section. Dane: Sure. This is another example [??] declaring the problem actually
is . . . let’s view this in full screen mode. You see that declaring the
problem is universal to any industry [??].
We’ve done it with freelancing, now we’ve done it with dating. I won’t go
to the next example in the interest of time but we will briefly mention.
If you click on this link it will take you to a video about Hipmunk.
Hipmunk is a flight search website that basically doesn’t suck and that’s
exactly how they market it.
I used it instantly after I watched the video. This video starts off with a
problem. You need to visit your honey across the world then you’ll have to
hunt through dozens of crappy flight search sites that drain your energy.
OK. You need to declare the problem right at the beginning of the video.
For 37 singles at base camp if you go to the home page for 37 singles . . .
I actually do want to show this one.
Let me know when you can see this Andrew.
Andrew: OK. It’s coming up, and it looks like it’s on the screen right now.
Dane: All right. If you see this, it starts off with a headline.
“Base Camp is a project management tool you wish you had on your last
project.”
It was very successful they don’t need my advice but I wouldn’t personally
use that headline. What they did I though really well is declared the
problem right below it.
“Are you still managing projects with email?”
“Are you still using excel for your to-do lists?”
They are sitting there declaring the problem right there. You see that
even the big amazing reputable company like 37 singles that everybody
idolizes are still declaring problems.
Andrew: Nicolas in the audience is asking, “Is what you are describing
called Yes Escalation?” Is that what you’re describing?
You’re trying to get people to say yes in their minds multiple times to
warm them up?
Dane: No.
Andrew: No OK.Dane: Maybe that’s one element of this but Yes Escalation is kind of at a
close where you are, “So you want to grow your business?”
“Yes.” You get five more customers.
“You know you need to be on Facebook.”
“Yes.” You probably need my product. You’ve said yes three times so you
probably want to say yes the fourth.
I think that’s what he’s talking about but this is really more just you’re
declaring the problem so that they agree with you and they know you’re
about to present the solution. That’s what we’re doing when we declare the
problem.
Andrew: Got you OK.
Dane: Some mind set tricks for declaring the problem is if you can
describe your customer’s current problem better than they can they will
unconsciously assume that you have the solution. OK. If you can describe
your customer’s current problem better than they can they will
unconsciously assume you have the solution.
If you’re not solving a clear problem it’s really a struggle to get people
to pay. The position you want to be in is you want to be selling insulin to
a diabetic not sugar cookies.
One reason from a broader perspective, one reason products fail is they
aren’t solving a problem someone has. If your product is nice to have not
must have you don’t have much power.
Here’s a real big shift I’ve just started to realize in my life in the last
two weeks because a friend was explaining this to me. If you’re selling an
aspirational purchase instead of an “I got this problem and I’m going to do
it with or without your product” purchase you’re in risky territory.
For example think of the NordicTrack verse Basecamp HQ. NordicTrack people
buy to start doing something like working out.
For project management people are going to do project management with or
without Basecamp. Aspirational purchases usually don’t last long. How many
people do you know still working on NordicTracks?
The vast majority of unsuccessful products you see are usually aspirational
in nature. If you aren’t able to declare a real clear problem then your
product could be more aspirational then you probably would want it to be.
That’s two. Shall we go on to three, Andrew?Andrew: Let’s take a look at one of the sites that was submitted before and
again you didn’t want to see it so I’ll give it to you right now and reveal
it with everyone else. Lets’ look at United iPhone Repair.
I specifically picked a bootstrap company. We had a few funded companies
here who submitted their websites, but I wanted to see how bootstrappers
would use these ideas.
Let me ask you to click on the click here button. He’s getting people to
click that button and he’s not sure about the page afterwards.
How does copy and specifically how does copy relate to declaring the
problem?
Dane: Well, I won’t watch the video. It’s four minutes and 48 seconds.
Andrew: What about the text?
Dane: Yes he has home based iPhone repair business in action. Let me
scroll. I’m . . .
Andrew: You’re not declaring a problem. OK. There are two problems that you
can declare, I think, here.
Dane: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: The first is that when a person’s iPhone is broken they don’t want
to have to send it in for a week and wait for it to come back. They are
teaching people how to create businesses where they repair iPhones, which
is interesting. OK. I wanted to make sure that you got that.
Dane: Thank you. Right. So, that’s the problem that people have. And so
if you’re trying to sell an at-home business, you really want to sell the
person on what problem they would be solving for other people. So that they
really get it now, and in their head they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I get it. I
see that I could be solving this problem.’ And so you really want to take
someone through the instant clarity headline and (?) the problem.
Right here on this side, I don’t see anything that really speaks to me from
an instant clarity headline. Especially from a home-based business
perspective. You could have a lot of fun with this. How a 21-year-old
college student makes $3000 a month repairing iPhones on the side without
any business skills, experience, and without even ever knowing how to
repair an iPhone in the first place. It’s something along those lines.
And then you really want to declare the problem, and I don’t know how that
problem would work right now. But I know that you would be solving the
problem for the people that need their iPhone replaced, so you declare that
problem. And you could declare their problem. Say, if you wanted to make
some part time money, what are your options? Work at McDonald’s? Go apply for a job? Well, by the time you fill out an application and go through the
interview process, you could already have your first iPhone repaired and
600 bucks in your pocket.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Dane: So, that’s how I would approach this.
Andrew: OK. All right. Let’s look at the next one. And, of course, if
anyone has any questions keep typing them into the chat room. The questions
that are on your mind are probably the same ones that other people are
wondering. So, keep bringing them on.
Dane: All right. Let me know if I helped with that website. Whoever
person that was with that one. I can’t see names because I’m on the
presentation mode right now. But the third item . . .
Andrew: Daniel saying, ‘Awesome, thanks!!’ He’s saying, ‘Yes, it was
great.’ So, thanks, Daniel. Thanks for the feedback.
Dane: Yeah. Thank you, Daniel. So, third, you want to present your
solution. So, you’ve done the instant clarity headline, you’ve declared the
problem. Now it’s time to present your solution. And the formula for this
is product name helps you do task. Say good bye to frustration or problem,
and hello to benefit. And then follow up with you get top three features
plus benefits for each feature.
So, here’s how this would work as a strict example. Paperless typeline
helps take your real estate transactions and related documents online. And
that’s product name helps you do task, which is what people are looking to
do. And say good to frustration and hello to benefits. Say good bye to
filing cabinets which people hate filing cabinets, and hello to happy
mobile agents. Which is hello to benefits.
And then below that you want to put the top three features plus the
benefits for each feature. So these were email, scan, fax, or directly
upload contracts; and that’s a feature. And then view them from any
computer, any browser, anywhere. That’s the benefit. The next one. Get an
items needed checklist for transaction; that’s the feature. To stay
organized; that’s the benefit. Securely send contracts via email to
clients, to the lender, or to the title company when they ask for it;
that’s the feature. And travel without the paper briefcase; that’s the
benefit.
So this is how you want to present your features. And the rule for this,
try and go ahead and fit your product into this description for a good
practice exercise. Regardless of what you’re selling. Even if you don’t
have a product or service to sell yet, pick a product and just try it out.
And, two, keep it to the top three features and benefits for this when
you’re presenting your solution. And it should be painful to pick your top
three features and benefits. You might be like, ‘Aw, why not ten? Or 11?’ Well, just do the top three and . . .
Andrew: So, how do you do it? How do you know which top three benefits to
pick?
Dane: You ask your customers what are their favorite features.
Andrew: I see.
Dane: If it was an eBook, what was your favorite part of the book? If
it’s consulting, what was your favorite part of our session? If it’s
selling UPS battery back ups, go on and say what was your favorite of
ordering through us, what was the favorite part of your experience with us?
And you would use those. You’ve got to be talking to your customers to get
these things. If you try and pick what you think is best, that might work
but you’re more likely to fall on your face here. Was that a helpful
answer, Andrew?
Andrew: It was, yes.
Dane: OK. If you sell consulting, place your product name with your
consulting package. So you don’t need to be selling software to use this
presentation. I want you guys to know that of all the check list items on
this copywriting guide, this, present your solution, was the personally
hardest for me to crystallize down into an actionable template.
There are countless ways to present a product. This is one that works well
for me. What this does, when you present your solution, is it forces you to
create a 30 second elevator pitch for your product, so if you want to go
out and raise venture capital, which I’m not particularly a fan of myself,
I feel like I have another job with bosses, and I want to be my own boss.
If you do want venture capital because you do want to grow the next
Groupon, for example, doing something like this will force you to create a
30 second elevator pitch for your product so that if a venture capitalists
happen to be by you, in 30 seconds you can explain exactly what your
product does, how it helps them, what frustration it gets rid of, what
benefit gives them, and then the top three things that your product does.
What will also happen is that the customer is going to unconsciously trust
and bond with you because you are clear. When you read this, you’re not,
‘OK, so what business are they in? What are they doing? What’s their
company plan?’ You know exactly what I’m talking about. That’s what you
want to do. Also, it gives the customer info to say, ‘Hey, I want to know
more about this.’ or it tells them that this is not for them.
Let’s face it, not every customer is your customer, and you want them to
figure that out on their own as quickly as possible. Let’s talk about
examples of how to do it. Your survey tool. Your survey tool, their
headline, product name helps you do tasks. Survey tool helps you quickly create and distribute surveys with just a few clicks. This is actually
their headline, but this is how I would present the solution, and I would
probably do a little bit of a different headline here.
This is how you would present your solution from Survey tools example. They
have their top four features or method down here, like customer
satisfaction, (?) service, get employee feedback, tracking studies. Those
aren’t verbatim, but they’re close enough. You can see that they have a
full product tour somewhere else. This is all about presenting the nuts and
bolts of your solution. If we go to the next one, Harvest. Harvest is a
great example because they use, what I think of as, a triple benefit
headline or tri-ading.
For some reason, we love threes. If we tell a joke, it’s usually the first
guy goes in the bar, the second guy goes in the bar, the third guy goes in
the bar, then the punch line. When you’re selling headlines, triples work
really well. Here you see that Harvest is doing a great job by presenting
their solution. Easily tracked times, send invoices and run your business.
Those are the three things that they do really well. They even have the top
three features at the top: simple time tracking, fast online
invoicing, and powerful reports. They’re presenting their solution, what it
does, and the benefits that it gives them.
Let go back and gather my thoughts on this one. The next one is the Harvest
products web page. I wanted to show this one as well, because you can see
that they keep the top three benefits and features in bold, and then each
of those top features has three top features and benefits to themselves.
Let me actually show that so it doesn’t sound gibberish. On this product
tour page, you see the three. Simple time tracking is bolded, fast online
invoicing is bolded, powerful reports is bolded. These are the top three.
Of course, they do estimates and expenses and security and privacy, but top
three are bolded. If you go to the right hand side, there are three
features and benefits: simple to use, simple to access, simple to deploy.
They have this for each one of their top three features. Their top three
features all have top three benefits. I found this to be a great example. I
know Harvest is kicking ass because I heard them on Mixergy. So these guys
know what they’re doing.
Andrew: Do you have (?) up still?
Dane: I think I can pull it up.
Andrew: There it is. Earlier you talked about how they explained the
problem that their customers are having. In the second sentence they talked
about their solution, and then underneath the main image, they had their
own solution. Deliverability has its own little logo. That’s the way they
showed their solution. I noticed that this is a pretty common layout. The
landing page template are specifically designed this way so that in the
bottom section you can show your solutions and even have a couple of icons to highlight and describe them.
Dane: Exactly. (?) does it really well because they describe the problem
and then they say, product name solves this problem by replacing the (?)
softer, improve deliver ability, actionable email metrics, and API’s all in
a completely scalable solution. Now as a software and service owner I would
know that I would want to sign up for this program just based on this
paragraph, (?) did a really great job with that paragraph. They are able to
do that because they are solving a really focused, simple problem. In a
neat trend for software companies I see is API’s for API’s. A company is
their own API, like (?) for people to use, it’s a neat little trend now.
Mind set tricks for presenting your solution is use the language that you
hear from your customers when they describe how they use your product. So
for Paperless Pipeline for example, which is my Real Estate Transaction
Management Go Paperless Solution, when I first started out marketing this,
I was marketing, hey you can work paperless because that’s how I thought of
it and I didn’t really know any better, but work paperless became, show up
to closing without paper.
It also became travel without your paper brief case, after I had been
working with clients and listening to their feedback overtime, I was able
to change work paperless to show up to closing without paper. Show up to
closing without paper is really nice because very few agents can do that
and this agent that did, she said, “I could show up to closing without
paper” and I was like, “Well, how does that feel?” She says, “I just feel
awesome because I walk in there and I see the other agent with their
briefcase full of paper and I chuckle to myself, sucker.”
Andrew: So you’re not surveying brokers, you’re actually talking to them
and then making note of the big problems that their having and how your
products solve those problems and that’s what your using in your
copywriting?
Dane: Yes.
Andrew: OK.
Dane: I do both. I do surveys and I talk to my customers. The problem
with surveys is you’re never going to get the third or fourth layer deep
behind what the person’s saying. So, if you say, “What’s the main
benefits?”
They’re like, “Man, I don’t have to have my briefcase anymore.”
If I was on the phone with them, I would be like, “Tell me more about that?
When was the last time that happened?”
“Oh, well I was at closing, I was able to show up at closing without
paper.””Tell me how that felt. How did it feel?”
“Oh man, it felt amazing.”
“Were you able to use it anywhere else?”
“No.”
“When you showed up at closing what happened?” I can dig in deeper and
deeper and deeper. Surveys are great but the telephone is even better
because you can dig in really three, four or five layers deep. Does that
help?
Andrew: Yeah. It does.
Dane: Then you want to think of your solution and first in terms of the
benefits not the features. Remember that every feature, well every feature
I design is to give the client a benefit. Not to give them a feature. I’m
not in the features business. I’m in the benefits business. So that’s
presenting your solution. With that said, should we move on to borrow
credibility?
Andrew: Let’s take a look actually at zoho.com someone who created one of
their pages submitted it to use for your feedback. They created a bitly
link for you to go directly to their page. It’s bitly/zohoquizmaker and
that will take you to the zoho.com page and we’ll check it out right now.
Dane: All right. Take quizzes. Take Zo Ho challenge the best free online
quiz maker.
Andrew: Nicholas is saying he’s good, he’s congratulating me on having you
here. Thank you.
Dane: Thank you.
Andrew: Thanks for that feedback. OK. The page loaded.
Dane: Zo Ho challenge helps you create self grading quizzes, assign them
to candidates, assess their performance, and analyze results. Say goodbye
to paper based testing, create (?) electronic (?) with Zo Ho challenge quiz
maker for your classroom or your employees today.
Andrew: I picked him because his page, I picked him for this section
because he has a lot of features on the bottom. In fact, you said earlier
limit to three, it looks like he has a lot of features and he highlighted
many of them. What do you think of the way he’s explaining the solution?
Dane: Well, that makes me a little bit worried that I said only three now
because you don’t really want to limit. If your products doing more than three, tell more of them. If your product’s puzzle or picture is not
complete with just three features, then tell a few more. When I’m talking
about presenting your solution, I’m talking about presenting it above the
fold so they can see your solution being presented. I see the instant
clarity headline that he declared the problem, and I see you presented your
solution all above the fold and then they can get everything else they want
as the click around the site.
Andrew: Debbie’s saying, “Should this page list more benefits than
features?” Right now, we’re seeing features like, reuse quizzes, randomize
questions, and options. How do you feel about that?
Dane: (?)
Andrew: Sorry. Let’s wait for the page to finish scrolling. OK.
Dane: Yeah. Sorry. I was saying, I think she should probably help teach
this course.
Andrew: All right. Let’s move on to the next point I want to keep this on
track so we can end it with enough time for you to take some questions from
people. We’re on number 4.
Dane: Number 4, real quick I know we’re evaluating presenting the
solution, I think they’ve done a fairly good job presenting the solution
here. (?) quizzes, (?) ZoHo Challenge I’m not totally clear on, this is
really cute and clever, but it’s not clear. Like you go to (?) and it’s email delivery simplified. You come to ZoHo Challenge you want to say,
create quizzes in 30 seconds.
What is it that you’re doing here? I wasn’t sure what you were doing until
I got down to this line here and that’s not a place where you want to be.
Features, when you’re presenting your solution re-use quizzes so that you
can save time instead of copying/pasting new quizzes all day long. Put it
in benefits after features, be more clear in the headline and that’s my
feedback for this page.
Andrew: OK.
Dane: I didn’t leave that loop open. All right. Number 4, borrow
credibility.
Andrew: Sorry. Let’s wait for it to scroll and can you repeat that please.
Dane: Borrow credibility. This is where you can tie your company to
trusted symbols and famous authorities. Remember, I hope everyone is
flipping out excited because you’re going to be able to get this PDF so you
can have it on your own. That’s why we didn’t want to do PowerPoint so I’m
actually walking you through the product that you are actually buying when
you signed up for this course. 4) is Borrow Credibility. This is where you tie your company to trusted
symbols and famous authorities. This is really kind of sneaky, ninja
powerful stuff. This is where you put the biggest brands all over your
marketing pages even if they don’t use your product.
I kind of feel like 37 Signals might of set the stage with this because
they would put Kellogg’s, and Hershey’s, and whatever all the companies are
that use Face Camp. Then you started seeing it pop up over every other
software page. That’s a little bit about what this is. It’s more than that.
So, let’s go to Survey Tools pricing page here and so you how you can do
this. Let me know when this page is loaded.
Andrew: Loaded.
Dane: All right. So here you see, I see how much can a good survey do for
you? Then below it you see Domino’s Pizza, Aclaim Games, and Pogo all
increase their revenues and make customers happier by learning what they
really wanted. Notice what they’re doing here. They do not say that
Domino’s Pizza, Aclaim, and Pogo use surveytool.com. They’re saying that
Domino’s Pizza, Aclaim, and Pogo use surveys to increase their revenues and
make customers happy. You can do this kind of stuff yourself, even if
you’re just getting started.
Andrew: That’s interesting, it looks like Justin in the audience is saying,
he did that with his site. Right. So you’re saying if our product is to new
to borrow credibility from our customers, we can still show credibility by
saying, “Look, these people you admire, use the brand category that we’re
entering. These people who you admire, Domino’s Pizza use surveys and if
they use surveys maybe you can use the same tools they have, but at the
very least you should understand you should use surveys too, and we got a
great tool that you should consider.”
Dane: Yeah. If you’re selling a To Do List Manager. It’s fairly well
known that just about every billionaire uses To Do Lists. So you can list
Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, and — I don’t know if Charlie Munger is a
billionaire, Charlie Munger is Warren Buffet’s right hand man and Michael
Eisner from Disney they all use To Do Lists to stay productive. You could
have their faces and photos and you could have their stuff all over there.
Of course, if you really want to verify if they use a To Do List, but I’m
guessing that they do, so that’s one event. You can take this anywhere.
Andrew: I’m looking at the chat box and Thomas in the chat box is saying,
“How do they even know that they really use surveys?” You showed me before
we got started that we checked this to make sure that we knew what we were
talking about and right here on the home page that you just clicked over
to, people can see that what surveytool.com did was they found a case study
where Domino’s Pizza talked about how they used surveys, and Survey Tool is
showing a case study, they’re citing the source, they’re not saying they’re
the source, they’re showing it.Dane: If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you see a link to Ann
Arbor’s News Paper Magazine, so you know watch CNN, watch CNBC, watch New
York Times and then you see Domino’s Pizza, taste study shows up there.
That’s how they found this. Just Google search around for your concept. If
you’re selling a concept like surveys, it’s really pretty easy to find.
Whatever concept you’re selling, there’s probably already a big brand doing
that similar concept somewhere and you can put that on your page.
Andrew: Thomas is saying, “Is it legal to copy that information?” They’re
not copying it, they’re just reporting it as a case study and then they’re
linking to it as far as I’ve been able to see.
Dane: Yeah. This is not illegal because (?) scroll the page (?) it may
have lagged a little, but see hear they’re citing the source with a link to
the original article. They’re not trying to make it their own and it
doesn’t need to be your own to be powerful. They’re just citing a source
like every single PhD does when they write books. They have plenty of
sources they include and then they just site them. That’s what they’re
doing here.
Andrew: OK. I know you have another example ready to go there.
Dane: Yep. The next one is you can use quotes from famous people. If you
click on this link you’ll see a video, it’s a 30 minute video I used to
sell my recruiting website software that helps companies really effectively
recruit real estate agents using the Internet. At the beginning of the
video I wanted to add a lot of authority and credibility to my cause.
So I used a quote by Charles Darwin who, everybody should know who Charles
Darwin is, but here’s this quote, “It’s not the strongest of the species
that survives nor the smartest, but the ones that are most adaptable to
change.” Then I go on in the video and say, “That has me worried because
brokers are not adapting to the changes on the Internet.”
Now in the very first part of the video this is amazing, it creates
tremendous authority, it creates credibility, and also sets the stage for
me to present a solution that will help them change. If I was to just go
out and say, “Hey, you know what? You’re going to be in trouble if you
don’t adapt to changes on the Internet.” Versus using Charles Darwin, they
can’t argue with Charles Darwin. It’s like accepted as fact when I say it
from Charles Darwin, but when I say it from my own lips then it’s not as
powerful. It’s much more than just adding credibility, it’s actually also
letting a third party state my point for me so I don’t have too. Any
thoughts there, Andrew?
Andrew: No. I’m eager to see the next page, which I know is the one I use
to sell this course.
Dane: Right. So, if we go to the copywriting page and I’ll wait for it to load.
Andrew: I’ll let you know when it’s coming. When it’s done, it’s still
coming up, all right, it’s there.
Dane: So here you see, learn the copywriting system that Dane uses to
sell to clients like Remax, (?), Century 21, and Coldwell Banker. He’s got
it right by the Call to Action button, which is great. This is how you
added it to the course, which you guys all signed up for.
Andrew: You know what you helped me do and studying this has helped me do,
is figure out how can I add credibility, or how can I show credibility to a
course that I haven’t even created. When I created that landing page, there
was no course yet. I couldn’t say, that these major brands took the course
or sent their people to the course, but I still wanted to show that idea
was credible and that there are good logos that I could associate with
those ideas, how do I do it?
So, instead of saying these are the people that took the course, I’d say,
these are the people who Dane has used to sell to, using the ideas that
you’re going to learn. I’ve learned there are lots of different ways to do
this and I shouldn’t feel just because a product is new that I’m locked out
of this major selling point, which is credibility.
Dane: Exactly. You can do this no matter what your position is, it’s only
your imagination.
Andrew: We have one more from the audience for this topic.
Dane: Before we do, just a random idea to get your juices flowing. I just
made this up on the fly, but if you’re selling an e-course on anything
that’s going to help someone do something that hopefully benefits them, but
a quote by Benjamin Franklin and include his photo below your Buy button
and one of his quotes I always remember is, “An investment knowledge always
pays the best dividends.” You have Benjamin Franklin, you have his photo,
you have it by the Buy button, now the person’s really going to feel like
they are disagreeing with Benjamin Franklin by not buying your product, in
a way.
Andrew: OK. All right. Let’s take a look at bidsketch.com, B-I-D-S-K-E-T-CH.
Dane: It looks like they’re following a really good tried and true
formula here. I don’t see any credibility indicators above the fold. You
want to add those. You’ve got quite a bit of space here, which you could
squeeze this up and then you could squeeze the rest of this up and then you
could add the credibility indicators below these for (??) managing your
clients, automate your proposal process, better communicate for online
sharing, increase profits and win more proposals. Andrew: Logos of maybe some of the agencies that have used Bidsketch or
some of the companies that have worked with it.
Dane: Yep. The Bidsketch customers are sending proposals to companies.
You could even use the companies that are receiving your proposals.
Andrew: Right.
Dane: There’s so many interesting ways to do this.
Andrew: I’ve noticed when a new company gets funded if it needs to have
credibility indicators if it needs to have some logos on their site, they
go back to their investors and say, “Can you please give access to our
program to all of your portfolio companies and the ones that actually use
it send us their logo?”
“For the ones we sign up let us use their logo.” It seems they instantly
day one have them and I used to think you had to wait years in order to get
those.
OK. While you go back to the document Sonny (??) in the audience is saying,
“Will this apply to direct mail and that brings up email and other
channels”.
Do these techniques apply to beyond landing pages and beyond home pages?
Dane: Absolutely. The Sears brothers were kind of the inventors of split
testing, I believe. They were back in the 1800s, I think.
I don’t know my dates. There are probably a few historians that could call
me out on being incorrect here. I know that Sears set the stage for the
mail order catalogues to split test.
If you’re sending a mail order catalogue, you would use the respected
brands and authorities of that product in your catalogue to help sell their
product. It would have worked in the 1900s just like it would have today.
Andrew: OK. Wow we’re really behind schedule so I’m going to try to not ask
too many questions so you can move on here with the next one. What’s number
five?
Dane: Yeah, let’s limit customer examples to the very end so we can to
all the content for everyone’s time sake.
Andrew: OK.
Dane: We’ll do examples at the end. Five, social proof. This is different
than borrowing credibility. In social proof you want to show people are
actually using your stuff and signing up.37 Signals are famous for this. Basecamp HQ they have, “Millions of people
use Basecamp.”
(??). I use it on my products. “Join the crowd with a number of files
stored in the company’s registered.” On the aweber.com order page I’ll pull
this up.
On the right-hand side, while I’m filling out my credit card it shows on
the right-hand side who is joining AWeber. John one minute ago. Rita three
minutes ago.
Alex five minutes ago. Marissa eight minutes ago. As I’m signing up I’m,
“Man people are really signing up and using this product”.
You want to add social proof to your site and show the statistics behind
it.
Andrew: Can you show your website? When we did a dry run of this, there’s
something really interesting about the way you did it that I think is worth
pointing out to people.
Dane: OK.
Andrew: Let’s take a look at that site. Here goes pipeline.com. I’ll tell
you when it comes up. It’s still loading and now I see it OK.
Dane: Here you see, “Join the crowd. 75 offices use PipeLine. 600,000
contracts submitted. 42,000 deals closed.”
This always intimidated me to have this on the site because I thought I had
to have some sort of live feed pulling in. Finally I just said, screw it.
It’s just HTML and every once in a while, once every couple months we all
get in and see the new numbers. Upload these numbers and publish this page
to the website that’s all we’re doing to show our numbers.
You can do it easily.
Andrew: OK. I wanted to point one other thing out but that’s before you
move away from this page so leave it on here please for a moment.
That’s really reassuring because when you show me AWeber and I see how
automated their system is where it can tell me three minutes ago that
somebody joined, that feels like a great idea but I’m a little concerned
that maybe I couldn’t do that.
I couldn’t develop it into the site fast enough. Maybe I don’t have people
every three minutes joining. I like this idea because everyone has numbers
of customers. Everyone has social proof like this that they could highlight
and it’s easy to add.The other thing I want to point out if anyone has been noticing the
headlines change on this page or maybe don’t match up with what you showed
earlier. They keep changing because you’re using AB testing constantly.
One of the issues we had is we were planning out this course we’d go to a
webpage, we’d see an element we wanted to highlight and then we’d come back
and it was gone. People use AB testing nonstop.
I’ll let you go back and while that page is loading somebody earlier asked,
“What do you use for AB testing?” Maybe now is a quick time to just mention
that resource.
Dane: visualwebsiteoptimizer.com.
Andrew: OK. If they wanted to do AB testing the way you do and test out
some of your ideas that is a good site to use. OK.
Dane: If you want to look more into these examples when you get it into
PDF you can, we’ll just stick with those two for the sake of time. Some
rules here, never stop selling social proof. Let social proof bleed into
everything you do to make a sale. You never stop selling and if you see
you’re on the sign up page for base camp, this is the page, when you sign
up for base camp, they’re still selling you on social proof, right here on
the right-hand side, 7,000 users, 1,000’s sign-up every week. Even on the
sign-up page so, never stop selling your social proof.
Andrew: OK. I’ll leave out the user website so you can move on to the next
one.
Dane: All right. Six is testimonials. This is proof that your product
works in your customers own words. You have the power of credibility where
you’re tying your company to image (?) brands. You have social proof where
people are actually signing up and using the product, and you got
testimonials, which is proof that your product works in your customers own
words. The formula for testimonials is, the specific end result are
benefits that the customer got in a specific period of time, plus the
accompanied feeling they have with the person’s name along with their stats
about their business or company.
Now the strict examples of this on Paperless Pipeline is, this is a
testimonial, “The specific end result is I’ve saved $200 per month in file
folder savings” that’s a specific benefit. “It took three days to get
implemented” that’s the specific time frame. “I recruited my first agent in
a month as a result” which is another benefit within a time frame. “I can
now be home with my baby son and review files” which is sort of an
accompanied feeling, “And the freedom feels incredible” again with the
accompanied feeling followed by the broker’s name plus their stats in the
top ten Remax in the world of 200 agents.(?) you do the testimonials. Now real important rules, don’t use
testimonials word for word as folks tell you or send them in. Reorder the
biggest benefit to be at the top of the testimonial, bold it and then put
the rest of the testimonial below it. You can see an excellent example of
putting the biggest benefit in action on this page here, let me know when
this loads.
Andrew: This one’s taking awhile . . . I see it now, OK.
Dane: You see all these, this is selling some sort of chiropractic
marketing system and the biggest benefit, first day up and running, you see
the new patient bolded, “Reactivated two patients who hadn’t been in since
2005” bolded. “This program is tremendous” biggest benefit here bolded. So
this is an excellent example and I’ve included the link in the PDF, you see
how great testimonials work. Now for me testimonials on websites are not
nearly powerful as an e-mail.
So here’s a marketing tip: I’ll send an e-mail out with one person’s
testimonial and a sign up link to users who have not bought yet. So if
you’re using premium based software and you got a 10% buy and 90% who
don’t, you got 90% of the people you can drip out a testimonial to them of
a customer who decided to buy your product. This would be reason number
6,372 do to (?) generation on your websites.
Andrew: Yeah. I keep seeing the power of (?) and that’s something people
kept asking about before we started the course, they said, “Make sure to
mention how these ideas work in an email.” I thought that was innovative
how you take a testimonial that someone sent you, you rearrange it and get
their OK on it and you rearrange it the way you described it on there and
then what you do is just email out to your users and you say, “Here, it’s
not me telling you why you should buy this product, here’s an actual user
like you who’s given me this feedback.” That’s incredibly powerful and I
didn’t know that you did that.
Dane: You can do it without being pushy too. You push the testimonial out
and you’re like if you’re still kind of . . . and then below testimonial,
you’re like if you’re still at all interested in benefiting from our
product, click here to try it out. Now you’re not being pushy when you send
those out and you can really do it with a lot of class.
I found folks are more likely to read testimonials than just one
testimonial by itself. One testimonial at a time and they’re scattered all
throughout your sales page. If testimonials are all stacked among five or
ten testimonials all in one section, people will gloss over it. You see
testimonials and people are like, “Oh, here’s what they are going to try
and sell me.” So, scatter them and surprise them throughout the site. If
people have no idea who the person is on the testimonial, it doesn’t really
have nearly as much of an impact, so you better make it damn good with
benefits.Remember to find some authoritative or related fact on them. For example,
one of my testimonials is, “Here’s why the number one Agent in Texas is
excited,” and then I follow with the testimonial. If it wasn’t the number
one agent in Texas, you could say, “Here’s why a multiple, $1 million
producer is excited,” and it’s pretty easy to be a multiple, $1 million
producer, you just sell like 20 homes in your lifetime and you’re a
multiple $1 million producer.
You can be creative with this, it doesn’t have to be number one like here,
but then you would follow with testimonial all that. You could put directly
below their names something like, “This person is the head of the
Associated Realtors” or “This person is a $500,000 project manager with a
budget of $500,000.” So they can have some sort of real table fact on there
if the name means nothing to the person.
Fifth, spread testimonials out all over your website. You could put a
testimonial for every feature. On the sign-up page, below the click to
register button. Never stop selling your testimonials. Every single page
should have testimonial on it.
For Huddle, the examples here, there are three testimonials. Just a few
seconds to load, Andrew. Let me know.
Andrew: Yes. It’s still not coming in on one of my screens. I’m watching it
on two screens to make sure that everything is coming in OK. All right.
Yes. I don’t see the main image, but I do see everything else.
Dane: OK. Here’s the testimonials. They don’t even have a headline up
top. Huddle has three testimonials on the top here. Notice the
testimonials: Huddle allows our basketball team to coach smarter. We have
used other systems out there, Huddle is the most user-friendly. This
testimonial is talking about Huddle being the most user-friendly.
The next testimonial is: Each time I have called the support team,
they have answered on the first or second ring. Their staff is
knowledgeable and answered my question. That was probably another
frustration that people have with competing products in this industry. This
testimonial is on the benefits of support.
This testimonial: From DVD theme protection to unlimited coaching
stations. This is probably another question. Coaches are like, “Well, how
many coaching stations can I have for this software?” So they include that.
These are not all three testimonials saying the same thing. “Oh, Huddle’s
amazing. Huddles highly recommended. I would recommend Huddle to my
friends.”
Those don’t really say anything. You want it to have a specific benefit.
These testimonials are very strategic and they are very different. This is
very purposeful stuff here. This is not done on accident by any means.The next is Paperless Pipeline. I have to scroll up and down a lot, so I’m
not going to show that.
Andrew: Let’s take just a moment. All right, there it loaded. OK.
Dane: Paperless Pipeline, you can see that on your own time. You’ll see
six or seven testimonials. They are all spread throughout the site. Every
single testimonial is touting a different benefit. One testimonial is like,
“This was so easy to get started.” Another testimonial is like, “This is so
much time savings.” Another testimonial is, “This has so much cost
savings.” Another testimonial is like, “This is so good for recruiting.”
I have all these testimonials saying a specific different thing with
objections that people have about this niche of software. You can see that
on your own time. I’m clicking that link. I had a real click study. I had a
237% increase in my conversions by adding a testimonial to the bottom of a
recapture page. Here you see, the lead capture page: Does your contact
database do this? I’ll scroll down to the bottom. Let me know when it
queues, Andrew.
Andrew: OK. It’s there.
Dane: You see here: See why the number one agent in Texas is excited.
I’m doing pre-marketing for a product that doesn’t even exist yet. You see
here join the free and private early launch. Remember, I always say, “Start
your marketing before your product is finished. Everybody and their mom,
built their product and then they finally started marketing.
I’m always marketing before I even create the product. Here, this is a page
on [cuts out]. You can see the whole page when you get this PDF report.
I’ve got this, “See why the number one agent in Texas is excited.” The
number one agent is a friend of mine through some email marketing messages
that I sent him. We just started talking one day. I called him up and I
showed him this and I told him about the concept and the said, “You know
what? Most agents don’t get over the hump to-do things. This reminder
system just might be the ticket to their success. I am excited to be one of
the first to use this.”
You see? He’s not actually a testimonial of someone using the product.
Andrew: Yes. He’s saying he’s excited to be one of the first people to use
it.
Dane: Yes. Right.
Andrew: Which I thought was very clever. I keep hearing, especially in the
lean start-up movement that you need to market first and then build your
product. You build your product based on the feedback you’re getting from
marketing. It’s easier to adjust your marketing than it is to scrap your
product and redo it. I didn’t know how using test elements like quotes without fudging them. Here, I can see a very clear way to do it.
You get someone who is not trying the product or not claiming to love the
product, yet it is just like the person who is looking at the planning,
excited to try it. Yes. OK. I see now you are scrolling down to the next
point.
Dane: All right, so, number 7 of 10 is a clear call to take action. I
didn’t just do 10 checklist items because I thought it was a cute number.
It just turned out to be 10. This is number seven; clear call to take
action. Tell the customer to do something, such as asking for money,
without guilt. Just from a mindset perspective, if you have a product and
you really think your product will benefit that customer, you are doing a
disservice to the world if you don’t do everything in your power to get
their money so you can help them solve their problem.
So your ability to not ask for money, if you have those hiccups, is
actually hurting the world because you’re not able to get more customers
that you can solve the problems for. So really, ask for money without
guilt. It’s such an important thing.
And the rules for this is for freemium software, make your call to action
the end result of what your customer wants to do, OK? This is real easy
change that a lot of you guys can make, and I saw a lot of your call-toaction buttons, need a lot of work on the two, three, or four that I looked
out.
So instead of the call to action, create an account, or register for free,
for split testing software. You might have your button say ‘Create an A/B
split test.’ This will replace the register button. So you fill out the
firm, and then it wouldn’t say ‘Create account,’ it would say, ‘Create my
first A/B split test’ at the bottom.
For transaction management software, you might have it say, ‘Create a
transaction,’ instead of ‘Create an account.’
For project management, you might say, ‘Create a trial project,’ as opposed
to ‘Register for an account.’ It works really well; it’s worked for my
tests.
And an extra buy button – ‘Add to cart’ seems to be the best, and it seems
to test the best for most marketers. Also, and I think the reason ‘Add to
cart’ works so well, is because it’s so common among like really reputable
companies like Amazon. And usually, if you can leverage the same color as
their ‘Add to cart’ button and send some of the same text from Amazon, you
really lend yourself a lot of borrowed credibility.
Another call to action could be extremely descriptive, such as just a blue
link that says, ‘Click here to create your recruiting system and start
recruiting agents,’ as opposed to ‘Click here to get started;’ you would just say this.
Some examples here is vertical response, if you’ll see on their call-toaction page, if you click over that you’ll see they have the nice, ‘Try it
Free’ button. Let me know when you see that, Andrew.
Andrew: It’s taking me a while.
Dane: See that?
Andrew: Yeah, I see it up on my screen.
Dane: I’ll show just that one, and maybe there’s one that’s pretty good.
Andrew: That was a very clear call to action.
Dane: Yep. ‘Try it Free.’ BaseCamp HQ, you can see theirs if you click on
that link. Paperless [??], you’ll see my ‘Try it out’ button, big and
green. A ‘Try it out’ test is far over on ‘Create an account.’ ‘Try it out’
works so well.
Here’s a link to back pain and inversion tables, and this is a sales page
that sells back pain inversion tables. And instead of scrolling through the
entire page, you get to [TD]. I thought I’d show you this call to action
here. Two things to note on this call to action: there’s an ‘Add to
cart’ button; there’s a blue link; there’s a ‘To order by phone,’ with a
person’s name that’s, like, ready to talk to you.
But then there’s also, ‘How to reserve your HBI Premium Inversion Table.’
Step 1: Select your country. Step 2: Click ‘Add to cart.’ The more
descriptive you can be in telling your customer how to order, the less
anxiety they will have, and the more likely your conversions will go up.
Now this could be because back pain inversion tables would be for a market
for 40- to 50-year-olds, and they need a few more instructions. But you are
not insulting anyone’s intelligence by adding further instructions on how
to order. The people that don’t need the instructions will skip over it;
and the people that it will use it.
I mean, think about how obvious it could be for some of to just ‘Select a
country,’ and then click, ‘Add to cart,’ but they still added those steps.
Andrew: Here, let me – I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Dane: Well, you first.
Andrew: Sorry, I’m just looking at some of the questions here as they’re
coming in, and since you’re talking about the different elements of this
sales process, Thomas in the audience was asking about, ‘What happens if
you don’t have a fixed price, or if you’re testing multiple prices? How do you show them in that top section of the form?’
Dane: Split testing software?
Andrew: So you split test it, and you show the price up on top, and adjust
the price. I’ll show you what I’ve been doing, and it’s based on one of the
past interviews that I did on Mixergy. This was with Will Schroeder, and he
said, ‘Break up the process into two steps. The first step is, have people
either ‘Add to cart’ or ‘Sign up,’ or whatever you want to call it. And the
second step is where they see the price and decide whether to buy it.’
And the reason he said it is, he said, ‘You want to know whether people are
not buying because they’re not interested in the product, or not buying
because the price isn’t right for them.’ And if you break it up, you can do
that. And also, if you break it up, you can test pricing without
influencing the rest of the process. So I’ll leave it out there as the
second option for Thomas. And if you guys have seen my forms, you now know
why I do it. I do it because of the interviews and what I’ve learned in my
past interviews.
Dane: Awesome, very good.
Andrew: Cool. And it looks like both those answers were good for Thomas.
Thanks for the feedback, Thomas.
Dane: Step 8 of 10 is: Reverse all risk. And here’s where you
think, you’re thinking guarantees (but it’s not just guarantees). What
you’re really doing is you’re reducing fear. To look like a fool is one of
the biggest fears we humans have. By purchasing a product that turns out to
suck, a person thinks they will look like a fool. So when people buy
products, they do not just consider themselves, they wonder what their
friends, their neighbors, their co-workers, and their family will think of
them while they are pulling out their credit card.
You go buy that nice sports car, you’re not just thinking about yourself.
You buy this product to improve your business, you’re not just thinking
about yourself, you’re thinking about maybe how your friends might envy you
as your business grows. Know that people do not just consider themselves
when they pull out their card and you want to reverse all risk so you can
reduce these fears.
The formula for this in a nutshell is if you don’t love product name, call
or email us and we’ll refund every penny immediately. Some rules for this
is the more outrageous your guarantee the better. Not just a refund, but
double your money back. I use the double your money back guarantee and I’ve
never had anyone ask for double their money back. You don’t just say double
your money back if you’re not happy. You would say, if this product doesn’t
add $10,000 to you business within 12 months and you follow our action
steps, we’ll give double your money back.People will not ask for double their money back. It just doesn’t happen. So
use it. The numbers behind refunds is that less than 5% of people will ask
for a refund. It’s far less than 5%, I’ve had maybe three people in my
entire life of hundreds and hundreds of clients ask for a refund and it
wasn’t a double your money refund. They just wanted their money back, they
didn’t even want double. The less than 5% refund, if at all and guarantees
so, if less than 5% refund and guarantees can double or triple your sales
and this is a fairly consistent metric across any industry. Just do the
math, it’s very well worth it to add guarantees.
You know what? A good guarantee can sometimes sell the product alone with
nothing else. So you try to make your guarantee sell the product all by
itself and you know the bonus tip? You can tie the guarantee to the result
or the main benefit itself for the [club] or the thing that protects your
car. Their guarantee was amazing and their company exploded their club.
We’ll pay $500 towards your car insurance if your car gets stolen. Now
that’s an amazing guarantee, right, Andrew?
Andrew: Yeah. I remember that one.
Dane: Domino’s, their company was really with the pizza. Hot, fresh pizza
delivered or it was free. A solid guarantee can sometimes sell a company
all by itself. So challenge yourself to really try to write that kind of a
guarantee. For example, on the book, “Round Table”, you can see all the (?)
that’s kind of important to see (?) and Andrew let’s . . .
Andrew: (?) is still taking time, okay it looks like you’re scrolling,
right? I’ll let you know when it stops scrolling too . . . and still
scrolling. So, is this your website?
Dane: Yep.
Andrew: While it’s still working, okay there it goes, I was going to ask:
what is it? What is the product?
Dane: The product is a monthly interview, just like yours, Andrew, except
I do one interview a month and I charge $55 a month for one interview.
Andrew: You charge $55 a month for one interview?
Dane: Yep.
Andrew: That’s impressive. OK.
Dane: So this is the guarantee, rock, solid double your money back
guarantee; if after 12 months you don’t get at least one idea that adds
$10,000 to your company, I will write you a check for double your money
back no questions asked. I’ve never offered a double your money back
guarantee before, and I wouldn’t offer this ridiculous guarantee if I
wasn’t a 100% confident in what it will do for you. Your worse case scenario is to double your money. Your best case scenario is to 20x return
on your money. This is a no brainier.
Andrew: Wow. OK. You actually mail CDs to people?
Dane: Yep.
Andrew: So you can even make a better than money back guarantee by saying,
keep the CDs and I’ll give you your money back and that’s still better than
a money back guarantee, but you decided to go even further.
Dane: (?) add what you said, that’s a great idea.
Andrew: Thanks. Let’s take a look at some of the other examples that are
still scrolling up on my screen here.
Dane: (?)
Andrew: Let’s just take a moment, now go for it.
Dane: Thank you. So for (?).com (?) said he did not use this guarantee,
but through a friend of a friend actually, David Saint, who works with
Andrew was going to start working with Andrew Warner hopefully, I hope I’m
allowed to say that Andrew?
Andrew: Yep.
Dane: So, he tried to get (?) to use the guarantee, you’ll make a $1,000
on the side or I’ll be your first client. That is probably one of my
favorite guarantees that I’ve heard in a long time. Because if I was really
nervous about not being able to do this and this amazing guy who was a Wall
Street, Forbes, published author or whatever said this to me, it would be
enough to push me, just the guarantee alone.
Andrew: One of his customers, Jesse again in the chat-room, he’s saying (?)
used this same guarantee as the one Dane just showed. Jesse, did he use the
double your money back guarantee or did he just use the one that David
asked him to try. Let me know. Oh, the double, so for [inaudible] did use
the ‘I’ll double your money back guarantee,’ almost word for word he used
it, okay. [inaudible] now is a blogger for the New York Times and he also
is, as you were saying, a New York Times bestselling author and Wall Street
Journal best selling author. [inaudible] using those credibility indicators
with him too.
Dane: Exactly and so you see, it’s not just [inaudible]. The best people
in the world use this stuff, and so here’s a guarantee that sold tens of
millions of [inaudible) self published book on self improvement. This
guarantee is amazing. Here it is. Try this book or product, 100% my risk.
If it doesn’t immediately solve every problem you’re now facing, free your
mind from worry forever, and let you walk two inches taller, then send it back and every penny of your purchase will be returned.
Andrew: So if I’m not so happy or walk two inches taller, I get a refund.
Dane: Yep.
Andrew: All right.
Dane: Eugene Schwartz [SP] wrote this. Eugene Schwartz wrote this and his
guarantees bordered on outrageous and, of course, he had outrageous sales
as a result. Another guarantee [inaudible].
Andrew: That is why I’m willing to lift all of the risk off of your
shoulders and put it firmly onto mine with an ironclad 60 day money back
guarantee [inaudible] product and then [inaudible] pricing paid, you can
just see a really standard 30 day money back guarantee.
Dane: Uh-huh. Moving on to price anchoring.
Andrew: I love this one. This one is one I’ve been using ever since you
showed it to me and it’s been incredible.
Dane: So price anchoring is where you make your price seem like a
bargain. This is what Steve Jobs did at the beginning of his video. He said
tablets cost a thousand dollars, bam, line through it. I passed five
hundred. If you had just came and said $500 for the iPad, ‘oh, I’m going to
pay a couple hundred bucks more for an iPad that’s just basically a bigger
iPhone?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s basically better than a tablet, but half the
price.’ Think about if Steve Jobs had compared it, ‘Look it’s just an
iPhone but it’s a little bigger,’ versus tablet, thousand to five hundred,
very strategic what he did there. So Robert Cialdini, look him up if you
don’t know who he is. He wrote a book called “Psychology, The Influence of
Persuasion”.
Andrew: “Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion”, I think.
Dane: He’s a world renowned psychologist and one of his principles is
called the Contrast Principle, and basically the Contrast Principle is
this, if you put your hand in warm water, then you put your hand in cold
water, the cold water feels much colder than if you just put your hand in
the cold water to begin with. It also affects the way you perceive the
difference between two things when they are presented one after another, so
for instance, you pick up a light two pound weight, then you pick up a ten
pound weight, the ten pound weight will feel much heavier than if you just
picked up the ten pound weight alone and the same principle works with
pricing.
So here’s a number of ways how to do it. You can link or tie your products
price back to a physical product in a similar category. You can say ‘look,
if you did this by yourself without my product, this is probably what it would cost you. If you hire me, one on one, what you’d have to pay,’ and
here’s an example of the three above. Do you want me to show this example
or not?
Andrew: Yeah. Let’s take a look at that. I think these concrete examples
really help. While that’s loading, I’ll tell you one of the first times
that I used this was Noah and I were trying the minimum viable product to
see if action videos made sense for the audience and the way that I offered
it, we offered it for just $14 bucks.
We just wanted to see if people would pay anything for it, and the way that
I used anchoring there was, I said ‘I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars
on people in the past who didn’t work out, so of course I’m willing to try
this $14 product,’ and that anchoring of the higher pricing, comparing it
to the lower price, I know that it worked because we got more sales for
that than we ever expected and as a result, I see Noah’s jumping into that
business, so I’ve tried it. It’s so easy. It’s just one line and it
reframed the whole price.
Dane: What was that line again, Andrew?
Andrew: I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on hiring the wrong people
in the past, so of course I’m willing to pay $14 for this product.
Essentially that’s what it was, $14 to know how to hire the right people
and get them started properly.
Dane: Does this screen show up for you?
Andrew: It is. Yeah, I see it here with your highlight.
Dane: All right. So let’s do a quick comparison. Last time I checked, the
Nordic Track would set you back over a thousand dollars and almost everyone
I know who bought one uses it as a clothes rack within a few weeks anyway,
or you could easily pay $50 to $75 bucks per month for a gym membership
you’ll probably go to a few times, but they were $500 per year. So this is
the physical product comparison.
This is if you have to do it on your own or without my product, what it
would cost you, or you could hire a personal trainer like myself to work
with you. This is if you had to hire me one on one. I currently charge a
minimum of $50 for an hour of personal training. Normally my clients work
out three times a week with me, so that’s $600 per month. This way, I
figure at the bare bones minimum, you’re getting hundreds and hundreds of
dollars worth of my expertise training at your disposal in my program,
we’re not going to charge you anywhere near the [??] minimum hourly rate,
oh what a generous guy. After total investment for the entire Get Fit While
You Sit program for just $29.95.
That’s less than one month’s membership to any gym without the hassles.
You’ll never have to search for a parking space, wait for someone to get off the machine you want, change clothes, shower etcetera. Plus [??] give
you a lifetime guarantee, that’s right, I’ll tell you about that in a
moment. So this is price anchoring at its best.
Andrew: So it’s no longer $29.95 for this product, it’s what a bargain
compared to the $1000 Nordic Track, which is kind of a clothing rack
anyway, or it’s compared to the hundreds or dollars you pay for personal
one-on-one training, or to the gym that you’ll never use, really well done
anchoring.
Dane: Right and [??] creator imagine [??] pay someone to do that on their
own, [??] probably on your page. So there’s also the dollar amount you gain
by buying this you’re going to get $10,000 more it makes $55 a month audio
serious that I do well worth it.
You can do one additional deal that will bring you if you buy, whatever it
is you’re selling, you lose X dollars by not buying this, and you can just
use X dollars [??] this will be the phantom money that you gain. So that
the money that you gain is actually money that you lose by not taking
action is kind of how that would work. And then also your time is worth X
dollars per hour.
Let’s say, Andrew, your time is worth $500 per hour when you’re really
productive, you take three hours per month that’s $1500 you’re going to be
saving when you work with my coaching program, my products, my services or
whatever.
So it’s real easy to sell 100, 200 bucks a month. For my recruiting
website, I price anchor, their time is worth $250, $500 bucks an hour so if
they just save one hour a month they’ve paid for the product alone and that
doesn’t include any of the benefits they get.
Andrew: So I’ve actually interviewed web app makers, who’ve told me that,
of course the $50 a month that they charge for their software, their web
based software isn’t that much for businesses. Businesses are used to
paying $50, and they’ll tell me, if a business saves just one deal, they’ll
make thousands of dollars which will make the $50 seem insignificant and
they explain this as a reason why they charge, and why they think others
should charge.
But I never see it on their sales pages, I never see it on their homepages,
they just kind of expect the customer to come to that conclusion on his
own. And I wonder if they’d be willing to test that out. I wonder if they’d
be willing to take some copywriting techniques and apply them to their
business the way that they would take some programming techniques and try
them out.
Dane: One of the funny things about doing this copy writing courses, I
realized how many things I’m missing in my various different products. So I
would say, oh man, you really need price anchoring, and I’m like, well, crap I’m not even doing it over here.
So I’m actually going to use the same techniques in my business right after
I get done teaching it. And I’m definitely going to be using price
anchoring on [??] Pipeline.
I do it a little bit with testimonials, but I definitely want to just talk
about different situational things. Like, you have to drive to the office
to go get a piece of paperwork, or you have to leave you family if there’s
snow in the driveway, you have to shovel. All to give an agent piece of
paperwork and you could have just logged into the pipeline.
Now how much time did you even save there. Yes, I definitely need to do
more price anchoring on my [??] products. But I do a couple of them, like
the more you stack, certainly doesn’t hurt anything. Now don’t worry about
your page being too long. The longer the copy, typically if it’s clear, the
more stuff you’re going to sell. Do you think that the highest paid
copywriter [??] the last one here…
Andrew: Actually, before you go into that one, Matt Morales asked earlier,
will the guaranteed or the better than money back guarantee that you
described earlier. Would that apply to his company which is a B2B company,
it’s actually called SpeakerText.com? So do these ideas apply and how about
that one specifically the double your money back guarantee, or the better
than money back guarantee, would that apply to a business to business web
site?
Dane: Yes, absolutely. For SpeakerText, what’s the frustration people
have with their transcriptions. If you’ve used other transcription services
before, what has sucked about them. Find out what that is, and then turn
that into a guarantee. And then make your guarantee if more than 5% of
words have an error, we’ll refund the cost, so you’re guaranteed nearly
perfect work, something like that.
Andrew: You know what I’ve seen work for me when people come to me for
business-to-business offers.
Dane: This is a really good website by the way.
Andrew: It is a really well done landing page. For me it’s not so much
double your money back guarantee because their prices are pretty small
compared to what the benefits that I get, it’s the effort that’s and issue
and often what they’ll do is they’ll say, Andrew, if you’re not happy with
this I will personally go into your website and strip out my code and add
my competitor’s code back the way that you like it.
And that kind of thing always works for me because I know what I have is
money when it comes to this stuff. How much is two bucks a minute for a
transcription? That’s not much at all. But what I don’t have is time and I
don’t have the ability to go in and figure out how to undo what we just did together. And when they offer that, that is incredibly helpful.
Dane: That’s amazing. I love that. That’s a really good example.
Andrew: And Antonio in the audience is saying, “Business [??] works because
you still are selling to people.” So all of these techniques still will
work because they apply to people. OK. Finally, you were going into your
tenth point, which is Frequently Asked Questions.
Dane: Which is one of the most important parts of a sales [??]. You can
boost your conversions by as much as 85% with an FAQ. The rules for this
are to ask the good questions that create a sale. Even extreme questions
like, “Why should I trust you?” or, “What’s in it for you?” they are good
questions to ask because if you see those on a site, people are going to
read them. They are questions that people will stop and read.
Also consider questions that may address some pessimists. Ask and answer
question that you yourself are afraid to answer. An example would be, “Why
should I pick you over the competition?” Not only do you want to write this
out and answer it for yourself so you’re just more confident and clear
about where you fit in against your competition, but it also helps you from
a confidence standpoint as well. It helps your customers decide.
So what an FAQ does is it addresses distrust, it also acknowledges concerns
and then by that, eliminates objections, and it’s also that you are
speaking their language. It is highly empathetic. We have plenty of
examples here for you. If you go to the Swoopbowl [sp?] [??].
Andrew: Just wait for the page to finish scrolling. Sorry, it looks like
it’s working. There it is.
Dane: OK. So Swoopbowl manual, they are selling an eBook on how to win on
Swoopbowl. He is a good friend of mine, so he shares all of his split tests
with me. Swoopbowl is of course closed down now so the business isn’t worth
anything, but he was never trying to make it be [??]. This was all just a
playground for him to test and measure conversions. So when he added and
FAQ, it increased his conversions from 85% by adding a FAQ right below the
‘Buy’ button.
So right below the ‘Buy’ button it says “Answers to Common Questions about
the Swoopbowl Manual.” The questions were gathered as e-mails over time
that people would send in and he took the most popular questions like, “Can
you guarantee I’ll win every auction of Swoopbowl if I buy your eBook?” or,
“If you’re so good at winning on Swoopbowl, how come you’re telling us
everything you know? Why don’t you just keep winning all by yourself?”
He answered these questions and his sales went from three people out of
every hundred that came to his website would buy, after he added his FAQ,
five of every hundred people that came to his website would buy an e-book
simply by adding this FAQ to his site. For another example, for the book “A Round Table,” that $55 a month thing, I am testing a free CD offer with
some pay-per-click they come to this page and they can get a free CD for
$4.95 shipping and handling.
I ask the questions on the page like, “Why are you giving away this CD
free? What’s in it for you?” And I also ask the question, “Who are you and
why should I trust you?” because I get a lot of costumers that have never
heard of me before that land on this site from pay-per-click, so these are
the questions they are probably going to have on their minds. That is why I
ask them.
Andrew: That is the language you use, by the way? You actually say, “Who
are you and why should I trust you?” as one of the frequently asked
questions that you answer?
Dane: Yes.
Andrew: I like how conversational it is.
Dane: And they say, “Why are you giving a CD away for free? What’s in it
for you?” And I said, “You know what. It’s real simple. I don’t want to
prosper unless you prosper first. Take this CD and get great results with
it. I’m sure you are going to be happy and I know if you’re happy with this
CD you would probably like to learn from other great [??], so I’ll continue
to send you more amazing interviews one time per month so you can continue
to benefit, but only after you’ve seen how amazing this is and only after
you’ve prospered first.
Andrew: By the way, Dane, I’m looking at one comment here in the chat board
from someone who says that he is, “…upset that he came in late. This is
awesome.” I would read you his name but he did something that people who
come in late often do, his first name is A, his second name is B, and he
must have just typed in A@B.com as the e-mail address so that he could just
jump in.
But he is saying his name is Alvin. Hey Alvin. It’s good to see you. Excuse
me Alvin, if I called you out on what you did to jump into the course.
Thanks for coming in, and of course we are going to have a full recording
of this. I know a lot of people prefer to listen to the recording and to
have it to go through at their own time with the document that Dane is
going through here with you, so don’t worry. You are going to have
everything here.
Dane, I am really eager for people to see this because I fought you on
this. I said, “Dane, are you just trying to get 10 points here?” I
shouldn’t even admit this because a lot of what you use has helped me and I
still was skeptical and wanted to improve. I can’t wait for you to show
what the Frequently Asked Questions look like on a site because this isn’t
Frequently Asked Questions like the way you might add to a web app. This is
a little bit different.Dane: Do you want me to show you that page?
Andrew: Yeah. Let me see maybe one of yours or one of the examples. I bet
you were going to I just got a little excited the way that Alvin did.
Let’s give it a moment . . . and it’s up.
Dane: Just from a product creation standpoint if none of you guys has
started a business this is the easiest business in the world to start. It’s
also the most lifestyle free-based business. You interview a business one
time a month and sell it to other business owners in that same category.
This is how to recruit two talent agents a month without cold calling and
rejecting. This is my instant clarity headline.
“Afford broker’s shares for a step-by-step system and a free interview.”
The CD says you’re paying just 4.95 shipping and handling.
Then I sell the course and then you have the cart button over here. I’ll
scroll down. Let me know when you see this.
Andrew: Yep there it is.
Dane: (??)
Andrew: Let’s take a moment; sorry it looks like its still coming in. Now
we got it. OK.
Dane: OK. “How long does it take for my CD to arrive? Give us seven days
we are a smaller operation, not FedEx” with a smiley face. Here you say
they’re not even saying, “I’m this big impressive company. I’m just human
and am trying to help you.”
The next one, “Why are you giving this away free? “Why not charge more?”
“What’s in it for you?”
First, because I know if you love this interview, you’ll probably want to
learn some more brokers’ secrets. (??)”
Second, everyone (??) service called the Broker Roundtable where you can
broker your (??) and retain a profit. If you’re happy with this free CD
then I’d like to send you more (??) brokers have learned from.
Each month I give you a successful (??) each month. That way you can
continue to get mentored by the best brokers in the country.
I ask a question. What’s in it for you? Brokers come to this page and they
sign up. They buy. The next question, Who are you? Why should I trust you?(??)
Andrew: We’re starting to lose the audio a little bit. Basically you’re
showing the questions that they would probably ask and you’re answering
them in really casual ways so that it sounds like a real human. Not causal
but in a real human way.
You’re not making it sound like a big corporation that’s answering this
stuff. OK. It’s right under the submit button and it’s interesting because
I have noticed this a lot and I have used it but for some reason I still
didn’t pay attention to the fact that it’s under submit buttons.
Do you have time to look at maybe one more at Huddle?
Dane: Let’s let them look at Huddle on their own because it’s much better
to look with the SitePoint one.
Andrew: OK.
Dane: When you go to Huddle the first question on their sign up page is
great. Huddle charges an annual fee for their product and their first
question is, “Why should I pay an annual fee as opposed to paying up front
and just owning the system?”
I’m guessing Huddle selling this coaching software and they got this 55-
year-old used to paying for software one time. So they’re, “Man why do I
have to pay an annual fee every year as opposed to paying up front for the
system”.
They address that question right at the time right below the sign up page.
This is my favorite execute question ever.
Here is the SitePoint design business tip.
Andrew: OK. It’s still loading up on my screen. I wonder if we opened up so
many pages that it’s taking a lot longer for each new page to come up.
The reason that we are doing it is because people kept telling me over and
over, “Andrew we want to see examples. We want to know that these ideas
work for other sites and we also want to see how they work for other
sites.”
OK. As I was talking the page popped up and here it is.
Dane: This is my favorite thing in the world. Actually when I first got
started on the internet I wanted to start a web design business it was the
only thing I was really confident I could do.
Now I don’t have to do anything I just hire everything out and I understand
I just have to do marketing. At the time I wanted to do web design business so I actually bought this book back in the day.
Here it is it’s it web design business. This guy has a $10 million a year
web design business and he tells you how he built it and runs it like a
business.
It’s $247. (??) 17, 18 and they don’t have a lot of money. $247 is a lot of
money in this market but they are not shy about charging this amount.
Look at this over on the right-hand side. This execute question is
brilliant. $247 is it really worth it?
And right below it the answer, “Absolutely consider that landing just one
new client will pay for the kit four times over”.
Andrew: They’re anchoring within the frequently asked questions.
Dane: Exactly. It is a beautiful, beautiful question. I saw that and was,
“Yeah man it seems like a lot of money”. I was, “Wait, duh, no it’s not.
It’s totally fair.”
It kind of goes back to way back in the day us humans had to be told how to
value information.
What is $100 is actually less than $1 and we were just told that the lower
the dollar bill the higher the value from the time we were growing up. That
is what we would assume it was.
We were taught to value that dollar at that point and a $100 at that point.
Well, the same works with information. You’re told how to value stuff.
Andrew: Daniel in the audience is saying that the examples have been
awesome so far. I agree. It really helps to actually see the techniques
used on websites. And I’ll tell you, Daniel, what you’re going to see after
this, is as you look at other people’s sales pages you’re going to start to
notice these elements and you are going to laugh. The way that I did right
here with the frequently asked questions and the anchoring as the answer.
You’re going to start to see this and you are going to understand what’s
going on there and you are going to know what you want to bring back to
your website. So try it and let me know.
Dane: One of the things beyond the end, for implementing this
checklist…
Andrew: Let’s wait for the checklist to scroll up on the screen too. I’ll
tell you when I see it up on my screen. And it looks like, on one screen I
can see that you’ve highlighted, on the other one it’s still coming out a
little bit slow. And there it is, okay, so now I see the highlighted end
section. Dane: Okay, so the end, implementing the spec list. Here’s what I want
you to do. Open up a Google document and then follow along this checklist.
And create a sales letter for your product. Without any of your website
design in mind. Just follow along the checklist and put it all flowing down
into one single Google document. Plug it into your web design later. So,
when people actually try to write copy with their website design in mind.
It kind of stifles their salesmanship.
Andrew: So, just write it all flowing down one Google doc. Alright, did you
do the instant clarity headline, did you declare the problem, did you
present your solution, did you borrow credibility, did you do social proof,
did you add testimonials, did you do price anchoring, did you add risk
reversals, did you do an FAQ.
Just flow it all down on one page. Then, plug it into your website design
later so you can edit it there. That’s how you want to do it. And, then,
review your current marketing materials and sales pitches against this
checklist. Correct or add anything that’s missing. And that’s all I have to
say for the ending.
Dane: As some of you have seen this, I’ve scrolled it up. I didn’t want
you to see it until the end. I’m kind of excited about this and I’m kind of
hesitant to do it.
Andrew: This was, actually, you’re talking about the last section. Here’s
what happened. After the interview with Dane people emailed him and asked
for feedback and asked for help and, Dane, you were very good to actually
respond to, I think, every single person who has email I forwarded you
responded. These were heart-felt emails. A lot of them asked you for
feedback and help and I felt terrible, terrible sending it to you because I
know you’ve got a business to run. And at the same time I said, ‘I see what
they need, I see what they are looking for from you.’
Dane: I can’t say to somebody in my audience, you know, bugger off.
Saying he’s too busy, that he doesn’t want to. I know that you are going to
get a lot of feedback from people that are asking for help. And we try to
find a way to reduce it and this is the way that we came up with. So that
people who really needed it can do it, but, you can also get back and do
your business.
Andrew: And I should also say, Dane, you’re doing this, to the people in
the audience, Dane’s doing this for free. Because he believes in the
copywriting techniques that he’s using. He believes that you need to use
this. He knows that if you do use these ideas, it’s going to help you. He’s
not doing this because he is in the copywriting business. So, just keep
that in mind as you e-mail him afterwards for help and to ask for help.
He’s there because he’s an entrepreneur using it. I want to say, Dane, that
I want to be really fair with your time. So we came up with a way to do
that. Dane: Right, so like Andrew said, I put this check list together, all
three. This has all been kind of unconscious for me. With that said, the
hiring, if you wanted help, one-on-one help, this you would pay for. Buy I
do want to offer the one-on-one help. If you would want help implementing
this checklist, you could hire me personally to help you and space is
severely limited, because I have my own business to run. Some of you have
probably already read this, but, I’ll say it again, you know, I just love
helping entrepreneurs. It’s deeply fulfilling to me and that’s why I’m
here.
Andrew: So, how this one-on-one help is going to work, you get two 30-
minute one-on-one sessions with me Dane Maxwell, to personally help get
started and implement this checklist. You also get a different perspective
on your product or business, which is also nice.
Dane: Session 1, you don’t have to start with an empty blank page alone.
Let me help you get started. And I’ll help you get started with each
individual item on the checklist. We’ll get you instant clarity headline
started, we’ll get your block problems declarations started. We’ll get your
credibility borrowing, we’ll get the writing of your solution. We’ll get
that all started for you. So you’ve got something to work with and once
your juices are flowing in each area of the checklist. You’ll be able to
rocket through it on your own.
Andrew: And session 2 will be a few days or a week after session 1. When
you’ve completed that checklist we’ll visit again to revise, edit, and
finish your sales page. This is one of the reasons for using Google doc.
It’s great because we can share it and collaborate back and forth on that.
I’d just like to include a few thought, like, who’s going to be a good fit.
Tech start-ups, they really need this.
Guys who are engineers, who really don’t understand marketing, are really
missing a lot of money, and a lot of sales, and a lot of added impact to
the world of their products. Because they could be getting more people to
sign up. But they just understand more of the basic principles of good
salesmanship and marketing on a website. There is a tech start up really
need this, and as people currently anything online, if you are currently
selling anything online this would be helpful for you. I also think that if
anyone ever wants to make a living online, it’s also good to go through
with.
If you don’t have a product to sell, I’ll help you follow this check list
of already existing products you can learn. If you guys have a family
memorable or an uncle or aunt, or brother or sister that has some sort of
business or web site. Like a photographer, or something that we could do
this for. Then you go through this check list, and this has worked for a
photographer as easily for a software company.
What I want you to do is to work from this check list from the ground up
and learn it. So whenever you’re starting a new project or looking at a web site, you will instantly go, “Oh man they’re totally missing credibility
here.” Once you know it by your ABCs. That’s when you really start to get
greater with it.
The cost for the program, if you just want to know all the cost and all the
details, I set up an e-mail address, Workwithdane@gmail.com. If you just email workwithdane@gmail.com, you will get a reply with pricing, how to
purchase and how to schedule your times. I don’t have all the payment fees
or anything. I’m just asking that you send it to a PayPal address when you
e-mail address when you e-mail to that. Because I don’t want to turn it
into a business.
I don’t want to be a full time copy writer, but I do want to further help
those folks that do want to have more results on their websites. One last
time if you like to hire me for one-on-one help, just email
workwithdane@gmail.com. You will get a reply with pricing, how to purchase
and how to schedule your times.
Andrew: It all comes in soon, because you are using Google auto-responder,
I’m imagining, is that right?
Dane: Yes.
Andrew: They don’t even have to wait for you to finish this session to get
that information. Frankly I would email just out of curiosity, I would like
to see how much Dane charges and what the experience is like. I will take
questions from the audience in a moment. But first, Dane, thank you so
much.
I wonder if it comes through the hours that you put into this. We’ve had
four sessions putting this together. Guys, I see the questions. I will take
them in a moment. We’ve spent four sessions that we’ve spent putting this
together. You had time on your own, where you put this course together, we
met in person to walk through this. If you’ve seeing a lot of these
techniques is directly applicable to your needs, it’s because Dane looked
over the feedback that you gave him after the interview. It’s because we
looked at the questions that you had before hand.
When you take something on, you just obsessed, I told you last night I felt
terrible, because I know you got a business to run. I said, “Dane now is
focused on this,” I felt bad about all the time you put into this, but I
also felt extremely grateful. I’ve seen my copy writing improve because it
is, people saw the landing page. People saw the landing page that they used
to buy this, and they said, “Andrew where who did you hire? How did you
learn to do this?” I said, “Well, I had an advance copy of this course. I
knew what Dane was going to teach, and I said, I’ve got to force myself to
try all these techniques and that’s why it works” Thank you so much.
Dane: Anytime, I love doing this stuff. Andrew: I could see in the radiance, here before we get to the questions. I
could see Matt from SpeakerText said, “Can I watch this again later?” He
was here before we even started and he watched this thing from start to
finish. Yes, of course you can. He’s also saying, “I want to share some of
this with our employees.” That’s a great idea. Show it to people who are
going to interview and implement this. Give it to people who are new to the
company and let them understand that selling is a new part of the ethics of
the business, and that’s part of what you do. Of course, there is no limit
on who in the company you can share this. I hope you share it with as many
people as possible.
Now I will take questions, but let me ask you guys, this question. You saw
the video, with Steve Jobs in the beginning, where he talked about the iPad
pricing. Dane explained the reason Steve Jobs showed the price of a
$1,000.00 for a laptop and a $1,000.00 that people expect him to charge for
this new device before he told everyone that his price was $499.00. That’s
because he was anchoring them. What do you think the second technique was
we saw from Steve Jobs in that one minute click? In this case, it’s kind of
good that you guys can’t see each other answer, before you answer. Type
that in.
Dane, can I show you one website that somebody submitted beforehand just to
get your feedback on it?
Dane: Um-hmm.
Andrew: Okay. How about we take a look at a site called habitmix .com, HA-B-I-T-M-I-X .com. How about one technique from all the ten that you
describe that the owner of this site can use to improve conversions?
Dane: It is interesting with a product like this, it kind of goes into
aspiration purchase territory. Where I don’t personally create daily check
list and I don’t use software to do it. I just wake up in the morning and
write a notepad on it, but with that said there are a certain number of
people out there that do want this, so the first thing that I would be
curious on is who is your best customer for this.
If you present this idea to 100 people, 100 random people, or if you just
walked up to 100 random people and asked, do you keep a daily checklist? If
so, why not and I’d be curious what their answer is and then I would
include that answer on the site so you can apply to that larger percentage
of people that aren’t currently doing that checklist type things.
Andrew: That’s a good point.
Dane: So your target customer for this is probably someone who is really,
I want to say maybe anal retentive about their productivity. So here you
have know your daily life, know your life to grow your life daily
checklist. Success one day at a time. Want to lose weight? Grow your
finances? Organize time? Improve your family life? The first step to managing your life is getting the facts. Having this daily checklist can
help. Of course they have testimonials all down the page, which are great.
Andrew: And those testimonials actually are the kind that you would put
together. They’re showing what Confucius said about creating habit. They’re
getting testimonials from Aristotle so it’s testimonials for the idea more
than for the product.
Dane: So you’re borrowing credibility. Perfect.
Andrew: I thought your point about the problem is a good one. What’s the
problem that’s so critical that they need to come in and solve it? If you
had that and you said it in my words I’d be interested in using it. If you
said, you know you’re writing down your to-do list on multiple pages and
you don’t get it done because you don’t have the top of mind, that would be
interesting, or if they said, you don’t know what your track record is in
achieving your to-do list, which is why you’re not pushing yourself to get
more of them crossed off, that might be another one. That’s a great point.
Dane: This is kind of actually what evolved to do the product for me
personally. I just moved into a new house and I was pulling up some
checklists that I had like 4 years ago, or to-do lists on this notepad and
I was looking at things I was doing a year ago and it was like designing
websites, emailing clients. All this stuff was on my to-do list.
My to-do list now is like create marketing, do Webinar, all this marketing,
do lead gen. It was all revenue generation today. Like close on existing
clients who haven’t paid. So my habits have evolved over time because the
amount of money you make is directly related to the skill you have so you
need to develop skills like marketing and lead gen if you want to have
higher income.
You don’t develop skills to become a better web designer. You’re going to
get more referrals, but you don’t actually grow your business like that, so
you want the skill. What I’m thinking is, I’m looking at this and I would
love to see how my habits evolve over time and I would also like to see
every month a trend of what my habits were and where I missed and where I
could be missing the mark.
If this does something like that and I don’t know it, I’d like to know it
here. What I’d also like to see in this habit mix is how 5 minutes a day
can give you more clarity, more certainty, more direction and more
productivity with your life. Something like that on the sideline, know your
life to grow your life daily checklist. Daily checklist is like such [??]
feature. Not benefit at all.
What’s the end result of HabitMix? When people sign up to HabitMix what’s
the end result that they want? If we go back to the Instant Clarity
headline it’s the end result the customer wants in a specific period of
time while you address objections. OK, so what’s the end result if they have a daily checklist?
So they can feel productive at the end of the day? So they know that they
got everything done? So they know they didn’t waste a day? What is the end
result that a customer wants to sign up to that? That’s what your headline
should be. The end result that they want in just 5 minutes a day without
any of the things that usually prevent people from doing a daily checklist.
Andrew: Right. Sam Holley is saying awesome. I think he’s quoting you here
in the chat. All right. Final one. Do you have time for it Dane?
Dane: I have all the time in the world for this.
Andrew: All right. Let’s look at ratetourguides.com. This is from Thomas.
He’s been very patient. He’s been wanting us to take a look at his website
throughout and I promised him that if he can wait we would come back to it
at the end. And the page is loading for people who are just listening to
the Mp3. Usually people do listen just to the Mp3 and they try to visualize
what we’re talking about. If you are, tell me how this works for you as an
mp3. Of course, I try to package an mp3 with everything that I do because I
know some people like to put it on their iPod, on their Android device, on
their Noon, on all kinds of things.
Dane: Greattourgides.com?
Andrew: Greattourguides.com, yeah. Someone said that some of these programs
are like auto university. In his car, he’s learning.
Dane: Beautiful, my car, if you opened the center of the dashboard, there
is like 40 different CDs from different businesses beginner speech.
Andrew: It looks like his site is taking a little bit of time to load up.
He said that when he saw your Google search results when you were googling
for a site he was fourth from the top. Let’s take a look, Thomas, it looks
like it’s loading up. Thomas, one of the reasons it’s probably taking so
long is because we’ve opened so many pages. I see them all here, Dana, on
your screen.
Okay, here we go. Now we see it. We have four panels on the screen, with
images on each panel, and words like, Lisbon Aquarium on top of one. Lisbon
monument is on another and so on. So, what’s your feedback for Thomas,
who’s been so patient?
Dane: Actually, you know, the ten items on the checklist, I had four more
items, like, define peoples alternative options, and third party
credibility, stating your problem for you. So, it was actually more then
ten items but we had to keep it to ten. And, you see we still went over by
a lot. So, one of these things with the tour-guide thing is you probably
want to determine the alternative options. What else can they do if they
don’t use your site? Let’s say that they want to leave your site, what else could they do?
Andrew: You can roll over the pictures that I described earlier, there are
15 more. Let’s see, and then they open up. If you click it, we won’t be
able to see it. If it’s a video, we won’t. Okay, so what about a headline
on that homepage, James, what does it say?
Dane: Going back to seven, clear call to action, what is it that you’re
wanting the person to do when they come to greattourguides.com. Bob, in the
audience is saying, ‘It’s a little confusing, it’s hard to see what the
purpose is.’ And I’m sure, when you see a homepage with a clever headline,
or no headline like this, it’s really hard to figure out what we’re
supposed to do and what the product is. So, we’re now on one of the pages
from the site, but back when you were on the homepage I didn’t know what
the product was. I didn’t realize what this was, I guess it’s a travel
agency that you’re offering?
Andrew: Right, you want to follow the checklist. I think you want to, I
don’t think scrap your entire site, but maybe just create a landing page
for your home page. Because you want to start with the instant clarity
headline. What’s the end result the customer wants? They want a lifechanging tour that will stay with their mind and heart forever. And they
want to do it with a reputable tour guide. And, they want to be able to set
it all up in less then ten minutes.
Dane: Actually, I take it back. He’s now explaining that it’s a video
advertising service. So, that’s really not coming through with the website.
Try to come up with a way to use the headline technique that Dane taught
you to explain what the product is. Make it very clear on the homepage.
Discover exotic locations from the first person point of view. That makes
sense, actually, if that was a little bit better. But, I think, I still
wouldn’t know what the product is. And I still wouldn’t know how it would
impact my life.
Andrew: Yeah, I would just go back to the gun to your head thing, if you
had a gun to the back of your head, and if that thing were to be pulled and
your life was over, if your customer didn’t completely understand what it
is you are about and what problem you solve and what you can do for them.
Would you keep this site up?
Dane: I mean….
Andrew: Uh-huh? No go ahead.
Dane: I was just going to call out Nima, because I think Nima2 in the
chat had some feedback, ah, there it is. I see it’s the question from
before. So, I think you’re feedback was great. A clear headline that
explains what the product is very specifically. And, a call to action that
lets them know what they are supposed to do. So, those are two great
techniques. Who is the person that is buying these video guides? Who is the person you
are talking to? What is the problem that they have? They want more people
to come to their tour company, they want more what? What is the problem,
what is your solution? Do a Google doc and put the text in the page for
whether their company a [?]. And follow the checklist. That’s exactly what
I would do, if you were hiring me one-on-one, that’s exactly what I would
do. I would pull out the checklist and be like, ‘Alright what’s your
instant clarity headline. What are you doing to let in customers?’ And I
would go on to declare the problem. I don’t much of that here, the
advertising hotels, advertise restaurants, advertise studios. Advertise
hotels is nice. Many websites offer outdated pictures. People still get
disoriented upon arrival. But our video tour showing that first person
point of view will have guests oriented upon their visit.
Andrew: OK, that’s the first thing where I’m like, OK, I’m starting to get
a handle on what you’re doing. But you’re varying it too far down the page.
Last one, mokabla.com . . . And Thomas is saying thanks.
Dane: You’re welcome.
Andrew: I’ve got to say, too, before we go onto this website, Thomas. I
benefited a lot from talking to Dane about my headline. I used the headline
formula that he gave specifically, and it works and it got results, many
more than I expected. But it was kind of cool, Dane. After you saw it, you
said, ‘Hey, let’s see if we can make it even better.’ And we went back and
forth by text messaging a little bit to have someone else who understands
this same mindset, who has an understanding of what works.
To have that kind of person to bounce ideas off of is extremely helpful. It
made me come up with ideas that I didn’t think of. I think the specific
page that you showed here within this course was the one that you created
with me and we were AB testing it. It’s extremely helpful. If you could sit
down, Thomas, either with Dane or with someone else who’s gone through this
and just brainstorm some ideas, you’re going to come up with ideas and a
way of looking at this that couldn’t on your own.
They say you shouldn’t be a single founder. Well, I think for the same
benefits that you get from having a co-founder of a business, you would
have from having that back and forth about an idea within the business. So
all that’s to say, think of somebody that you could try this out with and
brainstorm with.
We’re now on mokabla.com. Take it away. I hope I didn’t talk so much that I
lost you, Dane. Did I?
Dane: Mm-mm, no.
Andrew: OK. Good. Now that we’ve got this checklist, how do we start applying it to Mokabla and Mokabla’s . . . actually, I’ll let you take it.
Dane: It’s a pretty interesting concept. I completely get it, so the
clarity is there. I can’t picture the last time I was trying to compare
something, so I’d like to see a little bit more of a picture painted about
the problem that I have, if I’m going to compare something.
Mokabla helps you compare two things in a flash. Well, compare two things
to do what? So I can make a better decision? That was my first thought. So
why am I comparing two things? This is a classic example of . . . this is
not an instant clarity headline, but it’s sort of [??]. If you’re talking
about what the product is, it helps you compare two things in a flash, but
you’re not talking about the end result that I get as a customer. So you
really want to follow the instant clarity headline here and try a few
examples.
[??] are difficult. Even the best copywriters in the world will agonize for
days and write a hundred headlines to come up with the one that they will
end up using. I wonder how many headlines you’ve written here and I wonder
if you could really get to: What’s the end result that Mokaba gets me?
What time period can I get it in? And what objections can you address?
Because you could do this really great.
Mokabla helps you take the pain out of decisions by comparing two products
in seconds without having to browse between tens of hundreds of sites.
Andrew: If that was your headline, I was like, ‘Oh, Dane, I did totally get
what you were talking about.’
Dane: Is that helpful?
Andrew: Yeah. I couldn’t put my finger on what the problem was or what we
could do to improve this because, you’re right, the headline is pretty
clear and this is a very clear, clean site with a clear call to action. But
there was something missing, something that would keep me from using it.
And when you said, ‘Hey, I don’t know what the problem is that I’m having
that this site’s going to solve,’ that clarified what was going on with me.
If this page called out a pain that I’ve been suffering and said it in my
words, I’d go in there and I’d be much more likely to be an active member.
Bob is saying that a frequently asked question section at the bottom could
help, and Nima [SP] is saying thank you, thank you to Dave, actually. So I
guess there’s some feedback here in the comments for people, a way to help
each other.
Dane: (?)
Andrew: I’m sorry, go ahead.
Dane: In Casa FAQ . . .Andrew: They do? Okay. I can’t see it.
Dane: That was helpful. So what is this thing? If I actually have to read
that question, what is this thing, maybe you didn’t do a good enough job
explaining it but it still helpful to have it too. When I first came to the
site, if you come up to the site [??] helps you compare two things in a
flash. Then I see Posterous v. WordPress a few second later…five, four…
[??] v. Groupon and then it goes again five second later iTunes v.
Rhapsody.
I was reading the headline and I’m like compare two things and then it had
an example, [??]. But it wasn’t until Ustring v. Justin.tv rotated to iOS
v. Android that I was like oh, okay, I see what they’re doing here. So if
your headline has the end result the customer wants in a specific period of
time without having to browse ten different sites and then on the right
hand side. You have a headline that’s kind of on the left here and then on
the right hand side you’re going to have started comparing and then you
have CrazyEgg and Posterous and WordPress and they’re all right here and
they’re not rotating and I can see the headline.
And then I see really four or five common comparisons and then I see you’re
describing the problem under that and then I see something about maybe I’m
not comparing things right now but the next time I have a decision I might
want to remember you so I then maybe want to enter my email address for the
next time I might be considering trying to compare something. Because once
I’ve compared something I don’t need [??] any more but I’d want to continue
to remember it. I guess that’s my feedback and in a nutshell. Andrew, how
do you feel about what I just said?
Andrew: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I agree. I agree. This is a good
product and it could use a little bit of copywriting help. The thing is
everyone is going to get the document you put together. We’ll make it into
a PDF and I’ll make sure that everyone who is signed up and is listening to
my voice right now or is listening to it later on in the recorded version,
they will have that document that you created. In that document they’ll
have the checklist with examples with specific formulas that they can use
and they can just go through the checklist and say which of these ten can I
apply right away?
Dane: Let’s talk about [??] another second because what you’re doing
here, [??] compare anything but as I’m starting to research it more I see
that the community is actually doing the comparisons or the ratings
somehow. So the success of this company is going to be very dependent on
your small minority of people that are actually going to be comparing
different things. So you really want to pull out all the stops you can to
polarize people to want to compare products.
You need to have a clear mission about why you’re doing this. Why are we
here? It’s got to be something that evil companies have terrible products, don’t deserve our business, we don’t want another person to waste another
minute of their energy on a terrible product. This company exposes the
losers and makes the winners transparent. You want to really get your users
behind a movement because [??] needs to be a movement to using only quality
products and passionate people that are sure to help you because you just
don’t want evil companies getting their business. That’s it.
Andrew: All right. Dane, thank you again. I’m going to go right now and
edit this program so that we can put it up for people as quickly as
possible. Thanks for all the feedback. Antonio, Neema, Tobin, Bob…I’m not
going to go through all the names but I will just say thank you to all of
you. At the end of this you now know exactly what you need to do. It’s
right at the bottom of the document that Dane is sending out. Dane, thank
you for putting on this program.
Dane: You’re welcome. Cool.

(In his interview, Dane recommended that you copy the sales letters by hand. Antonio, who was in the live class, put together these two collections to make it easier for you to read and copy them.)

To work with Dane:

WorkWithDane@gmail.com

Master Class: PR for Startups
Taught by Stella Fayman of FeeFighters

Report issues here

Master Class:
PR on a Budget

Length: 57 minutes


About the course leader

We’re going to learn from Stella Fayman of FeeFighters. FeeFighters.com is the site where credit card processors compete for your business.

Master Class Toolbox

Course Cheat Sheet

FeeFighters

America’s Most Promising Startups

FeeFighters Press Room

Stella’s Dos and Don’ts

Stella’s Personal Blog

8 creative ways to keep your staff healthy

5 ways tech can make new hires feel like part of the team

15 things you didn’t know about the restaurant industry

Are We In a Tech Bubble?

Are we in the middle of another tech bubble?

Is it really a tech boom or a bubble?

Better Business Bureau Admits Mistakes Were Made on Pay-For-Ratings Issue

FeeFigthers Loses BBB Accreditation Over Investigative Blog Post

Fight Credit Card Processing Fees

Chicago’s FeeFighters Grows by Leaps and Bounds

FeeFighters Launches Samurai Press Release #1

FeeFigthers Launches Payment Gateway Samurai

What is credit card processing

FeeFighters Launches Samurai Press Release #2

ODesk

PressRelease.Grader

Elance

MuckRack

Toutapp

Bitesize PR

HARO

Transcript

Download the transcript here

-Andrew: How do you do PR, on a tight, tight budget?

We’re going to learn from Stella Fayman of FeeFighters. FeeFighters.com is the site where credit card processors compete for your business.

I’m Andrew Warren, founder of Mixergy.com. Where proven founders teach.

Stella, can you give my audience an understanding of what’s possible? What were you able to do, with what you’re about to teach us? And while you say that, I’m going to put in my earphones, I want no echoes, I want to make sure we have a really crisp conversation for people to listen to.
So what can they do with what you’re about to teach us?

Stella: PR is not a rocket science, you don’t need an expensive PR firm, to help you get press for a business and links.

We’ve been in TechCrunch, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Forbes, The Atlantic, Nashville. And a lot of that is just from being scrappy.

Andrew: So all the press, I see that press FeeFighters.com/press is not loading up quickly for me because I’ve got all these tabs to show the audience. But all the press including this great Business Week article on FeeFighters, you guys did internally by being scrappy and working at a tight budget.

Stella: We actually had experiences with PR firms. So we actually went through three PR firms in a year and a half. And most of the great links that we’ve got came internally.

We had a lot of pressure from the outside. People wanted us to have a PR firm, because it would mean that we’re more legit. But we quickly learned that doing things ourselves would get better higher quality link. Like the one’s you see. Yeah. You can look at our press page it’s really impressive. Especially for a company of our size.

Andrew: Yeah. We’re talking about Bloomberg Business Week, TechCrunch Inc, Entrepreneur Magazine, the Globe and Mail, Open Forum, Consumerist, Chicago Tribune. All these different sites, look at this great one over here, Mixergy, you guys got in too? I love it, I love seeing my name with all those sites.

All right. We’re going to teach people how you did it on a really super tight budget. But my audience is going to assume that you’ve got this naturally. Some people just have the gift, I see the look you’re giving me, I know from the conversation we had before, you weren’t blessed with some kind of gift at birth.

Tell me what was it like before you figured out what you’re about to teach my audience?

Stella: So I joined FeeFighters out of college. I have a degree in psychology from Northwestern. I had no experience in PR. I’ve never worked at a PR firm. I just kind of started doing PR on my own, and learning from different people. In the beginning I would email, personalized emails, to persons and reporters, that got zero responses. So I’ve learned the hard way, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of my experience.

Andrew: OK. That’s painful by the way. You didn’t just take collections of emails addresses of reporters and blast them the same email and put them on BCC, which I get those all the freaking time. What you did was, you personalized it, you said, ‘Hey, whatever, New York Times reporter, hey Nick Bilton, have you heard of our company?’. And nothing. And, ‘Hey this’, and nothing. None of that worked. You’ve got the system, you’re about to share with my audience. And that’s the whole goal here, so that they don’t have to suffer the way that you did. They can just get the results, by learning from the pain that you had.

All right. I want them to get this as quickly as possible. What’s the first step that the person’s watching us right now, what’s the first thing that he or she needs to do?

Stella: So you need to figure out the different ways that your company is news worthy. That’s not what you think, or why you think you’re news worthy, that you have the best product X, Y, Z, out in the market place. Even though obviously you do. You need to find angles that reporters will find your company interesting.

So I’ll give you a few examples of ours. I’m a woman in technology, I leverage that all the time. We’ve got MBA’s on our founding team, we use that, as should you if you should have an MBA. And another great resource is HARO, we are always looking at ways to get links from HARO.

That was one, a great one from BeatMap, we made this, we’re talking about creative ways to keep your stuff healthy. We made a funny video, about us all working out together. And we got hundreds and hundreds of views, from that. It was literally 30 second video.

Literally anytime a reporter, reporters are always looking for sources for different quotes. If you can be first and if you can provide interesting information, you will get links and you will get [inaudible].

Andrew: OK. So you’re saying, the first thing is you want to look to find those things that make you newsworthy. Now, I’m looking at this, and what is it, specifically? Let me scroll to the top of this page. I don’t know why it’s not going up. This BNET article about the way you exercise, what exactly is newsworthy about that?

Stella: You know, again, we don’t necessarily think it’s that newsworthy, but this reporter was looking for, you know, cruising HARO for interesting ways that companies keep healthy or have healthy tendencies. So we’re able to not only respond quickly, but also have this funny video that we made in 30 seconds that differentiated us from the probably hundreds of other responses she made.

Andrew: Got you.

Stella: Yeah, it’s about being, figuring out what makes you newsworthy and the different angles that you can have, but also being scrappy and thinking about ways that, you know, you can be newsworthy, or trying to apply yourself in as many different things. I’ll give you an example of another article in Crane’s. It was about whether or not tech geeks are sexy, whether geek is the new sexy and we’re quoted in that just because I responded and had an interesting conversation with the reporter. So it’s not necessarily just Fee Fighters, Fee Fighters all the time, credit card processing, it’s whatever reporters are looking to write about.

Andrew: I see. So you saw on helpareporterout.com, right? On HARO, you saw that this reporter, Elise Craig, was looking for some story, she was researching a story on businesses that are healthy. And you said, “Well, she’s probably going to get a whole bunch of responses from everybody via e-mail and they’re all going to be text and they’re all going to be same about how great we are. We’re going to just take a video camera, probably the iPhone, and we’re going to shoot our guys training. We’re going to do it kind of funny and we’re going to send this to her and give her something that makes it a little bit more interesting than the average response that she’s going to get from everyone else. That kind of scrappiness, just being subscribed to that free e-mail newsletter and being creative about the way you responded, got you in this and that shows the attitude that you guys have had towards everything that you do in the press.

Stella: Absolutely. 100%.

Andrew: You look at those opportunities and then you’re looking to go a little bit extra and we’re going to show people, guys, we’re just getting started. You’re going to get to see that she has a list of reporters, how she’s developed and how Fee Fighters has developed beyond this initial waiting for HARO to send out a request. But even that basic thing, from what I’ve heard, and what I’ve learned by talking to Stella before this session started, has gotten them a lot of press.

Stella: Yeah.

Andrew: All right. So, the next thing . . .

Stella: I will just say real quick, that responding to HARO has gotten us more links and some better sources than having a PR firm for a year that we paid a lot of money to every month did. I can say that with confidence.

Andrew: So just HARO. Help a reporter out. OK.

Stella: HARO, yeah, Reporter Connection, those kind of things.

Andrew: OK. And forgive me, I’ve actually said I jumped the gun here. The first tactic is “be noteworthy, not newsworthy”. We’re going to go into newsworthy in a second, but you want to be noteworthy, you’re saying does. Find that little thing, even if it’s just shooting a 30-second video that’s going to make you stand out. All right, now, I jumped the gun, as I said that’s the first tactic. The second tactic is, you say, “look for something newsworthy that you can connect to”. And you have an example of how you didn’t do that once and then how you did do it to show us how it’s done poorly, when you’re not understanding this tactic, and how it’s done really well, when you get it and we’re going to see the results. Let’s talk first about when you didn’t do it right. And I know this is a little bit painful, so I’m going to bring it up on my screen here for you. What am I looking at here? This is on feefighters.com, on your own website. What is this?

Stella: It’s an infographic that we made about the restaurant industry. So we found some reports and we thought it’d be interesting and so we made this infographic. Not only is it painful to look at and it’s painful for me to look at, but it’s also not something that people are that interested in, it seems. Like, we didn’t do a lot of research about who was writing about the restaurant industry or whether this information would be interesting at all. We kind of just went about this getting the data for the infographic and assuming it would be interesting, so that was a big mistake on our part.

Andrew: OK. So you just said, infographics are hot, Mashables seems to be copying and pasting them on their website, reporters are actually linking to and talking about infographics, not major tech revolutions but infographics. We’re going to jump in on this and you thought that you’d get all those links, but what you discovered was, “Hey, there’s nothing topical about this.” Do you know how much you spent on this because it’s really well designed?

Stella: Really? Oh, gosh, wait until you see the next one. I don’t think we spent more than $1,000 on this.

Andrew: OK. But we’re talking about $500 to do this.

Stella: We hired an outside designer. Yes.

Andrew: OK. 500 to $1000 and time to put this together. So you said we made a mistake here. It’s not all infographics that stink, it’s not we as a company, FeeFighters that stink at getting press, it’s not that we don’t have a background in it. It’s we did something wrong, and what you figured out was, be newsworthy and here’s what you did afterwards. Let’s, this now is not on your site.

Stella: So we sat down…

Andrew: Yeah, tell me about this.

Stella: So we sat down and we’re, you know, I’m, we’re seeing – this was back in, I think March or April or May that everyone was talking about this tech bubble, but we’re actually a really nerdy, geeky, data heavy firm. So we love these kinds of infographics and we didn’t see a great one out there. So we actually partnered with Kiss Metrics on this one. And did some really interesting research about whether there was a tech bubble and compared it to the dotcom bust. And so this one got snatched up by Mashable, so you’re looking at Mashable here. It’s beautiful, it’s beautifully designed. Which we can thank Kiss Metrics for, who we partnered with. But we did all the data and we compared it to what was already being, you know, talked about in the press. It’s a lot.

Andrew: So when you say you partnered up, you mean KISSmetrics.com, their designers designed this, but you put together all the information in-house?

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: You, Stella put together the research for this.

Stella: Our FeeFighters marketing team…

Andrew: OK.

Stella: …myself and our business development Sheila.

Andrew: OK. All right. So you put together all this data and you said here’s how it’s different. Guys, get KISSmetrics, you design it and we’ll both promote it and we’ll both get our links back from this. So yes, I see this now on Mashable. The first one I saw only on your website. This one, we’re showing off on Mashable, we also have an Atlantic article here. Atlantic, this is one of the premier magazines, reported on your infographic and copied and pasted it in?

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: OK.

Stella: Very good link juice.

Andrew: Very good link juice. Oh, we’re going to get into that, too. You don’t just want publicity. You want a certain kind of publicity. And I’m going to talk about that. You know what? Should I, no, I’ll leave this up. It seems to be OK. And then GigaOhm also, very good link juice. Link to it, let’s give my system a chance here to catch up. You know what, actually? I’m going to – I think the audience gets that this thing has appeared in lots of places and you’ve gotten lots of press off of it.

Stella: Yeah.

Andrew: I got to shut this off because the info – every one of these sites has imbedded your infographic which is killing my resources. OK, so…

Stella: So the interesting thing is that now, as the result of this infographic, a lot of people think that we consistently make great infographics or that we’re known for that. But literally, this was the first one that gained widespread attention. And we have a whole list of other ones that we made.

Andrew: OK, and as an inside bit of information for the audience, the very first thing that I pitched Stella on was, I said Stella, I see you everywhere. Can you please come and teach my audience how you guys do infographics and how you get all this publicity. And you said, Andrew, I hate to tell you this. We’re not the infographic experts, but we are pretty freakin’ good at getting publicity, and we can teach your people how to do it because we learned the hard way and we’ve got a system here. And you do this for everything. Tell me, we don’t have a visual for this, but give me another example of how you use a newsworthy topic to pitch FeeFighters to the media.

Stella: Well, we always, specifically in our industry, it’s really hard to make comparisons between, like let’s say Square versus a merchant account which is what people shop for on FeeFighters. So we notice that when Square came out, and when they update their pricing, people are always questioning. There are always articles written about Square, and people question the pricing. So we actually created a calculator that lets merchants really easily compare, you know, Square versus a merchant account. And we, anytime that Square updates their pricing, we send it to reporters, the link, and it’s very, very often linked to in articles about Square.

Andrew: I see, OK. Let’s make sure that I explain to people what your company does. FeeFighters is the place you go when it’s time for you to take credit cards from your customers and you don’t just want to take your brother-in-law’s or your friend’s choice for a credit card processor. You say, who’s going to give me the best deal, because I need to make as much money off of – I don’t want to spend a lot of money on credit card processing, right? So you go to FeeFighters…

Stella: Yeah.

Andrew: …you do the search, you find a list of credit card processors organized by how much money they’re going to take from you and you get other information on them. You’re sitting there saying look at all this publicity that my competition at Square is getting. When most of us would see, then frankly I might, too and feel like why aren’t they talking to me. You’re thinking: how do we capitalize on that. The way we capitalize on that is saying we’re going to create a calculator that let’s people compare us to them or our merchants to them and every time the get publicity we’re actually going to feed off of that which will make it into a good thing for us. All right. I don’t even . . .

Andrew: Yes. Exactly.

Stella: . . . bring that up. One of the things that I like about you is you really do your homework and you loaded up my computer with so many tabs that it took me, you saw, a half an hour just to make sure they all loaded up and didn’t eat up the resources. But people can go to Stella/blog, I think, and see that, right?

Andrew: Yes.

Stella: OK. So, the first thing, being noteworthy. The second thing, being newsworthy, the third tactic you say is create a press list. Now, I’m going to show your . . .

Andrew: Yes. . . . press list just the part that we’re allowing people to see. Tell me, what is a press list and how do you put this together and how do you use it?

Stella: A press list is essentially what you pay a big time PR firm for work that you actually pay for a press list or whatever or pay for a data base like Vocus to make these creative press list for you. But it essentially is another piece of news you want to know who’s interested in it or who would be interested in it, so, for every piece of music we have we make a targeted press list of reporters who have written about this topic. Let’s say we include [??] to the publication because we don’t want a pitch to bad trashy Blogs.

I should say that good Blogs wins from them [??] are worth more than news sources and bring more traffic, actually. We can talk about that later. The press list is really a great tool for you when your doing your outreach to make it more curated and relevant to the people who are more likely to pitch you or to include you in their articles.

Making a press list is a huge pain. Literally you have to be really good about how to find email addresses. It’s becoming more and more difficult to find contact information for reporters. They get contacted [??]. You have to be either really [??]. One thing that I do which is probably a little different is I hire people on Odesk and I give them specific instructions about the kind of reporter or the kind of topic that we’re looking for.

Instead of paying thousands of dollar to a PR, this press list which was, I think, 50 to 75 different reporters. I paid for $40 to a worker and for a [??]. So, you’re scrappy, your start up, I think it’s a really good tactic to take.

Andrew: $40 bucks, you’re saying to someone on Odesk, “We are in the personal finance space. I want you to go out there and look for personal finance writers and give me their email address, too?”

Stella: Not even that. Literally, I say, “Go on the Google news search or here’s a list of a top 100 blogs or publications [inaudible] some data base.” And I say, “I want you to find the reporter who has written about Square.” Then I would say, “In each of these piece the link in and find their email address . . .

Andrew: I see.

Stella: . . . and then also put in the page rank.”

Andrew: And put in the page rank, OK. So, you have this done. You say find out who’s reported on Square, my competitor. Then you personally internally, you or someone at FeeFighters will contact that person and say something, I guess, about the article because you’ve got the relevant link and you’ll say, “You should also be aware that we have the calculator that helps people decide.” And that’s it?

Stella: Yeah. Absolutely. The less it is about you, the better. So, that’s exactly the thing. You’ve written about Square in the past. Here is a great resource that your readers would find interesting. Please let me know if you have any questions or you would like to talk to our CEO [??].

Andrew: All right. Unbelievable. OK, actually, give me that again. I don’t have a screenshot here to show people, but if you can just describe to me what you say, I think it’ll be helpful for the audience. I think the person who’s sitting there had a blank email, I think the person who’s sitting there is in his inbox getting ready to send something out would be helped by you just saying, “These are the elements that I put in a message.” What are those elements?

Stella: The first element is to keep in mind what the reporter wants. They want a short email. They want the information. They want a link and [inaudible] topic or subject line that will draw their attention. So, hi so and so, you’ve written about Square. We are going to make the comment about even better, something in their article about square. Whoever it is.

Andrew: OK

Stella: Here’s a resource that I think your readers will find interesting. Check it out. It’s a calculator that compares square with a merchant account. Please let me know if you’d like more information or would like to speak with our CEO, Eppitt [sounds like].

Andrew: All right. You know what this is so short that it doesn’t even make sense for me to make sense for me to write it down. Hit rewind. I was going to type this all out as you said it. Then I realized well by the time I get the second point out you’re done with it. OK. We just want to keep it that short. You’ve pitched my Fee Fighters before, and I’ve brought up the fact that you’ve pitched me better than anyone else that I can remember has pitched me. What I’ve noticed is you keep it really short. How short do you go? Do you have a fixed number? Like I try to stick to three sentences or less. Are you like that? Or do you just keep it short without being specific?

Stella: No, keep it short. I look at emails. Everyone answers emails all day long so the short the better. If it’s an email that I would feel annoyed reading then I don’t send it.

Andrew: OK. And by the way …

Stella: You can be your point across in 3 to 5 sentences. It shouldn’t take you more than that to get your point across, and I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make especially in PR. They think that their message is so important that they have to get out every detail. That’s no something that I have found to be successful.

Andrew: They really do. All right, and by the way what people saw earlier was a list of links here. I was worried we would lose the connection. This is the full list of links. Actually no it’s a partial list of links, and I will give this to Andrea [SP] who will include it with the course so that you don’t have to copy and paste all the URLs that we are talking about here. You’ll get it as part of your package. OK, so build a press list. The next thing you do is build relationships with them. Should I be showing this next tap here with the better business bureau or do you want to hold off on that?

Stella: We’ll show the ones from the Ink.

Andrew: Got it. OK. Just tell me about this. How does this Ink article relate to building relationships?

Stella: When I was getting started with PR [TD] … was annoying me. So relationships with reporters because that the most ambiguous thing you can say, and it’s something everybody will say. So I’m going to tell you what it actually means.

There are really easy was to build relationships with reporters without even being in [inaudible] because I have done them personally. I notice that whenever someone has a typo or an error in their article I email them right away. That’s something that I think reporters find really useful and helpful. Then they have goodwill for you. That’s something that I do, but you can think of something you notice or whatever.

You can retweet them. I think Twitter is still a space that reporters will find you on that’s not been saturated. So if you retweet them, if you start retweeting often and messaging and commenting tweeting their articles, they notice. They have to. It’s Twitter. It’s going to pop up in their stream. Especially for smaller reporters.

Andrew: Now I ‘m going to write it down as you’re saying. So you’re saying that you find typos, and I don’t want to say that people have to do exactly what you did, you also will retweet them. Retweet, that matters to a reporter?

Stella: It shows up in their feed. So they’re going to get some sort of name recognition.

Andrew: OK.

Stella: Especially if you do it multiple times.

Andrew: What else?

Stella: I think with the found typos kind of a better way of saying that is find a better way to be helpful to the reporter. Or say, “Hey, B. You know, I have a great contact you should talk to this guy.” So you want to build that relationship where they’ll want to do something nice for you in the future.

Andrew: OK. What else?

Stella: And comments, comments [TD].

Andrew: Comment on their articles.

Stella: Comments and tweets on their articles. Yes.

Andrew: OK. Anything else?

Stella: A lot of things take a lot of time. So you’re not just going to email them once. You’re going to email them five or six times over the course of six months. And just try not to be annoying, but just helpful. Do it at a time when you don’t need anything from them. Then when you do need something their much more likely to publish something about you.

Andrew: All right. Let’s give this a moment. I told you that the resources on my system are going nuts, and it paused. It’s paused. Let’s give it a moment to catch up here.

Stella: So the article that you’re seeing right here is by Howard Greenstine [SP]. I literally just met Howard at a party by South by Southwest. He wasn’t that interested in Fee Fighters, and he kind of added it to the list of 20 business cards in his pocket. I followed up with him many times, and I saw that he had a small business toolkit on his site, that he thought it was going to be a good edition for. So I said that, I emailed [signal cuts out], I think the important thing is to be persistent but not annoying. I think reporters appreciate style of emails that are not annoying. Don’t say, “Why haven’t you written about me?” or, “Pay attention to me!” But you’d be surprised at how many people actually do that.

Andrew: [laugh]

Stella: Maybe not you, Andrew. But [giggle].

Andrew: I wouldn’t be surprised, because they do it with me too, sometimes.

Stella: I would absolutely say, and I just wanted to . . . I just wanted to say, I was just following up with you. You mentioned Fee Fighters might be interesting. Check [??] in the next few weeks, are you busy right now? Or something like that.

Andrew: Got it. OK.

Stella: So it took us a couple months, but he finally wrote about it, and I literally just met him at a party.

Andrew: There we go. So we lost the connection there for a moment, but I see how you got into ink. What’s the next thing that we need to understand? Want to take a look at the press releases, right?

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: Let’s bring that up.

Stella: So press releases, it’s the traditional form of communication there’s a lot of debate over whether they’re even useful. We found it to be not that great, and there are different services for releasing your press release. Some are more expensive than others. We’ve actually [signal cuts out] kinds of ones like Business Wire, and PR Newswire. And then we’ve used less expensive ones like PR Web. The difference here is $800 or $900, versus $200, $300. I can tell you that there’s not a discernible difference, at least in our case that we’ve seen between paying that extra $800. I’m sure a lot of PR people would be screaming right now, but I’m just saying you know, in our case . . .

Andrew: So which are, these are the services that will take, either you have a press release written or you write it yourself, these are the services that will take it and send it out to reporters?

Stella: Yes. On the wire.

Andrew: What are the two, and what are the prices for each?

Stella: The more expensive ones are called PR Newswire or Business Wire. They have an annual subscription fee, and they cost around, I think around $800 the last time I checked. The last time we used PR Wire, it was $200 or $300. We had the same results. Don’t expect stellar leaps from press releases, they’re just a necessary evil when you’re doing PR. [laugh]

Andrew: OK, all right, I like that you’re saying “I’m about to teach you how to do this, but don’t expect stellar results. You just need to know it.”

Stella: You just need to have one. So what reporters will do is use it as a reference to whip off information, if they’re going to write about you. I have two examples. The one that you’re looking at now is the last press release we had for Samurai, which is our new [signal cuts out].

Andrew: It’s a new payment, it’s your own payment gateway, Samurai.

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: OK.

Stella: So this is the press release that I wrote, and I use a tool called Press Release Grader. It’s released by Hubspot. Andrew can show it later when you go through the . . .

Andrew: Actually, let me see if I can show it right now. This is pressrelease.grader.com. We’ve got a list of tools here that we’re going to talk about in this session, and give to people. But this is what you use to write your press release? . . . I think I might have just lost you here . . . Let’s give it a moment. . . .

Stella: It’s what we use . . .

Andrew: Oh there we go, sorry. Yeah, what do I do with, we lost the connection there for a moment.

A: Okay.

Andrew: What do I do with pressrelease.grader.com?

Stella: So you put your press release through here as a filter, to make sure it’s 100% ready and optimized to be put on the wire. So do you have the right number of links, are there buzzwords, do you have the right structure for the press release? It’s a really great tool. And you can see your score out of 100, so you can know, and has suggestions to improve your press release. So the last time we had a press release, we had our PR firm write one for us, and it cost around $300. I think you, what do you have up right now?

Andrew: This is the one that you had written for you, the one that’s about Fee Fighters launches, oh no, this is the one.

Stella: This is the good one.

Andrew: Wait, is this the one that you had a PR company write for you?

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: This is. Okay, tell me . . .

Stella: No, sorry. This is the good one. The one with our logo is the good one.

Andrew: OK, do you want to show this one first, or do you want to show the, which one do you want me to show first?

Stella: This is fine. The first one. So the things that make it good, or the thing that makes it better, and when you run it through the press release grader, it’s actually the other one.

Andrew: I see, the one with the Fee Fighters logo. This is the one that you wrote, tell me what makes it good?

Stella: Right. Your contact information is right there at the top, it’s in red, when it’s going out in the wire, your logo is there. Within the first paragraph there is a quote from the CEO. It’s really easy to read. I won’t go into the content, but you can see even the structure itself is much more manageable.

If you go to the other tab, which is the one that the PR firm wrote for us that you would’ve paid $300 for. There is no, it’s just one big blob of text. The information for contacting the person is all the way on the bottom, the reporter is just not going to find that, in an easy way. So, yeah, the press contact is all the way at the bottom.

So it’s a nuance but it’s something that really resonates, I think, with reporters.

Andrew: So, is there a frame work that you use for this or book or service that you recommend that we take a look at, when we’re going to write our own press releases?

Stella: I would just Google the companies that you admire and respect within your industry, and see the kind of press releases that they have written, and try to include a little bit of flavor, we have brand, we have ninjas and fighting. So I try to include that a little bit into the press release. A funny story, we actually wrote a press release in Haiku for Samurai, because we thought it would be fun.

But I reach out to a few of my friends who are reporters, and I ask them, ‘Would this be interesting to you? Would you cover this Haiku press release?’. And they said, ‘Absolutely not. This is such a gimmick. We want the information, we want it in an easy, accessible way, that you can put that on your blog’. So we didn’t end up sending it out to reporters.

Andrew: Got it. OK. I see and that’s your email address right here. Are you the official person at FeeFighters? I know everybody, it’s a young company, which is very scrappy. I know everyone does everything. But are you the person who will have that title, if that title existed?

Stella: More or less. I mean, I do PR, I do marketing, I do business development, I do customer service, typical startup, wearing of hats situation.

Andrew: OK. All right. So what we got is, we see the two different press releases. The person is watching us right now can basically go to your press release, and follow the format that you’ve used, then they’ll go to Stella and it’ll include a link to that too, so they can have their press release graded. And they can use other’s as models, just look at companies that you admire.

What’s the benefits of having a press release?

Stella: You just have to have one. And it delivers the information in a succinct way that reporters recognize. What I would do when you email reporters with press release, is embedded in the actual emails itself, include it as an attachment. It’s a piece of advice a reporter gave me, because a lot of them are looking at it on their phones. And it’s just an easy way for reports to get that quote from your CEO about this new release, for whatever, without having to email back and forth. .

Andrew: I see. OK. I’m not like a New York Times reporter. I do interviews but I got to say that I hate press releases, but I also can not use them, because it does have, if they’re good, it has the information I need, to example write the intro for an interview with the founder, who’s press release I’m reading.

OK. All right. I got a sense of this. And of course when you write, quotes are so freaking helpful. They make an article more interesting. And what you want to do for the reporter is, create the quote for them.

Stella: Exactly. Just want to make their life as easy as possible. That’s the number one goal of PR.

Andrew: All right. Take a look at the next item on the list here. Work on messaging for outreach for reporter. No, we’ve covered that. Let me show, can I show people the notes, we’re reading it off of?

Stella: Sure.

Andrew: Yeah. This is Jeremy, our pre-interviewer put this together. I have this on the side of my screen, so people can see this now. And I’m just going down on the work that you’ve put together ahead of time. So, offer exclusive on news, pick the top three and then offer them dibbs.

Stella: Yes. So one thing to make your news stand out, assuming you have to have real news. So in the example of let’s say, TechCrunch. TechCrunch only covers for the most part, unless you’re a big company or a hot company, let’s say, funding and new product launch announcements.

Andrew: Funding and what kinds of announcements?

Stella: And a new product launches.

So we know that when we launched Samurai, that TechCrunch will be the place that we wanted news out. And we offered an exclusive to them saying, I e-mailed Lena and I said, Hi Lena, we have this news, it’s going to go out on the wire on Wednesday at noon, but we’d love to have Tech Crunch cover it first because you guys have our target customers. Here’s the press release embedded in the e-mail. Please let me know. And offering the exclusive is one way to really make sure that you’ll get covered. If you don’t over and exclusive, especially to a publication like Tech Crunch, they won’t be interested in covering your news because everybody else will.

Andrew: OK, and I see here that it says, so why is Fee Fighters launching a payment gateway, CEO Shawn Harper says that many and so on. Did she talk to Shawn, did Lena, she did not, she’s just saying.

Stella: See, that’s where the press release comes in.

Andrew: So, she’s using it as the quote in the press release that you sent and she’s just paraphrasing that and it feels to me like she’s talking to Shawn, like she did the groundwork, but what she’s doing is research by looking at your press release and that’s why a press release is a necessary evil. I see you’re squirming, is it OK that I say this, I think everyone knows it?

Stella: No. It’s actually, a good friend of mine is a blogger at the Next Web, and he once to described to me the lifestyle of where you know you have to pump out an article every fifteen minutes and you have to be an expert on that article and that’s just, you know, that’s what’s expected of bloggers. And so, that’s why, you know, you have to make it easy for them to cover the news. And I don’t, you know, I wouldn’t expect her to talk to our CEO, it would, I mean her job would just be so much harder.

Andrew: This is great, but all she did was get your e-mail. She didn’t talk to you even, did she talk to you?

Stella: No.

Andrew: No. Isn’t it great to be a Tech Crunch writer, because you just get this stuff in an e-mail, someone who’s giving you an exclusive and that alone gets you 552 Tweets.

Stella: It’s not that easy though, I mean, I know Lena gets a ton of e-mails every day from all of these companies, and it’s a challenge to weed through what is actually important and significant and that’s where having that social proof from all the other press that you’re getting is really important. And, yeah?

Andrew: I was going to say, how did you have Lena’s e-mail address?

Stella: I met Lena in an elevator at South by Southwest. So, and I had a great conversation with her and we actually took part in the accelerated program, which is an incubator in Chicago, we met with her for five to ten minutes there and I kept in touch with her ever since. So, literally chance meeting in an elevator developed a relationship and she’s covered our funding and product launch.

Andrew: Well, alright, OK. Capitalize, and this is the final one and then we’ll go into tools. The final point that you’ve got for my precious, precious audience, I want them to get all the value that they can and the final point that you’re sending away with is, capitalize on social media by engaging interested parties. You want me to bring up the PDF for that?

Stella: Sure, so, one thing.

Andrew: Let’s give it a moment here to load. Whoa, now it just took over the whole screen, I will zoom out, it’ll take me a minute here, let’s pop it right there so it doesn’t have the best placement but you guys can see what it is. Yeah, so tell me about that, tell me about how we use social media properly.

Stella: So, all of the people who ever Tweet our news articles or show interest in Fee Fighters, we try to send them a personalized Tweet and a lot of times what we’ll do is include a link to our e-book, because they’ve shown in interest in our company, we love our e-book, we feel that it’s a great expression of our brand and it’s also very informational for business owners. You can’t really find anything else like this on the internet that I’ve seen, so, and I know from just experience that people are impressed by it.

So, I Tweet, I say hey, that’s for Tweeting the Text Crunch article, or, you know, you’re business looks so interesting, something more tailored than that. And then I would include a link to the e-book so that they can download it and use it as a resource and then I would hope that when it’s time for them to search for a credit card processor they come to Fee Fighters, or they share this with their friends. Pretty viral.

Andrew: Let me see if I understand this, you’re sending this to the people who Tweet an article like this Tech Crunch article?

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: So, if I as just a viewer of this Tech Crunch article, one of the 552 people who Tweeted this, if I Tweet it out, you say, hey Andrew, thanks for Tweeting this out, if you want to know more about what credit card processing is, here’s a free e-book.

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: That’s it?

Stella: That’s it.

Andrew: And do you do this 552 times?

Stella: You know, in a perfect world, we would, we tend to be a little bit more selective just because we don’t have the resources to sit there and Tweet all day long. So but we try to do it as often as we can. If it’s somebody who could be a potential partner we would Tweet after and say, you know we should talk, or something like that. We know that with a Tweet that they’ve heard about us now and they’ve engaged somewhat and (inaudible) their engagement by tweeting back something relevant.

Andrew: By the way, how much did this cost you to create? This looks beautiful.

Stella: Thank you. I actually wrote all the (inaudible) on the team wrote the content (inaudible) designer. I don’t think it cost more than a couple of thousand dollars to make.

Andrew: A couple of thousand dollars. You had a designer. Where did you find the designer who did this?

Stella: She’s a good friend of mine.

Andrew: Got it, okay. I use a company called E-book Cake. It’s just run by a one guy, one man operation and the guy has an incredible eye. And it makes something that would look kind of ordinary in text, in a word doc, just look like a valuable asset. Like, you know these notes right here that I’m using. I bet you if they took these notes and put them in here, people would consider them valuable. Alright, so, you just create a product and you use this as a free gift for the people who’ve tweeted out. This is what it looks like.

Stella: Yes. We want to establish our domain expertise, make them like us, make them think we’re friendly, engage with our brand. All from a single tweet.

Andrew: Okay. And this is, it’s not about your company. What you’ve created here is how to be a credit card processing ninja. What you are giving them is a free e-book on processing credit cards and it just happens to have been created by the experts at it. And this reinforces it.

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: Alright. You were going to show us, and we couldn’t show your screen, we instead showed mine. You were going to show us Hoot Suite. Is that what you use to keep track of who’s tweeting?

Stella: We use Tweet Deck and we use Hoot Suite. Hoot Suite’s a little better when you have multiple users, but we like Tweet Deck because it’s just, it’s more real time.

Andrew: Okay.

Stella: We have heated internal debates about the merits of Hoot Suite and Tweet Deck

Andrew: I’m personally a Hoot Suite user but I know that a lot of people prefer the other. Hey, out of curiosity, before I show these resources. Your founder, Sean, was on Andrew to do an interview. Did he, and you and I went back and forth a few times about how, you asked me if he could come on and I said it’s not a good fit. You came back again you said with a gentle prod, you said maybe this is a may to make it work, maybe this is a way to make it work. We finally found a perfect way to make it work, I got a lot of traffic off of it. I think it was even the hot interview for the week. Did you guys get any business off of that?

Stella: It’s hard to say. We definitely got people who called or who e-mailed because they had seen us on Andrew. You know it’s really hard to understand (inaudible) because you never really know where the person is engaging with your brand for the first time. Is it because you know they saw us somewhere else and then they saw us on Mixergy? I definitely know that we’ve got a lot of inbound interested people from Mixergy but I don’t know how many.

Andrew: But, so you can’t measure this stuff. You can’t tell for sure how many people come from Tech Crunch, you can’t tell how many people come from Inc directly?

Stella: You can tell, but there are, you can tell traffic wise. And honestly if you do that then you will never do PR, because the traffic that comes from PR surprisingly is very little. Like that Inc article that was a profile on FeeFighters, I think we got less than 150 to 200 views which is astounding. What’s more important is the fact that I can put Inc now on my home page as a company that found us.

Andrew: See, there it is, I got it. You’ve got social proof. You’ve got the co-founder of Stack Exchange and Fog Creek Software saying something nice and you also have the Inc article reference to you, and that’s what’s great about PR.

Stella: Yes.

Andrew: So then, and there’s even more. So then, as a scrappy start up, and I’ll show the tools in a moment, as a scrappy entrepreneur how do you know that this is the right place to spend your energy? Why this and not SEO. Or why this and not something else?

Stella: It’s a mix. I think PR is important to. Because first of all a lot of it is easy. There’s a lot of low hanging fruit. There’s local reporters that you can easily develop a relationship with. Especially if you are doing something interesting. And then there’s a lot of the credibility that comes from doing PR. No credible website that I know doesn’t have links to at least let’s say five or six great publications on it. It’s just something that you have to do and there are different ways that you can capitalize on PR as well. One thing that we do for all inbound traffic and especially PR is you do the targeting. So any (inaudible) to our site (inaudible) FeeFighters ads for the next 30 days and that’s going to very, it’s a cheap, easy way to get customers.

Andrew: Got it. OK. Re-targeting is phenomenal, I’ve got to do that. Re-targeting is where you buy an add that only appears to people who have been on your website or a specific part of your website and because they’ve seen your site and now they’re somewhere else seeing an add for your site, they’re much more likely to click and register and of course you can start being everywhere they are on the web and it feels like you’re buying a ton of adds to these people.

Stella: I would also say we’ve been doing PR since almost the very beginning and trying to get into publications and having an emphasis on that I think people think that our company is a lot bigger and has [??].

Andrew: Yes. I agree.

Stella: We’ve been around for two-and-a-half years. We have eight people, four to six months ago we had three people working on the team. It just felt like a more credible company and our industry that’s something that is really important.

Andrew: Before we get into the resource, let me tell you something. The way you’re positioned on camera, because you’re a little bit closer, makes you look like you own the conversation and I’m feeling really small. I like to have a little space over my head so that I’m framed right, but now I’m looking really small and it’s like Stella’s running this show. I’ve got to remember that whenever I’m positioning my camera, maybe I need to be a little bit closer, like that. Then I’ve go to look at the camera.

Let’s take a look at these resources. We talked about pressrelase.greater.com and we explained what that is. You told us about Odesk and gave us an example of how you use ODesk. What else are you using ODesk for?

Stella: ODesk, there are so many great applications for that. If you need SEO optimized content that [??] high quality for your blog, you can use it for that. I actually found, I don’t remember if it was ODesk or ELance, I found several really high quality bloggers that will blog on our blog. In terms of PR, I use it, majority for press lists. Press lists are such a pain to make and they’re very expensive to buy.

Andrew: OK.

Stella: [Tout] is my new obsession. I love Tout.

Andrew: Let’s hope my screen is able to show it. Tout is actually created by a long-time Mixergy fan. I love this site too. We got to be able to bring, I’m going to shut off ODesk and see if we can make this all work here. I want to do Taut justice, let’s come back to Tout. You want to tell me about [Muck Rack]?

Stella: Yes. Muck Rack is a website that is all about journalist on Twitter. You can pull up different verticals and all the journalists tweeting their most recent feeds, all of those things.

Andrew: I see. So I can go into business, politics . . . I’m sorry go ahead.

Stella: Yeah. You can make targeted lists and in Twitter, based off of Muck Rack, reporters that you want to build relationships with. It’s a really great tool.

Andrew: OK. I’m going to shut that off too. Did you see, by the way, a moment ago when my screen showed that issue with Chrome? It didn’t show up on your site? OK. Great. What’s bite-sized PR?

Stella: Bite-sized PR is actually [??]. He created this . . .

Andrew: It’s by who Ryan?

Stella: Ryan Evans. He’s actually a very big Mixergy fan.

Andrew: I know. He was supposed to sponsor here and I just didn’t have a spot. I had to apologize to him, but I know what it is, tell the audience what this site is. This is such a clever freaking idea, it’s such a clever idea.

Stella: It’s very clever. If you don’t have the time to monitor HARO or any of these other reporter driven sites. Bite-sized PR will do it for you and create pitches and pitch reporters. It’s really like $90 a month. If you don’t have, personally I prefer to do all [??]. I know that . . .

Andrew: You prefer to do what, sorry?

Stella: I would prefer to monitor HARO myself because only I specifically know all the different angles that I can help reporters with Fee Fighters. If I didn’t have time, if you’re time strapped and you don’t have the resources and I would spend $90 bucks on Bite-sized PR.

Andrew: All right. So what they do is, they say right here, it’s only 90 bucks a month and what they do is monitor those kinds of sites like, help a reporter out. They pitch on your behalf and then they help you get mentioned. Great. I see my computer is picking up speed again. Let’s turn off Bite-sized PR to make a little more room and Tout, what is Tout?

Stella: Tout is a great tool. It’s every, anyone who sends a lot of emails, it’s your dream. You basically get to create, so you take that press list that you made and you make a template for all the reporters want to send that blast too. Then what you can do is you can customize it. You have that skeleton template but then you can add in whatever [??] information it tracks who’s viewing the email’s, if they’re even clicking on them, if they’re seeing them. It’s a great, great tool for sending targeted emails to specific lists.

Andrew: I see. So you get a list of reporters and we talked about how you put that list together. You want to send each one of them a personalized message but you can’t really do it, you can’t spend time sending it to hundreds of people, this helps take a standard message and personalizes it for every reporter you’re contacting?

Stella: You can do that. You can use that base template as a [starting point] and adding for every reporter something personal. The thing I love about this though, is that it let’s you track and see the [??] so you know. Let’s say last time we had, I emailed a New York Time’s reporter, obviously he didn’t respond to me, but I know that he not only opened the email, he viewed, and then he clicked on the link that I had for the resource. So I know the next time that this reporter has already somewhat engaged with the [??].

Andrew: I’ve watched [??] this site out. It’s really helpful. So you can template, track clicks, schedule email delivery and it auto updates your CRM, you’re Contact Management System. I think that’s the end of all the resources here. We will have somebody here internally at Mixergy pull together a list for everybody out in the audience so that you guys can have this. I’m going to minimize this, I’m going to come back to Fee Fighters.

We’ve left people here with a lot. Let me ask you this. What’s the one thing that the person who’s watching us who feels overwhelmed, who says I’ve got a lot of great material here, I’m going to go back and watch this over and over again, what’s the one thing that they can get started with.

Stella: The number one this is to think about different ways to make your company interesting to reporters. Not just what you think is the most important thing, but what’s so great about your product that will make people write about you. I actually wrote down, my three rules to PR, not rules, but what I think has made us be more successful. The first is to be creative and be scrappy.

Andrew: Look, I brought up my notepad again, I’m going to do that. You guys in the audience, tell me if this is useful for you if I write it down. So first is be creative.

Stella: Yeah. Just be as scrappy as you can. You’re a start-up, a link from Mashable is worth a lot to you [??] in ways that can make it happen. The second is to be persistent. Follow-up with reporters. Don’t assume that they’re looking at your email. Be persistent but not annoy. Like I said before . . .

Andrew: Before you continue from be persistent, before you go beyond it, you send out a link to, or you send out a pitch to a reporter. You don’t get a message back, how long to you wait before you send a second pitch?

Stella: I would follow-up and ask that they confirm a day later. Then whenever we would have the next relative news, I would email them again.

Andrew: I see. So you send out a message to, let’s suppose Tech Crunch is who are pitching with this exclusive. Sent out a message to Tech Crunch if you didn’t hear back, the next day you say, hey did you get this message that I sent yesterday, that’s it.

Stella: Yeah. Or even later in the day. PR people, which I’m not a PR person, they will tell the times of [??] let’s say your issue is not relevant right now or your product. Even though they don’t respond to you right now, let’s say in two months you email them again, it may be relevant and you’ll get picked up. That’s why you have to be persistent. The first time you email a reporter you don’t get anything back, I wouldn’t hesitate to email them the next time you have something relevant, even if they didn’t respond.

Andrew: Got it. Be creative/scrappy, be persistent, and what’s the last one?

Stella: The last one’s to tailor and personalize as much as you can. We’ve gone over that before. The more personal you can make any sort of pitch or email, the more likely you’ll get covered.

Andrew: OK. That’s the big piece of advice here.

Stella: Just to emphasize again, it’s not rocket science. What may work for me, may not work for you. PR firms claim to have it all figured out, they don’t. They’re doing the same kinds of things that you’re doing. They just have more time and energy to spend on it than you do.

Andrew: All right. We also, you have a list of do’s and don’ts about PR firm, how about this. Somewhere in here is your email address. Can I tell my audience that if they want that list from you, they could just shoot you an email and you’ll send it over to them?

Stella: Absolutely.

Andrew: OK, great. And if they want this document, we’ll include the document. We’ll include the document, but, Stella, I’ve got your website here. Let me get the email address. No, I don’t have it here.

Stella: It’s just Stella@feefighters.com.

Andrew: Stella@feefighters.com. And just keep an eye on FeeFighters, the blog. I think you’re going to get a sense of how they build up their audience and build up their community around, really frankly, Stella, this is not a product that anyone would expect to have a community built up around. I mean, we’re talking about a business tool. Right, it’s not exactly like having a big community over protractors, but, you know, we’re talking about a tool, and you guys have built this community that I see you on Hacker News being discussed, I see you used as a calculator that people refer to.

You guys have this great calculator about whether businesses should – help businesses decide whether they should use PayPal or a credit card processing. It’s just phenomenal. And if anyone could take this product, credit card processing and make it into a hot product that people talk about, that reporters talk about, then the person listening to us should be able to do the same thing, and you really helped us do it, and I appreciate it.

Stella: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Andrew. And if anyone literally has any questions, feel free to email me.

Andrew: Cool.

Stella: I’m happy to talk.

Andrew: I’m also going to ask for this. I keep saying this because every time I ask for it, I get it. If you’ve taken this session and you’ve done anything based on this, I want to see it. And if you’ve got any results which often happens, I want to see it. And in some sessions, Stella, I will actually have people pause in the middle, take a specific action and get results within, like, an hour and then they shoot me an email and they say, Andrew, here’s a screen shot of what I was able to do.

I don’t think with press you’re going to be able to get results that quickly. But I do want to see the progress you’re making and I do want to see the results and I’m looking forward to cheering you on and hearing about it. So come back and let me know, and of course, contact Stella@feefighters.com. Thank you. Go use this.

Master Class: Automation Tools
Taught by Mark Brooks of Courtland Brooks

Report issues here

Master Class:
Automation Tools

Length: 55:50 minutes


About the course leader

Mark Brooks is the founder of Courtland Brooks, which provides media relations, business development, and strategic advertisement services.

Master Class Toolbox

Course Cheat Sheet

My Intervals

Freshbooks

Tungle.me

EchoSign

Relenta (CRM)

Cision (PR)

Acuity Scheduling (Acuity’s founder is giving Mixergy members 4 weeks free.)

Transcript

Download the transcript here

Andrew: This course is about using tools to increase your productivity or as Mark, my friend, likes to say, ‘To get an unfair advantage’. It’s led by Mark Brooks, founder of Courtland Brooks, which provide media relations, business development, and strategic advertisement services. I’m Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, where proven founders teach.

Mark, we’re going to show people a whole lot of tools. But they’re going to want to know how it impacts their lives. So do you have an example of how using these tools, makes people more productive? What happened to you?

Mark: Sure. Well, I was inspired to start looking for these kinds of tools after I had an occasion to go the Shanghai, to go to an Internet dating conference, which I usually talk around, all over the world. Went to the conference in Shanghai and I was very scared about going to the conference, because I made a decision to go for a couple of months. I was actually going to spend some time in Shanghai and hopefully learn more about the market over there.

I thought, this is going to be a problem, my clients aren’t going to like this, I’m going to end up losing clients. I’m out in Shanghai, ‘Where’s Mark?’, ‘Oh. He’s off in Shanghai.’, ‘Well, enjoy your holiday.’, that’s what people usually say. And the reverse happened, exactly the reverse happened. We ended up picking up more clients. And what I learned from that experience was that, people, clients, didn’t give two hoots where I was sitting, as long as the work got done.

So I’ve been spending a lot more time looking for ways just to help that process along. Tools that can help me, just get the job done and then ultimately the clients didn’t care where I was sitting. So now, I’m sitting in Malta, this is the place I’ve chosen to live and spend time. And I’ve my yellow office in Malta with pictures of New York on the wall.

But prior to all these, I was in New York, I decided to break away from working directly for individual Internet dating companies after I had three offers at once. I figured, ‘Well, I should start working for all three of these companies’. And so I was sitting in New York, in upstate New York, trudging through snow in the winter…

Andrew: And this is where you, can we say the company you were working for at the time or not?

Mark: Sure. I was working with Cupid. Now I’ve left Cupid to start contracting for them, and working with these other two companies. I thought, ‘Well, Cupid’s going to want to have me on their doorstep, right there’. But ultimately I got to the stage that I got tired of the cold weather and I fled one day to Florida. I set off at 3:00 in the afternoon one day and I thought I’d stop when I got tired and I didn’t, I kept driving 24 hours, and drove 3:00 in the afternoon into Tampa with my AC blowing, and here we are. What, basically the message here is, I enjoy certain freedoms and I extended those freedoms to my team, they enjoyed that so much that they just never leave, they stick with me, my turn over is very low.

Andrew: So I was looking at photos of Shanghai, what a beautiful country, what a beautiful city, excuse me.

You were there, and even though you were disconnected. Not only the work gets done because the tools you set up while you were away, continue to work, and the people who you empowered through those tools continued to be productive. You got more business while you were away, because of those tools.

And this is why I asked you about what life was like before you used to work, where you were freezing your butt off, you were having to get stuff done, you were constantly depended on how many hours you could put in, back when you were working at Cupid.com and other sites.

And I can see that sometimes I get that way. And one of the reasons I want to put this course together is because if I can use these tools, then I know my audience can, to increase their productivity, to allow themselves to take a little bit of a break. And more importantly to empower the organization to grow the business to grow sales.

OK. So now, we see what can happen, we see what can happen without that. Let’s talk about the first tool that will get us there.

And first tool that you told me that you love, that helps you organize your whole business is something called..

What is it?

Mark: In order of importance, let’s start with my intervals, because this has changed my life round. I don’t know how I can possibly operate my business without this particular tool.

Andrew: Can we take a look at that?

Mark: Sure. Let me bring it up.

OK. What you’re looking at is a task list. This is actually internal tasking, so we’re not giving too much away with clients that we work with, they’ll be fine with it.

So let’s take a look. What I like about this tool, you all seen varies, there’s so many different task managers available now. We used to use TaskAnyone, but there’s couple things missing from that tool and I couldn’t find it anywhere else and I ended up coming across two companies that provided what I was looking for, and this one had the best usability. So I went with my intervals, because they’re pretty low cost. This cost me fifty dollars a month, and I would gladly pay 500 dollars a month for it, for what I get out of it.

What this allows me to do is delegate to my team. So they can all see exactly what is on their cards: they can slice and dice down to the particular client. But most importantly, the piece that was missing from the other tools that I looked at, is that there’s a timer built in. So, I consider invoicing a waste of time, really: there’s no real productivity in invoicing. And, at the end of each week, we’re able to look at the time that each person has poured into Courtland Brooks work, and just send out a check. They don’t need an invoice: it’s all done through these timers. Let me show you what that looks like.

Andrew: OK, sure, and…

Mark: So if we go to this first task here…

Andrew: Bigger picture, by the way, just to take a step back: what you’re saying is that the average entrepreneur will send out requests via email and say, can you get this done? And that’s inefficient. Before you show us how this solves the problem: that’s inefficient, why? What’s the problem with me sending out an email and saying, Andrea, please get this done, and waiting for her to do it and then sending me an email back?

Mark: Well, let’s pose a scenario: I need to get something done. Andrew, you’re the man that I think can get the job done for me. I send you an email and I send you a request: would you mind getting this done? But that’s not enough. You need to know: what the priority is really. Well, who’s the client, who’s it really for? What’s the detailing on it? When must it be completed for? And, most importantly, and this is the piece that was missing from most of the other systems: what is the scope? How much time should you pour into this?

Andrew: Ah, so you wouldn’t just ever do what I do, and say, please get this done. When you ask for something to get done, and I’m sorry, I keep interrupting you, but this is something I get excited about, that’s why we made it the first thing on the list. Because, most entrepreneurs just send out a request. You wouldn’t just send out a request — you’d give your people all the details they need in order to get it done, and we’ll see how you do that. You also say when it’s due by, and you say, this is how much time I’d like you to spend on it. And then, this tool, My Intervals, allows you to do that, and to constantly be on top of where they are in the process, how they completed it, how much time, and then of course if you’re paying them by the hour, you know exactly how much you paid them for the week that they’ve worked with you.

Mark: And there’s one other element to this: it’s all very nice for me to see what’s going on, and for you, but how about the client? They should also see what’s going on. And so, the reporting, having worked with marketing agencies in the past, I always felt that the reporting was weak. And when I did get good reports, I felt that they probably spent an awful lot of time on them. I want to be able to dive in and see what’s going on at any time, and so should the client.

Andrew: OK.

Mark: So, this enables me to give the client access whenever they want to log in and see what they’re getting for their money, they can log in and see progress. And they can see detailing under task.

Andrew: OK. So let’s take a look at that. So, maybe can you show us how you would create an assignment, or an assignment that’s done? That’s already been sent out?

Mark: Sure.

Andrew: So, that’s how you would send a new task, OK.

Mark: So, create a new task. So, there we go. We’ve come up with five killer PR ideas for Andrew. And my friend, Andrew. Let’s have a look. Courtland Brooks Central, and that’s media relations, I want to get that done for next Thursday, I never schedule anything on Friday, because that’s kind of the cleanup day for the week, and that’s for me, and it’s super-high priority, it’s got to be done then, and I’m going to spend 2.5 hours on it. There, all done.

Andrew: I see. So now, you just sent yourself an assignment. If you were sending it to someone else, you might include more details on it, but essentially, this is the way you’d send it to one of your people. Now, what would the person who’s doing this job see?

Mark: They would get an email, notifying them of the task. And then, when they log in, they can see everything that they’re supposed to get done. And, once they start working, once they’ve gotten to the task, they can hit the timer. And they’re working on it.

Andrew: Ah, and now they…

Mark: And once they’re finished working on it…

Andrew: Got it.

Mark: Stop. Apply. And, then they choose the name from the work type, and, there we go: save. And that time has been saved against that task, and they’ve moved on. So there’s also a nice way of getting people to just focus on one task at a time. We’ve all read these productivity books which say, look, just focus on one thing at a time, get it done, and that’s the best way of being most productive. So that ties quite nicely in with that, too.

Andrew: OK. Now, how about the dashboard? One of the things that I loved about this when you and I talked about this before our session started is that I essentially have a dashboard that tells me what’s going on in my company, who’s working on what, where they are in the process of getting things done. Can we take a look at that or are we going to reveal some secret information about your business?

Mark: I’ve got just Courtland-Brooks up here, so we use Courtland-Brooks Central for things that are related to biz-dev and just support work. That’s eh screen that I’ve got up here. For example, one of the tasks that I’ve got here is I just came back from IDates Russia. There is a task somewhere in here to prepare CEO summary of IDate Russia conference findings. What I’m going to do is pull together my notes from the conference and push that out to clients so that they can get the key intelligence in bite-sized, so that they can be ahead of what’s happening in Russia and perhaps be inspired by it.

Andrew: Nice.

Mark: That’s got to be done by the 8th, so that’s a nice weekend task for me. It’s probably going to take two or three hours to do that.

Andrew: So, even for yourself, to keep yourself on task, you give yourself a set amount of time that each project should get done.

Mark: It helps give me perspective.

Andrew: OK.

Mark: The rule that we give out to the team is it’s plus or minus 50%. It’s a very rough number, but if somebody was feels inclined to put more time into something, then roughly it’s plus or minus 50%. So there’s no hard and fast rule on it. Scope is important in any task.

Andrew: As the head of company, if you don’t mind me snooping here on your notes, first of all I see that you have a lot of assignments assigned to you, but second I see for example that you’ve got, Jerry, Laura, Mark, and Vanay, who are working on Conrad’s side. So, you can keep of the fact that they had that assignment. If they had already started, you would see that counter to the right of the estimate with the number of hours that they put it on that assignment.

Now, you see instead they have three hours on this project, and as you watch this you can see your business get done. You can also see if you’re looking to assign something see that this guy Mark Brooks has lots of hours assigned to him, I’m not going to hand anything to him, I’ll hand it to someone else.

Mark: Right.

Andrew: OK.

Mark: Ultimately, I can log in and see what’s getting done, and if there’s any particular task that could rogue. One of the things that I change several months back that really made a night and day difference to stuff getting done is I started paying the entire team on a weekly basis. That gives them a 12 to 23% bonus, provided that they get all the red and yellow tasks completed at the end of each week.

Andrew: What’s a red and yellow task?

Mark: Red is really important, can’t slip.

Andrew: I see, it’s priority, not about how late it is or not.

Mark: Yeah. Yellow is also ‘can’t slip’, but it can move a day or two. It can’t move over to the following week. Green, just let it roll, it can go on whenever, it’s a filler task, essentially. If things are slow, they can move to the green tasks.

Andrew: So, let me say this to the audience. We want you to see specific tools, because I know how you are. If you watch this session and you don’t know what to do the next day, you’re going to feel a little cheated. I want you to be able to learn from this, and then go implement it within the next 24 hours. At least try it within 24 hours. But more important than that is to get the bigger picture. We’re not saying you have to use my intervals. We’re just saying look at how Mark uses this one tool, and take the bigger message away from that, so that if this one tool is not right for you, you can find other tools. Here, the important message is you are the boss of the business, you are the head of the company, you want to know exactly what’s going on and who’s working on what, and you want to be able to assign things in a way that enables others to get done, that let’s them know how much time you expect it to take, and lets you keep track of where they are. So, actually, for this specific tactic, you have another tool that you recommend. What other tool is that?

Mark: There are all sorts of project management systems. There are some that include Gant charts and are very extensive and quite suitable for, say, the programming environment. This suits, I think, the majority of fairly straightforward businesses where programming and more detailed project management is not required. This and Base Camp, the system that we used before was Task Anyone.

Andrew: Do you happen to have that tab up still on your screen?

Mark: Sure.

Andrew: So, if you guys don’t like that one program, you’ve got Task Anyone, you’ve got Base Camp, but the key ideas are there for you. Is there one thing about Task Anyone that the audience should know about?

Mark: Sheer simplicity. It takes the best of My Intervals and makes it even simpler. Both are very reasonably priced as well. To ask anyone, also, last time I looked it was available in software version 2 that would synchronize up to the online piece. The difference with My Intervals is it’s got a timer that’s integrated in the project management system. It’s more extensive, more flexible. It’s the next step up from Task Anyone.

Andrew: What’s cool about that is a lot of us are working with remote times and it’s hard, in fact impossible, to look over someone’s shoulder and get a sense of what they’re doing and you feel out of touch with what’s going on in your own organization. What you’re showing us is how we can feel like we’re in the same room, watching what we’re all doing, getting a sense of where we all are.

Mark: Also, it’s really a matter of trust when you’ve got a distribute work force. You want to be able to trust them and they’ve got to trust you. It’s all got to work in sync and that lack of visibility can be quite constraining in some ways. You need to have a comprehensive system that pulls it all together. But the bonus system is what’s really inspired people to pay a bit more attention and try and keep things on time. Having that weekly pay system in a contractor environment works quite well.

Andrew: We’ve got more big ideas like this and specific tools to implement them. How about for PR? What I’ve noticed a lot for PR is people will go and hunt down the right contacts, they’ll go and search for the right reporter. You have a different system that you use. What’s that system?

Mark: It can be a real time sink looking for contacts, up-to-date contacts for the press. We’ve selected a tool called Ciscion, which used to be called Bacons, by the way. A lot of people would be familiar with it as Bacons. In a nutshell, this is up-to-date contacts of a quarter million press around the world. Let’s have a look.

Andrew: OK, let’s have a look.

Mark: I go to quick search.

Andrew: There it is. There’s the site, and the URL is CisionPoint.com?

Mark: It’s Cision Point for the actual products but it’s Cision.com for if you want to sign up for it in more detail.

Andrew: So now I see that you’re on the search screen. This is the way you’d search for the right report or the right contact.

Mark: Let’s look at a particular report at first. Perhaps you might have heard of a fellow called Saul Hanzel. Actually he’s in there. Let’s see if his contact comes up. Probably all of them. [???] Let’s try Ed Baig. USA Today, biggest newspaper in America’s distribution. There’s a telephone number, there’s his email address.

Andrew: While it’s searching. This will give you contact information for the reporters you are looking for? And you can search not just by specific name, but if you run a gadget company and you need a gadget reporter you can do a search here for them. If you are someone who has a new start-up and you need a reporter who reports on start-ups or blogger who reports on start-up, this is the system you would use to find their contact info. Let me zoom this in for people. He covers technology, that’s the topic. Title is personal technology columnist. Walk me through the rest of it, what’s on here?

Mark: It gives a tidy profile, as you can pitch him by fax or give him a call or email him, but more importantly, these days, it’s important to follow the Twitters of reporters. Reporters are often inundated with pictures. So a good way of really connecting with reporters is via Facebook and Twitter, because it’s a lot more difficult to spam. So their attention is far higher on these media. You’ll see that Cision influence is 99, Ed’s right at the top of the totem pole in terms of influence. It lists his LinkedIn profiles and Facebook profiles, the social media aspect of Cision, they’ve done a really good job of this recently and helped enhance the usefulness of this tool.

Andrew: What does it mean that he has a Cision influence profile of 99?

Mark: It’s probably more familiar with Klout, K-L-O-U-T, and it is a ranking of how influential a particular newspaper reporter, or blogger, or member of the media is in terms of influence: how far afield can their word be felt, and this gives some idea of their rank. So there’s Klout, Cision has their CisionInfluence. I think I’m about a 40, 40 or 50, in Cision. I’m listed in there for Internet dating.

Andrew: I see. OK. So, I’ve got a sense now of how to search on this tool and how to find the right people. Let’s take just a segue for a moment here and ask you: How would you, if you found the contact right here, it’s like magic, you no longer have to go and hunt down the people, you don’t have to work for months trying to put together a good contact list. Once you had that, what would you do, what would Mark Brooks do?

Mark: Well, look, the ideal scenario here is not so much to pick somebody out of the blue, but actually have a relationship with them. So what we do, every single day, we look over the news for Internet dating. We get the news, in fact, Petra gets the news every day, she’s sitting in Prague. Every morning, she gets the news, and she helps run, just filters out the news. We then summarize it and run it on OPW. Then, she goes into here, looks up the contact information for the press that we’ve run summaries of on our Online Personals Watch. We then email them and say, hey, we’ve run a link to your article and a summary.

Thank you very much, and by the way, if you ever happen to be writing about Internet dating again, please keep us in mind. So they know us, they have some connection with us. And then we keep their contact. So I’ve got about a few hundred, five hundred-plus contacts that have written about Internet dating in the past. So that’s our hotlist. We’re in a difficult industry, because there’s no, what’s known as a beat, for Internet dating. There’s a beat for Internet, there’s a beat for consumer electronics. There’s no beat for Internet dating, so it’s important for us to connect and maintain — initiate and maintain relationships with press who might write about Internet dating again.

Andrew: You know what, I’ve got to tell you, I’m so glad that I asked you that question, because, you’re quoted in the media all the time, you’re looked at in this space as THE authority on online dating, and now I see what you do — one of the things that you do. You have a blog where you essentially summarize the dating base to online dating news for an audience of people who are in the business.

But you don’t just stop there, you go and contact the reporters this way, who you’ve written about, and now they must be flattered because you took their message and extended it to the proper audience and linked back to them, and you’ve started the relationship with them by saying, ‘I’ve given you something. I’ve connected with you and shown you that I’m here, I’m an authority in this base.’ And of course, when they want to contact someone, they contact you. This is so much better than the other systems that I’ve heard other . . .

I almost want to have you come in just to talk about PR. But, now I see the way you work. It shows me the tools that you use, but also as I said earlier, the bigger picture, the way that you organize your system so the press comes to you, so the press thinks of you as the authority.

OK, one more thing on this topic before we go to the next one. Do you have another tool beyond this, that you could throw out the name of? We don’t even have to take a look at their website, but just to give people another option.

Mark: Yes. One of the questions that I’ve been asked over and over again is: how do you measure PR? How do you measure social media, too, that’s the new question. I remember, back in 2003, Andrew Conru from FriendFinder asked me: How do I measure PR? How do I measure the results? And back then, I said, well, I have no idea. I don’t know how to do that. But now there is a tool, called Meltwater News.

And there are a few versions of this, but Meltwater is pretty well respected, and that’s the tool that we use. It allows you to track the news, and then match the press hit, the media, up with distribution. And further, actually show what’s known as the Ad Value Equivalency. It’s a very mushy number: it’s very rough number, but at least it’s a number, it’s something. It’s a dollar figure, which equates to a multiple of the ad value. If you were to advertise in that media, what would it cost, and what’s the multiple of that, which is for most PR is generally regarded as being more valuable. So we use Meltwater News to provide a monthly report for clients as well.

Andrew: OK, alright, so guys, check out this site, and also Meltwater News. OK, how about, do you mind if I bounce around a little bit? I know we’ve got a list in order of the sites we want to look at, but what you just said here made me think of how you use Relenta. Let’s bring up Relenta and tell me about, while it loads up, though I see your mouse is moving, so we’re all caught up. While it comes up on my screen fully, tell me, what’s the problem that Relenta solves?

Mark: There’s a multitude of different CRM systems, right? You want to stay in contact with people, but you got to remember to follow up with them when they don’t email you back. The problem that we had is just remembering to follow up with people who’ve initiated interest, whether it be for a PR pitch, some business development or for sales. You’ve got a hot list of people that you want to get attention from and do something nice for, hopefully. The problem is follow up. It takes a lot of mind share to follow up, and it’s very costly time-wise. So what I looked for was a way to do what’s known as work flows. Here’s a scenario. You email somebody, you have some products or service that you want to market to them.

The best approach is to try to do something for them right off the bat. So, you send them an email and then you generally want to follow up in two weeks time, and it’s generally going to be the same email. Ideally, the system should look after that for you. Then, a couple of weeks beyond that, if they’ve not responded you want to follow up with them again. Probably, that’s about right. You’ve followed up with them with three emails. If they’ve not emailed you, it’s because they’re not interested.

Andrew: I see. Let’s take a look now.

Mark: So what we do with this tour, we’ve got the PR folks here with us, but let’s go to email marketing, because that’s the powerful piece of real interest. What we’ve done is split up the database. We’ve got 500 contacts within the Internet dating industry. We’ve got three emails, three auto emails for optimal payments, for example. Let’s look at the first one.

Andrew: OK.

Mark: We’ve built a resource. We don’t sell, at Courtland-Brooks. We do nice things, for the industry, essentially, and refer them to products we believe in. We’ve got a resource which we’ve built, called a payment processor spreadsheet, which lists all the major payment processors that serve the dating industry. We’ve got a client called Optimal Payments, one of them. I know if they’re interested in the payment processor spreadsheet, then they’re probably look at alternatives. If they’re looking at alternatives, I want to refer them over to Optimal Payments, as a resource they should be looking at. I need to gauge if they’re interested in looking at alternatives. So the first email says, “Have you got the latest payment processor spreadsheet? If not, I’d like to get you a copy.” The second email –

Andrew: Before you go to the second email, let me see if I understand this. Is that because the resource you’re recommending is a client of yours?

Mark: Yes.

Andrew: I see. So the first thing you want to do is say, “Have you seen this spreadsheet?” What’s the spreadsheet that you’re asking them about?

Mark: The spreadsheet is an analysis. It’s the sort of analysis that somebody internal to an Internet dating company that looks after payment processes would probably never get around to doing, actually. It’s just way, way extensive. In it we’ve got over 30 criteria that we look at. I think we’re over 20 companies now. We’ve looked at all these companies over the years, and we update it every six months.

We look at all these different criteria for these companies, and we add ones in as they come across our desk, as we hear that other dating companies are using new providers. It’s a one stop snapshot of all the options. So rather than the payment processing manager at a dating company looking at three or four alternatives, we’ve got all the alternatives and all the major criteria that they consider looking at.

Andrew: So you’re sending them a spreadsheet where you do the analysis for them and show them how your tool compares to others, and gives them a sense of all the tools that are available. You’re saying, “Have you gotten a chance to look at that?” Is that the first point of contact? Or is the first point of contact sending them the spreadsheet?

Mark: The first point of contact is asking them if they’d like a copy of the spreadsheet.

Andrew: I see.

Mark: If they say yes, they get moved out of the way of the workflow. That’s really important, because workflow based CRM systems are the quickest way to build a relationship. And they’re also the quickest way to destroy them. If you don’t remove them from the workflow, they get another email and they realize that we’re on automated email and that’s not cool. That’s not really so cool. You’ve got to be very careful that once you get a response, you remove them, and follow up on an individual basis. So, what I do is that I then remove that individual contact from the workflow to a manual follow up process. I basically move them into my [???] and I follow up with them individually.

Andrew: I see. Gotcha.

Mark: You’re looking at referrals, not sales.

Andrew: I might limit myself to, maybe the ten people who I can keep track of each week. You say no. If the market is big enough, I want to reach everyone in the market and give them all a chance to, at least, consider my product. But I can’t contact everyone and stay on top and following up on everyone and build relationships with all of them, so you automate that process.

You get them in the system where you send out the first email. The first email, because it’s consistent, you can test it a little bit and be sure it’s the right message, one that gives you a high conversion rate. And then if they don’t respond, you send them the second email, and I see the way you’re doing the second email. It’s so clever. First, tell me about what’s there and I’ll tell you what I’m especially attracted to in this email.

Mark: I’ll usually send the second email which will say, “Hey, I just want to bring this to the top of your email list again.” And I’ll include the email that I sent initially so they can see that I’m willing to . . . They’re going to get some follow ups. In this case, what I’ve done is just said, “Hey, I don’t know if you’d like a copy of this processes spreadsheet. Here’s a big more detail below, the original email.”

We usually have to point out that it’s free. A lot of people think that I’m trying to get them to buy a report. That’s not the case; it’s free. It’s a goodwill service

Andrew: I see. And what I was drawn to are a couple of things. First of all, you have the system auto insert the first name of the person you’re contacting, but second, because you put those little – what are they called, carats, I guess – because you put them on the left margin, it looks like what you did is went into your send box and hit reply again on that original message.

It feels authentic. It feels like you’re following up with them, and that short at the top of it feels like it’s, “Hey, a quick reminder. Let’s bump this up on the top of your inbox” and it’s free.

Mark: I did actually used to do that, but I realized that it was something I could alternate, so why not?

Andrew: What I like about you is that you find a process that works, and instead of repeating it mindlessly week after week or giving up on it because it’s too much work to repeat mindlessly week after week, and those are the two options that most entrepreneurs consider, you find a third option, which is automate this. I’m going to have the process just work to build my business, so the process builds my business not I have to build my business. So, the people build my business, not my limited hours have to build my business.

So, this is the second template. You’ve got a third one in the series, and that’s the general idea here, to systemize that kind of relationship building. Once they respond, take them out of the system so you can have that one on one conversation. This doesn’t replace human contact, it just starts the relationship. Is there another tool like this than you recommend people think about? I want them to know the big picture, but if there’s another tool to get the big picture result, that’s fine.

Mark: ACT does this as well if you like software.

Andrew: A-C-T, I know them, right.

Mark: Yeah. And SalesForce does it, although it’s a higher echelon service. You pay a hundred dollars plus a month. But what I found with SalesForce there are so many options within Sales Force, the usability, they are a little tough to follow.

Andrew: They have to go hunt down . . .

Mark: This is a lot easier to navigate and get up to speed on.

Andrew: OK. Since I’m bouncing around in our notes here, but I want to make sure to fill everything in, let’s talk about the process of connecting with people. First of all, you’re remote. Let’s bring up the tool that you use for connecting with people, and then I’ll ask you this question.

Mark: Tungle?

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: OK.

Andrew: OK. You get a lot of people who ask you to connect with you. They want to meet with you. They want your expertise. You’re the guy in the space. When someone wants to meet with you and you’re in Malta enjoying the good life over there, what’s your response to them?

Mark: We have matching complexity. We have 15-odd people in the team in total, seven people in our core team. So, we’ve got several people in our team. We’ve got, at any time, between nine and 12 clients. We’ve got multiple people that we’re coordinating with. And then we’ve got several time zones. We’re all the way from Malta. I’ve got a client in China, and we’ve got to coordinate the time zones. So, it just becomes really complex really quickly, especially when I can be involved as many as a dozen teams a week.

So, all I need is for someone to say, “Well, I can’t make that time now.” That constitutes one among many, and it just becomes a massive time table problem which can really soak up a lot of time.

First of all, I try assigning this to my super admin. She’s super. She’s been with me now five years. She could not get her head around this. It’s the one task in five years where she said, “I don’t want to do this. I just don’t want to do this.” So, I looked at a few options, and I came across Tungle. That’s the only one that worked. I looked at TimeBridge, great tool.

What I like about Tungle is it just hits the nail on the head. It’s simple. People use it. When I use it and push out a meeting maker, it works. So, I actually have a live meeting that I need to schedule. I’m sure you know how it works.

Andrew: By the way, as long as I’m looking over your shoulder and spying on you while you’re doing that: Happy Birthday!

Mark: Well, thank you! [laughs]

Andrew: Can we tell the audience where you were on your birthday, or is that too private?

Mark: Oh, no, that’s fine. I was in Malta, and I had a surprise birthday party. My wife surprised me, totally caught me. Totally caught me.

Andrew: So what you did was, you painted the time that was available to you, you selected the subject for it, you’ve got the location on Skype, and you selected the meeting time.

Mark: Yeah. So, I say, I’ll call you on Skype. ‘Message’ — don’t bother with. We’ll type in ‘Kate’. Should autofill, which is also very nice. Should do. There we go. A few people, add Eric. And that should autofill, there we go. Propose some times, I know they want to meet on Tuesday, because Kate’s in Canada and it’s a holiday on Tuesday, so let’s go for, probably,…it’s a little full then. That could work. So let’s run with that, and failing that, we’ll offer Wednesday. Then we’ll put [??] and then let’s push it. That’s it. ‘Create.’

Andrew: OK.

Mark: So now Eric gets an email, and Kate gets an email, and both of them say, please select all the times that you’re available from these options. They click through, they select the times, and Tungle books the earliest common time.

Andrew: OK. And you’ve got now…

Mark: It goes on my schedule.

Andrew: And I see where you’ve painted the times for them, I see…and can we see what the person who you’ve invited to a meeting would see?

Mark: Well, I’d have to invite you. I don’t have…

Andrew: Or, if we go to, do you want to go to that screen that you created, you’ve got a public-facing calendar that we can use as a test here.

Mark: So this is one of the features of Tungle is you can actually show a personalized page. This links into my calendar and it shows the available times that I have. And I generally offer up 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. EST five days a week for meeting times.

Andrew: Let’s give that a moment to come up on the screen while you describe it. I’m still seeing your screen, not your guest screen. OK, there it is. So now this is what anyone randomly would see if they wanted to book a meeting with you. And essentially, this is what the specific people who you’ve invited to pick their meeting times would see: they’d see a list of availabilities; they’d click the time that they want.

Mark: Yep. Although I’ve done a subset of that, because I know Kate wants to meet on a Tuesday, but I’ve also offered up Wednesday, and so they can just pick off all the times that are available, and hopefully one will work. If it doesn’t, then I get notified, and I can go and push a meeting time.

Andrew: OK. And let’s talk alternative tools, and then again, we bring it back to the message here, because it’s not about the tools, guys, it’s about giving you a new way of looking at the world. Because every time that I see you, by the way, Mark, not only does your business get done, but this confident, happy attitude just permeates from you. I believe my audience can get a sense of the person who I interview and who I have in the courses, and there’s a calmness to your life that I would like to have in my life, that I’m working towards, and the way that I’m learning to get there is by studying the systems that you created and finding my own systems. Let’s talk about alternative tools. What other tools are there for getting this same kind of job done?

Mark: The tool that was the precursor to this that we looked at was TimeBridge. But I found that some people didn’t use it. The email that they sent through was good, but not entirely usable. Not entirely easy to follow. Tungle gets it right. The message is simple: book [distortion] are available, and people follow through. It works. So I’ve opted with Tungle. But there is another missing component to this, and I hope Tungle gets their head around this missing component one day.

The other part of this, the missing piece of the pie is follow-up. People often forget about the meetings. I’ll book meetings, in some cases months in advance, and people just forget. Even if it’s the following week; they don’t quite remember it’s on the calendar. So the ideal, I thought, was to get an email follow-up. And I didn’t want to have to remember to do that, and I didn’t want my super-admin to have to do that, either. She’s got better things to do.

So I came across a system called CureCRM. And they’ve got all sorts of bells and whistles, but they’ve got one particular thing that I wanted, and that’s the automaton calendar follow-up. So essentially, what you can do, is you sign up for CureCRM, sign up for their calendaring tool. And, here’s what I do: if I’ve got a meeting that’s booked onto my calendar, I add ‘Victoria’ — and you can choose the name — but I add ‘Victoria@CureCRM.com, and Victoria then follows up with all the people who are involved with that meeting and reminds them immediately, when I ask her and also a few hours before the meeting. And you know what? Night and day difference. They just don’t miss meetings now, people are aware.

Andrew: And it looks like you’ve got this great assistant who always follows up with people on your behalf, and it comes across as a very professional interaction with you.

Mark: Yes.

Andrew: So, CureCRM has an addition to Tungle. There’s now appointment slots available on Google Calendar, if you guys want to try that as a specific tool alternative. We’ve experimented with AcuityScheduling which has some benefits and also some things that it can’t do. It can’t book meetings with multiple people at the same time. The tools are there, alternatives are there.

The big picture is: when there is something that’s just taking up too much of your time, systemize it and have it just work. A system can even be better than doing it yourself in this case. For example, if you did it yourself, you’d have to remember to send a reminder to people. If you had an assistant do it, she would have to coordinate everybody and take up a lot of time, and then she’d have to remember to send a reminder. Find the right system. You set it and you forget it, like Ron Popeil says. That applies a lot to business. You just systemize and you run.

So, now you’ve got the meeting with them, and, Mark, you want to get these people locked into an agreement with you. My lawyers will still – do I have it here? No. They still send me frickin’ paper documents, all the frickin’ time, and it’s these big things. What I have to do is I have to scan them in, and I bought a scanner. I use SnapScan, and then I have that go. It’s just endless.

I just wish they would learn this, and this is what you’ve introduced me to in our prep session, let’s take a look at what that allowed you out, OK?

Mark: This has really helped speed up the signing up process. So, once we get to this stage for a new client, once we get to the stage that they said “OK, send the agreement over.” I’ll send them a hard copy. I’ll send them an agreement by email, but I’ll also send them an echo sign. A good proportion of the time it is signed into here, and they sign by electronic signature. So, let me back up a step.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Here’s the contract that people sign that they become retaining clients to Courtland Brooks. I’ve loaded that into the echo sign system. If I want to send . . . I’ll send you an agreement right now, so I go to CourtlandBrooksUSA agreements. I’m going to send that from the library. I’m going to send that to – is that right?

Andrew: Let’s see. It’s coming up a little slow. It’s mail@awarner.com or actually andrew@mixergy.com works, too.

Mark: There we go, and that’s it.

Andrew: I see. It’s in there. It’s the same exact document. Boom! It’s sent.

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: And you’ve got a password protection option. You can add a signature to this document, preview signature as I see. You’ve got all these options available to you, and it’s sent. They can just handle it.

If you don’t mind, let me go off on just a small rant here. I’ve done very, very little startup investing, and these are the guys that are cutting edge technologists. And you know what they do, Mark? They send me a document via email, and then they want me to sign it and fax it. I don’t have a fax machine here. I don’t even have a printer. I have to email this to the receptionist. The receptionist prints it out, brings it out.

Sometimes, in the middle of an interview you’ll see me just get distracted. It’s because a legal contract comes out. I sign it. I have them fax it back or go back to my scanner, and I scan it so I have a copy of it. And then I email them the scanned copy. I can’t imagine even cutting edge technology people don’t think: how can I systemize this? How can I make this easier for myself and for the person who is signing the contract? It’s going to be so much easer for them if they could just say, “Here’s a contract. Sign it digitally.” Boom! That’s my little rant.

Mark: It dramatically speeds things up. It makes life easier. It reduces the mundane.

Andrew: Do you have a tool for getting people to sign on time? Is it just enough to send them a digital contract, or do you also have a way of getting people to sign on time because I know when people have those legal documents, they tend to drag their feet, to take forever to talk to their lawyer, take forever to read it because they’re intimidated by it. What do you do about that?

Mark: Well, I think the personal touch, that’s one thing that I wouldn’t so much want to automate because I think there’s a certain dialogue once you get up to that sort of point. If people aren’t signing, it’s because they have an objection because there’s something that’s bugging them.

Andrew: OK.

Mark: So, I want to know what’s going on with them. It’s very important to ask the question: is everything all right? Please let me know if you’ve got any concerns or questions, and part of the sales cycle is I’m covering things that are bugging people.

Andrew: OK. All right. So, you’re not automating every single interaction. If the person has a contract and they haven’t signed it, you want to know what’s going on with them.

Mark: Yeah. They’re at the bottom of the funnel at that stage, so I want to provide them with as much personal connection as possible.

Andrew: All right. So, finally, let’s take a look at getting paid. You’ve sent them the contract they’ve signed, you’ve done the work for them, and now it’s time for you to get paid. You use a tool that many of us — oh, one more thing, is there an alternative to EchoSign that we can bring up?

Mark: You know, I’m sure there are, I’ve not really looked for anything else other than EchoSign.

Andrew: OK. All right, if there’s nothing that you especially think of as a great second best, that’s fine: the audience can go on a search for that themselves. I want the big message to be: Simplify it, Systemize it. And we’ve shown it to them. Alright, now this is your — wait, before I zoom in on this for the audience, I’m going to leave it intentionally zoomed out — can I zoom in on this, and show this to the audience?

Mark: Well, we’ve got some clients in here, so . . .

Andrew: OK, so I will black this out when we go live. Fair? Let me see if can black this out right — no, I can’t, it’s too late. Alright, I’ll zoom in, and I will black this out. Sorry, guys, it’s not about the numbers, it’s about the system. Now I don’t — this is how much Mark is charging. Interesting.

Mark: [laughs] Well, it’s entirely public. We charge 2500 bucks every two weeks on a one-year basis. That’s it. It’s the same with everybody.

Andrew: Ah, 2500. And many of us have. I do for my ads for the interviews. It’s the same amount of time, it’s not one day you pay 25 bucks, the next day you pay 2500 dollars. Every month, it’s the same amount.

Mark: And we denominate to USA. So we go in any major currency. Whatever xe.com tells us is the mid-rate; we adjust every three months or so.

Andrew: OK. So, what I do is, until recently, I just sat down, and I would write out the invoices, and I would see when they got paid. And you automated. Talk to me a little about that.

Mark: There’s no added value in invoicing. It’s a pure cost base. I used to pay somebody three-, four-, five-hundred bucks a month to do accounts receivables and follow up with all of this, and my goal really was to automate it as much as possible. Now the problem was, there is a stage at which you want to be able to connect with people and identify when things push out a little bit, when they get beyond the payment terms.

And there are really three reasons that people don’t pay on time: it’s either because they’re not happy, or they’re not willing to pay, or they’re not able to pay. And, in all three cases, it’s important for me to know what’s going on. So I wanted to remain connected with this, which meant I needed to bring it down to a two-minute a day job. And that’s what this system has allowed me to do. This FreshBooks, this is the one that we use, but there’s also a site called Blinksale, I believe, and Zoho. Also very good options. But what I liked about FreshBooks was that they will also send a hard copy. And they also allow me to use multicurrency. And they’re pretty darn inexpensive, for what they do. So, if I’ve got a new client, I’ll go into…

Andrew: I think you can do it from within ‘New Invoice’, you can add a new client from within there. I just want to move away from this screen, so that I don’t have to worry too much about accidentally releasing your numbers. There we go. And I will personally edit the numbers out.

Mark: So I can pick off a client. Let’s pick one that’s — well, that’s public. People know that we work for Plentyoffish, so we can leave that screen open. And I can say, ‘Service’, ‘PR’, the amount, every two weeks. And there we go. There’s an invoice, it’s ready to go, it’s pre-filled, actually, all the information…

Andrew: Where do you tell it every two weeks?

Mark: Well, there’s something called ‘Recurring’.

Andrew: Is that on this screen, or is that on a different screen to create — oh, there it is, it’s the secondary tab to the right of ‘Invoices’ at the top of your screen.

Mark: Yeah. So first step: I create the new client. Second step: I add the recurring profile. And that’s it. Pretty much.

Andrew: OK.

Mark: The final step, really, is tracking all the payments. So, either, if you’ve got a really good bank manager, then you can have them let you know when you’ve got payments in. Or if you’ve got somebody handling your accounts, you can let them know, let you know when you’ve got payments in, and, I like to know. And I can mark them as ‘Complete.’ Say if I want to mark an invoice as ‘Complete’, I can go to ‘People’, I go to — who’s outstanding? I’m actually pretty good right now. Let’s try and find one. Let’s try that one. I go to ‘Invoices’.

Andrew: Wait, the Recent Activity screen, do you want me to hide stuff on there, too? Yes.

Mark: Just company names. That’s the only thing they might not like that so much….Let me go to–this works, people are paying on time.

Andrew: OK. I’m, getting a little paranoid about all these. About potentially revealing too much of your stuff. Let’s go back to your home page. So that I don’t have to worry about.

Mark: There we go.

Andrew: Oh. You’ve got something?

Mark: Yeah. So if I want to mark one as paid, I hit the invoice, I hit enter payment, I hit paid in full, I hit the date.

This is really important. Actually note the date it hit the account, or something is referenceable. Because what you don’t want to do is, double enter a payment.

Andrew: Let’s give it a moment to catch up. It looks like it’s just a little behind us, there’s a bit of a lag. And you want me to hide this company name too?

Mark: Probably should.

Andrew: OK. I’ll hide it all. I see what you’re doing now. You’re entering the date that they took it, the date they paid. You’re entering the method, if you entering it manual, it means, it came by check and that’s it.

For the most part, what they see though is …

Mark: Enter the date. I hit save button and they get emailed notification, ‘Thank you very much, you’ve got a payment’.

Andrew: All right. Let’s go to your home screen, where I can feel a little safe about, not accidentally, I mean, not your fresh book home screen. But your home screen at CourtlandBrooks.

I get very protective of the confidentiality of the people who leads these sessions with me. Even though as people see, I get a lot of details in my interviews, because I get people to reveal their finances and all that. One of the ways I do it is by being trust worthy, and being someone that they can count on with information they don’t feel comfortable sharing.

Are you on your home screen? Because so far I still see FreshBooks?

You are right? So just going to take a moment to come up.

OK. Ask you about bigger picture philosophy . Now that we’ve seen the tools, we’ve seen them in action. If you can leave someone with one message, what would that message be, that will help them create their own systems like this, and get that peace you have?

Mark: I think, we’re moving into a new era. I think creativity is becoming more important. And it’s not so much what you know, it’s what you can create.

People really appreciate having the freedom to find where they work and when they work. Maybe I feel more creative sitting on the beach in Thailand. At least part of the day sitting on the beach in Thailand, and then working from a hut.

The engine that is strong enough these days, perhaps that will be the right environment for me to be most creative. Maybe I’ll try that one out one day.

But Shanghai certainly works. And Malta certainly works. And next week in England, I’m sure will work. So there’s a lot of value I think in providing. I enjoyed those freedoms; I think it’s only fair that the people in my team enjoy those freedoms. I’ve managed to extend those freedoms to them, thanks to some of these systems here, and mine most significantly.

So I think you can select the right tools these days. If you can motivate people right and they will follow through for you good.

Now, we do still meet, in person and in conferences. And we do still meet, of what I call, virtual water cooler calls.

So I always got other tools like siCoCo and Skype to help us stake an exit. So there is that personal connect. That is very important. But ultimately I have freedom, they have freedom, they don’t leave. They stick around. And that’s nice, I want to work with those people i enjoy and we seem to enjoy this environment.

Andrew: And to me, I used to think, I’m so impressive as an entrepreneur. I’m working until 10:00 at night. When everyone else is going back at, the receptionist is going to leave here at 5:30 today, I’m going to work until 10:00 at night. I’m going to work till midnight. And what I didn’t realize is that I was making the big mistake that, a lot of things that kept me working that late, are things I could’ve systemized.

Now, you can’t sit here remotely and systemize my job personally, perfectly or my listener who’s watching us or listening to us on the run. You can’t systematize their business perfectly, remotely like this.

What we can do and I believe we’ve done it and I appreciate you doing this is show them how it can get done. Send the message that it’s possible, show examples of how to do it, and then leave that person a ticket to the last step in automate their own lives.

And I know every time we do these courses, people actually use the tools, they use the tactics and they email me. In fact, we did a course on linked in. I think I posted the course and about an hour and a half, and an accountant came on and said, ‘Andres, I’m an accountant, I took the session, here’s a screen shot of my linked in screen, if you search for accountant, in my home town, I’m the first guy who come ups ‘.

This works for me I love that. I hope that you’re using the ideas here. And if you’re not, rewind and go back and use it, or look at the transcript that we give you, and follow along and use it. And I want to see the results. I care so passionately about your result. Come back and let me know and of course, you got so many ways to connect with Mark, right here on his website, we shall zoom in on.

Contact him, let him know we’re both very, there is nothing he get’s out of this, except for this, the pride of feeling that he’s changed your live and so on. When you have that opportunity, to have your live changed and your business change, choose it, and then come back and share with me and Mark.

Thanks you all for watching. Looking forward to all of your results.

Master Class: Automate with Systems
Taught by Nicholas Green of Ivy Insiders

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Master Class: Automate with Systems

Time to watch/listen: 75 minutes

About the course leader

Nicholas Green is the founder of Ivy Insiders in 2003, an education start-up which he sold to Revolution Prep seven years later. He is now the EVP and Product and Tech at Revolution Prep.

Master Class Toolbox

Ivy Insiders Website
RevolutionPrep.com

Resource Links

Aweber.com

yousendit.com

bigface.com

quickbase.intuit.com

salesforce.com

sites.google.com

Transcript

Download the transcript here

Andrew: This course is about creating business systems. It’s led by Nick Greene, who is the founder of Ivy Insiders which hired hundreds of Ivy League undergrads to run summer SAR and ACT prep-businesses. In 2010 he sold the business to Revolution Prep, the market leader in SAR prep. You can see the website right there that he created, and you can see the man right there.

Nick, do you have an example of what our audience can achieve if they systemize the way that you and I are going to be showing them here in this session?

Nick: Sure. So, I’ll actually show you right off the bat the culmination of all of our work, systemizing the Ivy Insider’s business, and that is the Ivy-based dashboard, our one-stop shop for businesses. By the time the business was sold it was called Ivy-based and the front page of this was a dashboard that allowed our general manager as well as regional managers to see actionable, comparative data and metrics on performance of our branch managers around the country. And allowed them to basically deep dive into categories to learn more.

So, what we’ll hopefully get to by the end of this presentation is understanding how to think through and build a large, multi-variable system and the benefits that they can draw upon to create a full fledged system that really organizes the main function of your business.

Andrew: OK. And basically what we’re looking at here is how…we don’t need to understand every single cell in this sheet, but basically what we’re doing, what we’re seeing here is you’re able to manage hundreds of students, essentially, who are running their own business and see where they’re doing well and where they need help. And that’s the idea.

If you can keep track of such a big business with so many people in it, then we should be able to do the same thing for our business where we’re probably not going to have as many people that we’re in charge of.

Nick: Exactly. This dashboard here gives visibility. It gives accountability. It creates a closed loop work flow with the major processes that we have, and most of all, as I said before it not only allows us to see it, but it’s also actual. And so, a manager can actually use this dashboard to enhance their management.

Andrew: OK. I know my audience, and I know one of the things that they’re going to be wondering is: was it always like this? Why don’t you give us a sense of what life was like before you got this organized, because this is really intimidating. I want them to see that if you can go from where you were to this, that they could do the same thing for their business and really take control of it through good systems.

Nick: Sure. So, I certainly wish I could say it was always like this. I definitely also wish that I could say it got to this much faster than it really did. This was, again, the culmination of years of iteration and much less successful business systems.

Where we started at was really at the beginning of the scaling of the Ivy Insider business in 2007, and that was systemless, essentially. It was just me running my own business, and I was the sole employee and the sole branch manager and the sold regional manager and the sole general manager. Everything was in my head. There wasn’t a need for a business.

The first year we really started to expand by hiring other Ivy League undergrads to run their own summer SAT prep businesses, the very first business that we needed was one for a business system, one for tracking the application process.

I’ll show you here actually my first stab at a business system for that which I can tell you was woefully inadequate, and here is where students, undergrads, were actually able to sign up

. You can see here there are probably 50 or 60 interview slots that have been selected, and our brilliant system for management of this entire thing was a Google spreadsheet.

So, you can imagine, right off the bat, a number of problems that might arise from this. People

each other interview slots, people scheduling their own interview slot over someone else’s, people simultaneously try to schedule the same interview slot at the same time. All kinds of issues that happened because we were basically flying by the seat of our pants.

The good news is that was a huge learning experience. From there, we were able to ultimately get it to where our allocation process from beginning to actual applying and submitting of a resume to interview, to the actual extension of an offer, to the management of the offer process was one system. And, again, we used the quick-based platform and developed an entire interface around that, they could manage the entire application process, soup to nuts.

So, rather than a person signing up for an interview on a spreadsheet, they were going to a straight forward page where they would actually see instruction for how to sign up for the interview. In this case, you can’t see the interview slots because there are none, we’re not actually holding interviews right now. They’d be able to come down here and do a table, you know, click on an interview time and a location. They’d sign up for it and at that point, no one else would be able to sign up for, no one would be able to see that they’d signed up for. We have better privacy protection and we don’t have any overlap sessions. The whole process was just much cleaner and much smoother. As you can see back here, it wasn’t always that way and paying initially was really what drive the creation to a better system.

Andrew: You know what, I could understand that if I were applying for a job and I saw somebody else whose applying for a job too, on the spreadsheet, I could see myself maybe deleting them or maybe being a little careless with them. But, isn’t it funny how that. That happened a lot?

Nick: I mean it happened more than you’d like it to happen. Even if their not doing that, you have all kinds of issues with just privacy. Like, anyone can see this, it had to be a public document since it was being shared with all the possible applicants. I mean, the list of things that were wrong with this initial iteration, was really endless. That’s the way it always is with the business system, when you first start there’s going to be problems. That’s why you have to really, you know, tighten that feedback loop and iterate over and over and over again. It’s agile development and practice.

Andrew: And you guys got, as a result of the system that you created, you guys got huge. How many people did you end up having under you who are creating these businesses and then teaching dozens of students, and thousands in general?

Nick: Yeah, we were ultimately able to hire about five hundred branch managers per year. Back in 2007, we only had hired about fifty or sixty and already, you know, some of these basic business systems, these first Gen ones, were bursting at the seams. So, yeah, once you get a scalable business system, it’s incredible the difference it can make to the growth potential of the business.

Andrew: Alright, so, what’s the first step that the person whose watching us right now who says, I want to organize so that I can grow as quick as Nick did, what’s the first step they need to take?

Nick: The first step is looking at the current process that you have, where you think you might need a system in the first place, or a better system than you currently have. So, I’ll use an example actually from our business, which is our mailing list processing. So one of the main ways that our branch managers would acquire customers is by doing mailings. They would acquire mailing lists from various sources in the community.

Early on, again you rewind to 2007, we were starting to scale the business, we really didn’t have a system at all. The branch manager would obtain a mailing list and they would type up that list, they would e-mail it in to us, the central team would download the list and then we’d add it to the master Excel sheet. Now, that whole sort of Step 1 through 4 here that you see on the slide, was basically a black box, right? There was no real accountability on the branch manager side on the central side, and the communication was completely left up to e-mail.

The first step in really figuring out how we could create a better system for this was understanding, alright what’s in that black box, what are the implicit steps that are supposed to be happening, that, you know, often on us break down on us and we don’t have any visibility into. So, first you start there and then the second step.

Andrew: Actually, before you go to the second step, let me make sure that I understand this, this mailing is what your branch manager, the person who had already taken the SAT, who rocked it, whose now about to teach students how they can rock it, this is the mailing list that they would use to keep track of leads and convert them into sales? Right?

Nick: Yeah, it may be a mailing list that they are, you know, they held a free event and people submitted a form that had all of their mailing addresses and they have a pile of these forms where people had asked to get more information by mail or e-mail. Or it could be that they have a mailing list from their local community. Say they had a partnership with the local Booster Club, or the PTA, and that organization provides them with a list. Well that list isn’t necessarily going to be in an easily processed and database importable form. It’s usually a hard copy.

So we had to get all of those lists which come in all these various forms into one master Excel spreadsheet. I can tell you, even with fifty or sixty branch managers, this initial process, you know there are so many different potential failure points. You know, the BM would make typos when they typed up the list, they would type up the list into a Word document instead of an Excel spreadsheet, they’d e-mail the list to the wrong person in the organization instead of the e-mail they were supposed to send it to, the Central team and it wouldn’t be compatible with the type of machine they were running, the operating system.

Andrew: And would every one of these leaders have his own system for keeping track of the mailing list?

Nick: Yeah, essentially.

Andrew: So, if I happen to love A. Webber I might be on A. Webber. If you or someone else happened to love Google Gmail, they would use Gmail to keep track of it. Everyone has their own system, and the bottom line is, they’re supposed to use that system to get sales, but they were all different.

Nick: Exactly. They were all different, and at the end of the day if we’re going to do a company-wide mailing it has to get to one central place. So the real problem here wasn’t so much that everyone was using their own system, it’s that everyone’s using their own system and then we have to compile all the information from there, independent, you know, gerry-rigged systems into one central location.

Andrew: Got it. So when you’re faced with this kind of environment, and you want to systemize it the first thing to do is say, what do we have already systemized? Do we have a start point, which you did? Do we have an end point, which you did? Do we know what happens in the middle, which you did not know? You just laid it down here to understand where you were and then you took it to the next step. Do I understand that right?

Nick: That’s exactly right. And what you [inaudible] that there’s not an explicit workflow, as there wasn’t in this case. There’s an implied workflow. And the problem with that workflow is contained in this black box. Right? And so, you first had to make that explicit [inaudible] in that black box.

Andrew: Okay, so let’s take a look then at what’s in the black box, and how you brought order to this chaos.

Nick: Right. So, as I said, the black box really consisted of the branch manager typing up the list, and emailing it into the Central Lead Team, and downloading it, and then trying to compile all these lists from variable formats into one Excel file. Inevitably, there was data lost. There were mistakes, and the end result was increasing costs of our mailings, increasing labor costs to get them processed, and ultimately a much lower ROI. It was a huge problem for us, especially because that was a major way that we were getting customers at the time.

What we did, and what you generally want to do once you’ve defined what the problem is, you understand what implicit workflow is happening now, is you want to create a hypothesized workflow, essentially. This is what you believe is going to be the correct workflow going forward, and a key is you want to have that workflow be close looped, so there’s no point in the workflow where it’s not clear who acts next, or where there’s not visibility in who holds the baton. So, this was our attempt at [??] the mailing list processing.

You can see it’s kind of complex. Any system for a complex process has to be. But it ultimately captured what we wanted to have happen, and made sure that the communication between the Branch Manager and then the organization that was doing the data entry, who in this case ended up being outsourced data entry processor in India, was continually viewable to the Central Team, and clear who was in charge of each cell.

Andrew: Now, you actually do it this way, using the Google Dock Charting System?

Nick: Yeah, I tend to do it in PowerPoint. I mean, for me it’s just an easy interface, where I can create these kinds of workflow diagrams. Different people use different types of mediums, and the modality is less important than the kind of rigor of the process. I can actually show you, I’ve got a different process map, where I actually did it in Word. This is again, going back to the process [inaudible].

This is a workflow that we created for managing the applicants as they came through from application stage, interview and offer. I mean, you can see it’s about a page-and-a-half document that summarizes what happens at each stage of that workflow. So, you can use whatever medium you are most comfortable in. It doesn’t have to be PowerPoint. It doesn’t have to be Word. But the key is you want to capture in a closed-loop fashion what each stage of the workflow is, and how it should process ideally.

Andrew: All right. Let me see if I understand this. I know it’s not about the specifics of your workflow, but I’m curious about how you think. And since I see the chart here on your screen, we can use that to understand how you think. What does BM mean?

Nick: BM does not mean the popular acronym, which was both a source of comedic relief and at times frustration in our organization. BM stands for Branch Manager.

Andrew: Okay, so the Branch Manager obtains a mailing list, either through the partner he’s working with or maybe by having a sheet that he’s handing out the day that he’s giving a sample SAT course. People come in: they write their names, one way or the other, he has this list. The next thing the BM does is he scans the list. Do you mean actually scan it using a scanner?

Nick: Exactly.

Andrew: You give them the scanner, or they have the scanner themselves?

Nick: They are responsible for finding how to scan it. A lot of them have scanners at home. Now days a lot of them will just take photos of each page with their IPhone. And in fact, in the olden days, sometimes they’d go to Kinkos.

Andrew: Okay, so then they upload the list via UsendIt and record the link for the file retrieval, got it. Then they add the list record in IV base. What does it mean that they add the list record in IV base?

Nick: So, they get a record link from, you send it, that is where that image file, or set of image files, for the scan list is stored and so they go to IV base, they actually pull up a form in IV base and their able to record that link. So, that’s the way they submit the information for use by the database.

Andrew: Got it, so they’re just taking the link of the image file that they just created using the scanner, whatever scanner they happen to have, they send it into the system and now you’ve walk them through every step of the way to getting it into your database. Let me ask you this, Nick, I see now how you think it through, I’m also visualizing the person who is listening to us whose saying, I’m an entrepreneur, I didn’t get into business to do paperwork, to create flow charts, to organize everything to this degree, we’ll figure it out, we’ll just have whatever system work. What do you say to that person who sees this and gets intimidated and says, it’s not me?

Nick: So, that’s fine when it is just you, when it doesn’t involve an organization that’s starting to grow. You do, you want to figure it out and there’s no reason to overly codify things when you’re still trying to figure out the process. Eric Reese, the Lean Start-Up, you hear him talk about iterating really, really fast and your initial idea for the process is just type in offices. So, yeah, you don’t need to get to this stage when you’re figuring it out on your own, but once you know how the process should run, and you want to make that an extensible process to other individuals in the organization, you absolutely need to codify it. Otherwise, it just won’t happen. I mean that’s the problem that we ran into with our Gen 1, where it’s black box.

Andrew: Alright, I’ll let you continue, but let me say this: I’ve got to disagree with you little bit here. When I was an individual running a business here at Mixergy, I thought I don’t, the thinking that I just expressed a moment ago, that was my thinking, I thought it’s just me, I shouldn’t organize it this way. Maybe when I need to pass it on I will. Big mistake. If I would’ve created a flow chart like this, I would have recognized that things don’t have systems and I was just kind of doing it whenever I feel like it or doing it whenever I think it’s time. Or, if I would’ve organized it this way I would’ve recognized that there are moments, or steps, that don’t need to be there that I can cut and save myself a ton of time.

I would have been able to think about how I can grow and get more people in the organization. And, of course, once I did bring in more people, I would’ve had a system that’s been tested, that I tested on myself that I knew worked and I could say to them with complete conviction, this will work and if it doesn’t, give me feedback and we’ll take care of this.

Nick: Yeah, I think we’re actually in agreement, like I got, I don’t mean to say that when it’s just you, you can run fast and loose. You still need to try to figure out what the right system is, you know what the process is, try to discover what the process system is and I guess, at that point, it really is about experimentation. So, what you want to, all I’m saying is you want to avoid overly codifying early on, because you want to be able to iterate quickly.

Andrew: I see.

Nick: But at some point, and the sooner the better, you want to get to a process that’s close to the work flow that you know both works at the individual level, you know at each time it’s executed, but then also is scalable.

Andrew: OK, alright, I figured we were kind of in alignment. I just wanted to emphasize to the audience that even if your a one person shop, even if you don’t think anyone is going to ever going to do your job again, do it this way. I’m telling you, you are going to benefit from being able to cut steps out that don’t need to be there. When you have to actually write it down and see it on paper or see it on PowerPoint, you have to look at it and really recognize, wait, I’m doing this, do I really need to do this? OK.

Nick: Right, and you’ll see things as soon as you write it out that you didn’t see when it was just, you know, based on intuition.

Andrew: OK. We understand this first step, I bought into your system. Obviously I did, that’s why I have you here and obviously my audience did. They saw your interview on Mixergy, they saw how big you’re able to build your company because of systems and they asked to have you here so we could presume that they bought into it that they understand how to create this. Let’s take them to the next step, Nick. What do we do after we’ve written this out?

Nick: So, once you’ve got the system written out, you’ve got to decide what platform. You want to build the system in, and there’s kind of a spectrum that you can go to. From a completely off the shelf to custom, you know where you’re building it, you’re actually programming it and creating your own custom software application, to some sort of hybrid systems. Depending on the system, the off the shelf can be great and the custom can be great. You need to decide what is best for that particular business problem for that particular business process.

To give you an example, going back to that application process, you know, our initial system was to just do a little spreadsheet, completely off the shelf software. What we found was, it was a total mess. We needed more customizability, we needed more rigor around it so we ultimately built into QuickBase. Now, we could’ve built an entirely custom application for our application process but that wasn’t really necessary because there are other businesses that build that need to do application processes. It’s a pretty common type of workflow. You’re going to be able to typically find something that’s largely off the shelf, but customizable to some degree that will work for you. It’s really balancing act of let’s make it as complex as necessary, but not more complex than needed.

If you can get away with a typical spreadsheet for a system, absolutely use the Google spreadsheet. If you can get way with Excel, use Excel. If you need to go one step further and used a customizable platform like Big Face, go there. The approach that we took was ‘Don’t build it in-house custom unless you absolutely need to.’

We did make mistakes in making these decisions. One of the things we did in 2009, I was building an entirely in-house system for managing our mailing list. You saw the workflow that we created for assembling that mailing list. Ultimately we ended up using an off-the-shelf, really awesome app that would manage our mailing list as well as the actual mailing process and metrics. The first year we tried to build our own system, we actually built it completely from scratch, hooked up a custom web app to a sequel database. It was also a completed disaster. It was overkill. We were trying to engineer an app that had basically already been engineered, and we could’ve just bought.

You really want to think through each individual situation and decide the right jobs for this particular system.

Andrew: What software did you end up going with that was off the shelf and worked great?

Nick: We used QuickBase.

Andrew: Tell me about QuickBase, it looks like you’re doing a lot with it. Let’s take a look at this right here.

Nick: We did a lot with it. For us, it ended up being a best of both worlds kind of situation. QuickBase, like Salesforce, and a few other different platforms out there, have really created an ecosystem for non-technical app developers to create business apps and other types of apps, that can be picked up by people and customized to some degree. It’s a database driven piece of software, but it doesn’t require you to be highly technical to work with. You don’t have to have extensive experience with table normalization, database normalization, or sequel calls. You can do everything through your browser, and it’s very flexible.

For us, a lot of our problems could be solved using the QuickBase. Sometimes we probably did too much with QuickBase. I’d say in general, using that kind of flexible tool that was both easy to use and could be used for rapid development, that also has a degree of customizability, it was really a great solution.

Andrew: Is there a screen that you can show us within QuickBase that will give us a sense of how you’re using it?

Nick: Yeah, I can go back to the actual dashboard. This is the general manager dashboard for Ivy Base, which is our one stop shop for many of our business processes. Across the top you can see all the different business processes that we manage through there. You basically go into the menus and you can create new tables, new reports, new relationships between tables. You basically become a database architect, even if you have no experience managing databases. Then you can also build the frontend forms that populate the information that goes into the database.

Andrew: I see.

Nick: With most fundamental business systems, that is the fast way for a business to stop a database problem. Basic ones can be handled with Excel, but once you get beyond a little bit of complexity, you want something that’s more flexible. QuickBase gets you there. It gets you there fast. One of the great things about the platform is that it also a lot of tutorials. Both made by Intuit, but then also powered by users. It has a huge forum where people are asking questions and answering questions. So it kind of becomes an open source community where some of these non-technical people can build tech-like applications.

Andrew: I see. So, let me see if I can understand a use case and then we’ll move onto the next tactic. If someone listening to us right now has a business where his employees are calling on prospects. I mean they’re shooting them emails, making phone calls, maybe even meeting them in person, they can create a form for their employees where they type in the name of the prospect they’ve contacted, when they called and so on, that form would go into the database so you have the contact information of the prospect, but also you can keep track of the number of the prospects that the person’s contacting and see them on a dashboard like this?

Nick: Right.

Andrew: OK.

Nick: For example, our CRM application was exactly that. You’d have a form, salesperson enters the contact information, creates a new contact. That’s put into a contacts table. You’ve got another table that had holes for CRM activities and that then you can create reports that draw information from individual tables or from both tables. So, as a manager, I can see reports that show the number of activities that have happened this week, the types of activities to be categorized, to collect information in a category, you can see next steps, if you have dates for those next steps you can see what steps haven’t been done by their deadline. I mean you really have kind of infinite flexibility.

One thing I will say that kind of comes off that example, that’s actually a really good example of an application that we built in QuickBase that maybe we shouldn’t have. There’s a lot of even more like straight of the shelf software for CRM that you can pick up that will work for many business purposes. Salesforce is one of them, but there’s also some that are completely free. So, I’d say, as a first step if you’re thinking about platform, you know QuickBase was a catch all for us, but a lot of entrepreneurs will find that it’s worth the time to just go out there and see what, you know, type in their business problem or type in the workload that they’re trying to map and see if there’s already a platform that doesn’t exist, or that exists, that can capture the steps their trying to do.

Andrew: OK. Alright, so I like to get into tactics and I want to see specifics, that’s why we’re taking a look at QuickBase and talking to much about it, but the bigger idea that the audience keeps asking me for in addition to the tactics is this, look at the different platforms that you have out there, find one and try, do your best not to have to build one from scratch. You want to see if there’s one that you can even hack together that already exists just so you can get up and running.

Nick: Yep.

Andrew: OK, so they’ve gone through it, they’ve looked at the different platforms, what’s the next step? Is it proto-typing?

Nick: Yeah, the next step is going to be to proto-type. So, I’ll show you, and we just talked about CRM, I’ll show you the initial CRM app that we had built, back in I think this was 2007 or 2008. It was a simple, again, Google spreadsheet. You know, this could’ve been done in Excel as well. We had our branch managers basically entering the contact information for the each of the people that they were talking to, and then as they performed interactions they would re-cap them and then they would highlight a next step. This was throwing everything into one table, which ultimately if you want to create a really robust system you want to actually break that out into multiple tables and then you can pull reports that draw on information from all of them.

But this suffices for our individual purposes, you know, we added some color coding. You could do sorting. As a basic first approximation of the process, it was fine and most importantly, as a proto-type should, it gave us information about what additional features we wanted. So by rapidly proto-typing and then iterating off of that, we were able to start with something that was a minimum viable product at best, but pretty quickly get to something that worked a lot better. Ultimately, from that proto-type, we were able to create a system in IV Base, which is our CRM activity system that really captured all the information in one place, that allowed us to do customer reporting off of that information, that allowed us to really have the institutional memory and the manager visibility and to a really important process in a way that we didn’t have as much when we were just trying to do it with a spreadsheet.

Andrew: OK. So, Nick, you still recommend that the person watching us right now, if they can start off with Excel, or in this case Google spreadsheet, start off with that, build what you can in there and then go and implement the same thing with improvements and a smoother process in something like QuickBase, but look for the simplest way to keep track of your system and then improve it.

Nick: Yeah. As complex as necessary and no more complex and if you’re going to err in one direction or the other, err towards simple because chances are that whatever you design right out of the gate isn’t going to be right. You’re going to have to iterate it multiple times, and the less investment you’ve made up front, and the easier it is to do those iterations, the faster you’re going to get to a system that really works.

Andrew: OK, and when I interviewed you on Mixergy, one of the things that really excited people in the audience is, you were keeping track of all these different, essentially, entrepreneurs who were working for you, and you were rewarding them along the way. So, for example, if an entrepreneur called on a school, they didn’t close a sale but you wanted to reward them and say you’re making progress. If that school had the entrepreneur come in and teach a free session to their students, they were making some progress even though they didn’t close a sale, make any money. If they taught the session and they did well, they were making progress still.

Anyway, it’s a long process until there’s a sale and you kept rewarding them along the way by giving them points, by letting them compete against each other. The system where you were giving out those rewards, and keeping track of the progress that each entrepreneur teacher was going through, was it here, in QuickBase?

Nick: It was in QuickBase. That is one of the great things about building any business system. Once you are capturing each step in the workflow, if you want to incentivize activity or best practices at any one of those steps, you can start to track metrics there. At the most basic level, it is just reporting those metrics, so you show how–whether it is salespeople or whoever–stack up against one another, against those metrics. What we ended up doing is we built a game layer on top of our business systems infrastructure, so we took those metrics–we called them Ivy points—we color-coded the dashboard, we added prizes for performance levels, and really started to turn it into something that was fun and took advantage of basic game mechanics to get these first-time entrepreneurs excited about actually using a business system.

I mean, it is your point earlier: a lot of entrepreneurs right out of the gate think, “I don’t need this,” right? “I want to run fast and loose because that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about,” so we were able to kind of capitalize on their competitive nature to get them to act as if they needed it even if they did not think they needed it.

Andrew: I see. Alright, that is a great point, that once you systemized it, you can look for points where you can reward people who are taking the steps that the system is asking them to. OK. I did not realize that you can just do that using QuickBase off-the-shelf solution. What does it cost you per month to use QuickBase?

Nick: It depends on your number of users and the bandwidth that you are going to end up using, so for us, I think at the scale that we are at, it is still under $1000 a month, which if you think about it, is just incredible.

Andrew: Yes.

Nick: The SAAS world just completely changes what you can do with a business system at what cost. If you had built Oracle on-site business systems and infrastructure ten years ago, you would be paying tens of thousands of dollars, minimum. There would have been, in our case, no way to scale. Now these can be accessed straight from a browser, they can be built right in the browser, and you are paying a monthly fee that is really pretty reasonable.

Andrew: OK. Alright. I can even see using Excel spreadsheet if you had a small team, laying out a different column for each step in a process, and rewarding people or giving them points every time they take a different step and fill in the column, so there are ways to…

Nick: Yes.

Andrew: We are not pushing QuickBase, we are just pushing an idea, which is organize, systemize, and then once you have created this and you have prototyped, what is the next step?

Nick: Well, the next step is you iterate.

Andrew: Yes.

Nick: You want to get to that step where you have a working prototype as quickly as possible. OK. Before, you want to minimize the amount of investment to get to that point, and then you want to release it to your users. In this case, with business systems, those users are going to be your employees or independent contractors or whatever. You want to see how they use it, you want to see where their pain points are, you want to get feedback from them, and you want to make changes in real time. Like I said, building a business system should really be an agile development process in action.

Andrew: Nick, let me see if I understand this. You are training your people on these processes that you have created, and you are iterating them. How do you train them in a way that lets them understand the system but also communicate, “Tomorrow it might change.” What is the way that you trained so many people on Excel and then Excel version 2, version 5, and then QuickBase version 1, and so on? How do you do that?

Nick: That is a major challenge. It is a particularly a challenge because if you are iterating and changing the systems rapidly, you need a training infrastructure that can also adapt and be changed quickly. Early on what we did is we had what we called our “Branch Manager Handbook,” so just a giant–on my computer it was a Word document that I was updating all the time– and to the branch managers, a PDF. Now, of course, there we ran into all the version control issues that you would expect. It was a real mess. You also were limited in modality. It was all text, so where we ultimately landed was on creating a company intranet.

One of my greatest pieces of advice to any new entrepreneur is, “Create a company intranet or the equivalent as soon as possible.” The sooner you can start institutionalizing the memory of your organization, the faster you can start to be creating a forum for communication within the organization, and for housing documents, whether they be training or process-related or whatever, the better off you are going to be. I can show you kind of what our system looked like there…

Andrew: Yes, please.

Nick: …And how it evolved. We started with the very basic Google Sites version, that we called Audience [??] Intranet.

Andrew: And this is Google sites, it’s sites.google.com, it’s available to free for anyone whose watching us here. And what is, before you show us what you did with it, what is Google sites?

Nick: So Google sites is software service platform, similar I guess in theory to QuickBase, but instead of building a data base driven web application, Google sites allows you to build a basic front end web site. You can create pages. You can change the hierarchy and the organization of those pages. You can click what they call gadgets to change those pages that can show iframes, information from other web pages, that can be set up to house images, to have blog roles, whatever. It’s actually a really flexible and incredible tool that has a lot of the same advantages that I was describing to you before with QuickBase. The great thing about Google sites is that it’s completely free and I can tell you we’ve been using it since 2008 and every year we’re discovering new things about Google sites. Not only features that existed and we didn’t figure them out but also new features that have been added as Google.

Andrew: And before you show, again, before you show me, I’m sorry to keep asking questions, but I want to make sure that we fully cover everything here. I’ve heard that it’s also likened to Wikipedia, for a company, you get the encyclopedia guidebook for the company. I’m wondering though, why do so many entrepreneurs use Google sites for their intranet, for their internal process documentation instead of say, Google docs where you can create a folder and share it? Or instead of creating, I guess a full-blown website is a lot of work to create. You’ve got this infrastructure, you might as well use this content management system. Why this over something similar, like Google docs?

Nick: I think getting back to the QuickBase discussion, sort of the in-between solution, right? If you’re just creating a bunch of spreadsheets and folders, I mean you can do it and you can toss the information there. Or if you wanted to go a full custom app you can get complete customizability but at the expense of a lot of development time. Or you can use one of these in-between solutions where some of the infrastructure is pre-built but then you have the ability to customize to your purposes. Google sites is just incredible that way. It is like a Wiki, in a lot of ways, you can adjust the permission levels so that individuals can be contributors of certain pages but not others. You can have different sharing levels. You can make different groups into administrators or not.

Then you can completely customize the organization of the site. I mean, early on you can see we just did a very basic navigation with a few different pages, by 2009/2010, that was getting really, really big. Then we ended up creating a set-up where there was actually organization within the navigation, so we had sections of the site. So, it’s really, really powerful in being able to kind of grow with the organization.

Andrew: I see, let me read that out to the people just to make sure that they can see it. So, right now, left margin just a handful of menu items. That’s the first version, let’s see the second version after that.

Nick: The second version, we all of a sudden have about twice as many pages.

Andrew: Gotcha.

Nick: And it’s getting a little cumbersome, you can see we just alphabetized the pages here for user navigation.

Andrew: And we have error tracker, Facebook, people need to know how to use, how to do sales, how QuickBase works. All these processes are documented and are linked to from the left margin and as you have more and more processes because your business is growing and we can see the business growing, you’re saying to yourself, we need a little better structure than alphabetical order and that’s when you’re going to tab number three.

Nick: Exactly. So that’s when we started to build in functional organization, which is a lot better than just alphabetical organization and we’ve got now a branch manager basics category, a training category, a marketing category and it goes right down and you can see by 2010, the intranet is massive. Basically, you know a collection of collections of websites where we have now aggregated and stored all of the institutional memory to companies. Every announcement that’s made, instead of those going out by e-mail, they are posted here on the intranet in our announcements section.

Andrew: I see.

Nick: …which is a blog role, automatically e-mails the branch managers. Instead of us creating a new training document, you know, we’re updating the training page for whatever we want on the intranet, or if we do want to have an external document, we’ve got a page on the intranet. I mean, this is one of the things Google sites does really well that allows us to merge a control documents and manage the most recent, up-to-date versions for everyone in the company.

Andrew: I see, so if the process changes from month to month, you can always go back two months ago and say, that was a better way to do things, let’s go back to that version and publish that to our people. If you grow the company bigger and you suddenly hire Andrew, for example, to manage your marketing, you could say, ‘Andrew, you have permission to edit all of these process documents only regarding management, you do not know anything yet about training, you do not know anything else about these other pages, leave them alone, you have complete control over the pages that fall under your territory.’

Nick: Exactly, and then the Administrator actually has the ability to view every single edit made to the site itself, so you actually have purge control on the internet itself. So, if Andrew gets hired for marketing and he comes in and says, ‘Oops, I deleted the entire marketing section of the website.’ Someone who is non-technical, like me, can go in, and I do not have to go into FTP, I do not have to deal with anything on the backend, I can just do it straight from a browser-based interface and really simply revert to an earlier version.

Andrew: I see. Oh, this is wonderful. By the way, thank you for taking us through this. I know this is backend stuff that companies often do not want to share with others, I really appreciate you doing this and taking us through this, and this is the kind of thing that I want to do Mixergy for. I know that, and we have so much more to cover but I have got to say this, with Mixergy we specifically target real business people. Non-business people have no interest in this. They just want to know where you came up with the idea and how you celebrated on whatever yacht you ended up buying.

That in-between part is never fascinating to non-business people, but to real business people, it is like air, you want to understand how is it that Nick did it so that I can do it. Let me just not only hear it, but see it. Sometimes you look at this and you understand something that you can bring back to your company that is just unique to your specific issue and I really appreciate that you are willing to share it all with us. I look at this and I even come up with ideas for what we can do, for how we can display this stuff. I really appreciate that.

Nick: Cool

Andrew: What else did you want to show about this before I interrupted with my enthusiasm?

Nick: I share the enthusiasm and that is kind of a problem, I could go on for hours about all the different parts of this page and geek out on it in ways that even entrepreneurs would not find interesting. That is one of the really great things about business systems in general, once you do start to capture them, you will get interested and you will develop a passion. A lot of people start out not being fans of systems, once you start to do it and you see the value that it adds to the organization, and the efficiencies that it adds to the organization, you become a fan. That was the case for me. When we first built the intranet it was just an experiment, now it is an essential.

Andrew: Do you remember one time when you said to yourself, ‘Ah, this makes so much sense. I see how in this one example, my business improved or my life got easier’?

Nick: Again, I hate to go back to the intranet, but that is a prime example of a place where there was just so much pain. When you are thinking about taking 500 undergraduates who have never run a business before, getting them up to speed and trained in a month and a half, and then they are running their own businesses during a pretty tight window of time, where they have to ramp up and make it successful, you absolutely need them to have at their finger tips, any piece of information they need and there is a lot of information there.

It is not just that you can send them a bunch of emails with all of the documents they need, they need to be able to search and find that information, and with Google Sites, every single one of our training documents is now in the Google site and is directly searchable. A Branch Manager that has any question can go in here, type into the search bar powered by Google, and be into whatever training documents are relevant for them.

Andrew: Wow.

Nick: It is just amazing how much this has decreased the amount of support that is needed or required for the branch managers, it allows our regional managers to, the second management layer to be really focused on management as opposed to trouble shooting and support. It allows us at the General Manager level to be focused on being strategic and leveraging the institutional [??] that we have, rather than recreating processes because we did not ever really [??].

Andrew: Alright, I see that there is a fourth tab here. Is there something on the fourth tab that you wanted to show us or was that it?

Nick: Yeah, the fourth tab is just the 2011 version, so this is this year and you can see from 2010 to 2011, one of the major differences is that we decreased the number of pages here on the navigation bar, and that was because it was getting a little bit unwieldy, but the same principles. On the front page, we have got major announcements, celebration of people who have performed really well, a chart that shows the top performers for the week, you really have a snapshot of what is going on in the business that keeps the employees focused on the parts that are important.

Andrew: So, you create your system. You want to keep iterating. You train people. You get feedback. How do you iterate with the feedback that you get from people?

Nick: The iteration I think is the most important part of the process. As I said before, the first skill that you’re going to have out of the gate is going to tend to be uninformed. It’s a hypothesis, so you want to make sure that you’re equipped to gather the information to find out what’s working and what’s not and then make changes quickly. I think that another one of the nice things about a platform like QuickBase or Google Sites is that a non-tech person can implement those iterations.

What I’ll show you now is the way that the progress was made in iterations of Ivybase, and I believe I’ve got here Ivybase 2009 which was my first stab at creating a dashboard. You can see it’s got the color coding. We tracked revenue, regions, and we’ve got some of the different tabs up on the top for the tables we were collecting. By the time that we got to 2010-2011 the business was more robust. Not only had the business grown a lot but you can see that the whole page is organized in a more fluid and easy to read manner. We’ve added the PNL’s down at the bottom which can be seen for the whole business and we’ve added more and more tabs along the top.

Going from this to this may not seem like a lot but it’s a lot of functionality. Maybe the best way to throw it into perspective is to show you this 2009 version. I believe I have on here a workbook that shows our gen.5. So, here it is. We basically had an Excel workbook that each branch manager had. Each branch manager had a manager version. We used Macros to basically aggregate all the data and have information by all the branches, a region summary, and a business summary. But, you can see that this is basically pushing Excel to its limits. Then we got over to this. Then we got over to this.

You can look at this in terms of iterations by summers. There were three summers in getting from the Excel spreadsheet to the final QuickBase version, but, literally, the number of actual iterations that were made there are in the hundreds. We are basically deploying on a daily basis and in many cases on an hourly bases. The iteration, I would just say do a lot of it, do it often, and do it from the very get go.

Andrew: A quick statement to the audience and then a question for you. I have the ability to scroll and zoom in and out of these documents. I’m intentionally not zooming in all the way. It’s not about the specific numbers, the specific rows, and the specific columns that Nick is showing us it’s about the overall understanding of how there’s progress being made.

It looks like also, Nick, that some of this stuff is really private, so I’m intentionally not zooming in to bring it up. It’s about the bigger picture and that’s why you’re not seeing every last detail here. I don’t want to distract from the big message by going down to each individual number.

Nick, you’re pushing this out to your users. Actually, in this case your users are your employees and partners. How do you get feedback from them in a way that’s useful and allows you to adjust. I know that when I asked Eric Ries about the Lean Startup movement he talks about getting multiple users, hundreds of users, to come in and interact with your product and then use that to iterate the product. In most companies, they’re not going to have hundreds or thousands of people they’re going to have maybe dozens of people. How do you get feedback from them in a meaningful way and then use it to improve it and create a product that’s good for whoever is going to be there in the future?

Nick: That’s a really good question. One thing that we are huge fans of is surveys. As a means for direct feedback they are flawed in many ways, but they get a lot of information and they get it quickly. For an organization like ours, we’ve got 500 plus branch managers out there, we can actually get a lot of data points even if we don’t have a ton of participation from the surveys. So, we ran surveys from 2007 through even this year multiple times per summer on everything from Ivybase to other business systems to experiences they were having in the classroom. We found that’s a really good way to get information. The classroom that we typically use for surveys, just to [do with surveys] because it’s totally free, it’s pretty flexible and ties in really well with the internet. We can just put the survey right there on the internet and they can take it there.

The other one we’ve used in the past is [Sumawrang]. There’s one more that we’ve used, Survey Monkey. Both of those are pretty good, but they’re paid programs. I haven’t seen enough, other than the maybe the data analysis that you can do on the recording features, to justify the cost. I’d rather get the hard data right out of a skip fee download that you can get from a Google survey or Google forms I guess is what they call it and then do my own data and I’ll sign it.

One thing I really stress is that doing direct feedback whether it comes from surveys or weekly management calls or conference calls or whatever, only tells you what they think they need. What they think they need is not always . . . I mean there’s overlap, but there’s not 100% align with what they actually need. Another really, really important opponent, I’d say probably even more important than listening to the customer or the user or in this case the employee, is to be watching how they use the application.

Where are they having problems? What’s getting drops? What parts are working really well and are there best practices being used there that could be applied to elsewhere in the system? With Google Analytic you can also see what parts of the page they’re using more. We use that even on some of our Quick Base applications to really look at another Google Analysis.

We use Google Analytic on the web applications. They’re custom built to find out how they’re being used [??] further.

Andrew: I see. So you want to ask them for feedback, but you also want to watch how they’re using it. Someone else I interviewed, I interviewed a guy name Stephen Jagger who’s also using Google sites to manage his employee documentation. He says he puts a question on the bottom of every page that says, “How can I improve this?” Are you able to put a form within each page on Google sites to let people give you feedback on it?

Nick: Here you actually could. We have actually just one page on a site that’s for feedback and questions and it’s a bug recorder too. That just populates into Google form. There are also a lot of grades apps actually out there that are built for bug reporting. There are three kinds of applets that you can just also plug into any site that will run that kind of thing for you. The more you can make it easy for them to find information and being right on is the better. Being right on page is obviously a lot easier than having to go to a separate page.

Andrew: You mentioned a web app, can we see that to? Do you happen to have it available?

Nick: The web apps that we have are on the back end of the [??] site, that I can go to, but those are basically the system that had to be fully customized. If we weren’t able to build it through Quick Base because it’s something like core scheduling, for example, if we’re going to create the process for our branch managers to set up their own SAT prep courses or anything that will populates the web site

One, that’s a pretty specific kind of process that you’re not going to find a lot of off the shelf programs to do. Two, it has to talk so much with the website anyway, you almost might as well build it. Those are the kinds of processes that we built there. Those are actually probably less relevant for the entrepreneurs who are watching this for the same reason that the details on some of these business systems aren’t as relevant. They’re just very particular to our business.

Andrew: OK. Let me show my notes here to the audience. What I’ve got here is year one used excel just to get yourself going. Year number two is a minimum viable product as you say. Year two Quick Base with limited reporting. Year three Quick Base with advance reporting, again still off the shelf, but now you’re getting more and more sophisticated with it. Year four you built your own web app.

Where most people might jump to year four, you’re say, “No, no. Let’s start simple. Whatever is available to us that we can adjust easily and that even the least technical person in the company can use, jumping with that then go for the next step up and get more sophisticated. Only when you’re busting at the seams only then do you build your own internal web app.” That’ the process that you took.

Nick: No, year four our own web app really hasn’t even happened yet. I mean the only thing that we’ve built our own web app for has been the things that are very, very specific to our business.

Andrew: OK.

Nick: So the CRM, the market activities tracking, the Ivey points tracking, the P&Ls, all that stuff is still housing Quick Base. We’ve actually had the discussions at multiple points and what points we want to move over to our own custom web app. We’re getting probably quite closer to that point, and I will tell you why. The reason is that we have had issues with down time on QuickBase, at the whim of their servers, and because there are certain types of functions that we now want to do for payroll that do get customized enough that it could justify a web app. What you really find is, when you actually weigh the costs and benefits, a lot of times building your own system just does not make sense. Even if there are significant benefits, the costs are so high to going in that direction, make sure you do not do it unless you really need it.

Andrew: OK. Let us go over some of the things that you have said that we need to remember. This is something that you said before the session started, you said, ‘Do not forget the user. Stay 80/20. Err on the side of usability, keep it simple.’ Can you talk about that? Maybe we can start with ‘Do not forget the user.’ Why is that an issue? Why is that something you want to make sure to emphasize to the persons listening to us right now?

Nick: You need to think about who is going to be using the business system because if you are building it for somebody who is exactly like you, and you are building a business system that you would want to use, you need to think, is the person who is going to use this system actually exactly like me? When I was building business systems that were going to be used by Ivy League undergrads, I used to be an Ivy League undergrad. They are a lot like me.

When I was building a business system that was going to be used by our outsourced data entry partners on the other side of the world, all of the sudden, a text-heavy, really complex form that requires a high degree fluency in English does not work so well. So, really think about how sophisticated this person is technically. Think of what are the things that the typical user might have problems with, and try to pre-empt those so that you can build a system that is catered to them.

Andrew: If you are dealing with someone who is overseas, who does not speak English as well as Americans might . . . these days it happens that the people overseas end up speaking it better than we do but, if you are dealing with someone who is overseas where you might have a language issue and you are certainly going to have a time and space issue, how do you communicate the process that they need to take? What do you do? Do you do video? Do you do screen shots?

Nick: To preface that, it is a great question. To preface my answer I will say, it is so much more important when you are working with someone or a team overseas, for all of the reasons you described. The a synchronized timing makes it especially important. If they have a problem, they cannot just ask you because you are sleeping. Then the issues with language barriers, it is so easy for things to be misinterpreted. There are also cultural differences in the differences in the quality of work. If you are outsourcing, a lot of times you are doing it because you want to save some money so the quality of work bar can be dropped even further. So yes, that was extremely necessary for us.

The answer is that there is no really good answer. There is no fool proof way and you have to [??] as you do every time, but you want to just be that much more diligent in trying to set up the process to be fool proof. With our data entry partner, we really made sure that every single passing of the baton was crystal clear for them. We minimized the number of tables and reports that they would have to go in to. We did all of our training with them live so that we did not depend on them to read on their own time, a document that we sent them. We got face-to-face with them. We said, ‘Here is the process, let us walk through it. Alright, now let us see you do it on your own. Do not just tell me, yes I understand it, show me that you understand it.’

Andrew: Ahh.

Nick: Then we ran some test cases for our mailing list process before we ever released that to the Branch Managers, we submitted some mailing lists as if we were Branch Managers, and of course, we told the outside data entry partners that we were Branch Managers, right? We did not let them know that it was a test, we saw how it went, and then we gave them feedback.

I would say the biggest things are: do the training in person, show that they understand exactly what the process should look like, and the third thing is test it in an environment where they do not know it is a test. So, actually make sure they have done it when they actually think that they are working with a customer.

Host: I am writing it down right here for the audience. OK, remember the user, show… by the way, when you said, ‘show it to them live’ essentially what you are saying is to use the same tool that you and I are using to teach my members, get on gotomeeting.com, which is what we happen to be using right now, and say, ‘Show me on your computer as you do it’ or ‘let me show you first and then you take the mouse and you show me.’

Nick: The irony is that if you are like me, what you are trying to do with the data entry part is avoid having to be on Skype with them for 3 hours, from to 2:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. every day, which is what I was doing for a while. In order to get to that point, you have to first do that in person.

Andrew: Okay. And I’ve actually done that. And what people have often asked me before is, after I show them one-on-one on their computer, they say, ‘Can I have a recording of it.’ So I started using screen flow and you can of course if you’re on a PC use Camtasia, or actually, if you’re on a PC you can Go to Meeting, hit record. I started just recording it, and if they want to watch it later on, they can watch it just the way, you the person is listening to us right now, is doing it.

All right, stay 80/20. What do you mean by that?

Nick: I mentioned a couple times, I think, earlier in the conversation, you know, make it as complex as necessary, but no more complex. All right? So stay 80/20, just means if you guys are familiar with kind of the predo efficiency, or predo optimality, 80% of the benefits come from 20% of the features. And with 20% of the work, you tend to be able to get 80% of your goal. So, don’t over optimize, basically. Focus on getting that minimum buyable product out the door, right: that business system that can just barely do the process that you’re trying to get done. Then, [inaudible].

You want your product to be as 80/20 as possible, and then the iteration is where you start to improve it, hone in and perfect. But I think even during the iterative cycle there can be a tendency, especially if you’re like me, and you start to fall in love with the business system, to go for more complex. And eventually you start to lose people. The usability of the system goes down as you increase features. I would say, with QuickBase if there’s one criticism it’s probably that there’s too much there, that we get from Branch Managers, is that there’s just too much there, and it can be very overwhelming.

Well, for me, it gets me all excited that we’ve got all of this data that’s being collected: for some of the Branch Managers it’s gotten to the point where it’s already too much. So, keep it simple [??].

Andrew: Okay. You know, and actually that happened to me, too. I said, I don’t need any systems here at Mixergy. I can deal with it myself. And then when I brought in other people I said, I don’t need any systems for them, because we still had it pretty simple, and they could figure things out. And I don’t want to be too rigid with people by telling them exactly how to do things. Meanwhile, they wanted me to be clear with them. They want to know exactly how I do it. But later on maybe they could experiment.

But first, they wanted to know specifically what do I do on day one, what do I do on day two, to give you what you’re looking for. So I got to that, and then I started to go, I think I might even be now going towards a place where I’m over systemizing. So, how do you know when you’re over systemizing? I want to know before I start to say, here is a document and a way to do, and a macro for every email you send out on behalf of Mixergy. How do I know where the stop is before I get to that?

Nick: Right. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet there. It is case by case, right? And the factors and variables are different with each business system. But I guess I’d say two things. One is, you want at first to start with the [heuristic] that less is more. Right? I mean, you want to minimize the number of features, and you want to only have those features that are absolutely necessary. So basically, if you [??] you just raise the bar to about double of what you think it would be for introducing a new feature, or a new deal that you affirm, or a new component to a business, from a new step in a process.

And so, really discipline yourself to not do those things unless you believe it is absolutely necessary, and to just think back to that each time you’re going to do it. The second thing I would say is to implement those [??] that we talked about. Watch how users are using it when they’re actually in the system, and solicit their feedback through surveys. And listen to them. If it’s too complicated, they’ll tell you. You’ll hear it in angry, unsolicited emails, and you’ll certainly hear it if you do any sort of survey.

Andrew: Okay, and there are a couple of mistakes that you want us to be aware of. The first mistake you say is,

Nick: I’ve lost you. I’ve lost the sound.

Andrew: Can you hear me now? Good, that should do it, right?

Nick: Great.

Andrew: Okay, so there are a couple of mistakes that you want us to also be aware of. You can’t see this, but I’m sliding documents up in front of the screen, as we’re talking, so that the audience gets to see.

Nick: You’re reminding me of all the things I said I’d talk about and didn’t.

Andrew: No. I’m just doing so much, right. I’m doing so much here, like, as you were talking I hope that this comes out for the people who are watching us, taking notes on their behalf so they can follow along. Here, like, I can slide in your home page right now. So, let’s talk about some of the mistakes. You say there are a couple of mistakes that we need to be aware of. The first is systems that capture information soon get redundant. Tell me about that, and maybe show me how you did that.

Nick: Systems that get redundant, later capturing too much information, is that it?

Andrew: Yeah, I think you were saying too that the room tracker, or the room rental tracker, is a good indication of where you might have made a mistake in the past. What is that?

Nick: Yeah, I mean you want to collect as much information as is necessary, right? Going back to our simplest point but you don’t want to collect much more information than is necessary. We had a room rental tracker, one of the big processes the branch managers had to go through is renting a classroom space where they’re going to run their courses, and that tracker was meant to capture all the information we needed to make a decision about whether we should allow them to rent a particular space. But we wanted them to fill in that information for every single space that they considered using. Many of them considered ten or fifteen spaces for every one space that they even ended up deciding they wanted to use. So the system became a real burden as we built on more and more fields and required them to use it for every single space.

The result ultimately was that people just stopped using it, that’s really the risk, I guess to close the loop on the point we were talking about earlier, of not being 80/20. Now, if you do make a system overly complex and you capture too much information, you think you’re doing a really good job because you’re going to have all this data to work with but at the end of the day you end up not getting nearly as much as data, because people would’ve stopped using it.

Andrew: I see. Do you happen to have that on your screen to show us?

Nick: You know I don’t. I don’t have that the one specifically, but you can actually see, you know we’ve got that table and here’s the form that we currently use for room rentals. You can see it’s quite a bit, so we ultimately ended up changing. We both reduced the number of fields, if you can believe it this is less fewer fields, and we also now only require the form to be filled out for those rooms that are already selected as one’s that the branch manager wants to use.

Andrew: OK.

Nick: So, rather than them having to do it for twenty or thirty rooms, now their doing it for three or four.

Andrew: And actually, you’re a company when people are renting rooms, were they renting it from the company or renting it from third-parties?

Nick: Renting them from third-parties.

Andrew: OK.

Nick: So, if we’re running programs all over the country, you’d have, you know we’d be renting from a school, a church, a synagogue, whatever, for a classroom space. Every single one of those processes has to come through from the branch manager to central and you know, just with that mailing list, there’s a bunch of different steps that take place in between.

Andrew: I see, and by the way, as someone who used to organize events, I know how tough it is to find a location and I completely understand why you’d want to keep track of all the locations you’ve considered and be very methodical about it, because boy is it hard to get someone to just rent you space. It’s not, it’s not something that’s as organized as say finding a restaurant to go to dinner.

Nick: Yeah, and another place where we see this is a lot, and I think most entrepreneurs will see this, is in an CRM system, you’ll have a tendency once you build a CRM system for your salespeople, to want to collect as much information as possible and sales people, you know, they’ll want the information that is valuable for them and managing the process but any information that’s extraneous to that, they don’t care about. So, the more of that kind of information you start building into the system, the less likely they are to use it.

Andrew: OK. You also want to show us an overly complex version of IV base versus the simple version. Or am I just jumping ahead here?

Nick: The overly complex version of Ivy base I guess is the current version of Ivy base. What I showed you guys before. It works really, really well but like I said, the major criticism that we’d gotten from branch managers was that it can be a little bit too much. Again, you need to think about your user, and in this case we’ve got first time entrepreneurs and in many cases with first time employees who really run a business with four and are now having to get everybody up to speed on a business system.

The more complex that system is, the more frustrating and overwhelming it starts to be and I think what we’ve found is, is that we’ve kind of crossed the line in some areas and what we’re looking at over the course of the next several months, before we head into the summer of 2012 is really simplifying the data or simplifying the tables so the branch managers can really focus on the things that are most important without being overwhelmed by too much information, too many things to do.

Andrew: Got it. Alright, anything else that we missed, before I ask you one last question?

Nick: I don’t think so.

Andrew: I think we covered it all. Here’s a question that I had for you, by the way, thanks for doing this session here with us, let me bring up your website so the audience can see it. Behind you, I’ve been looking over your shoulder, I see a bike, I see a surf board, how has life changed since you sold the business?

Nick: Life has changed a lot. I have a life. As any entrepreneur whose watching this knows, when your in the throes of building a business, that’s all you can think about, it’s all you can dream about, and it consumed your life and even with the best business systems, even with the most automation that you can have, if you are anything like me, you will still be spending night and day focused on the business, and that was very much the case for me. That has changed, obviously, since selling the business. I am still working very hard and having a great time working for Revolution Rep, managing their products and technology, but I also have some time to surf. I have gotten back into cycling, something I had enjoyed for a long time before but had not done much of for the last few years. As you can see with those Venetian swords back there, I have also had the time to travel a bit.

Building the right business systems, though, was very key to even enabling a sale to happen. You know, the key thing with any acquirer, or the key question that any acquirer will typically ask, is, “Can this business be taken, and put into our business as a strategic acquire, and still run?” and if we did not have the business systems that we had, the answer to that would have been a very vociferous, “No.” Because of what we built, it was pretty much plug and play.

Andrew Yes. I can see, too. A company buys your business–they do not want to worry that if you leave, the business falls apart. Here, you leave, the system is still in place, and you have a process for iterating it. Alright, let me say this to the audience:

We keep talking about specific tactic, tactic, tactic, but let’s not lose sight of the big picture. It’s not about Google Sites. It’s not about QuickBase. It’s not about any specific tool or any specific tactic. It’s about a big picture here that you want to organize your business, you want to systemize it, you want to delegate it, and then you want to iterate based on the feedback that you are getting from people.

Every time we hit “publish” on one of these courses, I get email back from people who often–let me tell you this Nick–people will sometimes pause at about fifteen minutes, and email me back and say, “I had to use this before I continued.” I want those emails. If at any point here, you stop and you say to yourself, “I am going to go try this,” or “I am going to go explore this,” come back and let me, let Nick, know how far you have gone, what you have been able to do with this. I am so proud of what people who have taken these courses have been able to achieve, and I want to keep hearing more and more of them. We do this for a reason. Nick does not need to do it. He could be surfing right now, and I appreciate, by the way, not only the time, Nick, that you put into doing the course, but all the hours that you spend to prepping this with us.

Nick: Of course.

Andrew: The reason that he did that–correct me if I am wrong, Nick–is to pass it on to you guys, so you can go and influence your business and then come back and hopefully do what Nick does, which is share with everyone else what you have learned.

Nick: Absolutely.

Andrew: Alright, thank you for doing it.

Nick: I will say one more thing, and it is going to be half something I feel now, half just a plug. To your point, Andrew, the ability to share what I have learned, from the pain of running without systems, to getting to the point where the business really was systematized to the point that it could be sold, was an awesome journey, and it was also a challenging journey at points, that could have been made less challenging had I had some insight from other people that had done it. I hopefully have communicated some of the things that I learned and can help other people to learn those things faster.

I also want to say–here’s the plug part–that if there is anyone out there watching this who is an undergraduate at a competitive university and wants to take their entrepreneurial skills to the next level, one of the great ways you can do it is by applying to be an Ivy Insiders Summer Branch Manager. The program continues to be run through Revolution Rep, and to my knowledge is still one of the only positions you can take that does not involve the risk of being an entrepreneur but still enables you to get out, learn how businesses are built, build your own, and use the best-in-class business systems like the ones we have been talking about today to really become an entrepreneur.

Andrew: I have to tell you, people do not think that I have had jobs–I have had a few jobs before I started my first company. One job that I had actually was working for a guy who just systemized his business, who understood his business, and who understood how to make sales. To me, working for him, Paul Sorbera, was more valuable than the four years I spent at NYU, more valuable than the four years I spent at high school and all the eight years before that. When you get to work for someone who really understands business and can communicate it in a way that you can pick up and use it, it is like being apprenticed in business and in the real world, and I am glad, actually, that you said that. I hope that people in my audience, if they are looking to get started, will get started with you, and I hope that they will give me feedback on that, too.

Thank you all for watching, guys. Nick, actually, where do they go if they want to sign up and work with you? I am going to zoom in on a page. Can you highlight the part of the site where they should go if they want to work with you?

Nick: Www.RevolutionRep.com/Ivy-programs. From the Revolution Rep homepage, they can just click on Ivy Insider and they will get there, too. The applications will be open in January and February in 2012. We are going to have our biggest summer yet, and a lot of exciting developments and changes to the program that will make it just that much more of a better training ground for entrepreneurs.

Andrew: Cool. Alright, thank you for doing this. Thank you all for watching. Send us your feedback. Don’t just be a passive observer of life. Be in the game. I am looking forward to seeing you there. Thank you all.

Master Class: Maximizing Retention
Taught by Noah Fleming of Membership Black Box

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Master Class: Maximizing Retention

Time to watch/listen: 87 minutes




About Noah Fleming

About Noah

Noah’s Blog

Master Class Toolbox

Course Cheat Sheet

Frank Kern

Gary Vaynerchuk

Avinash Kaushik

Third Tribe Marketing

Travel Hacking

Basecamp

Dan Kennedy

WishList Insider

ClickMeter.com

KISSmetrics

Transcript

Download the transcript here

Andrew: This is a course on membership site retention. It’s led by Noah Fleming who has helped over 500 online marketers optimize their attention and profits since 2005. He’s now a contributing author on membership retention strategies for WishList Insider.

I’ll help facilitate this session. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, where proven founders, like Noah Fleming here whose website you see on your screen, where they teach.

Noah, do you have an example what my audience, what our viewers, will be able to do at the end of this session?

Noah: Absolutely. So I’m interested in talking to people who are running membership sites or people that are thinking about running membership sites. What I want to show them is that you can keep your members long enough to do things like pay off your mortgage, pay cash for cars, live a really good life and run a really great business and I was able to do that. I was able to pay off my mortgage by running one single membership site.

Andrew: One single membership site.

Noah: That’s correct.

Andrew: I know you have a document there. Do you want to show that now? There it is, it’s right there on your screen. I’m zooming in and we’re going to give it a moment to load up there. While it’s loading up, what is that document? What’s this letter that’s coming up on all our screens?

Noah: So this is a document that I received a few years after buying my house that said my house has been paid in full and my mortgage has been paid off. Now here’s the interesting thing. Before I launched my membership site, I was looking for a job and my wife was a teacher. She didn’t have a contract yet, so for us to get a mortgage, it was almost impossible. We had to have co-signers. It was very hard for us to get a mortgage, but we got one. We were making our minimum payments and then this is just about three years later that it was completely paid for in full.

Andrew: I have to tell you. If I were just sitting in the audience this might feel like a gimmicky thing for getting attention, but I know you and we’ve connected because we have friends in common. Friends who I trust and because of that, and even though I’ve seen this before in our pre-interview notes, it’s just so touching to see this letter on the screen. It’s not like some guy who I don’t know. It’s a guy who’s a friend who’s done this. It means so much that you’re willing to share this with us. I want my own audience to see these kinds of results. Measurable, life-impacting results and I want that to come from this session.

What’s the first thing that they need to be aware of in order to do what you’ve done?

Noah: Well the first thing is, we hear this all the time, but you’ve really just got to take action and do it. So for me, I was working in this job, I wasn’t very happy. One day I’m driving along in my car to work and the guy on the radio says there’s now a billion people on the Internet and I’m driving and I think, “A billion people, like I don’t even need 200, 300 people to give me $20, $30 bucks a month and I never have to do this commute to work again.” And when I had that in my head, I was able to do that in about two to three weeks.

Andrew: Two to three weeks. How many people did you get to sign up?

Noah: Originally, I had 200. I later added another 100, we later added another 100. So I maxed out at about 500 members at one time.

Andrew: All right and it’s great to get those. Retaining them, as people will see, is something you’re especially good at. Because a lot of people will get users to sign up to their web apps or sign up to their membership sites and then poof, disappear. The way you get people to stick around and feel excited about sticking around is what I especially want to learn and I know what the audience here is looking to learn. And you say that there’s a few common struggles that people need to be aware of.

Noah: So here’s the thing, they say that most people who sign up for a membership site will stick for about three months. So for me the big thing when I got these people was there was no way I was letting them go. I became literally militant about keeping them in a good way. What I’m going to show you know is the common myths about retention. One of the things that happened to me is when I got these people and I had this idea that I’ve got to keep them. I started buying everything on membership sites.

What I found is that nobody is talking about how to retain members. They all taught me how to build them, how to make content, how to interview people, how to do guest posts and things like that. Nobody was teaching how to keep members and I thought, “Why is this?” Then I started to hear that quote about the average member retains three months and I thought you know what I’m going to change this. So what I found is all those people teach retention re-actively. When the bucket starts leaking. When you start losing members this is when they start saying, ‘Now you’ve got to implement these pain of disconnect strategies,’ and things like that. For me it was all about thinking about it pro-actively so from the very first day I was thinking about how do I keep these people for the long term?

Andrew: And so, I’m watching this and I feel the pain of it. I know, actually I had an entrepreneur on this site, on Mixergy, and we say that the reason that his revenues kept going up month after month after month is because he figured out how to keep people from dropping out. Every month the idea of a membership site is that every month you’re suppose to have a base level of revenue and a base number of customers and then you build on that but if you have that leaky bucket you’re starting off over and over and over again. I mean lose the big advantage of having (inaudible) …

Noah: And that’s one of these common myths right, is people think that they build the site once and then they just forget about it and they take all this great money coming in and they go off to the Bahamas and sit around and sip drinks all day, and for me that’s a big part of this was it’s not like that at all, I mean, these members were literally, they’re my blood, they were the people that from 9 to 5 I was severing them so whatever I was doing, this just wasn’t just set and forget type of marketing this was literally carrying for these people, being there for them, connecting with them, engaging with them. That’s a big part of this.

Andrew: OK. So were going to go over the myths, and you started talking about that, then we’ll talk about a philosophy that our audience needs to be aware of and then we’re going to go onto tactic, tactic, tactic starting with the character’s that you want to explain to people …

Noah: Right.

Andrew: Going onto community and then we’re going to talk about content and all of it with the idea of you got people to sign up, now you want them to keep staying signed up, it’s easier to obtain a person if it’s done right then it is to go out and find a new customer.

Noah: Oh absolutely.

Andrew: So the first myth you told us, can you repeat that?

Noah: Well so one of the myths is that if you keep giving this much stuff every month, if I’m giving you X amount of dollars each month there’s no way you’re going to leave. Well that’s a myth because we can give people way to much stuff and then they’re overwhelmed and then they’re gone or it’s not connecting with them, it’s not the type of information they want then they’re gone so that’s one of the myths.

The next myth is this idea of a set and forget membership site. Where you do the work once, you drip feed it out to them and away you go. We’re going to talk about that later and then another myth is that people leave because my contents not good enough. That’s another mistake because a lot of the times your content is more than good enough but it’s these other reasons they leave so we’re going to get into those.

So a couple of the big ideas I have today, one is something I’ve already touched on. I blog about this idea of a spec which is basically kind of this idea of 200 or 300 people that come in and are going to get paid for your content. I believe that anyone can do this. If you’ve got any kind of skill, any kind of talent you can do this and when I say this I’m not really talking about the passion bug that’s going around right now, I mean, I love the whole passion thing but there’s a fine line between when talking about worms is going to make you a lot of money and I have blogged about worms by the way as a passion.

Andrew: So you’re saying just being passionate about worms doesn’t mean that you’re going to find a big paying audience of people?

Noah: That’s correct.

Andrew: Who are going to pay you once and keep paying you month after month, OK.

Noah: That’s correct and the other idea that I want to talk about today is these three C’s of retention which are things that I’ve developed. I believe that there’s three important things in a membership site so one is everyone believes that they’re here for the content and then you often hear people say, and my friend Stew (inaudible) says it’s a lot, they come for the content but they stay for the community.

I actually believe there are three reasons why. I believe they come for the content but they stay for the character, they come for the content but they stay for the community and they come for the content and they stay for the content and sometimes they come for the character but they end up staying for the community so I want to talk about what all those different things are because they’re not things that you’re going to find in every membership site.

Not every membership site is going to have a community, not every membership site is going to need some kind of exuberant character behind it but these are all important things so we’re going to talk about those.

Andrew: OK. All right and you’re going to teach us how to develop a character, how to build our community, how to think about and create content in a different way than most people do?

Noah: Absolutely.

Andrew: Can you give us a quick teaser of that page that you showed earlier, the one in the forms where people were sticking around and not just sticking around but were proud of, you’re going to show this later in more depth but if you could just show us one quick snap shot of that?

Noah: Yes …

Andrew: I think it will drive home the message.

Noah: So this …

Andrew: And it’s taking a while to load up on my screen that’s why I was talking a little bit longer.

Noah: Oh, OK. No problem.

Andrew: Go ahead.

Noah: So this was a sales page on the Warrior form and this was when I tried to get a few more people to come into my membership site and what happened there was I didn’t really ask any of my members to go in and say anything but all the sudden all my members just started going on their own and leaving these comments saying I’ve been a member for 2000 hours or I’ve been a member of this site for two years and it’s the best membership site I’ve ever belonged to and I think about 50 of them came in and just left comments like this and it was really just awesome. So that’s kind of what I want people to be able to do. And that’s part of character building, you want your members to go and tell your story and tell about you as the character, you want them to be telling people that “look Andrew Warner is the man, you’ve got to go join this site.”

Andrew: All right. So what’s the first thing that persons listening to us and watching us right now need to do to develop and project their character?

Noah: So the first thing I want to say before I go into these three C’s of retention is that again, it’s not a linear process. So it’s not really step 1, step 2, step 3. What you’re going to do is you’re going to kind of think about them and think about these things as you need to. So if you do have leaky bucket right now, this is the time to start thinking about those things.

So I’m going to show you a few extreme examples of characters, and then I’m going to show you a few kind of more normal version of characters and I’m going to show you why they’re important. So the idea of the character is giving people somebody to associate with. We want to connect with somebody, we want to connect with a leader. So one of the most extreme examples of that is Frank Kern, who lots of people know in the internet marketing world. We know Frank Kern as this guy, we know of this slacker/surfer. Is it coming up on the screen?

Andrew: Let’s see, it’s taking a little while for it to come up on our screen. While it’s coming up, Frank Kern does what?

Noah: Well, he’s an Internet marketing money, online type of guy. So he’s the biggest guy in this industry. He’s the one everybody is talking about. But the thing about Frank, is Frank didn’t start the Frank Kern we know now. The Frank Kern we know now is one of those extreme versions of a character. And I say that in a nice way, but if we look at here, the real Frank Kern. This is Frank Kern, when this comes up.

Andrew: OK. And you’re right, the guy with the long hair is the one that everyone talks about, he does outrageous things on video, he does things to get you to remember him. Oh my goodness, now it popped up on the screen. Which one of these guys is Frank Kern?

Noah: Right here on the right. So this is 2004, OK? So I say Frank is an extreme version of this because I don’t know Frank. He may be the most amazing, transparent, honest guy that we could ever meet. But if you ever check out some of the stuff he’s teaching, this is exactly what he teaches. He has a course called Mass Control and the second module of that course is all about building your character. And it’s about building this large than life character, that is going to have all these great legends and parables, and things that people tell and retell about them. So this is an extreme example of the character.

Andrew: I see. Now, if I have this extreme character, why would people stick around more with my site, because I have a big character? I know you’re going to talk to us about having to develop our character, but why do we need one in the first place? Isn’t Frank Kern just kind of being Frank Kern and goody for him but people are signing up for the content that he created, because he’s going to teach them how to really market, not because he’s got this long hair and creates outrageous videos?

Noah: So, if I’m going to be brutally honest with you, the reason that we don’t connect with this Frank Kern is because he’s boring. OK? I say that again, in the nice, kind way because I don’t know him at all. But this Frank Kern is boring, we don’t really associate ourselves with this Frank Kern. But when we see this other Frank Kern, we can associate with that, there’s a story there. There’s somebody we want to connect with, he’s like our friend. He’s the guy that we want to be apart of. So another example of this, a less extreme example is Gary Vaynerchuk.

Andrew: There it goes, it’s coming up on the screen. And I think the guys that gave me Frank Kern, give me links to his sites, tell me “Andrew, you need to create stuff with this kind of attitude”. Or about themselves they say “we need to be more fiery with our products. We need to be more passionate about what we’re selling here. And they send me his videos as an example of that kind of powering energy that they want their software or membership sites to have, so I see the benefit of that.

Noah: Well, here’s the thing. Now everybody is going to be that guy. I mean, I’m going to tell you about my character to my members. My character was kind of like who I am now, I mean, I had a story. It was kind of an us against them type of story, you know, I wasn’t one of these gurus of the marketing industry. I was just a normal guy, I was going to create an environment that was safe and friendly. And like I’m saying with the Gary V. story, we all know Gary V. now, as this guy yells at the camera and the guy that was over the top energy and fires up everybody. It’s a little bit intimidating with all the energy and passion he has.

But again, Gary started, not as the Gary we know now. Gary started in episode one and two, kind of a timid guy, kind of a laid back, easy going guy. If we play this…

Andrew: It’s still coming up on my screen. Oh, there it is. Look at him, with his college shirt, this is second episode. And his sweater over the college shirt, looking at the camera. I see, yeah. We’ve got to link this stuff up. Yeah, this is not the guy I know today, but it is. You don’t see the essence of Gary in that. Right away, before you hit play, I can say, “this is a nice guy.” Not the essence of Gary that now I hit with.

Noah: That’s why I want to stress that it’s all about being honest and transparent about who you are. We’re not creating fictitious characters here. I wanted to show the example of Frank because there’s a larger-than-life aspect of the way you can do this. But I’m talking about it from a more realistic level. So Andrew Warner, for example. If we take a look at the Andrew Warner story…

Andrew: Is there an Andrew Warner character? I’m kind of coming at this session feeling like, I need to learn this. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to put this course on, because I don’t feel that there is enough of a character.

Noah: There is a character. Absolutely, there is.

Andrew: Can it just happen? Do we need to trust that the character will come through, because I’m not good at trust, or can we have a framework for bringing that character out?

Noah: No. There’s definitely a framework. I’m going to show you that.

Andrew: And there’s the about page on Mixergy.

Noah: Yeah. So there is an Andrew Warner story but I learned a lot more about the Andrew Warner character when I went through here and I watched a few of your videos. One of them is when you admitted failure. Love that video. But to me, that’s a part of the Andrew Warner character. Then there’s this post where you revealed your financial information from the first business you created. That’s a part of your character.

So these are all the things that bring this credibility to you. They bring a real life character to your story and makes me want to connect to Andrew Warner. You’re not some guy that created this premium membership site. You’ve got a story there. And that’s what we want when we talk about character. We want a story. We’re going to hop over here to this discovering your character worksheet.

Andrew: We can give this to the people who take this session, right?

Noah: Absolutely.

Andrew: So that they can go through this on their own, OK. It’s coming up on the screen. Discovering your character. And you use the word discovering intentionally, don’t you?

Noah: I do.

Andrew: Why discovering versus creating?

Noah: Yeah. Like I said, I don’t want to be creating characters. I want us to be who we really are. But we’ve got to have a story, because we need to give our customers something to connect to.

Andrew: I see the framework here. I see the worksheet.

Noah: The first step is to develop your back story. It’s the reason you’re doing what you’re doing. The second step is to talk about what you learned along the way. What are the stories, the parables, or the lessons that helped you create that story. The third step is what did you overcome? For you, Andrew, you overcame failure. That was a big one. And you admitted to that failure. You learned different lessons along the way, and then you’ve got to take a stance. So what do you stand for? What are the things you believe in? You’ve got to have a stand that you take. For me, it was this us against them stance. I’m standing for these ethical, honest, internet marketers that want an environment where we can learn to do this stuff without this idea of being bullied or, any question being too beginner-ish, so to speak.

Andrew: I know you want to walk us through this. But there was a change in me when you started talking about the failure story that I revealed online or even the revenue that I earned. Because it was so personal to me, both those moments, and so painful for me to admit it publicly that it wasn’t something that I did. I went into easily. That I had to fight myself to do and I actually, frankly, part of it was I was too embarrassed to admit it publicly and the other part was who cares?

I know also my audience is going to think, “My customers care about my product, not about who I was in the past.” They don’t care about the struggles that I came through. You’re saying silence that voice. We do care about it. We want to know what went into creating this software. The failed first version that didn’t go over too well or the job that you hated that made you want to do it. People care about that.

We want to find somebody that’s in our shoes or somebody that we can trust. We want a relationship with someone. So with your story, those are definitely all relevant to your character. I think those things are probably some of the most important things that you’ve done in terms of your character and your story. I can’t stress that enough, but again we want these stories to be honest and we want them to be real.

So develop your back story, meaning what are the reasons for doing what you’re doing. Sit down and write those stories that reveal why you’re doing it. You don’t want us to just write sentences just saying I am creating my software because other software is too complicated or I’m creating my membership site for skaters because everyone’s treating skaters like garbage. You want to tell a specific story. I’m creating a membership site for skaters because I once went out skating and cop pulled me over, not because I was hurting anyone else, not because I was really invading anyone’s privacy, but because I was having a really good time enjoying a sport he couldn’t relate to and at that moment I said to myself, “We need a community where we can band together.” Tell that story and people will get the message.

Noah: You want real, true stories. So the story of me driving to work and hearing the guy on the radio, that’s a real story. There’s a story about me riding an elevator with Gary Vaynerchuk standing next to me and he told me. There’s a back story to this to, but he said to me three words, “Legacy trumps currency.” And we’ve all heard Gary say that before, but I rode an elevator with Gary and that’s what he said to me. And I took that home and I did a whole bunch of things with that. That changed my look on a lot of things. So that’s a story. I’ve got another story later. Different stories that brought you to where you are today.

Andrew: You told that story really well. How do you get to a place where you can tell your story clearly and in a way that moves people and not in one of these rambly ways that a lot of people used to tell stories where they lose their audience? We want to fire them up, not make them feel bored because they’re listening to a story. How did you get to that place?

Noah: Well I may be rambling a little bit today, but the trick is to tell the story over and over and over and over again. What you’ll find is that some of these guys talk about the core of your story and that’s your back story. It’s the story that you’re telling over and over and over again. Here’s an example. Gary Vaynerchuk, we all know his back story, his parents’ wine shop. He came from Belarus. He sent the guy out to Best Buy to buy a video camera. The guy comes back, he starts filming, the rest is history. That’s the back story that he tells us every single time that we see Gary on stage somewhere.

Andrew: I see and that sets us up for an understanding. When he says I just sent a guy out to get a video camera, what he’s saying is it’s not about the production value, it’s about me finding an outlet for my passion and then he says the same thing to everyone else.

Noah: Right.

Andrew: So he tells his back story to let you know what he stands for and then he also gives the message that he wants the rest of the world to stand behind. All right.

Noah: So that’s how you don’t ramble. You just tell that story over and over and over again. And then Gary tells us different stories, different lessons that he learned. Taking out ads in the New York Times. Things like this, things like that. I mean you’re a fan of Gary. We’re both smiling because we’ve heard these stories over and over again and I’m sure there’s people out there that are going to feel the same way. So when you start to look at these bigger, larger than life characters. You’re going to see that they have these same ideas. They’re always perpetuating the same stories to us.

Andrew: OK. Take this worksheet if you’re in the audience and really fill it out. Print it out, write on it, come up with as many things as you stand for. I’ve got to tell you, I did that recently. The last one I wouldn’t have advocated here, number four, because I wouldn’t have felt that it’s a little too wishy-washy. I wouldn’t have advocated it, except that I sat down at a coffee shop with my wife. We both wrote down what we stood for and some of the things I stood for, I felt like, “Who cares?”

I’ll give you one. I stand for education. I believe that learning really impacts your life and I was too embarrassed to stand for that because I felt it was too small. But I wrote it down and then I waited a week to see how it felt to come back the next week to look at it. I said, “You know what I didn’t think it was significant, but boy is it significant.” We all talk about it in this tech-space about how raising money changes businesses and we measure how much funding each company got but I don’t stand for that, I think that we need to care about how much we’ve learned, that how much we’ve learned and those ideas that we get are going to have much more impact than how much funding.

Noah: Right.

Andrew: You show me a guy who’s funding but doesn’t have the understanding of what it takes to do with that funding and he’s going to be a failure. Show me a guy whose got no funding but has an understanding of how to build a business, that guys going to be a success every single time and at first I wrote it down and I was feeling a little wimpy about it but you can see my enthusiasm for that amount and I let it come out in interviews and I’ve got to tell you it translated into sales because as I talked about this little thing people said, and they emailed me to tell me this, they believe that too. That this is something that they stood for, this is something that they’re passionate about and they told me about the books that they, that they read and the courses that they took over their lives that impacted them and I thought, “Boy, I thought I didn’t have this kind of story, I didn’t have this message,” and here it was and I was undervaluing it and the only thing that brought it out was sitting at that coffee shop with my wife and really feeling this out.

Noah: And that’s how this thing, that’s how this translates into increased retention is when you’ve taken that stand and you’ve got this story people want to associate that and we want to stay associated with that so if I’m a budding entrepreneur and I’m looking at creating a startup this is the place for me to be. Not only because you’re offering great content but there’s a story here and there’s a character and I’m going to stay because this is somebody that supports the same ideas that I’ve got.

Andrew: All right, so we print this out, we write on it, we look it over, we get better and better at telling our story, what’s next?

Noah: Well I just had another example here of the character that I just wanted to show you, so if we look at the Third Tribe which is a membership site, this is a site that’s …

Andrew: Yes tell us about it while it comes up and I’ll let you know when it’s up on my screen and on the audience’s screen too.

Noah: Well I’m not a member but what I can tell you is that there’s a bunch of characters behind this website that we’re all familiar with and that’s a reason why people want to join and be a part of this. We don’t necessarily want to join because it’s … has this come up on your screen now?

Andrew: Yes.

Noah: We necessarily don’t want to join because it’s got internet marketing strategies that work without being obnoxious appear in the headline but we want to join because Brian Clark and Chris Brogan and Jonathan Fields and Hugh McCloud and Laura Roder are all the people that we’re going to find in this site. These are the characters that have these stories that we want to connect with and we’re going to stay to be a part of that crowd.

Andrew: I see that and that is why I signed up. I knew that there were tons of communities out there that were free but I wanted to see what would these guys do, what is it that these guys would say in a chat board to their members, what kind of … and they create courses on a weekly bases too… what kind of courses should they take? What kind of courses would they create and what would they say in them and it’s true I wanted to connect with those people and that’s why I’m a member and still have been for about half a year now.

Noah: Cool. Awesome, so the next thing we’re going to move onto is then the idea of community which is a big one. As I said before, Stew is always saying, they come for the content but they stay for the community, and that’s a huge component of this so when we talk about community we’re talking about all the things that connect our people together. We want to let them engage with each other, we want to bring them together in a way that they can connect so if you’ve ever read Seth Godin’s Tribes, a tribe is very much a community.

It’s a group of people that have a shared interest, we want to connect together, we want to be able to share our knowledge together and so this is an important part of intentions, having these different community aspects in your site.

Andrew: OK.

Noah: So if we just go over here, a really cool example is Chris Guillebeau’s Travel Hacking Cartel, it’s a (inaudible) …

Andrew: What a great name by the way.

Noah: Yes.

Andrew: Well while you’re bringing that up I’ve got to tell you he’s such a good, such a good namer. He doesn’t say it’s a Traveling Community; he says it’s a Traveling Cartel.

Noah: That’s right and for us we want to be part of the cartel. So he’s got a really cool page here that he does for his community and what he does here is we’ve got these little pictures of all our members. You can click on any members here and find out about them so we can connect with Keith here, hey Keith whoever you are out there, and if we go back … two of the things that he does here and these are tactics … he’s got this Hacker of the Month here and this featured hacker and the way I say these are tactics is these are spotlighting members, putting them up in the lights. We all want to see our name up on the big screen and that’s essentially what he’s doing here but there are lots of different examples of where this is being done.

So WishList Insider, my friends, every week they do an insider video, and every week they welcome all the new members on video. So they say, “Welcome, Andrew.” “Welcome, Dave.” “Welcome, Noah.” That’s important, I mean, recognizing us, and giving us recognition that we’ve joined and we’re here, that’s an important step with retention.

Andrew: Now, is Chris doing any more than just highlighting his members here, are you suggesting that just highlighting members and letting them click and read about each other is enough?

Noah: No, I’m not.

Andrew: Or do we have to have a chat board afterwards?

Noah: No, I’m not. In fact, I think Chris could do a better job here. I think Chris is probably running an amazing site here. I heard once that there are thousands of members in this website, I’m not sure. But, what he’s not doing here, is he’s not giving them any way to connect inside. They probably want to be able to connect together inside. He’s giving them the ability to connect outside, to go to their Twitter pages, and go to their Facebook profiles, but he’s not giving them the ability to connect in here, and talk and share different strategies. I think that’s missing here, I think if he was to implement that, that could probably have a pretty positive affect on his retention.

Andrew: I see, OK. I see what he’s doing. You’re now making me think I’d better have some kind of way for people in my membership site to communicate with each other, but we’ve got to take a look at that [??].

Noah: Well, we’re going to talk about your site, too.

Andrew: Oh, it’s always painful when we talk about my site, but it’s useful. All right, what’s next?

Noah: So let’s talk about some different tactics for the community. So one is discussion forums, everybody’s familiar with discussion forums, this is important, again, our members want to connect. Now, when you’re first starting out, they always say it’s not really good to have a forum that’s empty and there’s nobody saying anything. Over time, this is something you can build. I think a site like this, I think these guys would eat it up.

One of the things we did in my site was this idea of group projects, so what we did is we broke members down into groups of five, six, seven people and we set them up over at base camp and what they did is we set them off on little projects, so they were taking action together, making things happen and that was important. I mean, that made people feel, even a deeper part of the community, now I’m getting to know these . . .

Andrew: What kind of group projects?

Noah: Various projects. So, some would be creating an information products, so it would be from writing the product to writing the sales copy, creating the website, things like that.

Andrew: OK, so, are you guys going to sell it, or are you just learning by doing it together?

Noah: No, they would actually then take it and sell it.

Andrew: All right.

Noah: Now here’s the thing, though. When you start running group projects, like this, you’re going to run into the same problem you have anywhere else, is that there’s going to be people that just bug off and don’t do anything. We ran into that a little bit too. You would have three members that were going hard on something and two members that just weren’t showing up or helping out. You know what, then that’s a moment where they have to then, as a group, decide are we going to move on without those two, or what are we going to do? We ran into a few issues with that, but I think it was important that it gave people the opportunity to actually do something.

Andrew: I see. OK, so are you saying that you used Base Camp in order to manage your group project?

Noah: We used Base Camp as a side program, so what we did is we bought, I think, I forget what the account was, uh, $60 a month or something and that allowed me to set up unlimited projects. So if there were 5 people inside my membership site that wanted to work together, then I would create them user profiles on base camp and give them their own little space to go and do this project. It was just kind of another added benefit to the membership, that they could do this. If there were two of them that wanted to do something, I would set them up and let them go. Then, I could be a part of that; I could join in and offer advice or tips. It was kinda cool.

Andrew: OK, cool. So discussion board, group projects. What else can people do?

Noah: So, another big one is rewarding participation. So, points, gold stars, different titles. You’ll see this in forums, people want to say, senior member. I have a guy in my membership site that was just crazy about his post count being right, how many stars were beside his name, and one time we had a forum issue where we lost some of that. He was certain that if anything had to come back, it was his post count and his senior member title. It shows you that that’s one of those things, people want to be rewarded for taking part.

Andrew: OK. Is there another way to keep track of people’s participation beyond using chat boards? How else can site owners keep track of reward participation?

Noah: David did allude to me that you did have an option there, one for people to leave comments, but it wasn’t really utilized that much. But, there might be an opportunity there to reward people for taking part. I don’t know what that reward’s going to be, but “leave a comment here and we’re going to enter you in this contest” or “leave a comment and you’re going to enter these points.”

The WishList Insider guys, again, what they do is they get points for everything across the board. They get points for a forum post. Points for updating your profile. Points for this. Points for that. Then you can use the points. So, they let you use the points for maybe a free month’s membership or tickets to an actual seminar. Different things like that, just rewarding any type of participation, and what you’ll find is people going crazy trying to load up on their points.

Andrew: I remember the founder of Four Square told me that he was handing out those badges, the mayor badge and the others, and he said, “Andrew, these are fake badges. No one’s a member of anything, but they’re so passionate about this that people are now cheating. They’re cheating to be the member. The whole thing only matters because we made it up, and now it matters so much to them that they’re cheating and trying to find ways around it so that they can become mayors.” I see the value of it.

We did do one experiment that worked for us. In the course on how to do interviews I asked my members to answer each others questions and I said, “If you answer 5 or 10 questions I will give you a one on one call where I’ll help you with your issues, or if you ask a question that more than a certain number of people will like I will do a special one on one phone call with you. I’ll deal with your specific issues and help you go beyond what’s in the course.” It really did help. It got participation to up. Even people who lost were really happy to be a part of it, and that message board was really active and still is.

Noah: Yeah. The Four Square’s a great example. How often do we find ourselves checking in because we want this badge or that badge? But, what is it? It’s a virtual badge, but it’s the same thing. Inside your membership site, if you can find ways to reward your members, actually reward them. Give them real rewards for taking part. Your engagement’s going to go up. Your retention’s going to go up. They’re going to stick around. They’re going to want to participate. Nobody wants to participate in a spot where there’s nobody participating.

Andrew: All right. Is there another one?

Noah: Yeah. The next thing I want to look up is number ascension models. So, these are basically ladders of ascension that you move up. The biggest person in the industry for that who started that and who probably taught that is Dan Kennedy, and I’m going to bring up his site here. Are you familiar with Dan Kennedy?

Andrew: No. It sounds familiar but I can’t say who he is. Who is Dan Kennedy?

Noah: Dan Kennedy’s probably the godfather of info product marketing, and he publishes all kinds of books. His big thing is the Glazer-Kennedy membership, and what they do, basically, is they have seven different levels of membership. He’s got gold, gold luxury, diamond, diamond luxury, platinum info mastermind, titanium info mastermind… So, what this is is a ladder. It’s an ascension ladder. So, everybody comes in at gold and then what happens is they start to try and move you toward luxury gold, or they might want you to skip and move to diamond luxury.

What happens over time is you start wanting to climb the ladder yourself. So, you can start at gold. But you know what? All of the sudden I can get a little bit more for gold luxury. You get in there and then all of the sudden they’re going to give me a little bit more if I’m a diamond member. So, these ladders of ascension are important to give people somewhere to go because if there’s only one spot for them there’s nowhere for them to go. They’ll stay put or it’s out the door.

Andrew: What do you give them at the next level?

Noah: If you look at what they do here at the Glazer-Kennedy membership, basically gold luxury gets everything that gold gets plus just a little bit more, so you might get one more news letter. Then diamond luxury gets you a whole whack more, so you’re getting tele-coaching calls, different hot sheets and faxes and things like that. It just keeps going up and up and up. You can do this on a small level. You could have bronze, silver, and gold member in your membership and just give them somewhere to go where they start.

Andrew: Oh, that’s a great example. I hadn’t thought to do that. For some reason I kept thinking you actually need to give something else. I didn’t think that you could create a whole new member of super users. That’s not that hard to do. We use wish lists here at Mixergy. It’s just a word press plug-in, that easy to use, and it’s really easy to add another level. We’ve got to consider ways of adding another level than…

Noah: Yeah. Wish lists are built specifically to do this kind of stuff. It’s built that you can have hundreds of levels if you want. I would probably start with 2 or 3. Maybe with Mixergy, for example, you’ve got your premium membership, but then there’s maybe a gold membership. And that now gets you access to a private call with Andrew every month where he’s going to recap all the different master classes that we did and go through them. Some kind of benefit, some kind of added value that moves them up to the new level. So from here…

Andrew: I love, by the way [??]…

Noah: So from here I probably want to move into start talking about content, if that’s OK.

Andrew: Absolutely, let’s do it.

Noah: OK. So, what I’ve actually brought up here is this sheet of Mixergy master class production sheet. So, I don’t know if…

Andrew: You’re showing people this sheet that you and I… Yeah, let’s show it. This is the sheet that you and David, our course producer, used to organize all the ideas for the sessions. We don’t just wing it. We work at it, a lot ahead of time. And before you show it, Noah, thank you for putting in all this time and putting this course together with us. So yeah, go ahead, take it from there.

Noah: So here’s what I want to talk about this when I just start talking about value. We’ve got this idea that value is more and more and more. It’s how much stuff we can give them. When really value is the quality of the content you can give them. It’s the way that your content makes people feel. So I wanted to show this because I don’t think, and I’m not sure, but I’m not sure people realize what goes into a Mixergy master call or master class. I did 4 prep meetings with David who is, I’m not sure what’s David… producer? Is that right?

Andrew: Yup. He’s the course producer.

Noah: Yeah. So four calls with David when we went through this, and we meticulously broke it down. Everything we were going to talk about, every tactic, what wasn’t going to work, what is going to work. It’s incredible, the amount of dedication, passion that is gone into to creating just this one little master class. That’s a perfect example of quality over quantity. One of the things that David mentioned to me was, you were thinking, “maybe we should have two master classes a week.” I don’t think you need to go that road. I think what you’re doing here is an amazing amount of quality for what we’re paying a month. So that’s how I want to lead into content. It’s not really the amount of stuff, but it’s how good of stuff you can deliver. It’s value. It’s quality, for sure.

Andrew: It’s hard for me to think of that. It’s so hard for me to think about that quantity is now the key. Because I keep thinking more blog posts will get more people to come to this site. More content will get people more excited. More content behind the membership wall will get more people to stay. But that’s not it, is it? I don’t want to be suffocated by excess quantity. I want quality and I want it to be sharp and I want it to be useful but I don’t want more and more of it.

Noah: Right. It’s quality and it’s the feeling that your content can create inside me. So if I’ve got one master class that leaves me feeling, “Wow. That was amazing. I’ve got my money’s worth here. That was awesome.” That’s the kind of content you want to be creating. It’s not just how much you can pile on, how much more you can give them. It very well may be that you can give one master class a month. It would be ten times the value of what’s being charged. So I want to talk about some content tactics here.

One of the big things is the idea of the first engagement. What that is, is the thing that happens the very first moment after somebody joins your site. So this is a content thing, because I like to do what’s called a stick video. So back in the day of info products and different products that are being shipped in boxes, they always have what was called the stick letter. This is what the old copywriters used to create input in the box of all your CD’s and binders. The idea of the stick letter was that it thanked you, it congratulated you, it restated the benefits you were going to to get from the product. They might give you an unadvertised bonus, and then it might give you some kind of action to take.

So from the buyer’s perspective, it was this really great letter that we’re getting thanking us, but really what it was doing, it was there to essentially make the purchase stick. It was there to ease the refund rate. It was there to ease that post-purchase buyer’s anxiety or buyer’s remorse that we all have. And so what I used to do, I like to see that done in membership site formats. So what I’ve got here is this is an old stick letter by Gary Halbert. So this was an actual stick letter that was printed and shipped off in, I believe it was a newsletter, and as you can see here he goes, “I’ve attached a nice crisp $1 bill to the top of this letter.” He goes on, “I’m giving you this money because I want you to see the unique thrill of receiving money in the mail from a completely unexpected source.”

So basically what he’s telling you is the system you’ve just bought is going to work and in fact he’s so positive of it, he’s going to give you your first dollar. So then we see this being done now in new info products and again going back to Frank Kern. He has a stick letter that he shipped in his mass control product and that looked something like this. Can you see that there?

Andrew: It’s still loading up on the screen.

Noah: OK.

Andrew: Oh so this is something he sends in the mail, Frank Kern, which you’re about to show us.

Noah: Right so when they bought his mass control 2.0 box you open it up and this was the very first thing on top of the box. It’s this hand-written scribbled letter. There are a few things happening here. First he’s reinforcing the character. So he’s reinforcing the character of this slack guy who just before he sent this he was able to scribble out this note for you, but there’s a lot of thought that’s gone into this.

Andrew: Yeah.

Noah: So if we scroll down a little bit here. He tells us, he says, ‘This is a stick letter, but it’s not really a stick letter but it is a stick letter.’ And then he tells you why the system is going to work, he thanks you, he restates all the benefits that he sold you on in the first place and then he gives you some first actions to take. So now I’m going to show you how this applies to membership sites. So one of my favorite examples is WishList Insider. Again, I really like what these guys do and I think they do it well. When you first log into WishList Insider, for your very first time you’ve just paid, you’ve logged in, you get this video that comes up from Stu here.

Andrew: Stu, the co-founder of WishList.

Noah: And I’m just going to play a few seconds of this.

Andrew: Let’s give it a moment to load up. On my screen I still see the Frank Kern letter.

Noah: Oh sorry.

Andrew: It’s OK. I think what happened is we’ve got so many tabs open that they’re probably chewing up some resources and that’s what’s keeping the video from loading as quickly as it usually does. But I think it’s OK. We’ve got it now on our screen.

Noah: So we’re just going to play a few seconds of this.

Andrew: So it looks like it may not be coming up on the screen properly. Can you narrate what he’s saying or repeat to us what he’s saying? Because we’re not able to hear it.

Noah: Sure. Are you hearing me OK now?

Andrew: I hear you, but I don’t hear him. So what does he say in his video segments?

Noah: OK. So basically he welcomes you, he thanks you for joining, he reinforces that you’ve made a wise decision in joining a community of like-minded people and he gives you a little bit of a tour of the site, which I’m going to talk about a little bit later. Then he gets you to take a first action, which again we’re going to talk about in a few minutes. So he’s kind of doing the same thing here that’s happening in those letters.

He’s restating the benefits and he’s thanking you and he’s showing you, “Look here’s what you just bought, you’ve made a wise decision, you’ve joined a great place with people that are going to support you and be there for you.” It’s essentially the same thing that Halbert and Kern are doing in those actual letters. I think this is crucial because one of the things that happens is our members come into our sites and they’re overwhelmed or they can’t find what they’re looking for, they’re not sure if there is that feeling of buyer’s remorse and you know what a lot of the time we lose those members right away. They might not cancel immediately but they may cancel in the first month.

Andrew: I can see the power of that and it’s making me think that we need to do that too. When I interviewed you, at the time, you had 37 Signal’s product on there. When I interviewed Jason Fried he said that’s what he’s working on now, the on-boarding process as he calls it for his software just needs more and more work. So, the first thing that you see when you sign up is something that welcomes you and lets you know what you’re suppose to do. I guess that he finds that, the more people that goes through that process the more they stick with it and the better he gets at it, the more people stick with it.

Noah: That’s exactly what it is, a stick letter. It’s the same thing that these guys were doing 20 years ago. It’s just being done in a different way this time. It doesn’t have to be done in video, you could easily do this with text if you’re not comfortable with video or you could easily have an audio recording or something. I just think that, video is so effective and powerful, right now, that it is probably the way to go. One of the next things I want to show you is something like the idea, the stick. One of the things that we are going to find is that we are going to loose a lot of our members in the first month. It’s just the way people are. They’ve paid, tried it out and now they’re not sure. I like to make the stick one more time before that renewal happens, which can be done by email. I’m going to show you that here. That should come up.

Andrew: I see it’s loading up. While the screen is loading, I want to ask you something. What do you use to keep track of how long people stay a subscriber? How long does people usually stay on as members?

Noah: I’ve got some things I am going to show you about that. Do you want me to skip over to those now?

Andrew: Let’s do it. It looks like the screen just loaded and we don’t need to kill time any more time while it loads. There it is, “Make It Stick Again.” I’m going to zoom in on that so people can really see it.

Noah: This is like an email that I would send out probably right before the first renewal takes place. Maybe, like, on the 26th day of being a member. And I wrote this as if I was Andrew Warner writing for Mixergy. I wrote, “By now you’ve probably had a chance to experience everything that makes Mixergy the number one resource to learn from proven founders and entrepreneurs. I’m extremely proud of the site and I’ve worked with you, which is why I want to take this opportunity to reach out and make sure we’re exceeding your expectations.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that, any one interview on here can easily be worth ten times the annual membership fee and I hope you’ve seen enough to agree with me on that. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this month’s interviews and any suggestions for future topics you might like to hear.” This is maybe little bit over the top but essentially we’re taking those same steps and we’re repeating them. This is to get those people past that first month.

Andrew: I see. So, just before the month is over, just before the next billing cycle, send them this note and remind them of the benefits they’ve got and for their feedback on what they’ve experienced so far. I don’t think that’s over the top. I like the way you’ve written this.

Noah: I certainly wouldn’t be afraid to make a valid suggestions and say that your one month or first class may be easily worth ten times the annual fee. I think that anyone could say that about their content because we are delivering quality content and it’s probably true. Maybe something like this or something personal to make them stick and get over that hump.

Andrew: I can see that.

Noah: The next thing I would like to talk about is the idea of the first action. We’ve already gotten the first engagement, which is the first thing that happens when they visit the site. Now we’ve got the first action. We want them to do something right away. If they come in and they are confused, uncertain, and can’t find what they’re looking for, we want to give them something to do right away. There is a few ways we accomplish this. Maybe something big or something small. If I flip back here to WishList Insider for a small example, Stu tells you that he would like you update your profile picture, tell us a little about yourself, and link to your website. That’s getting people to do something small, however you want them to take some sort of action once they are inside. Did that come up for you Andrew?

Andrew: It just loaded. In the video, what does he say they should be doing?

Noah: He basically has you update your profile, tells you how to add a picture. That’s reinforcing this idea of commitment of consistency. When I’ve taken a time to add a picture of myself and tell people who I am, add a bio, a picture, I’ve now committed to this. So, the last thing I want to do is drop out. You can take that a little bit further by maybe having them go over to the forum and do an introduction post or tell us about themselves. I’m going to switch again here back to the Frank Kern letter…

Andrew: This is the actual letter. So he writes his letter with a magic marker on a loose leaf paper and then he copies and mails that with the box, I see.

Noah: Yeah. And that’s all reinforcing his character. That’s exactly what that’s doing. He’s maintaining that congruency of his character that Frank wouldn’t get something professionally done. He would hand write this, throw it in a box, and send it off.

Andrew: I love that. I love it.

Noah: So, what he has you do is he’s got a first step here where he says, “watch this before you do anything else.” He says, “under this letter, you’re going to find a core influence DVD.” And he wants you to watch this first. What that whole DVD is about is again reinforcing his character, telling you a little bit about this methodology.

Andrew: Right.

Noah: Then, sorry go ahead?

Andrew: Oh, I was just saying, “right.”

Noah: Then he gives you another first step and he tells you both this 40 cash machine. He says that this was designed to totally recoup your investment in this course in just four days. So he’s giving you something to literally take and do with. What you’ll find is a lot of people will buy this stuff and never do anything. If we buy this stuff and we’re actually told to go out and do something and we do it, you know what, that’s almost made the sale stick right there because we did it. And we’re not used to doing stuff. It’s hard to do stuff, it’s hard to take action, but we’ve done it now. So that’s going to help reinforce his stick rates.

Andrew: I see.

Noah: And again, simple example of that of taking that first step, Chris Guillebeau, welcome emails that’s going to come up there.

Andrew: Let’s give that a moment to come up on the screen, too. I didn’t know Chris Guillebeau was so advanced with his community. I mean every time I talked to him, he’s just doing what feels fun. I didn’t realize how much planning went into making it come across as just this casual, fun atmosphere.

Noah: Yeah, like I said, I read that he’s got some crazy amount of subscribers on that site.

Andrew: I’m so curious now about how many subscribers he has. All right. Cool. So I see the page right here on your screen. I love, by the way, and I really appreciate that you grabbed the screenshot for us. And I can see it’s on your local drive because you went out of your way to put this together for us.

Noah: Yeah, no problem.

Andrew: What are we looking at?

Noah: Again, just a very simple idea of that first action. Setting up your alerts here. We’ll send you deal alerts however you want them, but you need to tell us what you prefer, email’s the default or you can get free SMS notifications by texting us. So getting us to do something is again that idea of just taking that first action, getting us to whatever. Just take part and do something. Now we’re feeling like we’re getting our money’s worth. We’re getting what we signed up for. That’s really the reason this stuff is happening.

Andrew: OK.

Noah: So, if we move on with Chris again…

Andrew: We’re going to look at the next tactic. Can I… it’s coming up right now. You’re using Chris’s website as an example for the next one too, it looks like.

Noah: I don’t know if I should let that play or not. We can just talk about it. But he’s got a really nice intro video here where he gives you a site tour, tells you where to find exactly what you need, exactly what you paid for. He gives you a calendar, he tells you when you’re going to get different things, when they’re going to come. So he’s setting those expectations that, you know what, this is when you’re going to get that content and this is when we’re going to deliver it. And this is important. You want people to know how to find what they’re looking for and when they’re going to get what they want.

Andrew: This is fantastic. By the way, I know this is not nearly over but I really love the way that you teach these concepts. You’ve broken it down, you’ve shown us evidence of each one of them in action. I’m feeling like in my head I can see how I would use this, and I’m kicking myself for not having done it before. But for some reason, I just didn’t realize it. Like even Stew’s site. I’m a member of Stew’s site but I didn’t even notice what he did to me until you pointed it out.

Noah: Well, thanks, Andrew. Like I told you before the interview, I’m not to used to doing this kind of stuff so it’s a little bit out of the box for me. Yeah, but I’m glad you’re getting some value out of it.

Andrew: Hey, you are good at this. I can see why Stu counts on you so much. I emailed him and said: What do I need to know about Noah? He said: Basically, this guy is fantastic. He’s the guy to go to.

Noah: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Andrew: So what else do we need to know?

Noah: One of the things, again, when I talked at the beginning about reactive retention strategies, the whole idea of pain of disconnect. So these are the things that when I cancel my membership, I’m going to lose certain things. So these are things we’re going to unplug. When you think about your hydro bill or your water bill, when you stop paying your hydro bill or your water bill there’s going to be some pain of disconnect. It might not be that you can’t take a shower but it might be that your wife is a little angry that there’s no hot water.

This is the same idea as your membership sites. What we are going to unplug when they leave? Examples of that might be things like hosting, web hosting, photo albums, weight loss sites do a lot a lot of trackers, fitness trackers. An example here is clickmeter.com. So this was just an affiliate link website. If I paid my $99 a month or $34 a month and I’ve gone to all this trouble to load up all my affiliate links and start tracking everything, it’s pains me more to disconnect and stop paying than it does to move and find a new tracker that is going to cost less or save me less money. Any time we can build these into our membership sites, it’s a good thing.

Andrew: I hadn’t thought of that. So you build them in. Do you also tell people about the pain of leaving or is it just enough to have them in there?

Noah: I think it’s enough to have them in there. An example I like to say is a restaurant that might start a loyalty card program, for example. I’m working with a restaurant right now and they’ve paid a lot of money to start this loyalty card system. Now they’ve got people going. There’s a provider for this service. They’ve put a lot of money into building this, so the disconnect there is, they can’t really disconnect because once they disconnect all that work that they’ve done, all those members that they’ve already put into this loyalty program, there’s no way for them to disconnect.

We’re not trying to be sneaky about this. We’re not trying to do anything that’s going to upset our members, but that’s why these things happen. That’s why things like web hosting make a great pain of disconnect. It’s harder for me to move all my websites than it is to just keep paying them the $35 a month.

Andrew: Yeah, I feel that. I feel that even with analytic packages. I’ve got an analytics package. I just can’t cancel because all my old data is in there.

Noah: It’s the perfect pain of disconnect right there.

Andrew: All right.

Noah: So that’s a pretty broad overview of character content and community. And now I want to show people some month to month operations of running a membership site properly especially with this idea of retention in mind.

Andrew: OK.

Noah: So, one of the things I’ve found is that most people that are running membership sites, a lot of them aren’t doing anything. So, if you’re going to do something and take a little bit of stock of what is going on, you’re probably going be better off than the people that aren’t doing anything. I’m going to provide here some basic membership math. I’m not a math guy at all by any means.

So, again, when I talked about that idea at the beginning of 300 people that pay me 30 bucks a month, that’s the type of math that I’m good at. But when I started to think about retention, I started to have to look for ways to do this kind of math. I think I found this type of math back in 2005, 2006 from Rotary Club or something like that. It works. And you can run this stuff. Has that come up for you?

Andrew: It has, yes. I see your really basic membership math in all of this.

Noah: Yes. Basically, to find out your retention rate, essentially you take the number of people that are eligible to renew and the number of people that did renew and you just divide them. So, if we had 282 people renew out of 300, that’s a 94% retention rate. So, just backwards to that, the attrition rate then is a 6% loss rate. So we lost 6% of our members. One of the things here that is very important when you’re a membership site that’s not necessarily counted for growth is maybe you’ve said: We’re only going to take 300 members, which is something I did, and that’s it. Once we’ve done that we’re locking the doors. You really have to think about attrition rates, and you really have to think about this idea of the failure rate. So if I was to maintain a 6% loss rate every month and do nothing about it, then approximately by 16 and a half months I would be broke and out of business. Now that’s saying total failure, 0 members left. Most of them are probably going to be gone by that point.

And that brings us down to average member retention, basically we’re just dividing that number in half, again this is really basic, I’m going to show you a little bit more of an advanced model that we can use. Especially for people that have some data. Again if you’re doing nothing, then this is a good start. And then, a very simple calculation of lifetime value of a member is essentially taking the average member, multiplying that by your membership fee and your figuring out your lifetime value. So in this example here, the average Mixer G, and this isn’t really, by the way, I just made this up in this example. But the average Mixer G member may stay 8.2 months at $25 a month, so the lifetime value of your members are around $207.

Why is this important? Well, because now at least we have some kind of base number that we can start thinking about acquisition of a member. How much do we want to spend in AdWords to gain a member? How much do we want to spend in advertising to gain a member? Without having any type of base line here, we’re just guessing. I’ve got a few other calculation here. You can figure out your cost per members, how much you spend each month and then divide that by the total number of members and that’s your cost per member. And then cost to get a member, I’ve got another simple formula here. So again, that’s really basic membership map, but if you’re doing nothing you can start plopping these numbers into an excel file and that’ll help you. I’ve got a file here that I want to bring up as that comes up.

Andrew: OK, let’s give it a moment to come up.

Noah: Yeah.

Andrew: And we can give the audience all these documents that you’ve been showing us, right, like the really basic membership math?

Noah: Yeah, and I’m going to give them these Excel files, too, because they’re really fun to play with.

Andrew: If you’re watching us, this will all be on the course page. If you’re listening to us, come back to the course page and grab all of these documents, they’ll be here for you. I see the spreadsheets a little bit small on my screen, which might be a good thing, because it looks like an email address is in there.

Noah: Oh, those are just random emails that I threw in.

Andrew: Good.

Noah: Yeah, they’re not real. So, this is what I call small changes. This is kind of that Idea of know this really basic membership math, where you can play with the idea of, “If I get this many members, this is how much I’m going to earn.” So, I’ll just run you through this here.

Andrew: Can you make the font a little bit bigger on these?

Noah: Yeah, I can.

Andrew: I think if you select it all by clicking that upper left box, yeah, I guess you’re doing that, it’s coming in a little slow on my screen.

Noah: Is that better, Andrew?

Andrew: Uh, let’s see, it’s still coming in. I’ll let you know when it’s all on there. What this is is you’re showing us how a small change impacts overall revenue, month to month, and over the course, of it looks like, fourteen months too. There, yeah, that’s better.

Noah: Great. OK. So let’s just start at the top here. And right now I’m going to take out acquisition costs, I’m just going to put that at $0, cause I’m going to assume we’re not really trying to get any members, we’re starting with, let’s say 300 members. We’re going to put here that our monthly membership fee is $29.97. So, what this shows me here, is if I’ve got a 5% attrition rate and a 6% growth rate, my membership is going to grow gradually over those 14 months.

Most people, unfortunately, it’s going to be the other way around. It’s probably going to be around a 4% growth rate, I’m just guessing these numbers, not 400, and let’s say a 7% attrition rate. What you see happens there is those members really drop off over time. Let’s say that there’s 0 growth rate, and we’ve got 7% attrition, so we start with 300 members, we’ve got 9 grand coming in a month, then all of a sudden we’re down to about $8400, now we’re in the $7000 range, $6000, $4000. You can see it drops pretty dramatically. So, what I want to show you here is that, just small changes, like, getting your attrition down to say 5% and getting your growth rate up to 5%, you can keep those numbers pretty constant over time. Or, if you able to grow a little bit faster than your attrition, you’ll start to see those numbers rise. You can play with this, it’s just something fun, I like it. I like to dream about that kind of math, and plop in different numbers and think of what I can do.

Andrew: I do too, and it’s good to think that far forward, and to think about how if you could just increase conversions how much it would impact your overall business. Let’s say your attrition rate stinks, and it’s still 5%, you want to go even stinkier go to 10%?
Noah: Yeah, let’s go to . . .

Andrew: If you find a way, every month, to grow by 25% or by 20%, it covers up for a lot of that attrition, and it allows you to keep growing, growing, growing. Or, if you can cut down your attrition rate, but keep your growth steady. It’s such a big growth that it actually number signed out the numbers, but it is really helpful to think about the membership site that way.

Noah: So, this is something to play with, especially for your people running membership sites that, even if they don’t want to do any crazy stuff over time, they can at least look at this on a month to month basis, and say, ‘Well, jeez, if I had a 8% attrition rate this month and I didn’t gain any new members’, then they can plop in those numbers and see when they’re going to have to clean up the old resume and get back to work.

Andrew: That’s a painful thought to think about.

Noah: Yeah, sorry.

Andrew: All right. Did you want to show us a second spreadsheet also?

Noah: I do, but I don’t want to show you that yet.

Andrew: OK, all right. What’s next then?

Noah: So, next thing, I just want to show you, just a few more ideas of lifetime value. I’m going to, basically just give your subscribers these links to go take a look at themselves. Ovenosh Koshick [sp], is that his name, I know you interviewed him?

Andrew:

Noah: Sorry, your audio kind of cut out there a little bit.

Andrew: There it is, I think it’s Ovenosh Koshick.

Noah: Yeah, so he’s got a really great blog post here on Lifetime Value, and I would recommend that anybody go take a look at this post. He’s got an excel spreadsheet there that you can download and you can punch in different numbers, and it’s not necessarily built for a membership site, but it’s definitely fun to play with and just punch in different numbers and see what the true value of a customer really is. I mean, this guy is the master, right, so this is the guy to take this from and learn from.

Another example of that is just this KISSmetrics and their infographics, they love their infographics. They’ve got an awesome infographic lifetime value that’s worth checking out, and we can probably link up to that. Again, I’m suggesting looking at it far more simplistically than these types of calculations are showing us, but it’s just kind of cool to start thinking in that mindset of, What’s a member coming in worth to us over the long term?, and If we can increase our retention then what’s that member really worth? Or, if we can sell them additional products on the back end, what are they worth? Really, you just want to keep them happy and keep them there a long time, and deliver a lot of good value.

Andrew: Right.

Noah: So, the next thing I’ve got is a really crazy Excel file that a friend of mine named Shawn Veltman created for me. He’s this guy that does reactivation for chiropractors, so he goes into chiropractor’s offices and looks at various problems and he helps them reactivate lost members. He created a spreadsheet for me awhile back that helps with figuring out your attrition hot spots. So, a hot spot is, if we’ve got, for some reason, a large chunk of our members that are dropping under the first month, or maybe they’re dropping after the third month or maybe the fifth month, this is the file that he helped me with to kind of figure that out. So, you can see that OK? I’ll make that a little bit bigger.

Andrew: Let’s see.

Noah: I’ll make the font bigger.

Andrew: The spreadsheet that you showed us earlier is still up on the screen, I’m guessing that you’re about to show us the second spreadsheet, the one with those fake email addresses?

Noah: Yes, that’s correct.

Andrew: There it is, it’s coming up right now.

Noah: So, this is all fake data, although I’m sure that Bob@gmail.com might be real. So what this is showing me here, just to walk you through this, and I’ll provide this. This isn’t going to work with people that are just starting out at day one with no data, this is going to be good for somebody that’s maybe got a year’s worth of data, maybe a little bit longer. What this allows them to do is punch in, the customer, punch in their first payment date and then their last payment date. This tells us that the total time they were a member of our site.

Here we got; Bob was here 142 days, Macy was here 33 days, this person was here 190 days. Over here what we see now is that we are losing 6% of our members within a week, 18% of our members are dropping under a month, and then 37% are dropping under three months. To me, that’s a hot spot. Somehow, I’ve got to get them over that three month hump.

What he’s also done here, he has he show me that if I’m able to keep my members over three months, then they have a tendency to stay in about nine months. There’s a hump there, I’ve got to get them over that three month hump. Once I do, I’ve got them on average for about nine months.

This is a really fun thing to play with, especially if you got some data. Even if you don’t, it’s still fun to play with to just kind of think about.

Andrew: Oh, that’s fantastic. If you start to see that after three months, people drop off, you need to think of what do you do after three months to get them more engaged. Maybe at three month period is when you trigger an email that says come back to the site and you’re going to get this special thing.

Maybe at three months is when you allow them go up a level if you’re doing, the leveling system that you taught us earlier. Three months, that’s this time when you loose people, that’s when you have to think about how to get them back.

Noah: Exactly, this is the hot spot; anything we can do to get them over that hot spot that’s what we would want to do. Especially, if I look at this spread sheet again it’s actually showing that under four months I am loosing 62% of my members. They are not making it past that point.

Somehow we’ve got to get them over that three and four month hump. I’ve heard of people doing things like, sending cupcakes right before that hump. Just various stuff, maybe it’s a personal phone call right before that happens. Anything to get them over that is what you want to do.

This is pretty cool, this is as far deep into the math that I get. It’s the kind of stuff that I used to think about. I used to look at where these spots were and how do I get them passed those spots.

Andrew: This is fantastic. We’re giving them the spread sheets, so that they can do this with their own members; just go into your PayPal account, or whatever account you are using to keep track of your orders. Just type them in and have the start and last payment and you will get a sense of when people dropped out.

Noah: Absolutely, this one requires some data, it’s not going to work with people starting out. If you got a year under your belt, or something, you can use this to figure out some cool stuff. I’m not an Excel guy, I’m not a math guy, but I have taken a look at the calculations and he sat up here and it is pretty easy stuff to figure out what he is doing. You can manipulate this if you play around a little bit.

Last couple of things I want to talk about here, is this idea of what happens when somebody leaves? You get the message from PayPal, if you use PayPal, they’ve canceled and their gone. How do people just leave it at that? As membership site owners, we think well they’ve canceled, they don’t want to hear from us anymore.

This is a huge mistake, because I’ve found to my experience, especially with PayPal, probably 80 to 90% of those members the subscription canceled by accident, or an error. They didn’t update their credit card, their credit card expired. I always recommend at least one follow-up to members that leave. You’ve got to do something.

What I would do is a very simple email that is automatically sent when a crenelation [sp] came in, and it just read something like this. . .

Andrew: Well, you know, it’s actually funny that you say that, because I realized that with PayPal too. I email people when I say, why did you cancel? Then they would say, I didn’t cancel, PayPal must of canceled me, or they don’t know and investigate and they come back and tell me. I call PayPal, PayPal have some kind of odd policy if the card doesn’t go through one time, then they assume it doesn’t work. Then they cancel, I forget what it was and to be honest, I don’t really fully understand, and they will not tell me enough about what’s going on with my customers’ orders.

Noah: What is happening there is that PayPal have a policy, that if my credit card expires and I don’t know and I have not updated it in my PayPal account. They will try and process that payment three times and after the third time, it is going to automatically cancel. This is a huge issue for people that are using PayPal at their membership sites. When I hear people that are using PayPal and not having some sort of follow-up, it’s a huge hole in the bucket that can be easily plugged.

So with a simple follow up, it might be two follow ups, it might be three follow ups, but I would just send an email, just exactly like what you’re saying, ” noticed your membership was cancelled today, I just wanted to see if this was in error, or if it was an intentional cancellation, and if you did it intentionally, why?”

We can learn from why they left. You want to have some sort of follow up, and give them a place where they can go and restart their membership. You can keep this going. If they haven’t unsubscribed, it might just be because they’re busy, they haven’t got to their email yet, so I would probably send out emails, maybe for about a week. Maybe the first day, maybe the third day and maybe the seventh day, especially if you’ve got some of these pains of disconnect ideas that they’re going to lose. So if you were offering something like hosting, you might let it go a little bit longer, you might let it go ten, fifteen, twenty days before you say, “OK, we’re going to pull the plug now.” So, definitely you want to have some sort of follow up.

Andrew: I hadn’t thought of that.

Noah: The last thing you want to think about is reactivation strategies. These are things to bring those members that have cancelled, and they have left willingly, to bring them back. Because, the one thing is, we’re never going to experience 100% retention rate. Even though I have really good retention with my site, people leave for various reasons. They leave because they forget to update their credit card or they’re not really feeling it anymore, they don’t have time for it, they’ve got a new job, they don’t have time to watch Mixergy anymore. So reactivation strategies are just things we do to try and bring them back. So what I’ve provided is just a very simple reactivation sample email, that’ll come up there.

Andrew: There it is. All right, I see it. So this is what we would send people who cancel.

Noah: Yeah, something like this. I mean, you’re still better to bring back a lost subscriber than you are to find a new one. If they were there for any amount of time, they wanted to be there, and there’s a good chance you can bring them back. Even if they left because they just thought they weren’t getting value out of your content anymore, there’s probably a chance that you can bring them back and show them that the content is better now, or it’s really good now.

Andrew: That’s a great idea. You know who does this really well. I think it’s Citrix, the company that makes GoTo Meeting, the system you and I are using now. I’ve cancelled one of their products in the past and they emailed me afterwards and said, “Do you want to come back?”, and I think I said, “No, I’m fine.” And then they said, “Do you want to come back?” again and I thought, “Hey, you know what, I’m having trouble with the other solution that I thought would work better, I’m signing up,” and I signed up.

Noah: Yeah, if you go into your Gmail account, if we all have Gmail accounts, and you just type in the words, like, we miss you. You’ll probably find 30 emails from different forums that use these types of strategies, it’s the same idea. They’re trying to reactivate you, and bring you back.

Andrew: That’s awesome, that’s great. All right, and there’s one last point that you wanted to make sure to leave the audience with, a fourth C, you call it.

Noah: I did, so even though I said there was three C’s, there is actually a fourth C. I’ve kind of briefly alluded to it already, but the fourth C is caring. I mean, you really need to care about your members, that’s really what retention comes down to. So, when I talk about character and I talk about community and I talk about content, you just really want to care for them and be there for them. These are people that are opening up their wallets and giving you their money. A lot of the times they’re working hard for that money.

So, that’s why this whole idea of “cookie-cutter” sites and drip-feeding content, where you don’t have to do any work, I don’t like that idea, just because there’s no real caring going into that. So, that’s kind of the fourth C, and if you care your face off, and work real hard to show them that, they’re going to stick around.

Andrew: Let’s bring up your website, just so people can see where they can follow up with you. I’m looking here at the notes you gave me before we started, the ones that you showed there for a moment, and it’s packed with information. But in this session, I got even more than I got in the notes, man, you really care your face off with my audience. That you would go through this much trouble, frankly if you would have just stuck with the content, it would have been a packed course, if you would have stuck with just the section on how to bring back members, my audience would have loved you for it, any one section, if you would have just left it at that, my audience would have loved it.

But to put it all together like this, and to put the effort into it that I saw you put in, I can’t tell you how much it means to me, because I care my face off with my audience and to have you care that much about my audience, I appreciate it. I owe you for this. I’m grateful to you for this. And I can’t wait. Let me talk to the audience before I let you go. Guys, go to Noahfleming.com and follow up with Noah. If you got any value out of this that you want to thank him, his contact information is right there on the side. I believe we use the contact information on his website because that’s how we connected with him.

More importantly, use at least one tactic. I feel sometimes that people go through these sessions and we give them so many tactics that they feel overwhelmed. Find just one. You don’t have to use it all. Just find one and use it and then let Noah and I know that you used it. Then try another tactic, and another and then come back a few months from now and revisit this and come up with new ideas for how you can use this. This is a packed course and I’m looking forward to receiving a ton of feedback and examples of how you’ve used this.

Noah, thank you. What’s a good way for people to be able to follow up with you beyond going to check your site out?

Noah: That’s probably the best way. Follow up with me there. If I could just leave you with one last thing that I’d like to say. You just mentioned about using little bits of this. I think it’s important to remember that retention with a membership site is all about these little changes. So when we go back to that leaky bucket theory, it’s just a matter of plugging these little holes and figuring out where people are leaving and why. There’s one story I want to tell you real quick.

Andrew: Please.

Noah: Last fall I had the utmost amazing opportunity to be at a dinner with Seth Godin. I was sitting right next to him during dinner and talking to that guy is just like reading his blog. It’s incredible. We were sitting at a table that was covered in butcher paper and we’d had a good discussion about what I was going to do when I got home. After dinner he took out a pen from his pocket and he threw it at me and he said ‘I want you to write it down on the table, what’s the one thing you are going to do when you get home.’ I went home and I did what I said I was going to do. I think it’s important to take one little thing from this, write it down, and just go do it and you’re going to see some results for sure.

Andrew: That’s a great piece of advice and I’m going to remember that story and tell it to others as they go through these courses and as they go through these interviews. I’m going to write it down and do it. Work for Noah Fleming, work for you. Looking forward to your feedback. Thank you for doing this course with us.

Noah: Thanks, Andrew.

Master Class: Leveraging LinkedIn
Taught by Lewis Howes of LinkedInfluence

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Master Class: Leveraging Linkedin

Time to watch/listen: 97:21 minutes

 



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Andrew: This is a course on leveraging LinkedIn. It is led by Lewis Howes, who is the co-author of LinkedIn Master Strategies, and the creator of LinkedIn Influence. I will help lead the course. My name is Andrew Warner. I am the founder of Mixergy.com, where proven founders teach. Lewis, give an example of what my audience will be able to do at the end of this session.

Lewis: Yes. I am planning to make this the best session possible for people on Mixergy, so what I want to do is share some social proof really quick. Excuse the language in the email. This is a screenshot from an email of my business partner. It was sent to one of our friends who is an affiliate of ours, and said, “This is literally within thirty minutes of an email being sent from a big LinkedIn group. That’s it. I have never seen anything like this.” I will just show you what this is up close.

Andrew: Yes. Explain to me what we are seeing over here. Yes, I see the excitement, of course, in the email.

Lewis: This is a screenshot from GoToWebinar. With LinkedIn groups, when you are the owner of a LinkedIn group–and I will show you how to create your own group in this session–you can message the entire database of a LinkedIn group anything you want. You can send them a link to your website, your newsletter, a live event, or anything. We send them to webinarsâ??free webinars–where we educate them on different topics specifically related to their industry, or their niche. By doing that, we get a lot of people to sign up for these. This was after 30 minutes, almost 1,500 people opted in– gave us their first name, their last name, and their email–and you can see at the bottom here, click the registration link: 1,800 people. First off, that conversion rate is pretty ridiculous, to get basically a 90% conversion rate of people clicking to opting in. That is from LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the most targeted business social networking site in the world, so if you are looking for more leads, traffic or sales, or people who have money and who know a lot about business, then you will want to be spending the majority of your time on LinkedIn, in my opinion, to do that.

This is going to be one of the strategies we talk about today is how to leverage LinkedIn groups–your own and other groups–to generate more leads. If you know the value of your lead–say one email view is worth $10 or $100, depending on the product or service you offer, or the software–then for some people, an extra 1,500 leads would be worth a lot of money to you. To get that absolutely for free . . .

Andrew: For some people? I cannot imagine, by the way, anyone not having a significant value placed on 1,500 leads that are not just people clicking to a site, are not just people giving you a first name or an email address, but giving you full name and full email address, and this is a spectacular place to get them, because as you say, these are business people who are coming over. Do you have to pay anything for this?

Lewis: Come again?

Andrew: Did you have to pay anything to get those members?

Lewis: You do not have to pay anything. It is absolutely free. I have never paid a dime to LinkedIn, ever.

Andrew: This is something that our audience will be able to do by the end of this call?

Lewis: Yes. I will show them how they can do this.

Andrew: OK. We are going to teach them how to do this. Alright, here is what I am going to do, actually. I am going to put earphones on right now. I want to make sure that your audio does not bleed into my mic, and that my audience gets to have crystal clear broadcast of this, because this is really important to me and to them.

Lewis: OK.

Andrew: What are we looking at right here?

Lewis: This is just a couple other screenshots of some other webinars we have done. Not all of them get 8,000 new opt-ins. That one email got 8,000 new opt-ins over a period of 5 days. That was just the first thirty minutes with 1,500 opt-ins, so I do not know if you can see this right here, but you can see how many people. These are different screenshots from GoToWebinar, our webinar provider to where we send our traffic from LinkedIn. You can see 1,100 people were on live that webinar, where 2,500 registered in the top left-hand corner. In the middle top, 2,000+ registered, so these are opt-ins, these are leads, and how many people attended live. 655 registered, so some not as many as others. In the bottom middle, 2,900 people registered, so these are all just free leads, all coming from LinkedIn groups. I just wanted to give you a little more proof how powerful LinkedIn really can be, and that is just a quick example.

Andrew: OK. My audience is going to say to themselves, “This is someone to whom this comes naturally.” I want them to understand that I did not get a guy here who was born with a LinkedIn silver spoon in his mouth. You had to figure this out yourself. Let’s tell them where you were, and let them compare their situation to yours. Where were you before you figured all of this, in life?

Lewis: Yes. I am feeling very grateful and very blessed actually, for my opportunity. In 2007 I used to play professional football I might have a quick picture I can show you real quick. I used to play professional football, it was actually arena football. So for those who don’t know about arena football it’s indoor football. Here’s a picture of my rookie card in 2007. Right here, I don’t’ know if you can see this.

Andrew: That’s your rookie card?

Lewis: That’s my rookie football card, yeah, back in 2007. I don’t know if you can actually see this right there on my arm. This little white speck right over my mouse right here.

Andrew: I see that.

Lewis: That’s tape, I broke my wrist in the second game of the season. I don’t know if you can see in the back ground of this card there’s a wall. So surrounding the entire field is a wall, and in the second game of the season. I played wide receiver, so I dove for a football, went into the wall and snapped my wrist in the wall like this. I realized right then, I knew I’d broken it because I could feel the pain, and I knew the pain was completely different from a sprain or anything else. But it was my rookie season and I had left college early five credits shy without graduating to go to the NFL draft [??] and my whole goal in life was to be a professional athlete. I didn’t go to school to learn about anything in business or classes. I didn’t go to class barely I just went to play sports. With this injury the doctor said you can play on this if you want to deal with extreme pain for the next 14 games of the season. But my recommendation is that you have surgery right now so you can heal this and come back and play next year. I said, I ‘m going to play this, I’m going to play this through, I’m going to deal with the pain. So I taped it up everyday right there to about the middle of my forearm. And all I could do was squeeze, I couldn’t bend my wrist either way, because I had to tape it so much just to be stable. And after the season was over, there’s a quick screen shot right there, this is a video. This is me in the hospital right after I had woke up form surgery.

Andrew: Holly molly, I just saw I shorted out your mic, wow, that is a painful thing to see.

Lewis: This is me all wired up and basically they took bone out of my hip and put it into my wrist, because my wrists had crumbled. There’s like five or six little bones in your wrist and one of the bones had crumbled because I had pounded it so much. So they had to take a bone out of my hip, the put it into my wrist, and for the next six months I was in a cast from here to here. I was like the kid from the movie, “Rookie of the Year”. I don’t know if you ever seen that movie, but for six months I was in a cast like this, pretty miserable. And I lost my passion, I lost my dream, and I don’t know if you remember this Andrew. At the beginning of 2008 was not a pretty stable economic time in the U.S. And as a guy who had left college early, didn’t graduate, didn’t get a degree yet. I eventually went back and got my degree. I didn’t have any experience in business, I maybe made a total of $12,000 my whole life. Literally I had worked in the summers, I trained in the summers during college and in between arena football and college I was a truck driver, driving from Columbus to Cincinnati and back everyday; driving auto parts. And there was a [??] on the weekends. So I really wasn’t making any money. I had no experience in business. I had no clue what I was doing, didn’t really have any skills besides being extremely competitive and being an athlete, and knowing how to achieve a goal.

Andrew: So how do you go from that to where you are today?

Lewis: A mentor or mine, a good friend of said, you know what Lewis, there’s this great site out there I’ve been hearing about called LinkedIn dot com. I never heard about this site in late 2007 until he told me. And he said there’s about 15 million people on there and I’ve been hearing a lot of great success stories on there. People getting jobs, people finding business opportunities he said why don’t you check it out, you seem pretty savvy on Facebook. You should check it out, maybe you’d be able to find a job opportunity, connect with people in the sports industry. Because I had eventually earned my Sports Management Degree. Maybe you can fine an opportunity there, I said you know what. I’ve got all the time in the world. I moved in with my sister, because I was in this cast for six months, I had $250 coming in a month from workers compensation from the arena football league. And I couldn’t work a manual labor job with one arm, and I didn’t have the skill set at the time to get a job due to the economy and not having a degree per se. So I moved in with my sister, slept on her couch for six months. I had a laptop and all I did was get on LinkedIn for eight hours a day for the next six months and learned everything I could about the site. I probably spent more time on LinkedIn than people that actually worked at LinkedIn during that time. I was so determined to figure out anything I could do to just get off my sister’s couch and really just survive for myself, by myself, in my own apartment, at first.

Within the next six months, I made a lot of mistakes on LinkedIn trying to reach out to people and connect with people, but I also saw tremendous results. Number one, building an email list, and at the time I had no clue what that actually meant, and what to do with an email list, but I built up a large network of people, a community–communities all over the world.

I started a sports networking site at the same time. Things started to really grow after about a year. I started hosting LinkedIn networking events around the country, and I threw twenty events around the country, getting anywhere from 300 to 550 people show up and eventually pay me a fee to get in. I was getting sponsors, and it was all using LinkedIn just to promote these live events.

Andrew: OK.

Lewis: That is kind of how it all got started.

Andrew: You are starting to learn this all on your own, and trying to figure out through conversations with people who you met in person how you can do even more with LinkedIn–how you can go beyond just looking for a job, but get to a place where you can actually get leads from it and eventually customers too.

Lewis: Right. I eventually realized that I could not work for anyone. I was going to get a job at some point in the sports business, but I realized that it was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to see if I could work for myself first, because my dad was entrepreneurial, so I never ended up getting a job. I just tried to figure out the best way I could generate a living using LinkedIn.

Andrew: OK. I hate to sound like a scavenger, but I want to get as much benefit and value out of what you learned during your most painful period, so that the person who is watching us right now and learning from us does not have to go through all that. I want you to give us the best stuff that you learned, and the most actionable stuff. You and I both know that the audience wants tactics, tactics, tactics. Let’s start with the first one. What is the first thing that someone who is watching us here today–hearing how well you have done with LinkedIn–needs to do?

Lewis: The first thing you need to do is really define your goals. A lot of people who may be on this right now watching this presentation, I would bet that 90% of you, if not higher, have a LinkedIn account, and you set it up maybe 2 or 3 years ago, and maybe Andrew you can answer this as well. You set this up, you have gotten some emails from people saying they are connected to you, you have asked a couple people about you to introduce you to friends and asked for recommendations, but you have gotten zero benefit from the site.

Andrew: Yes, 100%. I have gotten bupkes–nothing but emails telling me to come back to LinkedIn and add more friends, and I always add everyone because I do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and who knows, I might want to do business with them.

The other thing is, these endless fricking emails from people that go on too long. I was thinking earlier today, “Can I cancel my LinkedIn profile?” Actually not today, earlier in the week, I said, “Can I have my assistant pretend to be me? That way, everyone who wants to connect with me can have a friend, because I am getting nothing out of it, and I do not want to waste anymore of my time on it,” and here we are now doing a session. You are right. It was two years ago, I think, when I launched it, and anyone who goes today and sees my LinkedIn profile will see it is like that. You are telling me I have to think about my goal with it. My goal has always been to just have a presence. What other goals can I possibly have? Now that I have talked to you, I think, “How do I get some leads from it?”

Lewis: What I would ask is, what is your goal in business or your professional goal? Some people may be looking for a job. OK. That is your goal. I am looking for a job. For you, it may be: I am trying to connect with the most powerful billionaires and successful entrepreneurs in the world that I can interview on Mixergy. For someone else it may . . .

Andrew: You know what? I am glad you said that, because my answer to you is going to be, “Lewis, of course, you know me. I want leads that are eventually going to convert to sales.” Then I realized, as you said that, “Oh, wait, it is true. If I could use it to meet people who I could interview, come here and do courses, or somehow partner with me in some other way, I am up for that too.”

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: I do not need a job, and I am guessing the person listening does not either.

Lewis: Right. Maybe you are looking for affiliates: maybe you have a great product and service, and you need other people who have a big audience to promote it for you. Maybe you are looking for an investor. Maybe you want to raise $1 million. There are a ton of venture capitalists and investors on LinkedIn. Maybe you are looking for a sponsor for a live event. You can find that as well. Maybe you have an event business and you want to get more people to come to your event–to buy your tickets either virtually or in person. Maybe you are a wedding photographer and you are trying to find more people who are getting married. There a lot of different thingsâ??maybe a real estate agent and you are trying to find more homebuyers, right?

Andrew: OK. First thing we do is we decide what our reason is, and we get clear on that.

Lewis: Right. Write out your business goal–not specifically what your LinkedIn goal is, but what is your business goal or your professional goals. Be specific with that.

Andrew: OK.

Lewis: For me, I am looking for more leads. More leads from small business owners that I can sell my social media marketing training courses to. That’s my main thing.

Andrew: Can you say how much money you’re making with your business? Is this too inappropriate for me to ask?

Lewis: It’s fine. I’ve got a couple of different companies. My sports marketing company, which is a membership site for sports executive who want to advance their careers and get access to interviews, pretty much similar to Mixergy, but interviews from the top sports executives in the world on sports marketing, sports sales, sports tickets, things like that. That’s a six figure business a year. That’s all traffic from my LinkedIn group and my sports website that drives traffic there. My other company is called Inspired Marketing. We create information products, educational courses, do coaching and things like that. So far it’s done around $1.5 million or $1.7 million in sales this year; I guess the first nine months so far and we’re on track for $2.4 million. LinkedIn is one of the primary uses that we use to drive traffic and get leads. Again, I don’t spend any money on advertising.

Andrew: First of all, thanks for saying that. You and I have known each other for a long time now and I knew you before it got to this level. You told me in private what the number was; I’m glad that I asked you and I appreciate that you said it publicly. First thing we do is, because now you’re firing me up and I want to get closer to your numbers considering how hard I work I feel I’m entitled to. And frankly if my audience can do it long live Mixergy because they’re going to get more value out of this and it’s all going to make it better for me, my personal mission. You gave us a bunch of examples of what we can do. What’s the next step? What do we do with all this energy now?

Lewis: After you figure out what your goal is you need to optimize your profile. What I mean by that is optimizing it for search rankings. Let me give you a quick example. Let’s say we go to Google and we go here and I want to rank number one for the keyword ‘sports’. I’ve got a sports marketing company, I’ve got this association, I want to rank number one for that. But there’s no way I’m going to rank number one for keyword ‘sport’s on Google. It’s impossible; ESPN owns that, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, all these other companies. There’s no way my site will ever be up there or my name, my profile. Never going to happen. However, LinkedIn is an extremely powerful business search engine. Right now there are around 130 million members on LinkedIn. It’s growing at two people a second and people are going on LinkedIn for a specific reason. You don’t go on LinkedIn to search through pictures or videos or photos like you would on Facebook or the other social networking sites. You go here for one reason. It’s all business focused. For example, people are going up here in the search box, on the top right hand corner here, on the home page, or any page, and they’re typing in different keywords. Looking for people’s names or looking for experts, looking for talents, they’re looking for programmers, developers, whatever it may be. Real estate agents, it doesn’t matter. They’re typing in keywords all the time. When I was first starting out I was spending, again, six to eight hours a day on LinkedIn, trying to connect with the top sports executives who I was finding on LinkedIn. I would type in keywords like ‘sports’ or ‘sports marketing’ different keywords just to find examples of people. I would go there and click enter there are search results that show up. You can see right here there are 1.1 million search results for the keyword ‘sports’.

Andrew: Where do you see the number? Oh, I see it. There it is. 1.12 million results for the term ‘sports’.

Lewis: When you’re going here, if you’re looking for an expert or someone, you’re not going to scroll down to the bottom of the page and go to the tenth page or the fifth page to try to find experts or someone who’s credible. You’re going to see who’s at the top. Just like Google: who’s on top. For me, I rank number one for keyword ‘sports’. And it all depends how you’re connected to me and how many connections you have but I’m the number one result for you as well. But for most people out there I rank number one for keyword ‘sports’.

Andrew: There it is. I see it right now. Actually they could see it right now. The number one for company is Sports Authority; the number one for people which is the way I think on my search it automatically goes to people and let’s me decide that I want to have this more universal, there it is, you’re number one for sports.

Lewis: It’s extremely powerful. Is the screen OK?

Andrew: I can see it OK. What you’re going to show us is how we can SEO, Search Engine Optimize for specific keywords so we show up and then later on, we’ll talk about what to do when someone sees us at the top of the list and clicks on us. First, how do I get to be at the top when people search for one of my key words.

Lewis: Right. Actually, some people may not know what the benefit of this. Do you mind if I talk about the benefit?

Andrew: Thank you. Absolutely.

Lewis: OK. I rank number one. This is me up here. I’m linked in. You mentioned that you connect with everyone. That’s really good that you do that because I’m linked in. It’s the only social network in site that you can actually, with one click of a button, export all of your contacts to a CSV file so you can have their first and last name, email and database.

If you access to it, that’s your asset. Now Twitter and Facebook, you can’t do that. There’s a sneaky way to do it with Facebook. It’s going up 5,000 friends and it’s a little sneaky and sly. But here, they want you to do it.

Andrew: So first of all, you’re advising us to do what I do. Anyone who wants to friend you on Linked In, go ahead and add them. Even though Linked In says you have to know them super well. You have to either work with them in the same cubicle or slept with them, it doesn’t matter.

You’re saying if they added you, you add them back because you get their email address if nothing else. We’ll talk about what to do with that later. What else beyond getting their contact information? What’s the other benefit of that?

Lewis: The more contacts you have in your first degree network, the larger your second and third degree network expanded, meaning more people will be able to find you, contact you or hire you. They can find you.

If I only have 10 connections and I ranked number one for the QBurt Sports, only 500,000 people would get to see that and type it in. I want the expanded network of Linked In to be able to see me every time anyone types into QBurt Sports, not just a limited amount.

You are opening up more opportunities for plurals, for leads, for [??] sales so you want to connect with everyone for those two reasons.

You can see up here, this is an inbox. I don’t know if you can see it. I’m going to blow it up a little bit.

Andrew: Yeah, we can see it.

Lewis: See 82 right there in the inbox right up here. Some of those are messages to me but a lot of them are actual invitations to connect. I clear this pretty much every night, Andrew and you can see right here 53 new invitations. That’s 53 new opt-ins that I have from people who have opted in and I can export those emails at any time.

That’s just one bit. I get that every day, over and over again. That’s because I’m ranking up here for certain key words. That’s because of the Link In groups and I’ll talk about that in a second.

Let’s go over this five step process that you need to apply right now in order to rank higher for any queue you want. First, you need to find what your expertise is. What is it that you want people to find you for? If you’re a Word Press developer, then Word Press developer or Word Press design or something like that would be your key word.

If you’re a sales coach, maybe sales coach would be your key word. If you’re a social media marketer, social media marketing would be your key word. it’s hard to rank for one key word like sports, but it is possible. I advise people, if you are working in a local business, then you want to have your city attached to your key word.

Say you’re a real estate agent, you’d do realtor Denver or realtor Tampa or something like that or you could just do consulting for local businesses, you’d attach that city because it’s much more targeted. It would be less search results but it would be much more targeted and guaranteed to be based on a [??].

When I type in the key word sports, I rank number one for this right here. Again, that’s five places underneath the profile that you can optimize. Right when you come here, you see a little overview of your profile. It’s the first thing people are going to see. It’s the best real estate at the top.

It’s a very easy algorithm but no one knows how to do this. Again, I had all the time in the world to figure it out and I’m just going to give it to you right now.

The top three spots are your headline and your current [??]. In the headline, you can see right here highlighted, I’ve got the queue word sports. Very, very simple. I’ll show you how to edit this in a second, once we go over these first three.

Andrew: I see founder of . . .

Lewis: I’ve got . . .

Andrew: Sports Executives Association and Sports In Headline needs to be there if you’re going to Search Engine Optimize for it.

Lewis: Exactly. If you’re a Word Press developer, then you just make sure you have Word Press developer somewhere throughout your headline. There isn’t an exact formula on how you need to optimize and structure your entire profile with the wording, the language, the format.

I could go over this for probably three days with you but I’m going to try to give people the best contents on how they can at least optimize things to get more leads chopped into sales. If we have time, later I’ll go over the rest of the formula but for now it’s all about the keywords. The headline, you’ve got to have your keyword there. The [??] and password experience, you can see these are actually highlighted by Linkedin, you can see how many times I have a keyword in each [term] and work experience, I have the keyword at least once and each password experience, I have the keyword in at least once.

I’ll show you on my profile how this works. I’m on my profile right here, again all you have to do is click on the Edit tab, right here and just type in your keyword in your headline.

Andrew: Where is the Edit on the headline?

Lewis: If you clicked on your profile, right here on the top bar, you click on Edit profile and then this little Edit tab, it’s very small, you just click on this little button right here.

Andrew: I see it now. OK. It took a minute for it to show up on our screen. I think our screen is a little bit behind yours, so we’ll just keep that in mind. OK.

Lewis: So, again all you have to do is click on this Edit tab, it’ll open up a box and you’ll just enter in your headline right there. I’ll just give you guys some quick advice on the headline because this is the most important thing, it’s what people see first and Andrew, you have a decent headline for what you do.

Andrew: You know what? I’m feeling a little pain because it’s been so long since I cared about this, entrepreneur, researcher, interviewer, OK.

Lewis: Yeah. It’s lacking but for what you do and where you’re at, it’s not as bad as it could be. My quick example is, you want to tell people who you are, who you help, and how you help them in your headline. It’s the most important part of your profile. Because it hooks people to either click on your profile and read more or to go look at someone elses profile. When they look in search results, if you don’t hook them and I’ve got a number of different businesses so I do something different. There are really two different structures to the profile.

One is for the single focus business, just say your a Word Press developer, you’re a freelance Word Press developer or something like that you have one core business, one core focus and you want to tell people who you are and who you help and how you help them. Say, you’re a real estate agent, you would say something like this: I help successful young professionals in the Denver, Colorado area find the homes of their dreams in ten days or less. You’re being as specific as possible by telling people who you are, who you help, and how you help. Your filtering through all the other crap that people are going through and when they come to your profile they’re going to know whether-or-not your specifically able to help them right then and there and what you do.

As opposed to saying something like, entrepreneur, researcher, interviewer, how can you help me right now Andrew, you know what I mean? It’s like, let’s be specific and tell people how you can help me with also adding your keywords in there. So it’s a little way of manipulating your profile to make sure you have your keywords in there as well.

Andrew: Let me give that again.

Lewis: That’s the first thing.

Andrew: That’s who you are, who you help, how you help them that’s what you want us to include in the headline and when we write the answer to those three questions in there make sure to include the keywords. If it’s Denver Real Estate, it’s Denver Real Estate needs to be in those answers.

Lewis: Exactly. Yeah. Real Estate Agent Denver or whatever it is you want to rank for. Exactly. Since I’ve got a couple different businesses and for me I’ve learned how to optimize for my keywords and the whole structure, the profile, I’ve got these little, I don’t know what these things are called, little type symbols.

Andrew: That’s what they call them.

Lewis: Is that what it’s called? So I just break them up into different things that I do where I’m [??] for things and I’m also hooking and enticing people to come check out my profile, but I’m also so many leads every day from this that it’s kind of like I want to filter out who are not interested also so it’s not a huge value to me. So tell people, who you are, who you help, and how you help them. First thing is the headline, optimize that with the keyword. Second and third thing, right here is your current and past work experience.

Now if you’ve only added one or two of your past work experiences, you want to make sure that you think as far back as you can and add all of your past work experiences. If you have a couple different business or products that you’re working on just add everything because there’s a couple reasons why you do this but the main thing is for SC optimization. If you just have one thing that your currently working on and one past and you optimize with keywords there someone else may be able to beat you out of the rankings because they have more keywords and multiple current and past work experiences. You need to make sure you feel out everything and add your keywords into the description.

Right here is a little Edit tab where my mouse is circling right here so by each one you can just edit your current work experience on the past work experience there is no Edit tab here so you actually need to scroll down your page and I have long profile yours won’t be as long. Just scroll down the page, and you just click down here at the edit and the experience tab section down here in your profile.

Andrew: Let’s give it a moment to come up. There it is. OK, past experience. What if past experience doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m trying to promote right now?

Yeah, it’s a fine line by lying and just optimizing your profile. You don’t necessarily want to lie and say by just adding your keyword and your past work experience so if you could optimize it with just using the current work experience and not with the past work experience then you don’t need to add anything but for me, I’ve got like, let me just so you a quick example. I was Vice President of Mid-Day Toastmasters which is a Toastmasters Club in Columbus, Ohio and I just put the keyword sports in parenthesis. I don’t know if you can actually see this or not.

Andrew: I do see that, yeah.

There’s no sports related to that at all but I just want to rank higher for this so I just kind of put in there just to optimize for it and it probably is borderline lying because its not like I actually worked in sports (________) ever but I just wanted to optimize and rank number one. So I put it towards the end there so you can’t really see it.

Andrew: Here’s another thing that I noticed you did for that. If you could bring that back up again for a moment. By the way I wouldn’t have even thought to put a Toastmasters reference in there. Your making me realize just because I didn’t have more than a handful of jobs doesn’t mean that I can’t have more than a handful of items and past experience. But what you did there you said, “Vice President of Public Relations and Social Media Marketing at Toastmasters. Now, having been at Toastmasters for a long time, I don’t remember them specifically having a Social Media Marketing head.

Lewis: They didn’t. They don’t.

Andrew: They had a head for everything but it does connect with there and you are looking to optimize for Social Media Marketing so you put it in there and frankly, if your doing public relations at any point even for a club, some Social Media Marketing could be involved.

Lewis: Exactly.

Andrew: I see what you’re doing there. OK.

Lewis: Exactly. So it is kind of a little bit of trickery in a sense, I guess, if someone wanted to look at it that way but in my opinion I’m just optimizing my profile.

Andrew: OK.

Lewis: And I’m doing exactly what I need to do to achieve my goals. Now before I go on to the next two spots, we need to optimize your profile. Let me just so you an example of what not to do.

Andrew: Let me zoom in on your screen right now so we can see it. OK. What should we not do? I love this.

Lewis: So, I don’t want to point this person out. Let me see if I spelled the name wrong. So there’s a way, you guys saw my profile. You saw how I had about four or five current work experiences and four or five past work experiences with keywords but look at this, here’s a profile by a guy who’s actually one of my past students and optimized it with pretty much just ongoing nonsense for every keyword he could think of and did this to his most current past work experience and I just feel like this is overkill.

Andrew: I see. What he did was he put Social Media Marketing for everything. He was CEO of Social Media Marketing, I see that part, OK. So that’s way over-kill.

Lewis: (________) management, its a little way overboard and there’s a few people who have taken what I’ve shown them and kind of done, I’m just not a fan of doing it this way. It’s effective, it works but its really kind of gaming the system in a way that isn’t authentic. I mean, my way, I’m a little bit on the radar or whatever but if you look at my profile compared to that profile its just you don’t want it to look like that. So just have the work experiences you’ve done, just be honest. If you want to add an extra keyword or two in that then that’s fine. But just don’t try to over-due it and try to make it look super long like that.

Andrew: Lewis, I want to keep this moving but let me pause here for a minute to ask a question about how to find the right keywords. What do you do to figure out if the keyword you have in mind is one that enough people search on and also doesn’t have a lot of competitors who are trying to rank for it.

Lewis: Its a good question and its really tough to answer that because it all depends on the business your in. You can do a Google keyword research. I don’t know if you talked about Google Keyword Tool before.

Andrew: We have right. And we have that in one of the other courses. So your saying, do it there and assume that the same holds true for LinkedIn. There is no perfect way to figure out for LinkedIn.

Lewis: There’s no perfect way. You can just do a keyword, different searches up here, you can just type in real estate and see how many people have the keyword search on real estate. I go here, there’s 1.3 million search results. I’ll leave it a second up here so it’ll refresh for you guys but 1.3 million. You know there’s a lot of people in real estate so maybe people are searching for a realtor in your local market. If you could optimize for real estate.

Andrew: There it is. It just popped up right now. OK. So now what I might do is I might do a search right now to see how many results there are. That might be an indication how many people are active on this search term. Then I would look at the top person to see how well he is using, or she is using, your tactics.

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: If they do not have the key word on their page a lot, it means that they are weak, and we can be done.

Lewis: Right, exactly.

Andrew: Pick off the weak, is what I am suggesting.

Lewis: Even if they do have their keywords on there, I am pretty much guaranteeing you can still be in the top three search results for any keyword. It pretty much happens almost 99% of the time. There have only been two instances with people where I have not been able to show them how to get into the top three. I almost guarantee the top page.

Let me make sure I go through this quicker now, the final few.

Andrew: What is next?

Lewis: You have the headline, and you have the current and past work experience. You guys can see again here I have just my current and past work experience. It is not all spammy-looking. It looks like actually where I have worked in the past, and now, I just add a couple of keywords extra there.

The final two places are your summary–so this is the main body of your presentation–and again, Andrew, you definitely could work on your body. You look at your summary here, and obviously you have not done anything with this, so I am not trying to bring you down or something here.

Andrew: You are just now showing me that? Let me see mine. Is mine on your screen? There it is; it is on mine. What do I have for the summary? Nothing. Do I?

Lewis: You have, “I am an internet entrepreneur. I sold my last company in 2003.” Again, for the summary, you want to follow this same format: who you are, who you help, and how you help them. You see on my profile, I have a headline. Again, I have the second type of structure you can have on a LinkedIn profile because I have a number of different companies, so I tell people who I am, who I help, and how I help them with a different little structure.

What I would do, if I were you, Andrew, I would start off the headline, “This is who I am, or this is what people have been saying.” “This is who I am,” literally type that right here. I will pull this up a little bit more so you can see. Type in, “This is who I am,” or “What I am all about,” something like that. Then have a brief paragraph about who you are–maybe a little bit about your passion–get behind the scenes a little bit. You can get really personal here. It does not have to be completely professional, like a resume. You can get a little bit personal, because people want to connect with those that they are interested in.

Then you type into the second headline–you break it up with formatting–type in the second headline, “This is who I help,” if you have one specific business. If you have a few businesses, like me, I would headline with the sports business, so it is a little different. Then I talk about that with another paragraph.

Then the final paragraph can say, “This is how I help you.” You could have another paragraph after that about how you can help, but you have to make sure you have a call to action. You can see I have my websites in here. I tell people to head over to my websites to get a free report–things like that.

Andrew: Let me take a look at that. That is going to take a moment to pop up on our screens. You are right there already starting to say, “You can check out my website, give me your email address, and get something in return for that.”

Lewis: Yes.

Andrew: You are already doing some lead gen.

Lewis: You need to have calls to action throughout your profile, definitely.

Andrew: All right. There it is. I see “Magneticwebinars.com for our free report,” boom.

Lewis: Yes.

Andrew: OK. Great.

Lewis: That is summary structure, but also if you notice in here, I have the keyword “sports” a number of times throughout my summary, so I am optimizing for my keyword as well. You can just type it in a few different times. You do not have to have it in there a bunch of times. You can try just putting it in there one or two times, and then going back up to the search result, seeing if you are ranking. Now, I encourage everyone, while you are watching this, to just edit your profile while I am talking about this, because you will see instant results when you make these changes.

Andrew: Really? This is instant? If you are doing it, you are going to start to see the results? You are going to start to see yourself rank higher?

Lewis: Exactly. You can literally edit these five places–and the last place is the “Specialties” section, and we can see right here, I have “sports” highlighted here three different times. You can literally edit these five places. Take five minutes for you to edit these five places right now: your
headline, current and past work experience, summary, and specialties. After you edit and save your profile, all you need to do is go back to the top right here, to the “People Search” box–and I will give it a second for it to refresh.

Andrew: Thank you.

Lewis: Type in your keyword again. You need to have the exact same keywords in each of the five places. If you try to mix it up, it is not going to work the first time. Type in your keyword again, as you had done before, in those five places, and then type it up here in the “People Search” box. Click “Enter,” and then you will see on the next page where you are ranking. Some people, right away, they are in the top five spots. Some people are down towards the bottom, the top ten spots, and that is OK. You just want to see if you are on the first page. Once you are, if you are not in the first spot, then you can optimize it with more keywords to rank higher. Here is the trick. This is the secret. This is very easy. Basically, you need to have more key words than the people above you. Do you know what I mean?

Andrew: Yeah.

Lewis: So, it’s the most simple SEO there is. It’s like Google, day one. You’ll just have more keywords on your page, and you’ll rank number one.

Andrew: At one point you were able to do this stuff with Google and now it’s harder and harder. I was going to say that it feels like a temporary solution or it will be a while before they get more sophisticated and others start to realize the power of Linked In and get competitive. We might as well jump in now while it’s still easy. I’m going to bring up the five areas you want us to look at. I’m just going to pull up a notepad and there it is. “Headline, current work experience, past work experience, summary, and specialties”, that’s where you want us to put the key words. What’s next?

Lewis: So, that’s how you optimize your profile for SEO, and by doing that we’ll hopefully rank up at the top. What was the next thing that you wanted me to cover now?

Andrew: Let’s talk about how to build and leverage Linked In groups. I’ve seen people use groups. To be honest with you, I’m not exactly sure what the point of groups are on Linked In. Why wouldn’t I just set up a group somewhere else? Why would I want to be part of a group here? What are we looking at here?

Lewis: I want to talk about two things here; one is how to leverage other people’s Linked In groups, so not creating your own, how to leverage others to drive traffic and get leads for free. The second thing is how to really create your own so you can have complete control and be the number one expert in your industry by beating out the other groups. Let’s talk about first of leveraging other Linked In groups.

Andrew: The benefit of doing this is what? Just to be a part of groups? Just to be a part of conversations? If I can’t get business out of it, I have to be honest, maybe it seems a little cruel, but, I don’t want to be a part of it. I’ve got enough people that I could be friends on Facebook, and, frankly, I don’t even want that. I want business or nothing. I hate to sound like a philistine, but I don’t want anything else.

Lewis: I feel you. So, the main thing you want then, Andrew, is more traffic so you can generate more opt-ins for your e-mail list and get more people to sign up for your master classes and buy your products and things like that. Correct?

Andrew: Yes.

Lewis: OK. So, most people, they want leads, traffic, or sales. They want some traffic to their sites or conversions. So, let’s look at this really quick. This is BusinessInsider.com. They posted an article back in May of this year. They said, “Suddenly, Linked In is a traffic fire hose. Now, I’ve been driving traffic using Linked In for the last couple years, but back in May Linked In came out with something new, a new product that started driving a lot of traffic to a lot of sites.” I’ll show you what they’re doing and why you need to leverage Linked In groups to do this. They’re getting around 10,000 visits a month for a year, and all of the sudden, in March, April, and May it went up to around 100,000 and it continues to go off the charts up here. So, why did this happen all of the sudden for Business Insider and a lot of other sites that learned how to leverage LinkedIn’s drive traffic? Let’s show you really quickly.

Andrew: I would love for that to happen to our reader and our listener right now. OK. Yes. Now you’ve got my attention.

Lewis: So, when I go to the home page there’s two things that you see at the top, the two main focuses. One is sharing an update right here. You can see sharing an update. This is just like your status on Facebook or on twitter, and then two is Linked In Today. This is their latest product that I was talking about, which is basically the top sites, top articles of the day around the Web for your industry. So, I’ve got social media, marketing, and marketing & business as the key words that I optimize for that I want to get articles from, so I’m always seeing these headlines with these graphics from different sites.

Here’s why these sites are getting up here. They’re getting up here because they’re being shared the most through Linked In. Now, what does that mean for you? That means that people are either clicking on the share button to their Linked In wall or their sharing it to Linked In groups. So, I’m going to show you an example of how to do this in just about 30 seconds a day to ensure that you’re sharing a lot of traffic back to Linked In groups from your site so that you can optimize and get on the top of these Linked In Today headlines. You can also go here, I’ll show you this really quickly, because I go in here and search this every day. This is the new site that I go to. You can see all the top headlines. You can see business insider had one today that had 450 for shares. Now, that’s a lot of shares and a lot of people may not be able to get that. However, when you scroll down there are a lot of them down here that normally I see have 50 shares or 70 shares or something like that. Here’s my good friend, Michael [Stellsner] from Social Media Examiner, 777 shares he got so he’s up on here, 223 shares etc., etc. Here’s 80 shares down here. If you can get a lot of shares on here you can generate a lot more traffic. They want to send you traffic because they want people to share content so more people come back to the site.

Let’s show you a quick example of how to do this. I’m just going to grab a link from my site to show you an example of how I do this with my personal site. I’m just going to grab this specific link, I’m going to copy and paste this link and then I’m going to put it right here in the status box and I’ll take a second to let this load.

Andrew: So you grab the link, the link form an individual post and you’re putting it in there. OK.

Lewis: Yeah. You do mixergy.com/the newest post of the day, you’d attach that link you put it right here. I’m just going to attach this, assuming this is pretty intuitive for a lot of people, I’m gong to copy and paste the headline just to make this really quick for everyone. I will share it out to Twitter, as well as to my sports and Twitter handle. I’m going to drive my traffic by doing that, but I’m also going to click the share buttons. Now, here’s the important part, I’m going to click the share button, right here and this is going to go out to almost 15,000 people that I’m directly connected to on LinkedIn.

Andrew: These are the people who linked directly to you, 1,500 of them. All these people who we said earlier you should accept, accept, accept you did that 1,500 times so now you have 1,500 people. OK. What’s next?

Lewis: Right. I have 15,000.

Andrew: 15,000? Woe, 15,000 people are directly connected to you?

Lewis: Right here, well, 14,852 after I update the 53 that are just adding me right now, I’ll be close to 15,000 so that’s direct connections and here’s the important thing, what I was talking about earlier, this is direct contacts that links me to 21 million plus professionals. So, every time I connect with someone new, this number grows. This is the most important number, the 21 million. If you have around 100 to 500 connections, direct connections, this number is probably in the one million to seven million range depending on who you’re connected to and who they’re connected to.

That means right now only 21 million plus people can find me when they search different key words through our connections and they can contact me. If you have less connections than this then you’re only going to have a couple million people to find you. That’s the importance of that. That goes out to 15,000 people on the wall, just like it would on Twitter and Face Book or something like that, OK. So, this is instant. You see it on my wall right here, you see a little picture, etc., etc., I can “Like” this I can leave a comment on it to get the conversation going to keep it threaded at the top of the conversation like Face Book; however, this is the most important step so everyone needs to make sure that they write this down or just take action on this if you’re doing it right now.

This little tiny button that says “Share” and it’s really hard to see but you want to click on this button right here and this is the most important part for leveraging Linkedin groups to drive more traffic. When I go here there is this little light box that hoovers on your screen. You want to click on this little box right here that says, “Post to Groups,” this little box right here that says, “Post to Groups.”

Andrew: I see it.

Lewis: Now, when I go here I can just start typing in the groups that I’ve joined. I probably should of talked about this first and I’ll go back in a second and show you this, but in your industry you want to do research of groups out there. I’ll go back in about a second and show you what I’m talking about here, but I’ve already joined a lot of groups in my niche. I’ve got a sports site, so I’m driving traffic, I want to drive traffic to all the sports groups that I’m a member of, so if I just start typing in the name of the group and see all these different sports groups that are out there that I’m a member of, I’m just going to do this really quickly just for an example and I’m going to connect with a few of these to put in here, I’ll show you what this is going to do. I’m just going to add about five or six of these. These are all groups that I’m a member of and . . . this is around 50,000 members these groups.

Andrew: How can you tell how many members there are? Do you just know?

Lewis: You can go to the group and see the number count and I’ll show that in a second as well. This is roughly 150,000 people. What I’m going to do is type in, just going to, I want to type in right there, you can leave out subject details if you want to do that or you can just click the share button. After I do this and I click the share button, right here, this is now going out to around 150,000 very targeted business professionals in the sports industry. This is going out to the Linked-in groups that they’re all a member of, I’ll show you real time what this looks like. Let’s click on the sports industry network, which is my group, let’s see if it shows up there right now. It’s going to be sent out to all of these groups, you’re distributing this content. See right here, 16 seconds a go and it may take a second to load, 16 seconds ago my article just put up here at the top of my group. This has over 50,000 members and it went out to the other 50,000 people in the other groups as well. Now that’s step one. I just shared this . . .

Andrew: Let’s hold off for a second and just take a look at that. It was, where do you see, I’m sorry I feel like I just interrupted you, but where do you see the posting that you just put up there?

Lewis: Right here . . .

Andrew: Oh, right here, I see the post now. How do you know how many people it went too?

Lewis: So, you know how many people it goes to, you can go to the group profile.

Andrew: I see. OK. I thought maybe there was a counter here that I missed. So you know because you know the specific groups that you posted to and you already looked at how many members each one of those groups has, got it.

Lewis: Exactly. Te more times I share this to my wall, the more people will share it from my site to LinkedIn, the more it’s going to show up on the news feed and you’re able to drive more traffic back to it. It’s in these groups people can leave conversations, let’s just show you a quick example. Here’s a popular conversation from the group, this one has 1,255 comments, lots of “Likes” this one has 29 comments so people are driving traffic just be interacting in these LinkedIn groups. This group isn’t even that big compared to some groups that I’m LinkedIn. This only has 60,000 members. Some groups have 400,000 plus members. It’s like it’s own social networking site in a social networking site.

Andrew: I see. Yeah.

Lewis: Let me step back really quick because let’s say you want to first do research of groups you want to join before you can start sending out messages like this to groups. You want to find groups and join groups that your audience is hanging out. If you’re real estate you might not want to join a real estate agents group necessarily, you would want to join the young professionals network of Columbus, Ohio. Or the alumni of Ohio state university. Things like that where people will be the home buyers. You want to find your audience . . .

Andrew: Not your peers but your audience.

Lewis: Do a search for, yeah. Say you’re looking for job seekers, right, you just type in jobs, this is one brief example there are 17,000 results for the keyword jobs in groups. This group has 540,000 members. This group has 300,000 members. It goes on and on and on, if this was the type of niche you were trying to attract. What you would do is you would join all these groups where all these job seekers . Then you’d share your link to all of them at the same time from your home feed, to drive that link back to all these groups, to drive traffic back to your sites. Also get ranks in the LinkedIn share feature and news feature. That’s how you leverage other people’s links to linked groups, step one.

Andrew: Let me ask you something that, tell me if this is evil in this network, but can I have my assistant do this? My assistants just go in, can my listener take this video hand it off to an intern and say here’s my account, go and sign me up to every group related to these topics and share today’s post with everyone of those groups?

Lewis: Yeah. I encourage that. For me personally, I’m in here a lot because it’s my business. I’m educating people on LinkedIn so I spend a lot of time on here and I’m answering all these questions that people send me, but for pretty much everyone else, you can answer the questions you want to, if they’re specific to you. You can have an assistant [??] everyone and send them a [canned] email [??] message. You should have an assistant definitely adding a link every day from your posts to all these groups with a status update and things like that and sharing it out and distributing for you. You should have someone doing all this if you have an assistant.

Andrew: I love it. I know that a lot of people that watch this aren’t going to be doing every single thing that we teach them in every single course. I know what they like to do is say, here’s the video, go and do this for me and let’s see if Lewis and Andrew actually have something here. I like that this is something that they can pass on to others, but that they might want to, in the early days, experience it on their own. This is by the way, Lewis, this is freaking phenomenal I understand why people get so excited after they listen to you. What you usually like to do, you said, Andrew why isn’t there a live audience right now, I want them to do this in real time so they can see the results.’ Now, I totally get it. OK. So I was interrupting you and you were going to take us to the next step or do you want to go to the next tactic?

Lewis: Next thing is creating your own group hopefully that’s not [??] but so I’m just going to show you the power of your own group first. This is one of my groups. I have ten groups. You can only have up to ten groups. You can only be a member of 50 groups so keep that in consideration. As the owner of the group you have so much power than you do just as a member of another group and ridiculous how powerful these groups can really be. You guys saw from the beginning by promoting to LinkedIn groups, I was getting thousands of people opting in for webinars. That’s the way I use my sales funnel. I’ll get them on a free webinar.

I share with the best content they’re ever going to receive on the topic of [??] sharing or I bring on an expert to share that topic. Then, I offer a product or service or software at the end. That’s how I sell. It converts better than any other way I know of. As for me, the owner of the group, every time someone joins, they see my name as the owner, Lewis Howes. This is the largest forged group out there. It automatically puts the conception that I’m an expert or that I know people in the industry or something like that.

When people join, they are joining the group and then connect with me afterwards, personally, because I’m the leader of the tribe or community. Even if I don’t have a job in the industry or I don’t work in the industry, the perception is, I’m still an expert. My website is the website that is on the Google profile. This gets a lot of organic traffic for me every day. As you can see, there are almost 51,000 members.

It is growing close to 75 to 100 members a autopilot, without me doing anything because of the viral nature of a LinkedIn group signup process. Every time someone signs up they share it automatically with their friends, like attracts like, more people follow-up, you guys get the picture.

There are a couple of things I want to talk about. Two things on why you want to leverage. Why you want to create your own LinkedIn group, right now and the power that comes with this.

First, the title of your LinkedIn group. You want do some keyword research on this first. You can use the Google keyword research tool. Think about what people are searching for in your niche or in your industry. Why is this important? When I just do a copy & paste, type in sports industry network in Google. You can see this is the number one search result that shows up, for me anyways, it was my group.

It’s getting a lot of search results. I could probably make this sports network or something else but I’ve had this for awhile, this name. I’m getting leads from Google from people just searching for this. That’s number one.

Andrew: I see.

Lewis: You don’t want to make this your company name. You wouldn’t want to make this ‘Mixergy.com’, the title of your group. That’s not what you would want to do. You would want to make this . . .

Andrew: Start-ups and Founders network.

Lewis: Yes. Or the entrepreneurs and start-ups or whatever it may be.

Andrew: Right.

Lewis: Something like that. Where whatever people are searching for on Google, we want to optimize for that.

Andrew: Of course. LinkedIn has good Google [juice]. They’re going to show up towards the top.

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: Now, you get to benefit from it.

Lewis: Right. Exactly. There are two things I want to show you once you create your own LinkedIn group. I can’t go over it step-by-step how to optimize and create your LinkedIn group. All you need to do is click on ‘create a group’ and go through the process. First thing you want to think about is your title. That’s the most important.

There are two other things on how to leverage it. I could go on with this for about three hours about LinkedIn and [creating the group, alone]. The two most important things besides your title is in the ‘Manage tab’. Once you get to LinkedIn groups, when you have your own group, you’ll have this little tab that says ‘Manage’.

If you’re just a member of other groups, you won’t see this but when you own a group, you’ll see this little thing called manage. When you go to that, you’ll see on the sidebar, all these different options. A lot of things you can do to leverage your group, to generate more leads, topic and sales. I’m going to cover two of them.

Number one is the template section. Right here, I’m circling over it right now, it says ‘templates’. I’m going to click on this and show you how to leverage generating automated traffic and weaves using the templates in your own LinkedIn group. There are four different templates you can create. For now, we are going to focus on the ‘Welcome’ message. This is the most important thing you need.

I’m going to edit this, to show you really quickly. Hopefully, you guys can setup your own groups own the [??] go and do this either right now or after this training. When you create a ‘welcome’ message, this is important. I don’t know about you, Andrew but I really like getting traffic in my sleep, getting people opting-in, whenever I’m hanging out on the town or doing whatever I want to do. It’s easy when it’s done on autopilot.

So on the subject line of your ‘welcome’ message and this is a ‘welcome’ message on an email response. It is sent out to someone every time they join your LinkedIn group. There are going to be 75 to 100 a day joining this group. There is this message that comes from Sports Industry Network to their actual email inbox, or Gmail or hotmail or whatever it may be. A message that says, ‘Thanks for joining the Sports Network’.

In the first sentence I say, ‘If you haven’t already, make sure to signup for the weekly specials and updates at sportsnetwork.com/newsletter.’ I’m sure you know what that means, Andrew. I’m sending them right to a squeeze page to have them opt-in from my weekly newsletter. I’m getting them on list twice, once on LinkedIn and once on my email marketing (inaudible). Now 50 thousand people on a LinkedIn group that would be around $300 a month I think in email marking fees, depending on the provider you use so I’m saving money and am able to market my products and services just by having LinkedIn groups because they [inaudible].

Andrew:
And you’re allowed to email the members of these groups?

Lewis: Once a week they allow you to do it, once every seven days.

Andrew:
If you want to do more than once a week that’s a little excessive anyways so I see that.

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: That makes sense.

Lewis: Right, so they won’t let you (inaudible) cut you off and they give you like a countdown timer basically when you can (inaudible) them next but here you get them on your email newsletter list then [mesh] them as many times as you want and also I send them to my sales page, my associations, I’m getting people to sign up just on auto-pilot for my monthly membership site. I’m sending them to my Facebook fan page, my Twitter page, etc., etc., and even my sales funnel so they can follow me everywhere I am on the web so that’s step one. Set up a welcome message (inaudible) so you can get more traffic, leads, and sales on auto-pilot to your products and services.

The second thing is just where you can just send an announcement, a onetime announcement a week and that’s on the send an announcement tab right here on the left-hand side of the manage. We’ll send the announcement, click on that, it looks pretty much exactly the same but you can edit this subject line, you can just say whatever you want, latest update, whatever you want to say.

Obviously you want to have a compelling headline because this gets sent to the actual email inbox again. Not up here, this doesn’t get sent to the inbox on LinkedIn, like a Facebook update would do, this gets sent to your email. Your email address, it’s 100 percent deliverability it becomes, it comes from LinkedIn unless you decided to opt out of it, its 100 percent deliverability.

You can again add … this is what I do right here, this is how I generate all these leads, this one thing and it’s my opinion that this is the best resource on all social networking sites. It’s the best thing you can use on an social networking site, it’s your own LinkedIn group because if I can send announcement with just a link on here to go to webinar, my webinar provider and I send it out there obviously I would add some copy and some compelling calls to action but you add your own link in there and you send it out, you’re going to get a lot of people driving, opting in to your webinars or to your sales pages or where ever you want to drive them to, it’s ridicules and I built . . .

Andrew: I see so if we were, if we were selling something we could say, ‘Hey I’ve got a discount on this thing that you signed up to find out about or something that’s related to the group that you signed up for, click here and go buy it.’

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: You have a smarter sales process where you don’t send people directly to sales page. You say first they want to get to know what the products about and then after I’ve talked to them and showed it to them and given them a lot of value then I’m going to sell them and so you send them to a webinar but this . . .

Lewis: Right

Andrew: Is the email that you used to send out and get the number of leads that you showed us earlier today?

Lewis: Yes and I do something else that takes you to a whole other level. That actual email that I showed you in the beginning, that wasn’t from any of my LinkedIn groups. That was from another group owner that I had become friends with. I have built up relationships with lots of different groups on this and I said, ‘you know what, let’s do a webinar together where I’ll share your, I’ll share some of my social media marketing in LinkedIn contents to your group audience, which is specially targeted to your audience and help them to achieve their goals.

We’ll do a free webinar, I’ll give them the best content they’ll ever receive in their life on this topic period and then at the end I’ll offer my product which will be 10 to 100 times value of what the price is and let’s see how it goes. So he’s promoted a number of webinars and that was from another LinkedIn group owner. It wasn’t even in my own LinkedIn group and I got almost $8,000.

When you can do joint ventures with people like that or group owners, you can search through groups where people will . . . say you wanted to find someone, you had a marketing product and you just type in marketing groups and see what groups there are. See there are 32,000 search results that have the keyword marketing in their groups and there’s a key marketing association with 350 thousand members.

So I would just hit up the group owner which says their name right here, Robert Fleming, and I say, ‘Hey Robert, I know you’ve got a great group of marketing professionals and I’ve got this amazing training that teaches them how to get more leads using social media, absolutely for free. I would love to do a free webinar with you and give them the best training they’ll ever receive, make you the champion of your group and then make you money on the back end by the sales we get by giving you information. What do you say? Also by the way I’m a LinkedIn owner and I’ve done this myself a number of times, here’s the results.’

No one, none of these LinkedIn group owners know how to market, they don’t understand so if you can do this for them you’re able to leverage so many more opportunities for yourself, for you business, your services and generating more leads, more options, more sales than you can even deal with. And this is how I’ve been able to go from basically, you know my sister’s couch to doing over a million and a half in sales this year, by just leveraging LinkedIn groups and the LinkedIn platform, it’s that powerful. I don’t know if you can really appreciate this right now, but I get pretty passionate and excited about this ’cause it’s amazing what you can do [overlapping conversation]

Andrew: I do to, because you know what? I didn’t sign up for a business network to chat. I didn’t sign up to a business network to do manicuring all day long of my profile for no good reason, of accepting people who want to friend me for no good reason. I signed up to do business. And I haven’t known how to do business on this site. I’m not looking for a job, I’m not looking to hire someone this way.

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: So, I haven’t seen the value. OK.

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: So, you saw that I came in here, like demanding. Was it a little annoying that I was so demanding?

Lewis: Demanding, no.

Andrew: Good. I said, Luis, I’ve got to make sure that this gives my audience practical business use. I want those emails, Luis, I love when people watch one of these courses and then they fire off an email and say, I couldn’t even finish watching the course. I had to try this, and here’s the result. I love that.

Lewis: Yes.

Andrew: Guys, if you’re watching this, forget that you’re a premium member. I appreciate that a lot. The way that I really get satisfaction is not just from having you sign up, but from having you try this and email me back and say, Andrew, I used what Luis taught me. Here’s what I did. Here’s the link. I’d love to see that. And I know that Luis would, too.

Lewis: Right.

Andrew: What else? Do we have anything else on this?

Lewis: I apologize if I’m like going into too much detail here. There’s so much you can leverage.

Andrew: Too much detail? I love it.

Lewis: There’s so much you can leverage, I’m kinda just like, we’re probably already going over our time limit, so.

Andrew: We are, that’s fine. Guys, pause, come back, or give up something in your life, maybe you don’t have dinner tonight. This is more nourishing, I believe, than dinner.

Lewis: Yeah.

Andrew: I feel, when the stuff is good, I feel excited. This is what I came here to do. I didn’t start Mixergy just to hang out, either. And my audience should demand from me what I’m asking from you and what I demand from all these business tools that we’re introducing them to. OK, anything else on this topic, or should I move on to our final topic?

Lewis: I mean, there’s lots I could cover here, but if they focus on those couple core things, that’s a good start.

Andrew: OK. Actually, you know what, let me ask you one other thing, from the final topic. I’ve got a note here to ask you about driving traffic from the WordPress app. What’s the WordPress app?

Lewis: So, you mind if I go in and talk just a little about advanced applications in general?

Andrew: I’d love it. Yes, in fact, that’s my whole next topic, but if… I felt like maybe like you had to go since we went over time.

Lewis: I’m happy to stay as long as you want.

Andrew: OK. Good. All right. Advanced. OK, good, good.

Lewis: I didn’t know if you were cutting me off, eventually. So, I’m happy to stay until…

Andrew: No, no, no. I am telling you, I will give up dinner, and if my audience can’t give up dinner or figure out the pause button to come back to this, they don’t deserve to be in here, you know? You’ve got to commit a little bit more then just paying to be a member of Mixergy. I want you to use this stuff. And when I’ve got someone who actually is delivering the goods, I’m going to hold onto for as long as possible. So, yes. Next topic, topic number four, tactic number four is using advanced applications and enhancing your profile to get more traffic and leads. That’s what David Saint wrote here. Take it away, what do we do?

Lewis: All right. OK, so again, this is the main navigation feature on the top left of your profile. You see all these different tabs? Right here is a little more tab, so I’ll hover over here for a second so hopefully showing you guys profile.

Andrew: It’s up there.

Lewis: And there’s something, if we have time towards the end, I want to talk about answers, but you want to click on, right now, get more applications. So hopefully, you guys have your screen up and you’re watching this presentation but you also have your LinkedIn profile up and you’re taking action as we go. So kind of have this split screen so you can see this. If you click on get more applications, this is the applications directory on LinkedIn, and they’ve added some new ones since they started having applications and I’m assuming they’re going to start adding more eventually, although they haven’t added any in a couple months. But this is to help you really put your profile on steroids. You don’t want to think of your LinkedIn profile as a resume. You really just want to think of it as a professional profile online, that allows you to attract more leads and customers, OK? And for most people, again, kind of going back to the beginning of this presentation, for most people, your LinkedIn profile is one of the top five things, usually, that shows up when you Google yourself. So let’s just do a quick example. I’m just going to type in my name and hopefully I’m right and it’s one of the top five. So, right here, it’s the fourth result on Google, for me. For some people, it may be more or less, depending on how many articles you have, how many sites you have online, things like that. So, right now, it’s the fourth thing. You want to make sure you have a rock-solid looking LinkedIn profile or else the perception of you is not just going to be as good. And so we go back to this — applications. You want to enhance your profile applications. That makes sense to your goals. And if you are not a lawyer, then you don’t want to put the lawyer ratings on here. But if you are a lawyer, you want to put that on there.

I want to talk about three core apps — three or four core apps — that pretty much anyone could use in their site that I think we should really use to leverage.

One is the Word Press app. That’s what Andrew talked about first. I want you to scroll down. You can scroll down on your page here. You click on the app for all three, and you simply just click on it and it asks you to upload it to your feelings (ph) and profile on the next page. I’m not going to be able to do that. You just want to click through here and add this. I’ll show you what this does in a second. I want to talk about the apps you want to download first.

So download the Word Press app. Everyone should download the Slide Share presentation. And again, if you are a graphic designer, then you could put on the creative portfolio display and you could show your own work, your logo, as things like that. Again, so everyone should have the Slide Share. Everyone is to add the Word Press app.

If you are an author, you want to add the Reading List by Amazon, because you are going to have a picture of your book and sell books right then and there on your profile. And the next thing that you guys want to add is the – this Border application right here.

So Word Press, Twitter, and Slide Share are the three core ones that everyone needs to add. And even if you are doing events, then you want to put the Events one on top of that set.

Let’s go to My Profile and show you the power of this. So you’ve got the Word Press, Twitter, and Slide Share — all the main ones. So I go to My Profile. I want to show you guys this for a second. You come here to My Profile, and you click on it. And you are reading the headline. You might be reading some of this other stuff. And then all of a sudden — hopefully this works for – Bob.

[Audio in background]

You see – you hear this audio. And this audio is a testimonial from a client and a friend of mine named Jim Cuperal [SP]. This is, like, a couple of years old, actually. It’s a testimonial. I’m at a live LinkedIn networking event that I was hosting. There was 500 people at this event. And he came and got, like, three new clients for me. So he’s giving a testimonial about how, you know, I’m the man on LinkedIn or wherever it is.

Everyone needs to have a video on their profile in my opinion. And you can have one of two – one or two types of videos. One would be a testimonial, or two would be a personal video.

Now imagine this, Andrew. Imagine you go to someone’s profile, and all of a sudden you hear a voice. So imagine you come to my profile, and you hear a voice that says, “You are reading my profile.” And then all of a sudden you hear a voice of me saying, “Hey, thanks so much for checking out my LinkedIn profile. My name is Louis Howes [assumed spelling]. Go ahead and scroll down this page really quick, because I want to tell to you a little bit about who I am, who I help, and how I can help you specifically right now.”

And then I go into my spiel about, you know, I help people with LinkedIn, get more leads, track some sales. And I kind of go into this pitch. And at the end I give a call to action that says, “You know what? If you think that you could really use help in this, of this area that I’m – work with, it’s – just for you to give me a call right now. My number is on the screen right here, you know, or e-mail me or – at louishowes@gmail.com (or whatever it may be). E-mail me because I’m happy to help you out and get your answers – your questions answered right away.”

Imagine what you would do, and if you went to someone’s profile and it had something like that. It’d be so much different than every other profile you have ever seen. And it almost – you would want to respond to that person just because it was so different and was so compelling and so engaging and interesting — things like that.

So this is with Slide Share. It’s that . . .

Andrew: By the way you give out your phone number on your site? What happens when people call it?

Lewis: Well if you want them to call you, then you can have that…

Andrew: I see. Okay.

Lewis: … and you can – yeah. You don’t have to. And when some people have a business where they want people to call them, if they could get inbound calls and generate sales that way as opposed to doing outbound calls or having to do some other type of marketing, then a lot of people, that’s how…

Andrew: Got it. I thought Lewis Howes suddenly has his phone number out on the Internet for all these people to call. No. Okay, great.

Lewis: No. No, no, no. I don’t want that, obviously. But for people who do consultingand things like that, they may want to have – if you are a real estate agent and you want someone calling you saying, “What are the homes available?” You know, things like that. So it all depends on what you want, what your goal is. In fact – I mean, what’s your goal? If you want them to go to a Web site, you can tell them to do that. If you want them to opt in, if he wants you to send a free report, do that.

But you want to have a video either of you or a testimonial, because it’s really going to differentiate and put your profile basically on steroids. And you do this with Slide Share. And again — and it’ll probably take me about 20 minutes to show you step by step, so I’m just going to give you the overview of how to do this — once you download this application on your profile, you need to add a – it’ll ask you to upload a presentation, basically, like a keynote or a PowerPoint presentation basically like keynote or PowerPoint presentation to the Slideshare app so you can show on your profile. You can see here I’ve got a little. I have one slide in there that you can see for a second that is a slide that I uploaded. What you can do, you can add a YouTube link to the slide that actually plays before the presentation on your Slideshare. This may sound a little confusing. You upload a presentation, it can be one slide or a 100 slides, whatever you want it to be and then you add the YouTube link before hand so it auto-plays every time someone goes there. If you don’t put it before the presentation, it won’t automatically play when people land on your profile. You do that at slideshare.net. You upload your presentation to see that option there.

Andrew: Got it.

Lewis: So that’s that. Look over at the WordPress app. So this is what it looks like on my profile. Scroll down and you’ll see the WordPress app. This is on my sports site. So I want to drive more traffic back to my sports site. By having this application it’s just an auto-feed of the most recent articles from my site. You click on it, it takes you right to that article. So it’s driving traffic back to my site. That’s what I want people to do. I want them to drive traffic back to my site.

Andrew: And that’s just installing the plugin and giving it the right URL, the right RSS feeds so that it can do it.

Lewis: Yeah that’s all you gotta do.

Andrew: OK. That’s easy enough.

Lewis: Put in the link when you have it, and it automatically populates. You can drag these down, you can move these up and down, put them wherever you want on your profile. Again, if you’re an author, I’m not sure if you have a book on Amazon or not, Andrew, but you should if you don’t. You can see right here, you can see my LinkedIn book. I get people clicking and buying this right here. They can go to the next page right in Amazon and buy it and they’ll send me a message saying, ‘Hey I just went to your profile, saw you wrote this LinkedIn book and just bought it.’ So I’m assuming a lot of people are buying it right from this and seeing it there. I’m just generating sales on auto-pilot from that.

Andrew: I see.

Lewis: Another thing I talked about was the Twitter application. So this isn’t like a big app that shows up like the others. Right below your website links, right here on my profile here is Twitter and I’ve got both my twitter feeds, my sports on and my personal one, and people can click on those to follow me, things like that.

Andrew: Where you have that. Oh I see Twitter. You’ve got your Sports Networker and Lewis Howes.

Lewis: Yep right here.

Andrew: OK. I’m going through my notes that David gave me for the session started here today. “Driving Traffic with the WordPress App,” we covered that. “Selling Books with the Amazon App,” we covered that. “Adding an Auto-Playing Video Testimonial with Slideshare App,” we talked about that. And next item on the list “Getting 300 to 500 People to Pay for Tickets to your Live Event with the Events App.”

Lewis: This is going to be specific, you know this may not be for everyone on this presentation who’s watching or listening, but some of you may run tele-seminars, virtual summits, webinars, or you may be running live events, conferences, tradeshows, things like that. So I’ll cover this briefly. When you go to your home tab, when you’re just at the homepage. There’s a place where you can see events. It’s kind of hard to find this, but on my profile it’s down towards the middle, the bottom of the homepage

Andrew: Let’s give it a moment to load up.

Lewis: OK.

Andrew: I see you’re still on the home page. Oh I see the events tab, it’s right there.

Lewis: So it may be in a different place for other people. So just search on the home tab. Right when you go to your home profile section you see it on the right side in the tabs. What you want to do is click on anything here. I’m going to show you an example. It takes me to the events section on LinkedIn. Sometimes this is kind of buggy for whatever reason. Hopefully this doesn’t take very long. There we go. There’s a whole events section on LinkedIn where you can see the events that are happening online, offline, events that friends have posted. Events that are happening on LinkedIn, whatever it may be. I’m just going to give an example of my past events. Show you this to give you proof how powerful this is. When I click on my past events right here, this is just my events tab, no need to worry about where I’m going right now it’s just my section. So here’s a number of the events I’ve hosted. I haven’t done one in over a year. I just want to show you an example really quick of an event I did in I think Cleveland, Ohio. Here we go. This is a past event that I hosted back in August of 2009, so almost two years ago, I guess it was over two years ago now. Here’s what this looks like, I’ll give it a second to load up. You can create events and you put in the information, just very basic, when it starts, when it ends, location, a website link, different key words, things like that. What you can do is, after you create your own events, it gives you this link right here, that you can promote it to. What I did, was that I had a business networking group that I created in Cleveland and a bunch of other groups in different cities around the country. But what I did was I have this link, right here, I’d copy and paste this. I’d go to my Cleveland business group and I would send them the link. I did this a couple of times before the event started. If you click on, right here R.S.V.P., I’ll just show you what this looks like. By doing this, I had over a thousand people register for a live three to four hour business networking event. All these people paid, I can’t remember what this event was, they either paid five or ten dollars to pay to get in and when they register or R.S.V.P, they can see whose attending, their name, their picture, how you connect with them. Everyone else can see this as well. So it shows this amazing intial proof of how their connected to people in the business their in and it just shows all these people that you might want to connect with as well. So, every time people R.S.V.P., they get notified, it just spreads. In my opinion, I haven’t found another events marketing sites, like Event Bride, or anything else, that allows you to share information through Facebook events, this is like the best kept secret on LinkedIn and if your an event promoter because you can get so many people to R.S.V.P. for your events. The viral nature of it, spreads out to all their friends for you, in the local markets, it’s ridiculous. So for me, you know, say we were to get a thousand people, and this is in the first year after I’d gone on LinkedIn.

Andrew: Wow.

Lewis: And again, I don’t have business experience, I wasn’t like, I didn’t have an MBA, or anything like that. I just said I’m going to promote this to my group a couple of times, with a link, and I made a few grand that night, just in cash, just at the door. Then I had, I guess, some savvy, to you know what, beforehand, the manager of the bar or restaurant or whatever it was, I wanted a 10% cut of all food and bar sales. I also got five sponsors to pay me $1500 each just to have a table. So I was leveraged into this in other ways, but if you just want people to show up to your events, use this. I mean, look at this right here, there’s 47 comments, you can see all the people leaving comments here. It’s very social, very viral and it’s just an amazing way to get people to come to your live events or your virtual events. You can do this with webinars, teleseminars, anything else you want, but do it. You can promote it to your e-mail list. Promote it to other social networks by using this link you can mark it to other groups.

Andrew: And then it just takes off from there because it’s connected to your attendee social network, of course, LinkedIn being that powerful social network and their friends find out about the event and come. Let me ask you this, first of all, let’s go back to your website while I ask you the last two questions, we don’t even need to walk people through this, through these answers, but I want them to see your website as you answer them. So do you have your, maybe the home page. I feel so bad for you when I see that, I’m looking right now at the YouTube video, what a shot man.

Lewis: You should watch it, it’s funny, I’m really high on morphine, it’s hilarious.

Andrew: I’m very squeamish, even now as you actually did the thing with the arm to show how you broke it, I couldn’t, I felt it in my arm. OK, I’ve got two questions here that I wanted to follow-up on before we end here, and then some advice for the audience. So, the first question is, if you aren’t Lewis Howells, or even Andrew Warner, and people aren’t friending you, how do you get more connections on LinkedIn to power the rest of what you taught us here today?

Lewis: The easiest way to get more connections is to literally, and I’ll have to go back and show you this really quickly.

Andrew: OK.

Lewis: But when you click on your profile, you click on the contacts tab right here, on this contacts tab. This is where, one, you export your connections and add connections. Hopefully this is going to load pretty quick. OK, so at the bottom here, you can see this button, I’m circling it a couple of times, hopefully it will load fast enough. But if I just clock on export connections it takes me to the next page where all I have to do is basically type in a couple of letters and click export. Or I can just click export right here and the file that I want it to be in.

Andrew: And that’s where you get all the e-mai addresses that you want?

Lewis: Yeah, i just export fifteen thousand leads, done. Right, so I’ve got that right there. However, if I want to add connections, I can a similar thing. I can upload my email contacts from Gmail; I can just type in my password right here for Gmail or Hotmail or Outlook or Express. I can import a CSV file that I already have for my contacts. Start by adding the friends you already know just by doing this. Connect with people who are already on LinkedIn. That will help you expand your second and third degree network and that’s the easiest way to get started. There are some other things you can do but for now that what’s people should focus on. First, optimizing their profile and then adding all their friends after they’ve optimized their profile. You don’t want people to see your profile if it looks like crap. You want to make sure it looks great first.

Andrew: One tip for using ‘answers’ on LinkedIn.

Lewis: If you don’t have a lot of contacts or that’s not working for you or something’s not happening and you don’t have a group, you don’t have time to work on groups and you don’t want to deal with traffic and things like that the best thing you can do and the easiest way to get more customers…now, it all depends on what your business is but I’m assuming a lot of people who are on here want more clients or customers for their software, their business, their solutions, things like that. I started using the question and answer section. Again, I tested everything tons of times for many hours. I started using the Q&A section. When you click on ‘more’ right here you see a little ‘answers’ tab, this is another section on LinkedIn. People are asking and answering questions on every topic you can think of. I scroll down the page on the right hand side; you’ll see administration questions, business operations, business travel, health, government, finance, technology, start ups and small business which is where you’d want to hang out potentially, Andrew. I was going into LinkedIn and answering questions left and right like I do with my job. At first I wasn’t getting any results. I was just answering questions and wasn’t getting anything out of it. Again, I tested everything a number of times so hopefully you guys don’t have to test it, and what I learned was an exact formula for answering questions. I could almost get a client every time I answered a question; I was almost guaranteed to get that person as a client. They’d hire me or my LinkedIn strategies at that time, my LinkedIn Consulting I had at the time.

Here’s what I did. You can see down here it says ‘Top Week’s Experts’ and there are people who are answering questions. These people answer way too many questions if you ask me. I mean, 560 answers is kind of ridiculous but some people have a lot of time and they just answer questions I guess. You don’t have to do that. You see these people that are up here in the ‘best answers’? These people are getting a lot of exposure, they’re getting a lot of leads and sales based on that. Here’s what I want you guys to do. I’m going to show you really quickly. You can see the open questions that are just coming through, you can see this one has 54 answers, five answers, seven answers. You can see what day they came out, this was a day ago, two days ago, three days ago. All you want to do is go through and see which questions you can answer to the best of your ability. I would answer one right here, potentially: ‘How can I share a video with all my LinkedIn Groups?’ You see there are seven answers. I’ll show you exactly what I’d do. I’d click on this answer tab right here, because you want to make this public. You can see these other answers are pretty short, pretty lame, weak. This one’s got his phone number in there. Smart. You want to answer this question publicly so that this person Tim can rate it as one of the best answers potentially out of the group and so everyone else can see your answer because people who are looking for answers as well. Then after you share this publicly you don’t want to try to sell them anything in your public answer. You don’t want to say, ‘Click here and I’ll show you how to do this.’ Or, ‘Sign up for my product. Here’s my email. I’ve got a consulting service.’ What you want to do after you do this publicly, and this works pretty much 90% of the time at least to get a response from someone, is you click on this little button right here that says ‘reply privately’. I’ve already answered this publicly and when I click on this I’m going to reply to Tim and say ‘Hey, Tim, I just replied to your question and left you a couple resources. Here are a couple more. Also, I’m more than happy to hop on the phone really quick for 10, 15 minutes and just make sure to answer anything you have on this topic. I’ve got extensive experience in this, more than happy to help out, free of charge, would love to help. Here’s my number or just shoot me an email if you want to set up a time.

By doing that and taking that one little extra step you’re differentiating yourself from every other person that’s answered a question. It doesn’t matter what the person said, by you sending them a private message it shows up in their inbox. Your answer may get left in the stream, but this shows up in the inbox.

When someone asks a question, specifically on LinkedIn, a business-related question they are at their lowest pain moment. They have a pain and they want it answered, they want if fixed right now. They don’t want to wait for days or weeks for someone to help them, they want someone to actually do it for them right then and there. If you show up as the hero, their savior, and say, look I’m happy to help out and answer this question, you’re going to get them to respond.

A good friend of mine said that if you can give a free diagnosis and just fix the pain as quick as possible you can charge them anything you want. It’s kind of like a dentist. They don’t spend ten hours pulling your tooth out when you have a toothache. They take five minutes taking it out and they charge you a lot of money. They give you a free diagnosis on what it is. If you do that, you’re on the phone for ten minutes. This may not be relevant based on your business or your services or anything like that, this is the way to do that.

Andrew: Even if it’s not, frankly just reaching out to the person, if you reached out to me after you sent me an answer I out of just appreciation I would say best answer. Unless it was terrible I’d go best answer because man, this guy really followed through with me, this guy really cared.

Lewis: Exactly. I know people who have applied these strategies like that on the question and answer section. One guy specifically, he’s an email marketing guy or web design and email marketing guy. He says he doesn’t have time to do anything else on LinkedIn. Groups and all this other stuff he says it’s great, but I’m just so focused on my business and my current clients I don’t have time, but I’m looking for more clients.

He says all he does and go and do that same strategy for about fifteen minutes a day three times a week he’ll go in and see what the new questions are in email marketing and web design, answer the question publicly and then reply privately. He says he’s getting around three to five new clients every month, which brings in around $3000 to $5000 extra a month. Again, it all depends on what your goal is, what you’re looking to do, how much time you have and what you want to get out of it and you’re going to get out of it what you put into LinkedIn, so that’s my tip there.

Andrew: I see we went way beyond the notes here and way beyond time, so first of all thanks for spending the extra time with us. Here’s my suggestion for the audience and then I’m going to ask you how people can follow up with you. I’m going to say this, spy on Lewis. By spy on Lewis I mean he told you as much as possible here, but if you follow him on LinkedIn you’re going to get to see this stuff in real time and you’re going to get to see as he develops new ideas, follow him there.

Sign up to his email list. Even if you have no interest in sports I would sign up to the sports list just to see what he’s doing with his sports list and get into a webinar and watch him in the webinars. Where can they sign up to see the webinars since that’s where you send people?

Lewis: If you just sign up on my site right here. If you sign up on this box here or over here I’m going to send you five free LinkedIn videos with some great tips, some stuff that I have that aren’t from today’s training and you’ll be notified. I send out a message about once a week with different webinars and stuff like that, so just go ahead and sign up on my site anywhere and you’ll be on the list.

Andrew: By the way, as we’ve done this program I see it getting later and later. The sun is starting to set. It went from not being in the window to now almost blinding you. I always say to people don’t just be in the audience of life, don’t be in the stands of life, be on the field, even if it means you have to get a little hurt like you got hurt, you want to be on the field. On the field means watch Lewis, find a way to connect with him and say thank you if nothing else. How can they connect with you?

Lewis: The best way is just signing up here, but as much as I love LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook a lot, so facebook.com/lewishowes, I’ll just throw it up real quick so you can see it.

Andrew: And your website that we saw earlier is lewishowes.com.

Lewis: I’m on Facebook a lot actually just talking to people, sharing tips and things like that about LinkedIn and it’s a good little community here on Facebook/lewishowes or lewishowes.com or twitter@lewishowes, pretty much anywhere you want to connect with me online I’m happy to connect so everybody reach out.

Andrew: Thank you. We are madmen almost here at Mixergy. You saw with David Saint, the course producer guy saw me here in the program, we’re maniacal about actionable tactics, usable tactics. The whole idea is we don’t want big ideas that sound interesting, we want you to be able to use this stuff. So watch this video. Even if you have to go back and watch again and do what Lewis talked about in this session and then tell me about the results because I’d like to hear about it.

Lewis: I would love it if you do one thing today just do the five step SEO optimization section on LinkedIn because you’ll actually see instant results. But the beauty of this is that the results will be ongoing. I’ve got one great testimony of that, this guy went through my training on LinkedIn and he optimized his five points and he didn’t do anything else because he was too busy. He was a real estate investor and he was too busy. Lot of people are too busy. He said within two weeks someone found him on LinkedIn by typing in his key word that he had optimized for, and paid him $20,000 based on him being the number one search result for that key word. For his real estate investment coaching. He went through his profile. Read the calls to action. Went to his site. Ended up signing up for a $20,000 consulting program with him. And when the guy said ‘How did you find me?’, he said ‘I typed in real estate investor on LinkedIn and you were the first result to pop up’. Sounds like this stuff works. And I’ve had a number of people over and over say ‘I’ve got a $5,000 client from this, a $10,000 client from this’, just by optimizing their SVO on LinkedIn. So if you can do one thing today, go back, follow that, and edit it really quickly. You don’t have to do anything else. There’s a formula for your profile and just optimize that so at least you’re getting more people finding you as the number one and the top five for your key word, because you’ll get more opportunities that way.

Andrew: Lewis, thank you so much. You guys see it right on your screen. LewisHowes.com. Thank you all for watching and I look forward to seeing your results.

Action Video: Blogging for Startups

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Action Video:
Blogging for Startups

Master Class: Conversion Best Practices
Taught by Dennis van der Heijden of Reedge.com

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Master Class: Conversion Best Practices

Time to watch/listen: 69minutes

 

 

 

Reedge in Action

Video 1: Trust

 

Video 2: Flow

 

Video 3: Persona

 

Video 4: Personalize – Mixergy

 

Video 5: Personalize – AdWords

About Dennis van der Heijden

About Dennis

About Reedge

The Reedge.com Blog

Dennis on personalization @ B2B Bloggers

Dennis on “serendipity” @ Online-Behavior

 

Master Class Toolbox

Course Cheat Sheet

Transcript

Download the transcript here

Andrew: This course is about increasing your site’s conversions. It’s led by Dennis van der Heijden, one of the founders of reedge.com, where online businesses can test personalized websites with dynamic, targeted content for their prospects, and they can do it simply and inexpensively.

I’m Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, where proven founders like Dennis teach. Dennis, do you have an example of what our audience will be able to do at the end of this session?

Dennis: We’re going to focus on getting everybody 10% more conversion in thirty days by taking five steps.

Andrew: 10%. Both my hands, in thirty days, focusing on these five steps.

Dennis: I’m positive they might even be getting it in three, really.

Andrew: I see. You’re saying that just by making changes to your site you’re going to see increased conversions. Let’s jump into an example. Tell me about this page. What are we looking at here?

Dennis: This is one of our clients that uses Reedge. They use it in a very simple manner. They changed the homepage banner on the right hand side where it says ‘buy now.’

Andrew: OK.

Dennis: And it changed it for a pricing plans area so you’ll see in the next slide.

Andrew: I see. We’re seeing that what they did was they changed from this button, to this button right here.

Dennis: Yes. The ‘see pricing and plans.’ They had a specific hypothesis. They tested around five buttons and this was one of them and these two compared for 20 days gave them around 20-25% more increase.

Andrew: There it is right there. 24.18% increase.

Dennis: Yeah. The actual [inaudible]. That increase was about products added to the [??]. In that sense, it seems like a slight increase from 3.64% to 4.5%, but I don’t think anyone is able to get 24% increase in just 20 days just by increasing [??].

Andrew: Is this the only change that they made to this area to get this increase? All they did was they went from a ‘buy now’ button to a button that says, ‘see plans and pricing, questions, call us 800-,’ whatever is their phone number. That’s all they did to increase conversions that dramatically?

Dennis: Yeah. As you see at the bottom there they actually tested five variations because they had a hypothesis about how this needs to be improved. They changed five, and the winner was the ‘see pricing and plans.’

Andrew: Got it.

Dennis: So, one decreased conversion, and four increased.

Andrew: OK. Now before you show me another one, I’ve got one here loaded up, I just want to explain to people that what you’re using is a tool called Reedge. It’s your company and what you do with Reedge is manipulate a webpage and compare it to the original.

You take your original, you make some adjustments to it, and then you have a second version. Then you guys on Reedge will do AB testing for the user until you figure out which is the best converting.

Dennis: Basically what you do is test one code in your website and from then on you make these variations in Reedge and we’ll serve it to a [??] audience to see which one is going to work better.

Andrew: OK. The reason I invited you here is that you have customers who run these tests all the time and what I asked you to do was go through everything that your customers have learned and everything that you’ve watched them learn and help us understand what are some of the key things that increase conversions for them so we don’t have to run an infinite number of tests or try to figure out every test combination.

I want to know what’s worked for others and then we can bring those to our sites, test them, and see how they increase our own conversions. That was the first test that you wanted to show us. The second one is this one. Can you tell me a little bit about this one?

Dennis: This test is from a website called ABtest.com. I think it’s a great site to get some inspiration. This is a typical example of one of the first points we’re going to talk about. It’s simplifying the site. As you see, this site has audio additions, they have a long sign-up form, and a lot of [cold] actions.

They have a whole left bar of all the things you can do, there’s a book, you can sign-up, there’s a newsletter, lots of stuff. On the right you can even email them, call them, lots of stuff I can do. I can go away and read your top ten. Anything that’s not related to this conversion. So what they did, and they used another tool which is Google Website… (inaudible)…..Very nice start. What they used is simplifying it Simplify it to the core. And the core is I want people to sign up using this form. And all the rest is extra. And it’s not relevant for this page. So simplifying this form they removed some fields and the only thing is like requests is free audio catalog. What you see here, a big picture, small fields and long big send button, and that’s it.

Andrew: Let’s quickly take a look at the before and of course the before has all the links that you described earlier on the left and on the right. The after has less stuff to do on the sight, fewer distractions. And here is the difference. Bottom line difference. 67.4 percent more sign ups. So we’re not talking about increasing sign ups by paying more money for advertising, or paying more for developers or coming up with a better product. We’re just saying you can increase your results, get more sales, get more leads, get more of what you are looking for by making the kinds of tests that you are going to teach us how to discover here. And we can see actually, side by side, it almost looks like a no-brainer that the one on the right is going to work out with the big call to action, the fewer fields, the fewer distractions on the page in general. And the numbers bear it out. 67.4 percent and you are also telling us check out ABtest.com for other inspirational examples like this one. OK. So.

Dennis: I think, simplifying a site is sometimes, it’s looking at your site and you just go blind on your own site, right? It’s like, where do I start? I think (??). So I would like to take a look at examples that your audience sent in.

Andrew. Let’s have a look.

Dennis: The Scrubbly website.

Andrew: And that brings us to, the first thing I’ll ask is what is the first step that someone in our audience needs to take, and you want to show us based on this website.

Dennis: Exactly. This is going to be a great example of simplifying a site. This website has a good design. It’s well, it’s professional so no questions asked there. It’s already a very good page. So looking at your own website let’s say this is it. What do you want me to do? It’s the first question you have to ask yourself. There are a lot of things that I could do here. I could Like you on Facebook. Not sure that’s what you want me to do, but okay, it can be done apparently. I can take a video here. I can start it here; I can see how it works. I can click maybe on this icons or (??). I don’t know where I can all click. Even though it’s a great site it doesn’t still tell me what you want me to do. What is your preferred call to action?

Andrew: I see. You want us to have one clear preferred call to action on the website.

Dennis: Yeah. I’m fine with the secondary, I mean of course you want us to sign up and read the newsletter.

Andrew: Sorry, sorry, Dennis. It looks like we’ve got a bit of a lag here in the session, which is fine. But, before we started out this course you and I were looking over some of the websites that our premium members sent us. Scrubbly is one of those websites. And as you looked at this you said, Andrew there is a lot on this that I like and there is a lot on this that other sites can learn from. Before we talk about what can be improved, what is it about this that you see that really works? Because as I said in the pre-interview, for a lot of amateurs, when we look at this website we look at that cute little animal on the home page and we say that’s beautifully done, its eye catching, it’s well designed, that’s something that we like about it. And we might notice a few other things like the logos on the bottom. But we don’t have your eye for it. With your eye, what are you seeing here that you especially like. What one or two things should we learn from?

Dennis: OK. It seems to be a very obviously web 2.08 kind of design. It has a main video with two calls of actions, which is very typical and I think very good. But there are so many sites that show their portfolio all over the home page and hide somewhere in the menu pricing or sign up. So you want me to go into your menu, look next to your contact and find the sign up? You need to tell me what I need to do. So basically it’s very important that you give me one big call to action right in the middle of my screen that where you want me to click.

Andrew: OK. And you are saying that they do this right because they have this “start here” button?

Dennis: They do this right. They do this right. It’s just not big enough.

Andrew: OK. How do you feel about having two buttons on the page, one that says start here and another that says how it works? Is it distracting that there are two, or in your experience do you say that helps?

Dennis: I think it’s very important that they have a collection because there are two types of people that you get on your site, the people that’s like, I want to go for this, and there’s people, I want to research this. It makes perfect sense to have two-fold actions. Just give me the one that’s the preferred one.

Andrew: Gotcha. And here, you can see here that’s the preferred one. That’s brighter. That’s the one that’s catching the eye. The other one is a little darker and less. What about the lower part of the page, what do you like?

Dennis: What I like, I’m going to start here. There are four logos, especially logos that everybody will recognize. To me, this means it’s probably a new start-up because I can see through this because I do this all day. They don’t have 10,000 clients. If they would, they would mention them here.

Andrew: Right.

Dennis: That’s OK. They use all the trusted ones. They are gong to use Microsoft Outlook, the Mac logo, the Google logo to increase trust, and I think that is very smart.

Andrew: I see. Trust that it works with those and let me throw in one other thing that you and I talked about before the session started. You especially like the logos underneath as featured in Life Hacker, Giga Home, et cetera.

Dennis: That’s smart. And I think it’s a great way for people that don’t have Microsoft or Google as a client. What do you do on day one if you’re a start-up?

Andrew: Right.

Dennis: Who are you going to place here? Well, are you going to send out a press release, and everybody that mentions your press release, you are going to take their logo and paste it on your home page and say as mentioned in or as featured in or whatever. It’s a great way to increase trust and saying you know what, we actually matter. People talk about us.

Andrew: OK. All right. So, that’s what works. You want to give them some feedback on how to improve, and we’re going to learn from that for our own sites. Here’s the second page that you and I looked at.

Dennis: As soon as you click on the buttons, start here. Go to this page which says it in the header. You click here and you see sign-up. Every time you’re going to confuse me, you have a chance of losing me. I click “start here”, and I will see sign-up. At least, make sure the bottom text and the header of the next page match. So, either start here or start here or make the button say sign-up. Raise the specific expectation and make sure you deliver.

I think this next page actually is very good. It seems to have all of the trust elements. They have very few fields to fill out, so it’s pretty good to start here.

Andrew: OK. So, keep it simple. You would also add the trust elements like the Life Hacker and Geek Wire logos and maybe, even…

Dennis: Maybe, you could repeat those.

Andrew: I see.

Dennis: You can repeat, yeah. We work with it here. Maybe, some trust, verify, logo, whatever you want to add here to make sure that you add trust, that you’re not going to spam me and stuff like that. A different message, like we’re not spamming or we won’t use your email for anything else [??].

Andrew: OK. Let’s go over to the next image that you have here.

Dennis: It’s really interesting. If you want, this tool through a website is called browsersize.google.app.com. It’s a tool that we often use to make our points which I’m going to do again here. This is how many people, their screen size, and how they see this page. So, you can see in this image that 90% of the people will see the “start here” button. Only 80% will see the “how it works” button, and everything else on the page is basically falling off.

Andrew: I see.

Dennis: I would like to increase that. It makes perfect sense to make sure that everybody sees the “start” button. Let’s make it 99%.

Andrew: So, this is what you would suggest doing.

Dennis: Exactly. Go for the next [??] and see what I did for it. I just flipped it around. What if I just placed the “start here” button on the left side and [??] on the right side? That means it’s more in my eye. I go from the logo straight down to the “start here”. And the only thing I did is just exactly what we talked about. It’s learning how this works is not a secondary goal. It’s the secondary goal action. So, now “start here” is becoming more visible.

Andrew: I see. Right. OK. So you move this over to the left, and now it’s within a broader-, it’s a-, it’ll show up on people’s screens, sorry. Show up on people’s [crosstalk]

Dennis: Because not everybody has a very large laptop or a very large screen. There’s a lot of people that, especially for services like this, would still like to clean up their address book and are still on the Windows XP machine with an older display, so leaving them out because your start here button was falling off is basically excluding a lot of people.

Andrew: OK. Let’s take a look at…

Dennis: Now I think there’s more improvement here. Let’s go to the next one.

Andrew: All right. So this is-, this is the first thing that you suggest doing, and here is more improvement.

Dennis: Yeah. OK. I think everybody will see the first change that I make is the start button is bigger and it’s red. Now everybody can say it’s ugly. Yeah, it might be. Let’s show if the statistics can prove that this gives you more money. So, I mean, aesthetics aside, just see if this is going to work. And the last thing I did, and it’s-, it may be subtle, but all the logos on this page are now gray.

Andrew: I see them here. Here, lets do the-, here we can see the logos works with these address books and as featured in, have color and then you’re suggesting graying them out. Why? You say that it adds a lot of trust to the website and it gets people to fill in the form, but now you’re suggesting that we understate it. Why?

Dennis: Well, the reason, and this is different for everybody. There’s two ways of looking at this. It’s, you’re adding still the trust elements, you’re just removing the color from it. You can only do it if the trust elements are so familiar to people that they don’t need the color. So everybody knows the Gmail and the Mac logo so they don’t need the color. So I’m saying, removing the color on logos that are so familiar to people is just fine. And that way, we focus on the most important thing now, which is the start here.

Andrew: I can actually see that. My eye really goes directly, now to the start here button. And I actually don’t think [crosstalk]

Dennis: There’s no way your eye can escape this.

Andrew: Yeah. Is there another-, let’s take a look at this next one. You say, now, start here, and now you’ve simplified-, actually, you tell me what you’ve done next. What’s the next step that you took?

Dennis: OK. We as a [??] a lot of other start-ups used this-, a lot of text like they did to work out what is the USP of your company? I mean, you need to work out, what do people like? I mean, are we this or are we that? I mean, we can do everything, but what are we? So I understand that they have six bullets. They had six bullets before. As soon as you know what’s going to work, so for example you use A/B testing to change these three lines every time and see if the text inside them increases conversion. So to figure out what is your USP?

Andrew: I see.

Dennis: Now you did that, leave them.

Andrew: Dennis, what you’re suggesting is, take all of these bullet points, and just experiment with running them three at a time and then once you find the three that get you the most conversions, then you understand what three features people value most, and those are the three that you should focus on here, and eliminate the rest of them because they become a distraction.

Dennis: Yeah, it’s basically looking at, I mean you have to figure out the product market fit. I mean, for start-ups, it’s very important to make sure that-, to figure out what you are. I mean, you made a product, sometimes you still need to iterate on the market. Like, so where are we as far as [??] people? You have the same tool, what are we now? We are now an A/B testing tool for [??] so next time we are an optimization specialist, or next time maybe we are personalization. Just figure out what we are.

Andrew: I see. [crosstalk] figure out what you are. You test three different statements you just gave me…

Dennis: That’s how we figured it out.

Andrew …for the exact same product, which is your product, and you just test it to see which one people react to best. Got it.

Dennis: Exactly. I mean, we are not an A/B testing tool, we figured out. We still haven’t figured out what we are, but closer to this we are now and optimization conversion specialist or optimization conversion tool, we’re still figuring that out.

Andrew: And when you say… [crosstalk]

Dennis: We’re testing exactly this.

Andrew: You just keep taking different phrases to describe what you do, testing it on your homepage, see what gets you the most reaction, and that’s what you are. That’s how, at least you explain what you are to your customers.

Dennis: Exactly, I mean, of course we talk to our customers, but we have our wanting to do for everybody, but this is a good way of, like, being very objective. I mean, you don’t know who’s on the other side of your screen, you [??] they click more on the sign-up here button. I added something else on the last page. It’s also subtle. I didn’t say ‘start here’ anymore. I just called it what it was: ‘sign up.’ It used to say ‘start here’ and now it says ‘sign up here.’ Even more, I added a small phrase under it, ‘for a free account,’ because I think it’s important that people know before they click that this is not going to cost them anything to avoid any questions on the next page. That will increase numbers.

Andrew: OK. All right. Now let’s see the before and after. This is what you’re suggesting and you walked us through an understanding of how you got here. This is what was on the website that our premium members submitted before. We can see all the changes that you’ve made here.

Now you’ve flipped it so that the button is more visible to more people, you’ve made the button clearer, you’ve added a little line of text underneath for a free account, you’ve made all the other changes that we’ve talked about. I shouldn’t go through all of them. People can now see it for themselves.

Dennis: Even though the site was already really good, I think I focused more on what you want them to do. I think it is cleaner now. You focus on the main objective, but you can choose a secondary objective as you learn how or [??] which is the third option.

Andrew: OK. You actually gave us not just this, but you created…did you create multiple versions? No. But what you would test is…

Dennis: No. I created steps. I basically wanted to walk you through the idea of how I think on these websites.

Andrew: Got it. OK. The idea is with modern tools like reedge.com like Google Website Optimizer, you don’t have to redo your whole site. You can just drag and drop, you can change text, and the tool will do AB testing so that you don’t have to redo your site. You just run it through the system and you can edit it just as easily as you edit a Word document and it’ll run and will get AB tested for you.

Dennis: It’s really important to not spend a lot of time on things like this. I think the tool should do it for you so you enter it quickly, it’s a whole new start-up methodology, figure it out fast, let it run for a week and if it doesn’t work, kill it and do something else. Go for it.

Andrew: All right. Let’s talk about this one. This is another site submitted by one of our viewers.

Dennis: Yeah. In that one what I wanted to do there is start a second topic which is increase trust. First you have to simplify your site, and second is to increase the trust on your site.

Andrew: Got it. You told us at the beginning of the session that you’re going to teach us five different techniques for increasing our conversions by at least 10% and you’ve showed us that some of the sites that have gone through this process have gone beyond 20% and even beyond 60%.

The first thing is to simplify, and you showed us how you simplified from this. Even this, a beautiful simple site, got simplified even further to this, which makes it more effective. Now you want to talk about trust. This is another site submitted by one of our viewers. It’s volcanic. What do we need to know about this?

Dennis: Well, a slight detail. As soon as people go and search for this site, they find a title that says ‘ugly sites must die.’ It does not do a lot of trust for me. It doesn’t increase my trust. I think [inaudible].

Andrew: You’re saying that ‘ugly sites must die’ is what they see where? That’s on the Google search result?

Dennis: It’s in the title, it’s in your tab as soon as you open it.

Andrew: I don’t have it here, but it’s on the site. ‘Ugly sites must die.’

Dennis: If people go to extreme websites, if they search for that, they’ll find this website. That doesn’t help. It doesn’t help me trust that there’s a professional company behind this. It made really significant changes. I first looked at this page last week, and the one you see right now is so much better already than last week’s. There is still some room for improvement.

Andrew: That’s encouraging to see that [??] didn’t just submit his site to you, that he didn’t just come in to watch this course, but even before he got to the course and even before we started recording the course, he started making changes to the site and as you were looking at the site to include it here, you saw that it was changing from day to day. That’s cool to see.

Dennis: Yeah, I think, it’s like everybody knows they have to work in their site. There’s just no time, a lot of other things happening. And it’s quite intense to change the entire site. So I think the latest testing tools should really help saying, “OK. I just want to prove one point. Would a different pull action work?” Instead of changing and going to your designer, coming up with a whole new design. I think it’s usually a big step for people.

Andrew: OK.

Dennis: But this one, this site changed completely… and for the better.

Andrew: This is was it was now. This is what it was at least the day that you saw it last. And this is what you’re suggesting they do to increase trust.

Dennis: Yeah, the increase trust element, I got that from their pricing page. I changed only two things. One is in the center you see three pricing quotes. That is the main pull action. That is a great one. I think they could reduce the text under it. I mean it was a very long tagline, I think just tell me what I’m going to get if I click this button. So there’s not going to be any surprises.

Andrew: Here, let’s take a look.

Dennis: On the trust they are already doing…

Andrew: Sorry, Dennis. Here is the long line they had underneath the button. It said, “Give us 15 minutes, and we’ll give you a price quote.” What you changed that to is just, “Quote within 15 minutes.” Boom.

Dennis: Exactly. There are other elements that are really good. I mean, I would like to pull them up. On the top there is a phone number, and it is big and large. That is very good. I mean, actually having somebody, I mean maybe 1% is going to call you anyway, but having a number up there will definitely increase trust.

Andrew: Got it.

Dennis: So in that sense, I think it really helps. Then another element I really like is that one of the founders placed their picture on the homepage. Now, I would like to see that they’re the founders. So I would still like to add a name. Instead of, “I’m a friendly person” to saying, “I’m whatever, Ralph, or whatever.” So tell me who you are. That will make me more engaged with you, so I feel better. So that’s already really good. And some elements that I think could be improved. I put a very ugly yellow bar. I just took that from their pricing page. But it is helpful to see what clients they have.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Dennis: Because if you have your client that is AT&T and your client is Harvard University, why not show them on the homepage?

Andrew: Yeah, I see exactly what you mean, right. And here they have these great clients, but they’ve buried it on another page of the site instead of keeping it on the homepage where people make the decision of whether to work with the company or not. Whether to click that free price quote or not. You’re saying, highlight it, put it right on the homepage. Right near the…

Dennis: Exactly.

Andrew: Alright, let me say this to the audience too. In this case, what Dennis has done, he didn’t just create this before and after. He did a screen cast of himself as he made the decisions and moved the site around so that you can see how easy it is to make these adjustments. It’s included in your course package. So you can actually watch him move things around. You can watch him make those decisions, and you can see how he came up with the design and how easy it is to make these kinds of changes. It’s all part of your course package. We’re just going to fly through the course right here, but you can watch it on your own time and see how he does it. Anything else before we move onto the next site?

Dennis: Now, something that I didn’t take a screenshot of, but I think is important to tell. They made the decision that after you click that free price quote, you go to a page that shows a trust video. I mean, a video of a happy client which is very good. They added a form for me, like a lead capturing form. They didn’t show their prices. Their prices are very competitive. They start at like $49, and it’s I think pretty decent pricing. But the site is buried behind the lead generation form. I think you should really be careful when you do that. The assumption is, if everybody sees a lead capturing form on a software company, you are usually an enterprise software company, because they don’t want to tell you a price. They don’t want you to get shocked with $1000 a month. So if you do lead capturing, the expectations of the client then is usually going to be expensive. And if you only have $49 as your cheapest plan, why not mention it? I was a bit lost there. [??] capturing, I would prefer to see that on the enterprise model and everything whether it’s $29 or $49, just show me the price. I will decide, I might even buy it, if you’re convincing me on your page. You’re building in a different step on the workflow and I don’t like that, which leads me to the next point.

Andrew. Right. First point: simplify. Second point: add trust. Now we’re going to talk about workflow. I almost skipped ahead earlier to this one. This is Magical Fruit, another website submitted by a premium member who wanted some feedback.

Dennis: Oh, sorry. This is actually a website I used to work at. I used to work with them. No, they’re not a premium member.

Andrew: You know this intimately well?

Dennis: I know this very well. Some of the things that we did there, and a lot of people that have some specific ecommerce shop have that, is these standard ecommerce shops usually have a two or three step checkout. It’s like, give me your details, tell me the shipping, now pay, and then a thank you form.

Great. Why not put that all in one? You’re giving me four points of leaving your site, instead of one. So what we saw in this page is that you can increase your checkout by 70%, reducing 4: 1.

Andrew: I see. Not four steps, but cutting the workflow that a customer takes to one step, increases conversions right there.

Dennis: Yes. What we did there is that everything is optional. If you have a different shipping address, tell me and the form will get bigger. It becomes all optional and everything is dynamic.

Andrew: I see what you’re saying. On the bottom there’s a radio button that says ‘ship to this address.’ As long as that’s selected the form stays simple, as soon as the user selects ‘ship to a different address,’ the form gets a little bit longer and gives the customer room to enter the second address, keeping the form short and the workflow simple for the user.

Dennis: Indeed. This was Magento that was used there. Magento had a three step check out when I was working with them. They found plug-ins to make it a one step check out, so I think if you have a shopping part in Ecommerce, try to make it as short as you can. That’s very important. Now let’s go to one of your premium members.

Andrew: OK. Here we go. This one was sent over to us by the founder of eLearn portal, and wanted some feedback.

Dennis: This is a good design. I just have a difficult time figuring out what they were trying to sell me. I’m different than everyone else, but I’m trying to figure out what you are trying to do. I couldn’t figure it out in the beginning. It took me quite a while to figure out.

At first I thought maybe they’re a directory and they do ads or something. It turned out they are a lead generation site for universities. If you take the next light, you follow my thinking. I’m on the homepage, and I have to go forward. So maybe I ‘find a degree.’

Then you give me a whole page, but the only thing I see is that you want me to fill out their sign-up form for a newsletter I guess. That seems to be the most obvious point in this website.

Andrew: Where? I don’t actually see…

Dennis: It’s yellow. It’s on the left hand side.

Andrew: There it is. I see.

Dennis: By the way, nobody please. Yellow and white doesn’t do much. It’s really hard to read yellow text on a white background. That’s the only thing that caught my eye. The other thing that caught my eye is the green find on the right hand side. So maybe they want me to go deeper in the site.

I went deeper. If you go to the next page, you’ll see I went deeper into the site. Now, there you’ve got it. That’s where the conversion goal is. They want you to click on those yellow buttons.

Andrew: I see.

Dennis: I’m not that old, but I have a difficult time reading yellow on white. But these are the request information buttons. The second thing I’m seeing here is that I’m seeing lots of other things I can do. You apparently want me to tweet, you want me to ‘like’ you, you want me to share. In the center of the page there are 104 buttons that you want me to click on. You want me to sign up for a newsletter? Really? Is that what you want me to do? I think focus on the call to action, and the call to action is request information.

Andrew: That’s this button.

Dennis: I love [??]. Don’t get me wrong. But I just don’t see the point in ‘liking’ this page at this stage of my purchase. I would love to ‘like’ you, as soon as you did something for me. So you send me qualified information, then I’d love to ‘like’ you and I’d love to share you with all of my friends, but I don’t think this is the right moment where you introduce share, tweet, and all these other buttons.

You’re giving me the option of going away. If I’m gone, I might ‘like’ you, but I still didn’t do what you want me to do. Let’s click on the request info buttons and you’ll see what they wanted me to do.

Andrew: So you’re clicking on this button right here or one of these…

Dennis: Then you go to the next page, which is just a form.

Andrew: Got it.

Dennis: On this form, this is apparently what you want me to do. It took me four pages to get here, and there were a lot of options. I still clicked pretty direct. There are a lot of options to go left or right and all these things I can do on this site. You just don’t want me here apparently.

You make it very complicated to get here. Even though I do love this site and I think it has a valid point of guiding me and showing so much information, because it also makes you feel they are an authority because there is so much information on this site I start trusting you. You don’t ask me directly for the form.

This form is pretty long, and I don’t think there is an option to reduce it because they probably get paid by the lead your nation company for all the student information, so I don’t see them cutting the form in half.

Andrew: I see.

Dennis: The cold actions are yellow and white, and not very helpful. I think we should cut the step of the workflow by one. If you go to the next page, you’ll see how I did that. I go to that homepage, and now I know what the objective was. You want me to find a specific university, and ask for information.

Good. Now why on the left hand side in that yellow box is there reading news, sign up for newsletter? It’s all options to get distracted. I understand why it’s there. It’s there because they want to increase their natural [??]. It’s there because they show news everyday, and Google picks it up, and say, ‘you know this homepage is refreshed everyday,’ and they stay on top of the search rankings.

But wouldn’t it be better if you just placed it a bit down? So Google still thinks you’re at current, but we can start converting these people. Basically you’re removing that entire block, and replacing it with something that is so obvious, like please go and find a degree. And you can see in the after version how I did that.

Andrew: I see. This is the after version, and now you’re pointing people even towards this box. This is clearly now the action that you want people to take. You’re not distracting them with this, you’re focusing them right here on the right side.

Dennis: I mean, you can tell me that I chose the most ugly picture you can imagine, and that’s fine. But I just want to make a point of that is where I want you to click, that’s what I want you to do. You can either remove the whole area and move the green finder on the left, just don’t distract me from your main objective.

I think by this, we’re going to reduce everybody’s page views to get to your end result by one. That means you might be getting 25 more people to the end result because you’re done sending them to your blog to read news.

Andrew: I see. Reduce the work flow, that increases conversions. Again, we have a video of Dennis actually going through the process of taking the page from this design, to this design including picking the stock photography image and it’s about a minute and a half video. It’s definitely under three minutes. It’s in your course packet. You can go and watch him and watch him do this. You can slow it down.

Dennis: It’s right here. It’s like helping these people, and people love that. I mean, just tell me what you want me to do.

Andrew: Right. And reduce the workflow so that I can do that as a user.

Dennis: It’s like, you have a certain flow of your site, and I think it’s important to understand where you want people to go again. And you help them get there. And they’ll like you for it, because they didn’t have to visit five pages to get the information they were looking for. I think that’s really important, and everybody can do that, even [??] something like that. OK, let me give you an example of what we did. We increased 300% our current version of people using Reedge by the following you sign up for Reedge, fill out your first name, your last name, and your email. And then what happens, we told you, yes, go please, and check your email. You’ve got a new password there you can log in with.

How many people actually do that? I mean, this is very [inaudible]. It’s like, there’s a phone call ringing. I got to do something else. So what we did is super obvious, but we realized, only after half a year, that after they click that sign-up, they are logged in and redirected directly to the application. And at the same time we sent them emails saying, ‘Here is your email and here’s your log in and password just for the future.’ It’s so obvious, but we didn’t see it.

Andrew: That makes sense. So, you’re just telling the user not to create your account, go check your email, come back to log in, but create your account, and boom, you’re in. That’s it.

Dennis: Boom, you’re in, yeah. Of course, you need your password for the future, and so we send it by email. But reducing that, that’s a 300% increase.

Andrew: A 300% increase in what? Sign ups and payments?

Dennis: No, it’s basically of people using your tool. I mean, that’s the first metric we worry about is like, how many people start using this?

Andrew: I see.

Dennis: And we have a 300% increase in [inaudible]. We’re basically saying we’re going to skip. And we look at our funnel. You have your own funnel. Everybody has their funnel, like, and every step you work your way through any three-step conversion, every step. So in the end your bottom line will increase. And our first step was from sign-up to use your [icons] and we have an increase in 300% so a lot of reduction in people who didn’t use Reedge.

Andrew: All right, we covered three points so far: simplify options, increase trust and number three, simply workflow. Now we’re saying shorten the work flow. So, now I see my site coming up here. What’s the next big topic?

Dennis: Well, the next thing is something that not everybody mentions, and that is in these testing tools. We’re going to enter personas, and personalization. They are the last two steps. Now, you on Mixergy have different audiences that have different needs. They react differently. I’ve heard you say sometimes, ‘I wish I could make like a five-minute introduction video of what the most important things were that were mentioned in this interview.’ I wish I could do that, but it’s just so much work. And [??]. But there are people that love that. There are people that love the short videos. But we can help them in another way. So I came up with two ideas for your site. And the next slide shows two personas. And a persona is a general version, not specific, that resembles a large portion of your audience.

Andrew: You’re even picked ‘past guests’ on my Mixergy as an example of these personas. Your big point, though, is to say, don’t see your audience as one big lump of people. See them as individual personas, and you’ve got two that you created for me here. One is Miguel and the other is Alexia.

Dennis: OK. Now when I look at your comments, that’s where you got this information, right? These are the people who are saying, I heard this all over and over. And you know it. There are people that think 60 minutes is just way too much time. Other people are saying, you know what, why on earth do you have all this text type out? Others like, I will never watch your video. I only download the podcasts.

Andrew: Let me pause right there because I think this is important just to talk about. David, our course producer here, talked to you about setting up this session. After one of your conversations, he came back to me and said, “Andrew, what analytics do we have? We need to create these personas?” And I said, “We don’t have the analytics that Dennis is looking for. I guess we won’t be able to use Mixergy as an example. And David said, “Oh no, we absolutely can.” I said, “What do you mean? Are we going to fake things because I don’t want to fake things for my audience?” And he said, “No, Dennis and I talked and we realized that you can use comments as a way of breaking down your audience as personas.”

It doesn’t have to be as sophisticated as serving everyone in the audience or using special software to figure out what they’re all doing. It could be as simple at first as going in the comments, seeing what people are saying, and what you saw in the comments is what I’ve been hearing in my emails, too, which is there are some people who love text. They just read it. They will not watch any of the videos. Even though this is a visual course, they will read the text and do nothing else. And they are other people who love the videos.

Anyway, you described how you went through it. Tell me about the personas you put together, based on your reading of our comments.

Dennis: OK. So, I made two. There probably are a lot more, but I made one persona. I called Miguel and I gave him the picture. Why do I do that? Because I think it’s very important that every business and every start-up, everybody has that visual. What is our audience? You can’t just write a business plan and say, “Our audience is the world that likes to watch videos.” It just doesn’t work like that.

After you break it down and you do this for a while, you also realize that even in your original idea there are still people that are different, and they’d love to be served differently but you just can’t. You just can’t at the time. You can’t make a personal site for everybody. I like to have them visual.

So, at Reedge, we have a board, we have a photo of somebody, I’m not going to tell you who, that represents a specific audience. We give it a group, and everybody is referring to that group and saying, OK, with this feature we’ll make that group happy.

Andrew: I see.

Dennis: I looked at your site. I looked through the comments, and what do I see? On top of that, it helped that I saw like 100 interviews of yours. I keep hearing these things every day.

Andrew: Do you want to go back and take a look at that?

Dennis: Yeah, go for it. A typical person that blogs short videos and has a short attention span and doesn’t have the time to watch 60 Minutes would be greatly benefited, would be greatly helped by presenting a video index, something we can make and skip right through the important stuff in that video. That would be excellent, no editing for you. We could jump into it. That would be excellent, and you serve that specific audience.

At the same time, you don’t want to ruin that audience, but maybe Alexia in the group says, I love text. I love that long thing below. I read the whole thing. And they’re not just impressed with all the big names you mention. For that group, if maybe you want to increase, for example, your premium membership, targeting that group by removing all of your flashy photos or the Y Combinator, all the big shots, maybe it will help increase your conversion where on others it really helps to have them there.

Having a clear idea of who your audience is, I think, very important. So, I did that for you.

Andrew: OK. So, this is our website now, what people see on the site, the big header. Again, this is today what you’re seeing on the site. Who knows, a week from now it could be the exact same thing or it could be completely different, but you’re seeing this at the top. You see the intro text with the header about the video. You see the video here. Below it you’ve got a picture of the guest. Below that you’ve got a description of the guest, and below that you have the transcript underneath that I said so many people love as the only way of consuming our stuff.

So, that’s what you took. You took this and you made a few changes, and this is one of them. Again, let me just pause here for a second and say before I show that, if you want to see how Dennis did it, again, it’s in your course packet. You can watch him make these decisions, and you can watch him edit, and we don’t spend hours doing editing. In fact, he doesn’t spend hours doing editing. He’s just using his own tool. He’s using Reedge to just move things around and add the additions that he wants and changes he wants to make. You can watch him do that. Part of your course packet includes the video.

All right. So, this is one of the things that you did. Tell me about this.

Dennis: Even though I love all the right area where you tell the whole Mixergy story. Saw that, around 150 times right now so I’m not reading it anymore.

Andrew: You’re talking about this [??] where I have my photo. You’re saying if a user’s been on the site he doesn’t absolutely need to see it as much as you love it, you’re suggesting using that this way?

Dennis: So, what I made is a different area that is changing specifically the [??]. In the video I made, you’re going to see how I did that. Like how do I find Miguel, like how do I know that this person needs to see these five tips?

Andrew: There’s the Miguel that you’re talking about, right here, the persona. Yes, how do you find him … [??]…

Dennis: Yes, persona Miguel is the [??]. So how do I do that? I accept everybody that was eight pages on your website, at least, in the last year, and they only checked every page less than five minutes. That means they’re coming back, but they just don’t take the time apparently to stay longer on this page than five minutes. So for me, that is an indication of this could be a Miguel, right, this could be on e of those persons that will be helped by a quick five tips and if you click on each tip you will jump right in to that.

Andrew: I’m sorry to interrupt, but you’re saying, once you have the Miguel persona, when hit comes to our site, how do you know if that hit represents a Miguel or and Alexia or a brand new person that we don’t know yet? And the way you can tell is if you notice that a person has been on the site for a short period of time, repeatedly then he’s probably a Miguel, or someone with a short attention span, who likes the site but is not being engaged long enough, and that’s one thought process behind figuring out who Miguel is. And to that person, you show what he wants, which is present video index to that person you’re showing the video index right up there so he can jump to that section as he would like, got it, OK.

Dennis: Exactly, and this is really powerful. The simplest example I can tell you is, it’s like feed back from Mixergy, every time I go to Mixergy, Mixergy-dot-com, you’re asking me for my email, but after I give you my email, will you please stop showing that.

Andrew: You should not see that, that means that there’s a bug in the way that we do things, because if you have cookies turned on…

Dennis: I keep seeing that, I think that’s [??] lot

Andrew: You do, that means there’s a bug in there, because you should not see that. The idea is we show it to you once and then you should never see it again.

Dennis: Even if I don’t give you my email address?

Andrew: Even if you do not give us your email. We should probably change that and say, until you give us your email, I’m always going to ask you, but what’s supposed to happen is … [??]…

Dennis: For example we that [??], where there’s clients, people that signed up wont’ see that, and everybody that didn’t sign up will keep seeing that once a month. Lots of sites will have on the right hand side, you have your join now email address, you also have that on your website.

Andrew: Right here.

Dennis: It’s basically wasted real estate if I already gave you my email address. So that’s a perfect location to place something else. And I think tools like this can do that. I can see and help somebody that signed up on your mailing list, we can remove their block. So it makes the site indeed more personal. Using your persona to a make things personal which is the next step, personalization.

Andrew: This is the before, this is the after. You’ve go the video showing how you did this. The more important thing beyond what’s where and what you’ve done is the logic that goes into it. You’re saying that you want to increase conversions, you want to increase satisfaction, the way you do it, is by understanding who your users are, bucketing them into different persona’s and then showing them content based on the persona’s that they have.

So now the next thing you’re showing us is this top section here on Mixergy which is the same for every body today, and then for every visit it’s all the same, and your suggesting that we take that and we make this. Tell me about the thought process behind going from this to this and there’s a video. I hate to keep saying this guys, but there’s a video in your course packet that includes Dennis creating this, so you see how he goes about taking you from this page to this page and making those decisions and how you implement those kinds of changes on your site. But, Dennis, for now I’d like to understand the thought process. How do you go from this to this and why do you do it?

Dennis: Well, I think besides having different personas, you basically have different groups in there, right. People that are premium and people that didn’t sign up for premium. And your goal, your main call to action is making sure everybody signs up for premium. And as soon as they do that, I don’t see the point of you repeating the message.

Andrew: I see, why do I have to, somebody who already signed up for premium, is paying me monthly, why do they have to see the button that says go and sign up or the pictures that they already know. You’re saying, just recognize them and give them different content.

Dennis: Yeah. And you don’t always have to log in. I mean, we can do this based on a cookie. If they sign up for premium, you can monitor the cookie and see if they’re actually paid and stuff like that or you can use just a sign in. But I think it’s very important on the bottom of your pages, I sometimes see the idea like “we love you.” And even though it might be a bit over-exaggerated but this feels different. If I pay you a monthly subscription, I feel connected; I’m part of a community. So I’m not a non-premium member. So if you treat me differently, I feel even more connected to you. So treat me special when I’m premium.

Andrew: Let me ask you this. I now understand why you’re bucketing, how you’re bucketing, and what you’re showing different people based on your understanding of what bucket they fall into. We’re actually working on a system that will enabled me to change this header based on who you are. But for someone who doesn’t have the technology in place to log people in to then show different text based on what state they are, what do they do? What is a simple way for them to make those changes?

Dennis: If you don’t have the tools like Reedge, this is indeed a quite cumbersome process. The way we do it in the video. You see us around two minutes. I basically say, everybody that in the past or today’s sessions saw “PremiumThankYou.url”, something like that, somewhere where they logged in or paid. And as long as they have that cookie or did that in this session, they will be remembered by us. So you don’t have to worry about it. And you just click what you want to show and how you want to change screens just for them. So I think it’s…

Andrew: OK. That’s a question I knew the answer to, and you just gave it. The idea is that you don’t have to code this stuff yourself. If you want your landing page to recognize whether a person has been on that landing page two, three, whatever times before this one visit, Reedge does this. Other tools do it, but I happen to know Reedge better than I know other tools. Reedge, your tool, will enable the website to show different states based on whether the visitor of that website has been there before. True?

Dennis: Yeah, true. And I think this is a very good stage where you’re now working on trying different things. I think this is a stage where you all can say, you know what, I use Reedge or any other tool you have to see if this is helping. Are people more engaged if I change this? So you actually start off with a [??] test. And as soon as you’ve got it, saying, “Yes, it actually works. I’ve proven it.” Then you go to your designer and say now code this. I mean, it’s fine not using a third-party tool. But I think for the time there you want to discover if this is actually working, a tool like ours is very fast.

Andrew: OK. Alright, so let’s look at the next page. What is this? What is Impact Logos? This is one of our premium member sites?

Dennis: Yes, this is one of your sites…

Andrew: The reason we asked premium members to submit sites beforehand is we wanted to show how these ideas applied to real world sites. Not to fake sites. Not to sites that Dennis happens to have a tight connection with. But to as many different sites as possible and to as many real sites as we could get. And Impact Logos is a premium member sent in a site and said help me out here.

Dennis: Exactly. This is an inner page of that website. This is a design company from Australia, Sydney. The way I look at it is like what can I improve? And I was thinking in their model, they seem to be serving local communities in Australia, Sydney. They even have a domain that ends, not in “.com”, but in “.au”. So it seems they have a specific target on Australia. Now, I wanted to assume maybe that have some AdWords, or maybe they want to change the site based on the location of the person. So if you are from Sydney, Australia, let’s change the site. Or you just searched in Google for Sydney Logo Designer. Then, you get a different page. I will change it for you.

Andrew: I see.

Dennis: So what I’m doing on the next line…

Andrew: You changed the page based on what the person looked for on his way to the page.

Dennis: Yes.

Andrew: If someone goes to Google, tell me if I’m understanding this right. If someone is in Google and he types in Sydney, Australia, logo design you want to show them a different page than someone who just types in logo design and is not in Sydney, Australia.

Dennis: Exactly. I wanted to change it. In the video I made just two changes, one change is the key word I used, there was Sydney in it. Or the location that they currently are in or were recently in Sydney. So, we’re using tracking of the key words as well as geo [??]. And you can see the result.

My idea was: why don’t we act more [??]?

Andrew: Got it. And I see it right here. People can see it, again, in the course packet. You’ve got the video where you can watch as Dennis makes these changes, but what we see here is the end result.

Right over here the top sub-head says Sydney’s Logo Design, and then underneath it’s why Sydney Logo Design works. And what you’re doing, based on whether they search specifically for Sydney or they happen to be there, you can tell, based on their IP address, where they are. If either of those criteria’s are met, then we see a different page, one that addresses the user’s specific needs.

Dennis: A lot of people use landing pages for this, and I think it’s definitely the first step you go. You have tools like onbound.com, for example. You had one of the founders on here. [??] From your AdWords to the landing pages, it’s your first logical step. So, you make sure the landing pages connect to your AdWords text, so the copy matches your AdWords.

At the same time, if they don’t convert on the landing page, they might mark your main site, and they come back in three to five days, then we can still know that they were searching for Sydney and change that site. So, not only was your landing page a landing page, but every page on your site can be a landing page that we’ll adjust for them.

So, I think the first step is definitely landing pages, but tools like this make it commercial so that every page can become a landing page if you didn’t take action on your first visit.

Andrew: I see. You’re suggesting this for all pages, code it into the site or, at first, we can use a tool like Reedge to do that for us, right?

Dennis: Yeah. There’s open databases where you can track the IP address and then change the site based on that, go for it. There are even tools that monitor key words that you came into and change the site. I’m perfectly fine with doing that. The only thing is like, before you do all the coding work, just do a five minute check with a test like this. And you figure out if it’s going to work or not.

Andrew: Gotcha. Right. I have it.

Dennis: It just takes so much time, and you’re trying to hard code it. It’s just five minutes of work with a tool like this, and it will give you a week. And you’ll know is this working or not?

Andrew: Yeah. I’d hate to have my developer code up the location into every single page only to discover a week later that it decreased results or that it left them flat. You’re saying that it enables people to do it. All right.

The reason I invite entrepreneurs on here is that they know the business because they’re in the space. He, Dennis, is co-founder of Reedge, a tool that enables a lot of what we’re talking about here today. It’s not THE only tool but, of course, he knows it better than anything else so we kept referring to it.

For maybe some personalization, like the user’s name to say Andrew, or let me go here to the top of the page to make this point. To learn from proven entrepreneurs, if I want to personalize this, my software happens to enable me to type in the person’s name. So, I could say: Andrew, learn from proven entrepreneurs. If yours doesn’t, you can use Reedge and for all of the other things that we talked about.

Dennis: Be careful, Andrew. Be careful. I hear you saying you’re going to use the name.

Andrew: Yeah. What do you think about that?

Dennis: It’s scary.

Andrew: I’m going to use the name. It’s scary?

Dennis: As long as I log in, what is very delicate in personalization is make it feel like it’s serendipity. All right. It happens. I feel bad. I feel good. If you just put my name in a cookie and four months later say: Andrew, I saw you flew recently with American Airlines and therefore I’m showing you this great offer. You’re like ‘what?’ Don’t you know a little bit too much about me?’ So keep it serendipity don’t make it creepy. I think very important on personalization. In that sense I think as long as people log in they go to Mixergy showing your name is fine. I just want to warn people don’t over personalize your site and make it too creepy, because the first thing they’ll do is to find some sort of site to either block you or opt out or something to not be engaged with you. So don’t make it creepy.

Andrew: All right. Fair point. Let’s go over what we’ve talked about here today unless do you want to say anything about personalizing. . .

Dennis: No, I’m perfectly fine in summarizing it.

Andrew: OK. Here’s what I’ve got. And I’ve got the screen shots to show it. The first thing you say is simply identify the options. And you showed us how you got to this from this. Right? Took this page you simplify the options and you made it this way. The second thing you told us to do was increase trust and you showed us how you took a page like this and you just added that bar and you increased trust by referring to Harvard University, AT&T and the others.

Next you talked to us about reducing the work flow and you took a page that looked like this and where the workflow wasn’t very clear and you showed us how it could be simpler by and again you showed this very simply with that. And you also gave the example of a company that you worked with in the past that we looked at and in fact let me bring that up because I think that’s also a great example. That is right here, you showed how you reduced your steps and you increased you’re orders in magical fruit.

That’s work flow, next you talked to us about the importance of finding personas and you said, ‘Andrew, don’t make everyone see the exact same thing on Mixergy’. Bucket people, give them colors to represent them, give them faces to represent each bucket of user, give them names so that you can talk about them internally in a meaningful way and when you think about the features to add and how to adjust the landing pages, you want to talk to them base on the needs that they have, that each one of these personas has.

Finally you said ‘Andrew, don’t be creepy’, but start to do some personalization and you talked about how impact logos can take even a page like this inside their site and increase its conversions by personalizing it by using in this case the name Sydney. So, Sydney’s Logo Design instead of just Logo Design. Those are the five steps that you talked to us about. That’s what you suggested our audience use. With those five steps they can see at least a 10% increase in conversions and of course if you see an increase in conversions that means more user, more members and more profitability.

If they want to check out the tool that we’ve been using to show all of this and to make all of these adjustments it’s just Reedge, your company, R-E-E-D-G-E. We’ve got videos of you using Reedge and I think other tools to simplify the pages that you looked at here today and make those edits so people can watch over your shoulder. Dennis, thanks for walking us through the process.

Dennis: You’re welcome, Andrew.

Andrew: Let me ask the audience to do one thing. At the end of these sessions I often will get I’d say a dozen or two emails from people saying ‘Andrew this is what I did with what I learned’. It’s great that you guys enjoyed yourself here today. It’s great that you learned something but what I really care about is seeing the results. At the end of the course, use at least one tactic as soon as you can and then come back to Mixergy and send me an email and show me what you’ve done. I’d love to see it. I’d love to see what we can do to help take it even a step further and then if you’d like, I’d also love to show it to other people on Mixergy.com so that they learn from you the way that you learned from Dennis of Reedge.

So come back to Mixergy with your results. We’re all about results and I want to see your results. Dennis, thank you. Thank you all for watching and being part of this course.

Master Class: Networking for Introverts
Taught by Ruben Gamez of BidSketch

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Master Class: Networking for Introverts

Time to watch/listen: 49 minutes


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Transcript

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Andrew: You’re watching the Introverts Guide to Networking led by Ruben Gomez. He is the founder of BidSketch where website designers can go to create customized, clean proposals minutes. I’m Andrew Warner; I’ll help lead the session. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com proven entrepreneurs. Ruben, do you have an example of what our audience will be able to do at the end of this session?

Ruben: You’re going to be able to learn how to meet and build relationships with people that can dramatically improve your business.

Andrew: ‘Dramatically improve your business’ is important. So is knowing that we’re addressing introverts here. Let’s see an example of how you improved your business because you connected with someone you might not have had access to before.

Ruben: When I first launched BidSketch one of the things I was having problems with was that I was having a lot of people cancel on me early on. And I couldn’t figure out why. I kept emailing them and asking for feedback and trying all sorts of things but nobody would respond to me and it was just incredibly hard to get feedback. I explained this to [??] who advised me to actually add this little comment box here and make it required so that anybody who was cancelling would have to fill it out and tell me why they were cancelling. I was a little bit scared about it. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Nobody will have a problem with it.’ I put it in, tried it out for a week and he was right. I got great feedback, nobody had a problem with it and because of this box I’ve been able to increase my conversions from [??] to maybe 10%; from 50% to 60%.

Andrew: From 50% to 60% more people who try your stuff now are signing up. And the reason of course is if you get people to tell you why they’re cancelling and you address the issues that they’re telling you about future people won’t have those issues and won’t want to cancel. There’s advice and support and help from someone you just met online; you being an introvert, him being… Let’s take a look at his website. The founder of KISSmetrics, a site that’s designed to help company increase conversions and get more sales. You went directly to the top and you got help. People who watch this are going to see you on camera with me and they’re going to say, ‘The guy doesn’t seem like an introvert. Anyone who’s on camera at all isn’t an introvert.’ But you were and you still are, despite this, you’re doing this as a favor to me and to my audience.

Ruben: Even doing this right now is difficult for me. It’s hard. The only reason I can do it is because you’re a friend so I feel somewhat comfortable but I’m definitely an introvert. I’ll give you an example. The very first conference that I ever went to I was excited about because there were going to be a bunch of people like me, geeks, and it was a conference in Orlando. I went out and spent a lot of money on business cards, a fancy business card folder. I went out there with 500 people. It was a three day conference and I didn’t have a single conversation, I didn’t shake one person’s hand, I didn’t hand out one business card the whole time at the conference.

Andrew: I’m not an introvert but I so identify with that because I was like that at one time in my life. I would go to the conference, not know how to talk to people and find excuses to do emails in my room thinking that I was actually being productive. Meanwhile I was missing out on people like [??] KISSmetrics who helped you and multiple others who we’ll get to know about throughout this session. I know the person who’s watching us right now is identifying a little bit with this, maybe even more that I was, and now they’re saying, ‘What’s the first step that I take?’ What do they need to know? What’s the first thing you can tell them that they can see results from?

Ruben: The every first thing is they need to learn how to use email properly. A lot of this communication is going to be taking place through email. This is about, most of the time, meeting people online. As an introvert it’s just easier to do it that way and you’re not always near people. Meeting people online means you’re going to use email and you have to use email properly.

Andrew: Before the session we were thinking maybe what you should do is go to your Gmail account and just keep showing these different emails that you personally send out but we realized it was going to take too long and it’s going to be too distracting to show that, so you copied and pasted emails in preparation for this conversation. But this is a real email that you sent to Noah Kagan, the founder of AppSumo.

Ruben: Yes.

Andrew: Just copied and pasted.

Ruben: Yes. This is actually the very first email that I sent to Noah.

Andrew: Yes.

Ruben: This is a real email. Also, right below that I have an email that I sent to Jason Cohen, the first email that I sent to him. But, if you notice something about these emails they’re both really short, right? And they have two elements that I think are really important when you’re sending out an initial email.

So, they both have a compliment, and they have some feedback. So, as an example, the very first email here. It says, ‘I just wanted to let you know a couple of things since I’m a big fan of what you’re doing with AppSumo’. So right there, I’m a big fan of what you’re doing with AppSumo. I’m just saying that I really like what he’s doing. Then, I give him feedback on an email that he had just sent out that wasn’t working, right?

Andrew: So it’s always . . . and I’ve seen this and you and I have talked about this, your format is that simple. It’s short email, compliment first, feedback later.

Ruben: Yes, for an initial or if something just happened that I really like. Then I usually follow it up with lots of feedback; we’ll talk about that.

Andrew: So why . . . I guess I understand the compliment because if you say something nice about my work it’s something that I spend all day on; I care a lot about it and if I see someone who is appreciative of it, who compliments it, you just have now showed attention to the thing that I care most about. I get that.
But why feedback? Why not follow up with an, ‘Hey, we should get together for drinks or, hey, do you want to just chat on the phone. Or I really dig the fact that you’re trying to lower prices at AppSumo. Can we hang out sometime at a conference’. Why is specifically feedback the first entry point for you?

Ruben: Because it’s . . . personally, first of all, it just feels awkward to, for me, to . . . I am an introvert; it feels very awkward for me to just immediately ask for a meeting or anything like that. So, personally I have trouble with that. But, you have to think about them as well. So, if somebody just emails you out of the blue and you don’t know who they are and they ask for your time like this, how likely are you to give it to them? How likely are you to have time? These guys are really busy, so, you want to build a relationship first and helping . . . giving feedback is helping. So helping, and starting to help, even if it’s in small ways is, I think, one of the best ways to do it.

Andrew: Yes. And I can see, for example, I know . . . I’m assuming that the time that you sent that email to Noah is when he was just getting AppSumo going; when the rest of the world wasn’t so sure that it was going to be the site that it became. And you said, look, the email you’re sending out has got a bunch of markup in it and it’s going into my spam folder. If he’s now alerted to a problem that he might not have known about before, it’s clearly money in his pocket because you’re helping him solve the biggest source of revenue for him, which is email, in his case.

And if you’re helping someone by giving them feedback that actually helps improve their business, it’s like you’re taking cash out of your pocket and handing it to them. Or cash out of thin air, essentially, and handing it to them.

So it’s short email, compliment, feedback. That’s the introduction. That’s the way that you recommend people do it. What’s the next step? What’s the next thing that people need to keep in mind?

Ruben: Sure. The very next step, I would say, would be to send frequent emails. So, it’s not enough to just send one email and then email them a couple of months later or never again and hope that they’re going to email you back and you’re going to have built a relationship. That’s not going to happen.

So, you want to make sure to send a lot of email, basically. You want to be remembered. You don’t want to be spammy about it. You don’t want to just send everyday just because. You want to have real reasons to send email. You just want them to remember your name. Most importantly, you want to build a relationship. Building a relationship online is just like building a relationship offline. The more you meet somebody, the more you talk to somebody, the better you get to know them and the more comfortable you feel with them.

Andrew: So, what are we looking at here? It looks like subject lines and dates of emails. Who are these to?

Ruben: These are all emails to a good friend of mine, Rob Walling.

Andrew: He’s now a good friend of yours, but he’s a person whose blog you were reading for a long time, who you were benefiting from as you were building your business, but because of these emails, you became friends.

Ruben: Exactly. These are the very first emails that I had sent Rob. At this time I didn’t know Rob. I just went back and pulled the very first emails just so you can see how frequently I sent emails. Some of these are just a continuation of the same thread. You can see it’s almost at the beginning maybe once a week and there a couple threads. It’s just back and forth right?

Andrew: Yep. It just builds up and by February it looks like your “besties”, the way that you’re emailing back and forth by February 12.

Ruben: I actually looked after that, he starts sending me emails. It’s a way for them to remember and start building the relationship. It’s probably good to mention right here, at the very beginning I actually emailed them with a question and he replied back and talked quite a little bit. Then after that, a week later, a little bit after a week later, you see this update? Subject line right here? I emailed him back not just to say, not to just frequently email, but to, actually I had a reason I was updating him on something we talked about.

Andrew: All right. Let’s come back and talk about that in a little bit because I know that’s an essential part of the way you build relationship and show the person that you’re talking to that you’re not just hanging out. You’re not just a fan, but you’re someone who gets stuff done. For now the point that we want to make sure to emphasize, is you’re saying frequent contact, short emails, but frequently.

As an introvert, as someone who’s not a friend of a friend of Rob’s, you might be hesitant to email again. You might say, he didn’t respond to my first email or my second email. I’m going to just disappear. He doesn’t like me, I’m talking now about the way I would react to that, I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but I could imagine. You’re saying, don’t just keep sending it out there frequent, small, helpful, and build that relationship. We’re going to show how to escalate the relationship, but first frequency is important.

Ruben: Right. Going back to the first thing I mentioned on the first point about short emails, you can feel better about sending emails if they’re short. Sometimes like I said, they’re busy, they get a lot of emails. They may miss your emails, forget to respond it doesn’t mean they never will, it just means that you’re going to send them another email with something helpful hopefully next time, right?

Andrew: Yep. OK. So, what’s the next tactic?

Ruben: The next one is giving feedback. That’s really important because we discussed it a little bit in the beginning, but it’s all about helping the other person. One of the best ways to help is to — and the easiest, is to just give feedback. Every body can give feedback. It’s extremely important to give feedback. Some of the best times to give feedback are when the person you’re giving feedback too is involved in the project or involved in something. It’s really important, at that point in time — and that’s when they’re most open to feedback and that’s when you want to do a good job and give them thorough feedback on that.

Andrew: Now we’re saying, you’ve gotten the relationship going, now it’s time for the big help. This is where you know they’re at the stage of where they really need help and you’re not just coming in with a little bit of support, you’re saying, your going through something big I’m going to give you a big hand right now.

Ruben: Yeah and at that point of time is, I think some of the times where you start to really [??] the relationship. When you start to offer help or give [??]. Especially, if you give it automatically without asking. I think some people are weird about it. I’m sending out emails that give great feedback is a good way.

Andrew: What you’re doing here, actually before we even get to this I care about results, results, results in all of these sessions. I want to keep emphasizing the results that you got with Rob Walling. He showed you a plan for launching your product that enabled you to get sales quickly when you launched it, right? You and I talked about how you got sales after you launched your software.

Most people it takes them awhile to get customers in the door. He helped you when you needed it. Noah Kagan recently ran an [??] promotion for your company and helped get you customers. I know both of them have appreciated help that you’ve given them in the past and I want to emphasize that you’re not just here to hang out, you are in business this isn’t just about how to make friends, this is about how to build real relationships that help both of your businesses and by the way, along the way, make friendships. So, now I talked about the results. You’ve shown the e-mail. I recognized this e-mail when you sent it to me in the notes and preparation for the session. The e-mail that you sent me was incredibly helpful. This is when I launched the Mixergy Premium program, where I started charging, and I had all kinds of prices on that. I’ll let you explain what you were doing.

Andrew: Yes, I remember this. You had just lost the [??] program, and it seemed like you were getting a lot of grief from people. There was something on Hacker news where they were talking about you charging for content. Basically, everybody expects it to be free. You seemed to be kind of concerned about that. You asked for feedback, and you were testing it out. So, it was obviously pretty important. It was a big step in what you were doing. So, essentially, I find out. And then, right after I did that, I sent you an e-mail of three bullet list items, but I wanted to make them really helpful. So, basically, the first one I talk about which one I picked and why I picked that.

One of the important things about giving feedback is not just saying, “OK, this is broken,” or “I did this, and this happened,” but actually explaining why and letting the other person see your mindset. This is pretty helpful. So, that’s what I tried to do in the first one, explain what I picked, why I picked it, and what else I would’ve done. The second one, I sort of went through some of the negative comments that were happening on Hacker News and just said, “Ignore those,” because there are people like me that don’t think that way.

Ruben: Let me pause right there, and let me tell you where my mind was when I got that e-mail. I was living in Argentina at the time, and I didn’t even know that we went live with the paid version of the site, so it took me by surprise that we had. The out-sourcer who I was working with, not the guy who’s editing the interview, but one of the out-sourcers I was working with put it out much faster than I expected, and I started to see people complain all over the place, and I thought, maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. I started calling up friends back in the U.S., getting their feedback, trying to understand should I do it or not. And I was in this uncertain place, and it was you, it was Patrick McKenzie, it was Ramit Sethi, it was maybe a couple of others, who said keep going.

And as a result of that, all of the other noise just disappeared in my head, and I thought, all right, I’m going to do it. But you guys came through and pushed me at a time when I was really unsure of myself. I could name the people who did that, and I can tell you that this is much more powerful to me looking at this now in retrospect than it can be for the audience. I just want to communicate to them. These aren’t just a bunch of words on a screen. Take this for the powerful message that it is, coming from Reuben. The other one is Jason Fried, from 37signals. I’ll never forget the e-mails that you guys sent. I’ll never forget the way that he told me to keep going, because it came in as useful feedback at a time when I was just trying to figure out what to do. All right, and then you had one last message there. I’ll let you read that and explain what you were telling me.

Andrew: Basically, the last one was just about telling you that you could have charged more if you wanted to. And then I gave an example of when I moved up my pricing what happened. Certain people complained, people will always complain, and all that stuff. It was just letting you know a little bit more about what I’ve gone through and maybe hoping that might help your situation in this case.

Ruben: Yeah. And you’re saying, look, increasing pricing is actually a helpful thing. And I got that form a couple of experiments that I did, where if I increased prices, I ended up with more orders, believe it or not.

Andrew: Right.

Ruben: All right, and you’re showing the second e-mail there, too.

Andrew: Right. So, this one is to Peldi of Balsalmiq Mockups. This was really early on when he launched myBalsalmiq, when it’s still in beta. You could see, this one’s a pretty long e-mail, right? And so, a page is the e-mail, and what’s not part of this page is three screenshots that were marked up. So I just went through and basically talked about the stuff that I felt was confusing about the user interface and added screen shots, to make it easy to see some problem areas. Then after that, I ended it by talking about the things that I really like about it because it’s also important — especially if you’re beta testing something that a lot of people just basically just send negative feedback, but it’s really important to let them know what’s working right. What they’re doing right.

Andrew: [??], one of the most admired [??] software creators online, when I did an interview with you earlier this week I posted it. He started promoting it to his audience and it helped become one of the most popular [??] of the month. Because he has a very passionate audience, beyond that though how has he helped you?

Ruben: Several times. Early on when I quit my job, I was so stressed out about it and I didn’t know what to do, he’s giving me advice on several points, which has been very helpful, but this was extremely great advice. Because I was so stressed out, I wanted to give a month notice, maybe even two months notice. He said, ‘Don’t do that just give them two weeks notice and if they really work something out whatever you’ll thank me later that you did.’ I gave two weeks notice and within two days I knew that he was right. That was great feedback.

Andrew: Good. I want to keep emphasizing the power of what you’re doing here. I think a lot of times people look for simple solutions, like a set of pickup lines for how to meet entrepreneurs. I would be able to sell a ton of these courses if I said, ‘Ruben’s going to tell you the 20 lines that you can use to meet the top entrepreneurs and get them to mentor you.’ It’s not about that. It’s about this interaction. It’s not as gimmicky as that, it’s about really helping people and in return really getting support and help back from them.

Ruben: Yeah. Some of these things may seem like, OK you can send out a simple email and get that kind of feedback, which maybe let’s say if you ask the question about how long to quit. Maybe you can, but [??] it takes up a lot more of your time than that. He helped me think through my product road map.

Andrew: [??] did?

Ruben: [??] did, right.

Andrew: [??] help you think through your product road map?

Ruben: Well, he actually talked about the fact that people were emailing me and asking me for product road map and he said, ‘Why don’t we just trade product road maps. Let’s draft up an email.’ We discussed our product road maps and then drafted up really long emails. That kind of stuff takes time. Rob spent a lot of time. Noah just recently helped me take my emails, this was through a lot of time and a lot of emails going back and forth, helped me increase my email signups from like five a month to 15 a day.

Andrew: He’s good that way, but I’ve also seen people get emails from Noah and he says great, cool, and moves on because he doesn’t have time to help people out. What’s the next tactic?

Ruben: The next thing is following up. What do you want to follow up? Following up is super powerful. It’s great because hardly anybody follows up. Nobody does this so, it’s really a great way to stand out and be remembered. Like I said, a lot of times people will email people like this, so you want to do what you can to be remembered, and stand out and let them know that you’re different. That you actually get stuff done.

Andrew: OK. So when Heaton says, actually tell me the back story behind that email to Heaton? What is that?

Ruben: I was writing a guess host and I’d asked Heaton some questions. I’d sent him an email telling him that I was going to mention [??] and then I followed up with a couple of questions. My questions were short, but he actually responded back with, he put time into his answers. So this was just following up to let him know that he didn’t waste his time by answering my questions. That yes, I went ahead and published that, included that into the guest post, which is going to get thousands of visitors and hopefully some conversions out of it.

Andrew: And, you did the same thing with me?

Ruben: Right. I think I had asked you about a pay-with-a-tweet experiment that you did and then you sent back an e-mail, a really nice e-mail that had some great stats and information on there. I said “Wow”. I was really impressed. So, I went back, and this is key, whenever I ask a question or try to get advice and get it I make it a to-do item. It’s very important for me to do that, so I can then have something to e-mail the person back with. After you sent back that information I didn’t just say “OK. Cool. You did pay-with-a-tweet and this is what happened. I’ll try it some day.” Right? No, I went back to my site and I actually started a test. After a couple of weeks I mailed you back, “Hey, Andrew. I tried it out and this is a summary of what happened. I attached a screen shot showing my funnel.”

Andrew: I love that. That taught me so much. I’m glad that I helped you before hand, but what you sent me back felt really valuable to me. What you showed me was, “Here’s how I think about this kind of process.” You said, “Andrew, I did the pay with the tweet. Pay-with-a-tweet is you were offering something for free, but it wasn’t 100% free. People had to tweet about your freebee in order to get it for free for themselves, so, they tweeted then they entered your funnel by giving you their e-mail address and some of them ended up buying. What you showed me was that you don’t see all e-mail addresses the same, that you don’t at the end of a campaign say ‘I got 100,000 e-mails or 100 e-mails. Yay.’ You say, ‘How many of those e-mails converted into orders and if I didn’t get enough then it’s not worth my time.’ That process showed me so much.”

Ruben: I didn’t know whether you’d get anything out of the e-mail that I was sending. I was hoping you did or I was hoping some of the information might be helpful, but it was just a short follow-up with showing that, how I think about the process.

Andrew: I’ve got something in my notes here about follow-up.cc to talk about that in this section. I think we need to tell the person who’s watching us now about follow-up.cc, to talk about that in this section. What do we need to tell the person about follow-up.cc?

Ruben: So, one of the things that I do whenever I talk to people is I try to come up with something that, basically, if I’m asking for help, I’m going to do something and I’m going to make it a to do what. Right? So, in the past, and I still do this, I added it to my to do list. Another thing that I do is…

Andrew: That’s your Gmail design, by the way, the ninja.

Ruben: Yeah. I forget that not everybody has this, but I used a service called follow-up.cc to remember to follow up. So, let’s say that this is an e-mail thread that I just had with somebody. So, now it’s going to be an action item. I’m going to probably implement this in a week, so I would just forward this to…

Andrew: I see. So, we’re pretending that someone just sent you a message with a great suggestion. You then do what?

Ruben: So, then I go to forward and then I type 1W. I send it and that’s it. So, a week later I get an e-mail that looks just like this in my inbox. The only thing that this e-mail is is just a reminder.

Andrew: You’re basically getting that same e-mail back a week later with, on the right side, is a way for you to snooze it, so if you’re not ready to handle it right now you could hit the “snooze 30 minutes” and it comes back in 30 minutes. But, what it’s doing is reminding you to follow up with this person.

Ruben: Exactly.

Andrew: The way I use it, by the way, is if I were e-mailing, that’s Marissa there, if I e-mailed Marissa and said “Thanks for the great suggestion I would in the BCC[Sp] field type in 1W@follow-up.cc, and that way, a week later, it comes back to me. It’s really helpful.

Ruben: Yeah. I do that a lot too, but sometimes I don’t. I’m not sure that I’m going to come away with an action item so I’ll just forward the e-mail then.

Andrew: Do you have follow-up.cc open on your screen? Maybe what you could do is hit the one day snooze or something and we can take a look at follow-up.cc on the screen. I just want to show people what we’re suggesting that they check out.

That’s a confirmation. You did snooze for one day. And then hit the Home button, let’s just show the Home screen. I want to be as visual as possible in these sessions.

Now you’re editing it and there it is.

So, that’s why I forgot. I want to show people there is a free version of it and they can just go and sign up.

We have no connection with followup.cc. I know a lot of other people swear by Boomerang and other services that work really well. The general idea though it is that you send yourself a reminder so you know to follow up with them.

We talked before the session about how we want to focus this on introverts. Because we want to be really useful to one group of people, not a little use to a lot of people. We also said that we wanted to focus on online connections. But we thought that it would be incomplete if we left it at just online.

And so we talked about maybe one way that an introvert can make connections with really great people offline and you did something really interesting at a conference recently. Can you talk about that?

Ruben: So it was at MicroConf. My friend Rob was putting on MicroConf, and I volunteered to help out with MicroConf.

Basically you can see from the speaker lineup there were a lot of interesting people here, that you want to meet.

So what I did was, I volunteered to video tape the conference and that way I got to actually go to this speaker dinner, even though I wasn’t a speaker. And got to sit there and talked to pretty much everybody and meet everybody that way.

So as an introvert, it gave me a really good excuse to do that.

Andrew: I noticed that actually. One of the things that I’m learning about conferences is that, there are these clicks and the speaker end up often in their own little click. And they have the dinner, they have these private conversations. And as a person who is there at the dinner, they get to know who you are. What are you doing here, what is your part here? As a person who is a volunteering at the event, you naturally are called on to interact with the guest and with the speakers and it’s a great way to connect with them.

And that’s what you did at MicroConf.

How did you, did Rob volunteer you or did you volunteer yourself to help out?

Ruben: I volunteered to help out at whatever needed. Because it sounded like there’s going to be a lot going on at the conference. I said, ‘You know what, if you need help any kind, doesn’t matter, like putting badges together, whatever just, you know, I’m there, I can do it’. And then he followed up, he said, ‘Yeah, actually there might be this one thing’. So, it was pretty straight forward.

And another thing about meeting people at a conference, I mean, I always try to go to conferences, that’s where there are people that I kind of know online, but never met them in person. And it’s so great to meet people like that in person, really help take the relationship to the next level. One of the best things that you can do.

Andrew: What a big change from the time you went to the conference with business cards and didn’t get to meet anyone. Here you are at a conference where, first of all, you knew a lot of these people, I’m seeing their faces up there. Of course you know Rob is on the upper right, next to him on his left is Noel Kagan, who you mentioned earlier. Then you see Ethan Shaw, and as I looked around here, I see other faces of people who you know now and many you knew before.

And it is a big change and it is because of what you’ve done online.

Ruben: Yeah. I see that if I haven’t know anybody online, if I haven’t reached out to them online, it probably would be similar to that very first conference I went to. I didn’t know anybody, so it’s just a roomful of people that I’m meeting for the very first time.

Where as here, I’ve actually, I already know these people, I had conversations and now it’s just meeting them in person, which is great.

Andrew: All right. There’s still other tactics that we wanted to get to. At least one other one.

You want to bring that up on your screen?

Ruben: Sure, Warm emails.

Well, so, what I mean by warm emails is asking for referral, for an introduction, to somebody. Not just asking for one, but also giving introductions. I think it’s valuable to do both and it’s important to do both. The reason why asking for an introduction is helpful is because there are a lot of people that are very hard to reach and one of the easiest and best ways to reach them is through somebody else that they know. In here, I haven’t actually asked Noah to introduce me to somebody from Smashing magazine.

And this is the thing with you and Noah and a lot of people I know, you guys are so good at offering introductions without me saying anything about it. It happens all the time. He’s offered to introduce me; I haven’t taken him up on that just yet. But if I did this is how I would basically ask for an introduction. ‘Hi, Noah. Is there somebody at Smashing Magazine you can introduce me to? I have a couple of possible guest posts I’d like to run by them.’ And that’s it. Just two sentences. I’m doing this at this point in time because I know him already. So it’s not just like asking somebody that I don’t know for an introduction to somebody else that I don’t know.

Andrew: What I understand about human psychology is not a whole lot but I do know if you don’t ask for something in return, ask for something even a little big you create a relationship that’s lopsided and you create an expectation in the other person that they’re to never offer you anything because by you helping them you’re getting all the benefit that you need and it creates bad expectations.

I’ve even heard of con artists just asking for small things as a way of getting you trained to give them big things because they know if they don’t ask for small things you’re not establishing a relationship where the other person feels comfortable and feels ready to help out. Probably shouldn’t use ‘con artists’ as an example in these sessions but the basic idea is these requests for help are sometimes tough to ask for but they’re really nurturing to a relationship. I know Noah if you sent that out would be happy to make that kind of introduction. And of course the person who he’d connect you with, because it’s Noah and because he’s offered to make the introduction, would be much more receptive to responding.

Ruben: He’s already made so many introductions without me asking. That’s a good point about asking for things and not letting it be just a one-sided relationship. It’s just like a regular relationship, right, even if all this is taking place online. I read that a tactic to get people to like you is to ask for small favors. It’s kind of counter-intuitive. Doing things, sure that helps. But actually asking for favors helps as well.

Andrew: I agree. You’re right. It’s easier via email. It’s easier if it starts off small like an introduction. That’s how you get to meet people. You’ve got an email up there that I remember. I like, by the way, how you’re thinking about this. You’re saying, ‘The audience here knows Andrew. I’m going to show them how I did this stuff with Andrew.’ There is the email you sent me asking for actually…introducing me to Rob.

Ruben: This is actually doing an introduction. Once you actually start to get to know a couple of people then one of the other things you could do to advance your relationship, and this is about building relationships so it’s basically introducing people that might want to know each other. In this case I’m introducing Andrew to Rob Waller. Rob was putting on a conference. I’d asked Andrew about speaking at the conference; he said he’d like to talk about it with Ron. Introduction emails or something that initially I had a really tough time with because the very first time I had to do it, how do I write one? I had no idea. After a while seeing other people that do it all the time do introductions it’s basically a very simple thing. Just a couple lines where I say, ‘Andrew, meet Rob.’ And then talk about who he is, what he’s done. ‘He’s putting a conference together called [??] and was interested in talking to you about it and you can take it from here.’ That’s it.

Andrew: Can we give everyone who’s watching this a copy of all the emails you’ve used so that they can…maybe we’ll strip out the email addresses from them so you’re not revealing other people’s e-mails, but, can we give them these documents so that they can use them as guides when they’re sending out e-mails?

Ruben: Absolutely. Sure.

Andrew: Great.

Ruben: And, a lot of times you might add another line on here, like, “Rob” or “Andrew is…” to sort of complete that. Some people do that as well. The point here is to keep it short. You’re just doing a quick intro and letting them take it from your introduction.

Andrew: The other thing that you and I talked about before that we don’t really have a named tactic for but is important to talk about is how you kind of mimic. You take it from there. Tell the audience about that.

Ruben: So, I think it’s important to be reflective of the communication style that you’re dealing with, so, however somebody talks, just like in person, you want to sort of talk the way that they talk and sort of have the same body language that they have. In e-mail it’s similar. You want to reflect the way they communicate online. If they use exclamation marks and smiley faces it wouldn’t hurt to add one to your e-mail. If they don’t and they’re kind of monotone they might think you’re a little weird if you have all these smiley faces and exclamation marks and all that stuff, so, you probably want to tone down your communication style a little bit.

Andrew: OK. Finally, you say “get involved with or start side projects”.

Ruben: Yes. That’s very key for people that are introverted to do things like that because, for me at least, it gives me an excuse to talk to people. It is hard to just e-mail people that I don’t know, so just getting involved in projects is a really great way to give me an excuse to talk to people.

Andrew: Can you give me an example?

Ruben: Sure. We talked about one example which was the conference. Another example was the guest post. So, this is a guest post that I did. Because of this guest post I interviewed three people or four people as part of the guest post. I even e-mailed you, Andrew, about the guest post. I said, ‘Hey, [??] include a Mixergy clip where Jason Fried was talking about free plans and all that stuff. But, that gave me an excuse to talk to you and Hiten Shah. This is actually how I met Justin Vincent from Techzing, and we’re good friends now because of a project that I got involved in. I e-mailed him. I asked him for an interview because I was writing guest posts and I wanted to talk to him about some other things. He replied back and said sure. We talked on Skype and we had a nice conversation from that.

Andrew: I don’t remember you asking me about that, but I do remember reading that as a fan of Rob’s work. Look at how many tweets that post got. He must have loved it. But, it was also a really well written case for not offering free plans.

Ruben: Yeah. Thanks. It did way better than I thought it would. I was hoping that it would get at least one comment. That was my goal.

Andrew: I think it’s the most viewed article on his site. Right? When you go to the list of the most popular posts on his site it’s up there. There it is. I knew it. That’s how carefully I’ve watched that one. So, you’re saying to get involved in side projects. Even guest blogging means that you have an opportunity to talk to new people and you certainly have an opportunity to talk to new people and you certainly have an opportunity to get to know the person who you’re guest blogging for. You also say beta testing fits in to this. What do you mean by that?

Ruben: That’s how I started talking to Hiten Shah. He had just launched his metrics and they were doing beta testing, so I signed up for beta testing and it gave me a great chance to e-mail really detailed feedback, offered to give more feedback on the phone, on Skype…

Andrew: And, you got on the phone on Skype with him. As long as you have his metrics on screen, let’s bring up that tab. Let’s keep this stuff really visual. So, yeah, you got on the phone with him and you were walking through your feedback to him?

Ruben: Yeah, I think I might have offered him Skype, but he’s really big, or he was, on the phone, so he offered to speak on the phone, and I said, sure, let’s talk on the phone. Actually, he wanted to know a couple of the problems that I was having, just with my business, because it helped him with metrics and then in return, I told him some of the things that I liked about his metrics, and all that stuff, so we had at least a couple of phone conversations. Yeah, just getting involved in little projects like that, like I emailed somebody about writing an e-book. Somebody from the [??] network of sites. Just a project that I didn’t even consider. So I emailed the guy that runs the site and it’s pretty big and popular in the design space. He emailed back, that’s a great idea, and he was really excited because we’ve been trying to write something like that but don’t have the time to do it or anything like that so, yeah, if you do it just let me know and I’ll help you promote it to our network of sites and off of that we’ve actually had several email exchanges.

Andrew: Well, it’s the several that I want to make sure to emphasize. When you publish anything online or you start a business, there’s always someone who, there’s always people who help you out a lot and you say, boy there was that one guy that really helped me and I can’t think of his name. There’s one guy that really came through. I can’t think of his name, but man, the universe is a great place for sending people like him. You don’t want them building a relationship with the universe, though it’s great. You want them to get to know you and that frequency and that it doesn’t always have to be this big long document but that it can just be a hey, I used what you suggested and I got results or hey I thought you might want to know that there’s an issue with this one piece of your site. That frequency helps build relationships and it takes some time to get this good. How long ago was it that you were at that first conference? In fact, sorry, before you answer, let’s bring your website up. Since we’re coming to the end, I want to make sure that people see your site.

Ruben: Sure.

Andrew: So how long ago was it since that first conference that you went to?

Ruben: Maybe seven years ago. I was working at a day job. So, that was a while ago. But even after that first starter conference was also a little awkward for me. I soon learned to start doing things online before I actually, it just helps, as an introvert, to feel like I know at least a couple of people. It’s so hard to just go to somewhere and not really know anybody and try to meet people in person. It’s difficult.

Andrew: Well, I’m glad you did it. I appreciate all the help you’ve given me, and I appreciate the fact that you did both the interview now on Mixergy and you did this course here with us. When, I think, I asked you to do an interview because my audience asked, and I forwarded you an email from someone in the audience who said, you’ve got to get Reuben, and I said, Reuben, you should do an interview and you said, Andrew, I’m an introvert. I don’t do that stuff. And I said, I’ve got to keep up with him and I also asked my booker, I said, we’ve got to get Ruben on. And we did it. It wasn’t like it usually is where we say, do you want to be on, and people jump on it, and say, absolutely, can I come on five times a week? How often can I come back?

With you it was a little bit of work because of this introvert part and I’m really glad you were comfortable sharing that publicly, and then talking about how you get past it and build relationships that build the business. See, my video froze there for a moment, but hopefully it’ll come back when I say, thank you for doing the session. Thank you all for watching. Check out BidSketch, and can we include a link to your email?

Ruben: A link to my email?

Andrew: Yeah. Can we let people contact you directly?

Ruben: Oh yeah. Of course.

Andrew: Great.

Ruben: So it’ll be Ruben@bidsketch.com.

Andrew: Thank you. Thank you.

Master Class: Buying Ads
Taught by Ilya Lichtenstein of MixRank

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Master Class: Buying Ads

Time to watch/listen: 82 minutes

 

 

 

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About Ilya Lichtenstein

Ilya Lichtenstein is the founder of MixRank, which shows you exactly which ads are working for your competitors right now. See their most successful ad copy, landing pages, and traffic sources across 93,000 sites.

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Transcript

Download the transcript here

Andrew: This course is about buying ads profitably. The course is led by Ilya Lichtenstein. He’s the founder of MixRank, which shows you exactly what ads are working for your competitors right now, and allows you to see their most ad copy, landing pages, and traffic sources across 93,000 sites and it feels almost evil. At the end of the session I’d like you to show how you do this.

My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy, a site where proven entrepreneurs teach.

Ilya, can you give us an example of what the viewer who’s watching us right now will be able to do at the end of this session?

Ilya: Yes. So basically, you’ll be able to uncover traffic sources that you haven’t found before. That can be incredibly successful. That can send you massive traffic without worrying about key words or quality score irrelevance, or anything else that you typically have to deal with search traffic. I’ll talk about media buys, basically buying direct ad placements on highly relevant sites. So, here’s an example of a media buy campaign that I ran as an affiliate marketer. This was for a dating site, and these are all of the actual sites that we’re sending each traffic. These are one-day stats.

And you could see what kind of ROI I’m getting from this campaign–300, even 700% ROI in some cases. And the reason that I’m getting these results for these ads is because this campaign is highly targeted. It’s targeted to the exact right audience that I know will convert. And I’m not competing with eight other advertisers for the same ad slot, as I would in a typical search campaign. And so, here’s an example . . .

Andrew: Keep that up for a second, actually. Go back to that second tab, please. I want to make sure that people understand this. You and I went through this in the pre-interview, and I appreciate all the time you put into it. I want to make sure that everyone else is following along. So, we’re taking a look at the second line on the page right there–that’s love-only.com. That’s a website where you bought an ad directly and people are learning how you found them, how you know this would work, why you knew this would give you a high ROI. You got 26 clicks from them today, six leads from them today. You paid out $3 today. Your average cost per click is $.27, and your average earning-per-clicks are $.69. It’s a profitable campaign, $18 in income today, and that’s one website where you bought an ad, right?

Ilya: Yeah, and you could scale this across hundreds of sites pretty easily, and you’re always going to find a few that are just breakout hits, like some of these, here, that can give you massive traffic, and that will just blow away your expectations, basically–especially if you use competing on search, where the margins are really slim, and it may not work nearly as well.

Andrew: All right, one more thing. Go back to that first tab with your website. And the reason I want to do that is I think it’s a little, it comes across as a little suspicious when someone shows you their earnings. It seems like one of these . . . well, it feels a little shady. MixRank is a well respected website, backed by some of the most respected people in technology. Can you say who’s backing the company?

Ilya: Yes, we’re backed by Y Combinator. I just went through the latest summer batch, and we launched a couple months ago.

Andrew: Right. So this is a highly respected entrepreneur; a highly respected site. We’re showing stats because I know that all of my audience is from Missouri, the show-me state. They want to see numbers and thankfully the entrepreneurs, who are friends, who support the work we’re doing here at Mixergy want to help out, and so you’re showing your numbers. You said, just for today. Those are the stats just for today. We’re not showing your whole life history of stats. So, those are the odds that you bought, and you’re about to show us an example of where you bought the ad. That was the third tab. Let’s give people a sense of where you’re buying them.

Ilya: I don’t have that open. I can show you another media buy, just as an example of what these direct buys look like.

Andrew: Gotcha.

Ilya: Say for example, we’re a coupon site or a deal site. We might want to do a buy on Fat Wallet.com, which is a well-known deal site. And here’s an example of someone doing a media buys. So, this is Apple. On this coupon site, doing a direct buy, offering a coupon. Basically, it’s to list traffic, and that’s a great example of traffic that’s highly relevant and an ad that’s highly relevant. And the way I know that this is a direct buy is that I can basically refresh this page, and I will see the same ad here, meaning that it’s not remnant inventory, it’s not going through an ad network that’s just testing a bunch of ads.

This is really directly, highly targeted to this specific audience, and that’s why it works so well. You can basically do the same thing that they’re doing. You don’t have to be a big brand to do media buys. You can start with just a few hundred dollars and start seeing results almost immediately. You can find the right traffic sources that will give you the highest quality traffic and do these buys very quickly.

Andrew: And I know you’re going to show us how to find the right places and how to get the right deal. You’re going to give us the email that you send out when you’re negotiating an ad buy. But what I’m curious about is why this kind of ad? You explained to us why it’s better than buying ads in Google Search results, where you have to compete with others, and even Ad Sense, where you have to compete with other text links on the page. But why do direct and not go to an ad network, or go any other route? Why go through this trouble of identifying and contacting the website?

Ilya: Well, for one, an ad network takes a big cut, 30%, 40%, 50%. So, 50% of your spend is not going to the publisher. It’s going to the ad network, which means you’re paying a lot more for that same traffic. That’s one thing. The other reason is that a lot of these ad networks will actually not give you this level of transparency and tracking, and accountability. A lot of them are still designed for brands, especially the bigger display networks. So, you’re not able to target specific sites or specific traffic sources. You have to sort of target a channel, or a broad run of networks’ ad campaign.

And often times, when you go through an ad network you don’t even know where your own ads are running, and the reason they do that is that they don’t want you to cut out the middle man. They don’t want you to go direct and strip them of that 40% or 50% cut that they’re taking. And traditionally, the reason the ad networks have been successful is because there haven’t been tools available that let advertisers find these types of placements directly. So, the ad network says, OK, we’ll find these traffic sources for you, and we’ll manage your campaign, and you can cross your fingers and hope that it’ll perform well.

Nowadays, what you can do is basically cut out the middleman, run these campaigns directly, and build a direct relationship with the publisher that’s sending you traffic, meaning that you’ll get the best deal; they’ll make more from their ads than they would through an ad network, because that 40%, 50% is not being taken out. It’s a win-win; you get more traffic. You don’t have to compete with the other advertisers that might also be running on that same ad network and outbidding you. You typically wouldn’t even get into a bidding war with something like this. You would just do a direct deal, where you say I’ll pay you this much per month for this much CPM, or whatever. And that way you get all that traffic to yourself. It’s a lot cheaper and you can get it at a lot more transparency. You can get a lot more control of your campaign than you would going through an ad network.

Andrew: OK. All right. So, we see where the ads will go. We understand how profitable they are. We know where we’re going. What’s the first step to getting to this? What’s the first step to buying ads?

Ilya: The first step is very simple. You basically want to build a list of targets, build a list of sites that are sending the right kind of traffic that you want; build a list of sites that you can assume will convert well. And so, the way to do that is very simple. There are a few approaches. I have one specific approach that I’ve honed over years of doing media buys. So, I’m going to show you this one. There are others. And so, we’re going to stick with the coupon example, and say, you want to target that same audience of bargain shoppers, kind of a more frugal shopper. Say you have a coupon site, or a deal site, or something you want to target them. But this can be applied to any vertical, to any market.

The way I start is by going through social bookmarking sites. And the reason I do that is very specific. So for example, here’s ‘delicious,’ and I just search for coupons. And that’s all you need. All you need is to start with one key word. It doesn’t have to be a long tail keyword. It doesn’t have to be niche. It just has to be something that’s descriptive of your market, or your products, or your audience that you want to target. And the reason that I go through social bookmarking sites, versus just searching for your keyword, is that it lets you build a much more targeted list. It lets you build a list that is maybe not necessarily as obvious. So, sites like Fat Wallet, everyone knows about them, you’re going to be competing with Apple, if you want to try advertising on here. Some of these are a lot more long tail, especially if you keep going through this list. And yet, they’re highly relevant and you can start very simply and start building this list.

Andrew: Like, there’s a redplum.com on that list. I never heard of that website before. Maybe coupon people know it.

Ilya: I haven’t heard of any of these, but they’re highly relevant and these probably have the exact audience that I’m looking to reach.

Andrew: OK.

Ilya: And the other reason that I go through social networking sites to start, is that it really favors higher quality sites. Sites that people like, sites that people want to bookmark and keep coming back to, and that’s where you want your ads appearing on. You don’t want your ads appearing on a site that’s really good at SCO spam and can rank for all these keywords, but doesn’t provide a lot of value.

Andrew: Oh, I see.

Ilya: Someone who just stuffs their site with ads without any concern for the visitors. Because that’s going to cost you a lot of money. And the reason for that is that site is optimized for getting people to click on ads. And it’s not going to give you high quality traffic. It’s going to give you traffic that’s frustrated and bouncing.

Andrew: Tell me, do you have an example of a specific product and a specific category that you targeted that product to? I want to have an image of a real product that you are marketing, and I want to understand what you would have searched for through Delicious to find a place to market it.

Ilya: Actually this, I used to run pretty big affiliate campaigns for Groupon. And that’s why I kind of used this example because I know the space pretty well. So, this is basically the exact process I went through when I would build very successful affiliate campaigns for them.

Andrew: What did Groupon pay you? What was their affiliate commission?

Ilya: I think it was around $2.00 CPA for a free sign up.

Andrew: So every time you got someone to give up an email address, and agree to get email from Groupon you got $2.00? And you said “where do I go and run my ads”? Well I can go to an Ad network, but that’s overcrowded and they’re going to take a big commission? I can go to Google Ads, but then I’m competing with everyone else, including Groupon.com who’s buying ads? And Living Social who has a ton of money? I don’t want to do that, instead I’m going to think well coupon sites are a great marketplace for this kind of ad? I can’t necessarily go to Fatwallet and compete with Apple, but if I squirrel around I can find others that are smaller, assemble a collection of those, then I have a powerful platform?

And the same way you did that for Groupon, the person sitting in my audience who has a web app is going to be able to do it for their web app, when they find the right category? If they have a different kind of product or service their going to be able to do the exact same thing? We now understand the thought process here? OK, from there while you were scrolling down, what were you looking for while you were scrolling down there?

Ilya: I was looking through these tags actually, and I was looking to see how I can expand my list. So, starting from coupons this is a great example of starting from something that’s sort of obvious and going somewhere that might not be as obvious. See, it could go to something like bargains for example.

Andrew: Gotcha.

Ilya: Or you could go to deals. And you can kind of run through here and what I was looking at in this list. I was looking also at the number of people that have bookmarked this. Because if you kind of filter through here and find some kind of sweet spot. Where it’s not a completely huge site that thousands of people have bookmarked, but there is some core audience, that is highly relevant to this. Then that’s what you want to focus on. And there’s another bookmarking tool that I use that is actually even better for expanding this list.

Andrew: By the way, that seems like that’s a huge business. I keep hearing from entrepreneurs who will not do interviews with me on Mixergy about how their just in the affiliates space. They go to commisionjunction.com, maybe to clickbank.com. They find offers the way that you found the Groupon offer and then they go and they do ad buys like your doing. And they just do it in secret because they don’t have a well funded company that they need to promote. There not out in the open yet. And this is a whole business that’s earning them hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars in some cases true? You’re nodding, you’ve seen this right?

Ilya: Yeah, well before getting into startups I was in that industry for about five years. So I know it very well, and I kind of watched it grow and evolve, and it is a very secretive industry. And I think the only ones that are willing to share their secrets are the people that have got out of the space. That is doing something else. And the reason for that is because finding good campaigns is really, really hard. Unless you know where to look. Unless you have that expertise and that knowledge. So once they’ve found something that’s working, once they’ve found something that’s delivering them passive income, where they can find a media by. And run this every day, and keep generating positive ROI on it every day. That’s tremendously valuable.

Andrew: And that’ll just keep sitting there and working, and working, while you look for new keywords and new websites to go to. I see you’ve got a big smile on your face. All right, we’ll leave it there. So, you were saying you go to other bookmarking sites. What’s another bookmarking site that you go to? Boy, your screen just got really dark for some reason.

Ilya: Sorry, we’re going to have to edit this out.

Andrew: No, we can keep it in there. Let people understand that . . .

Ilya: My light shut off in my office.

Andrew: Oh, do you want to go and turn it on?

Ilya: Yeah, is that OK?

Andrew: Or is it one of those that you have to move your arm up and down for the light to come back?

Ilya: One second.

Andrew: Oh, go do it.

Ilya: I literally had to move; I was like, sitting still.

Andrew: I figured. I like that. I like how you’re very careful with the buck. I did an interview on Mixergy recently with someone who got a ton of funding, and then they went out of control and started buying special chairs, and started hiring too many people. Cheap is the way to go. All right. So you were saying there’s another bookmarking site.

Ilya: Yes. This is a fantastic site for research, and nobody knows about this because it’s not positioned as a marketing research tool. It’s positioned as a bookmark sharing tool. It’s called XMarks.com. The site is amazing. It’s probably the most relevant data I’ve ever seen, more relevant than any keyword tool, and this is where you find those long tail sweet spot, incredibly, incredibly relevant targets. And so, basically, what they do is they have a toolbar that you can use, and it’s very similar to the Delicious, where you can bookmark things and you can say the topic and category. But where I’m focusing here is this, right here–the related topics. So, I started off.

Actually, if we can take a step back I can show you how I got to this point. All I did was that I started typing coupon, and here are all of the super relevant categories that I can use to expand my search, and actually find the incredibly relevant sites that I know will do well with my media buys. And Coupon Blogs is one such example. Generally what you want to do when finding these targets for media buys is find sites that are not huge, like Fat Wallet. My rule of thumb is that I don’t deal with anyone who has an ad sales team. I like to go to the smaller bloggers. I like to go to forums, to discussion groups, to content sites, possibly even sites like Mixergy, where they have a passionate audience that loves the site, that will actually engage with the advertisements; possibly even just to support the site, support the blogger. And that’s where the high-quality traffic is. It’s not so much the big kind of corporate sites that may be Apple’s ad sales team will find, because they have a huge budget. But they’re not interested in the smaller sites, and the bloggers, necessarily.

Andrew: I see. You’re saying to yourself, if someone sees an ad on Mixergy, is he going to ignore it? Is he going to get upset? Or is he going to say, Oh, I know Andrew. It’s a good thing that Andrew’s getting some mad revenue. I want to support the sponsor, maybe even tell the sponsor that I saw him on Mixergy. Got it.

Ilya: Exactly.

Andrew: So, XMarks helps you find that. Why is XMarks better than Delicious, which is better known?

Ilya: Well, for one thing, it’s a lot harder to spam. Delicious has had a spam problem where people know that it sends significant traffic, because it’s better known. And you can basically just submit bookmarks very easily, and you can see that already, just looking through here, if you go probably a few pages back 80,000 bookmarks. I bet a large amount of them are spam, are low-quality sites. So that’s one reason. The other reason is that these categories are very well defined, and these sites are also ranked within these categories, which is actually pretty important, because you want sites that are very highly targeted.

So here’s an example, this is a site that would be a good example of a media buy that we’ll get to in a minute as an example. You can see it’s ranked highly in some of these categories that might not be very obvious to you, but that nonetheless, have a big, very focused niche audience. So Frugal, for example, is a great, great example, where all of these sites would be a really great fit for your deal site or your coupons or even is you’re an e-commerce merchant that has a sale, and you want to do some media advice for your products to promote whatever coupon you have or whatever you have on sell. A lot of these sites will be a really good target for that. I have a very active, very passionate community. You can find this for almost any niche. I bet you any hobby or any interest or any audience you can think of there’s some blog or forum or article site out there that’s targeted directly to them that is a pretty fit for their interest, that’s a site they trust that has credibility with them, that has worked with them.

Andrew: Let’s try it now together. Let’s pretend that I was going to sell my premium program and I want, so, not selling coupon or not selling someone else affiliate program, I want to sell my membership program. Maybe I think that start-ups are a good place to look for . . .

Ilya: Yeah.

Andrew: . . . potential customers.

Ilya: Look at this by the way. Look at this.

Andrew: So, start-ups advice . . . Where would you go? Would you go directly to the first one or do you go to all of them?

Ilya: I would probably browse a few just to get a sense of who’s there. So, start-up blogs might be a really good idea. The reason that you want to go there is . . . And see if you’re into start-ups you probably know all of these sites already. But, someone who might not necessarily be as attuned to this world might not. Also, as you keep going down this list, take a look here, so, actually we can do even better. How about this? Well, see, I don’t know if you’re in here. You might not be in here. But, hey, look at that. OK. Perfect. So, you can start with your own site and you can go through here. Here are similar sites . . .

Andrew: I see.

Ilya: . . . and here are the categories that you’re in. So, say you want to target entrepreneurship traffic, for example. Here are all of these sites about start-ups. So, looking through this list, what do I see? I see here an entrepreneur forum. That’s probably a good fit. That seems like it’s a very finely targeted audience. So, yeah, let’s go here and see if this would be a good media by target.

What do I see here on this target?

If you want to do a media buy, here’s something I forgot to mention, there’s a great tool for a Google Chrome called Chrome SCO. It’s a free extension. It gives you a ton of information about a site. I have it installed here. This is the first thing I always do when I visit a new site that I don’t know that much about. I’ve never seen this site before, so, I don’t know much about it. So, I’m going to open this Chrome SCO extension and we’ll see what I find.

This gives you a ton of data, basically aggregated from all of these other sites that’s all in one place. We have how many back links they have. We have their [??]. This is pretty good [??]. We have their traffic estimate. Comcast is not always accurate, but it gives you a sense of how much traffic they’re getting. Looking here, this site probably goes in my sweet spot where I was talking about before where you don’t want it to be a huge site.

If this was several hundred thousand or several billion visitors, this would probably not be that good of a fit. I would probably have to go through an ad sales team. I would be competing with friends. I would probably have to go through this whole process to do a media buy on this site. If it’s a relatively small site where I don’t have to spend a ton of money to test this traffic and I don’t have to spend a lot of time negotiation this buy, it’s a perfect fit.

Looking through this site, what do I like here? Here’s one thing that I like immediately. I noticed this right away on this site. What we’ll probably do for this course is I’ll probably write up a checklist of things that you should look for in a media buy target. This is one of them, this is they have a newsletter which means two things; one is that if they have any number of subscribers to this newsletter as I’m sure you know, that means they have really high quality traffic on that newsletter on that email list highly targeted and traffic that they could reach very, very quickly.

If I could do some kind of deal with them where I could say, “Let’s advertise on your newsletter or maybe even send something out about my sight” then this would be a fantastic way to get a ton of traffic very quickly because you benefit from all of the visitors that have come to this site for months or years. Some percent of them, the people that are most likely to convert, to sign up for something, to sign up for a newsletter have signed up to this list. This is an incredibly high quality list. It’s a highly targeted list and you would want to put in a lot of effort to somehow to promote yourself to this list.

Andrew: How do you get someone to put your ad in an email newsletter?

Ilya: You send them a compelling email.

Andrew: We’ll talk about that later.

Ilya: You just have to align the incentives and make it valuable for them to do that and add value. So that’s one thing I saw. Another thing that I see here is that this is a content site with blogs. This has articles. It has pod casts, which is pretty relevant to you, and it has a community. That is another thing I always really, really like. For one, because you have accurate stats. Usually a forum, you can look at a member list or you could look at something like that where you say, they have 100,000 members. That means they’ve got my attention. This is pretty valid. This means that I’m not going to be wasting my time going back and forth with them, negotiating with them for maybe just a few clicks.

So that’s really good and they have active forums, that’s another thing I look for, and they have classifieds, which is kind of interesting because that means that this is how their monetizing right now. The one thing that I always look for, when I go to any site, is who is advertising on there right now? How many ads do they have? Who are they monetizing and how? Do they have some kind of premium section? Do they sell something? Do they have advertisers that are consistently . . .

Andrew: Why do you want to know which, why do you want to know what kind of advertising they have on their site right now? How is it different for you to know that they’re doing direct sales versus working with an ad network versus selling their own products?

Ilya: Well for one, you know that they do direct sales if that is what they do. The problem with some blogs or some smaller sites is that they don’t want to deal with your advertising. They say, ‘Oh we have our Google AdSense Ads and it’s doing pretty well, so why stir the pot? Why try something new? Why take a risk? If you want to advertise on our site, just use Google AdSense,’ or whatever and that’s mostly a problem with the smaller sites. There are ways to get around it, but that is an issue where people are not willing to engage in that conversation.

The other thing that you want to see is . . .

Andrew: I’m sorry, before you go to the other thing, do you prefer a site that is working with an ad network or with Goggle to run their ads or do you prefer a site that’s already doing ads directly?

Ilya: It depends to who so, if they’re doing ads directly to big brands, if when you email, they respond and say here’s our media kit and it’s very brand centric, then you’re going have a really, really tough time competing and actually finding that you can negotiate with them and get a good deal. Because brands consistently overpay for traffic. They don’t care about performance. They just want eyeballs for their brand.

If there are a lot of brand advertisers going direct that is a problem. Conversely though, if they have an ad network with a lot of brand ads that’s actually good. Traditionally those brand networks don’t pay very well and they have trouble filling all of their inventory through that ad network. Because the ad network takes such a big cut, generally what you’ll see is that the traffic that’s going through an ad network is remnant inventory, it’s unsold inventory, it’s inventory that they weren’t able to sell direct, and so they’ll be happy to sell that inventory directly to you.

Looking through here, we see that these are brand ads and we see that these are not necessarily very highly targeted brand ads. I’ve been looking through the site and seeing whose advertising on the site and where. So, we have this 300 x 250 unit right here, that’s an AT&T ad, we’ve another non-standard format, bigger ad unit here, that’s another AT&T ad and it is sort of relevant in that it’s business-targeted but I bet you could get better performance from your ads. I bet if you said, “Learn how to take your business to the next level. Learn about entrepreneurship.”, you could probably beat the click rate of these ads right here.

Andrew: How could you tell if it’s an-, I see. So then already I have an advantage.

Ilya: Yeah.

Andrew: I’m better targeted than they are so I’m in a better position to monetize than they are and pay more . . .

Ilya: Do you like how they’re split-testing, by the way? I don’t know if you picked up on that.

Andrew: No, I haven’t.

Ilya: I recently picked up on that. So it’s $70 a month here but if you go down to this one it becomes $75.

Andrew: Oh, get out.

Ilya: Yeah so it’s all these little things that they split-test so that’s . . .

Andrew: You know, what that tells me first of all is that you have a really different eye for this than I would. What is it about this that tells you whether they’re working directly with an ad network or if-, sorry, whether they’re working directly or with an ad network? Do you look at the source or do you just take a look at that and you can tell?

Ilya: So if I just hover over that you can see in my browser that that’s going. I know that’s an ad network tracking URL.

Andrew: Got you. Right.

Ilya: And then you could follow the link and all to see where it goes.

Andrew: Keep it on there for a sec. Oh, yeah, OK. You’re just. . .

Ilya: Yeah.

Andrew: . . . if people can see it, I think, on their screens, they can see the bottom left-hand corner where it’s . . .

Ilya: Yeah.

Andrew: . . . where it’s showing the URL that the ad goes to, is clearly an ad network. He just right-clicked and opened it up in a new tab.

Ilya: Yeah.

Andrew: So there we go. Right there. It’s clearly an ad network that’s redirecting.

Ilya: Yeah ad network.

Andrew: If it was AT&T.net or AT&T.com . . .

Ilya: Right. And also you could look at things-, you could look at, like, where the ad is hosted. So this is hosted on that same ad network tracking URL. So going down here, here is another thing that’s interesting. This is their house ad in this advertisement slot. Which means that they literally can find nobody to buy this inventory right now. And the reason for that is that they’re probably not big enough to go direct. So this place right here – they’re probably making next to nothing out of. And the reason that it’s unsold is because it’s below the fold, is one of them.

So if you look here, this is important, especially if you’re paying CPM for these ads. So this ad is above the fold. All these are below the fold. And so here are all of their ads. If we go back to the homepage you can see something also very different where you see this. These are all sort of, basically, ad network low-paying brand ads that are, sort of, business-targeted. These are education paper-click ads, investment ads, charity ads, meaning this is probably completely unsold. And then more of these AT&T ads. Here’s another interesting thing here. So these might be more of a direct buyers, some kind of direct deal that they did where it’s outside of their traditional ad channels where they say, “We’ll spotlight your product.” And these are all, of course, business targeted products.

Andrew: So, actually, when I first brought this up, I thought, “Start-ups are a bad topic to use as an example because the people who have blogs in this space are guys like Mark Suster, Fred Wilson, who have blogs about their venture capital activities and their opinions and they don’t need money from advertising. And I thought the same thing about TechCrunch. You just proved that even in this space, where there’s a lot of money . . .

Ilya: You could find it anywhere.

Andrew: . . . that it’s competitive. You can find it anywhere. OK.

Ilya: There are so many. OK. So the next step is expanding our lists a little more and looking at actually identifying our audience a lot more precisely and trying to go through demographic or psychographic factors. So can start with this one and we can go to Quantcast. Quantcast is a fantastic site that will give you really, really relevant demographic data that you can use so then expand your list further because you don’t want to be on just sites about start-ups. You want to be on sites that are probably targeting that same audience and that may be as interested in entrepreneurship, or what have you, but not necessarily the ones that are going on start-ups sites because those guys go to other sites too all around the web and we want to find where they’re concentrated. So if you know the demographic of your audience-, so I just type this in here-, so you know you want to target higher-income people that are also highly educated.

Andrew: Now would I type in my own website at the top or one of the sites that I found on XMarks or one of the other bookmarking sites?

Ilya: You can do your own too. Basically you want to identify where you’re demographics are that you’re reaching now and what demographics you want to reach. If you want to reach an audience you’re not currently reaching, you want to test something new, then you would basically look for other sites, here the site that we looked at before was probably a little more descriptive of your audience. What you want to look for, things here that stand out that are highly above the mean. Already we can see that you’re audience, at least according to Quantcast is more likely to have kids and more likely to be college educated, but what we want to do is find as wide an audience that’s possible that’s relevant.

Quantcast has this tool called ad planner, it’s a free tool you can sign up and you can start finding targets that way to buy audience. What you can do is look for either the specific demographic factors that you’re looking at so, maybe high income, maybe highly educated, and you can start filtering that way. You can look for — what you want to do here is — the cool thing is you can filter by their estimated traffic. You don’t want the very high traffic sites. You want within that sweet spot of maybe even 10k to 100k, the other thing that you can do is go through here.

Andrew: That’s right on the left, on the filters that’s where you’re doing it? So, if for example, we saw that everyone in the start-up world was running a website either as expensive or popular as Tec Crunch or as lacking in ads as Fred Wilson’s blog, I might say I’m going to stay away from there, but what I’m going to do is find who reads those sites? What ages are they? What stands out about them and I’ll go look for other sites that cater to them.

Ilya: Yeah. The cool thing here is that you can actually find sites that are similar to another site. People who visit Mixergy also visit, oh, they don’t have that, but people who visit TechCrunch.

Andrew: Let’s pause there for a second. I want people to see what you’re typing, you’re doing this very quickly. There it is, it’s right on the left, on filters. You hit apply and then you can find other websites that are similar to that site, that accepts advertising and you’re also narrowing it based on traffic.

Ilya: Yeah. If we actually go back here, TechCrunch is a great example because it’s a high traffic site and so, oh, they hide all their stuff, how about that, but we can go back here to Mixergy and what we can see is that, all right this is a bad example.

Andrew: Can you do a [??]? I want to get a sense of maybe the coupon space, if you were going to go back to that first example, what that would look like.

Ilya: Yeah. This is perfect, [??] is a huge consumer site and generally this does well for a consumer site. You could see these categories that audience also likes, here are the sites that they are most likely to visit, and actually we can go to another tool called Google Ad Planner, this is a more comprehensive tool, it’s kind of like Quantcast, here’s Mixergy and the cool thing that you can do here, is here you go, here’s the site Affinity so, people who are likely to visit Mixergy are also likely to visit TechCrunch. I can go through here and people who visit TechCrunch, visit Venture B, and Search Engine Watch, and all these other sites. You can go through here and keep building your list, keep seeing where you can get good traffic.

Andrew: That’s the goal of this stage of the process.

Ilya: You want to build a big list. You want to build a list that’s as big as possible within those constraints of traffic greater than X. Going back here, I think the site that we found was this one, Startup Nation. This is my spreadsheet that I would typically fill out with some of the data. I would just start building this spreadsheet and basically, you want to have a comprehensive list and then you want to start filtering it as much as possible.

Andrew: Let’s see what’s on your spreadsheet. It’s the site . . .

Ilya: Yeah. Sorry. I’m going to go back here and grab this data from . . .

Andrew: That’s where you grab the site data because there are so many places to grab it. You’re keeping it consistent and it looks like you’re going for Quantcast?

Ilya: Yeah. This is U.S. traffic, Quantcast basically monitors U.S. traffic. If we want to target U.S. Traffic, that’s where we want to go. We’ll go here and we’ll fill in, so this will be 25,000 and up, another really interesting thing that you want to look at and this will be in Google Ad Planner is that you want to look at what are some of the usage patterns for this site; how do people use the site. Do people come back; is this a quality site? So, you have to keep in mind that when you’re doing these ad buys, you’re probably paying CPM, or per impression, and you don’t want to keep bombarding people with the same ad over and over again. They’re not going to convert. They’re just going to waste your money.

So, if you look here, this is actually a really bad example of targeting, because they’re paying for this ad and they’re paying for this ad. And they’re probably going to keep paying for more ads. If I keep refreshing this page, I’m going to keep seeing their ads as we’ve seen a bunch of times, and they just keep spending money on this. So, we’re cost them like ten impressions, now. And so, you don’t want sites that have a ton of page views per visitor, necessarily. You don’t want sites where people will keep refreshing the page. And so, that’s where this comes in, at Google Ad Planner.

Andrew: The Google Ad Planner, that’s Google.com/adplanner.

Ilya: Yeah. And we could probably link to all of these tools, after.

Andrew: Yeah, we’ll have it all in there.

Ilya: And so, what we see here is the number of visits that they get a month; and here is the number of page views. And so, what we’re looking at is the ratio of page views to visit. It’s about six, on average.

Andrew; What are we looking for? Are we looking for a higher than six, or are we looking for lower than six?

Ilya: We’re looking for lower. So, you want to expose your ad to as many people as possible. And you don’t want to keep showing it to the same person. If it’s a site where every visitor views a ton of pages, and every one of those pages costs you, because they’re seeing your ad, that’s bad. If you were to go through an ad network you could set some kind of impression cap, and you could say, I want you to only show this ad to a unique visitor three times. But if you can’t do that, if you’re doing it direct buy, usually what they’ll negotiate is, they want to sell you all their impressions, right? They don’t want to say, OK, we’ll only sell you the first impression, the first time someone visits our site and sees your ad. That impression is the most valuable.

So, they’re going to try to bundle in as much of their inventory as possible. And that’s kind of part of the negotiation process. But, that’s why you kind of have to look at the sites’ stats, and you want to also ask the web master for these numbers, if possible. But they might try to tweak them, and inflate them, or they’ll give you the global numbers, which could be different.

Andrew: Once you buy the ad, you can keep track of how many impressions you’re getting on your own, right?

Ilya: Yeah. So, what you would do then, and this is actually tying in nicely into the next step of what we’re going to do.

Andrew: Before you go to the next step let me put a pin in that for a moment and take a look at your Excel spreadsheet one more time with the audience, so we can all see what’s on there. The goal of that section that we just covered is to put this list together. You want to know how many sites meet your criteria, what types of sites they are, what are the uniques, if you’re targeting U.S., how many page views per visit you’ve got. Cost we don’t know yet, right?

Ilya: Yeah, this will come later as we start negotiating.

Andrew: Gotcha.

Ilya: The costs, the minimum amounts of time I need to run an ad, or the minimum commitment I need to make. And then, this is just the status of the buy that we’ll keep updated on.

Andrew: Got it. Did I buy this ad or not?

Ilya: Yeah. And how did it do?

Andrew: How did it do? OK. I was asking you about how we keep track after we buy. Is there software that you recommend?

Ilya: Yes. Usually ad servers are designed for brands, and most ad servers, or the software that’ll actually serve your ad and keep track of it are super expensive, and they require very high minimum spend and are very brand focused. But there are a couple that you can use, and here’s one. There’s one ad server called Ad Shuffle, and this is a tool that’s very much self serve. You don’t need to be a huge advertiser to use this. It’s relatively simple to use. It has a fifty-dollar minimum spend. So, this software may seem expensive in that they charge you per impression.

Usually, they’ll charge you like between $.01 to $.05 for 1,000 impressions, or CPM, your ad is shown. It’s not like a fixed monthly rate. It’s not like you could pay, like, 20 bucks a month or something. But it’s definitely worth it. And the reason that you want to use something like this–and it’s kind of like a whole process of getting an ad up through here, but it’s very step-by-step–is that basically it gives you two things. It gives you reliability, and it gives you accountability. So if you were to host an ad yourself, then. . .

Andrew: There are the lights again. Cool. There it goes.

Ilya: Sorry about that. OK. So if you were to host an ad yourself, then basically what would happen is, say your server slows down because you’re all this traffic from your new media buys, your ad that is getting served from your server, from your websites, gets slowed down, as well. And that could hold up loading the whole page for the site that it’s appearing on. And so that can be very, very bad. That can piss off the publisher. So a lot of these publishers will not even deal with you unless you go through an ad server.

Another ad server that I want to mention very briefly is this one. And this is Google DoubleClick for Publishers. And this is free, but it’s designed for publishers, not for advertisers. So if I want to have an ad on my site, or I want to sell ads on my site directly, I would use something like this.

So there two approaches. Either you could pay for an ad server, like AdShuffle, that you can control, or if you’re going doing a direct buy on a site, you could go to the publisher and say, sign up for a Google DFP and give me whatever I need to get set up in here and I’ll upload my ads and we’ll go from there.

And the reason that you need these, aside from reliability, is accountability. Meaning that whenever you do a media buy, you always want to go, especially if you’re doing a CPM type buy, meaning that you’re paying for 1000 impressions, versus something where you might be paying a fixed monthly rate, you always want to go off the ad server numbers, off their stats. And so that means that, however many impressions the ad server says it served, that’s how many you pay for.

That means that the publisher can’t con you. They can’t just say, well, my site gets whatever, x number of impressions, so pay me this much, or pay me this much upfront. Also, you can’t lie and say, well, my stats show more clicks or impressions than your stats, therefore go off my numbers. So you want a neutral third party. You want something that’s well-known and trusted. That’s why you want to go off this ad server.

And it’s pretty self-serve. Basically, the way the process works is you upload your ad creatives and you basically put in the URL that you want to link to, and it will spit out a tag with some code. And you say, OK, just paste in this ad code in your site. Very simple. Paste in this ad code and replace your existing ads with it. Or put it in rotation with your existing ads.

Andrew: That’s it. You just give them the code. It’s ready to go. It’s being monitored. You know exactly how well it’s doing.

Ilya: Exactly. And you want it to be as simple as possible, for them and for you. So you don’t want it to be a lot of work. The reason that publishers use ad networks is that the ad network takes care of monitoring the ads, tracking the stats, geo-targeting rotation. All of that. You can do all of that yourself with an ad server, and that’s what you want to do.

Andrew: All right. Let’s see the next step. What’s the next step that our listener and viewer has to do?

Ilya: So you’ve signed up for an ad server.

Andrew: Yep.

Ilya: And now you have your ad tag that you’re ready to send to publishers. And you have your list in here. Presumably it will [??] be a big list. You could it pull it from here, all these sites. You have this big list of publishers that you want to target. And what you want to do at that point is actually start doing these deals, start sending out emails.

And what we want to look for on a site, the first thing that we want to look for, of course, is something that accepts advertising. So I’m going to look on this site that I found from XMarks, and I’m going to see if I can find any contact info on here. So I would scroll around, and here’s this little link that says, email me. So I would email them and I would say, I want to do a media buy, I want to appear in this sidebar. Some sites may have a more formal process for this, but a lot of these smaller sites don’t even have a dedicated advertised link, necessarily. These guys do, and that’s what I was looking for.

When they have advertised link, the good thing is that you know exactly who to reach. You know they’re willing to sell advertising directly, because they have this whole site; and you know what the rates are. Usually the rates are not displayed on this page, and because they are varied so much. So if you go up to them and say, I’m a huge brand, and I just want as many impressions as possible on your site, they’re going to give you very, very different rates than if you say, I’m an entrepreneur, just like you. I’m trying to get more attention for my site. I want to negotiate some buy with you. Let’s do a test. So usually, what you’ll see is something like this, where it just says, our CPMs vary, based on the size of the ad, the percent of inventory available, and so on.

Andrew: And you’re saying that is what we want? This is the ideal situation?

Ilya: This is typical. Obviously, the ideal thing would be if they say here’s how much it costs. Here’s how much inventory we can give you, and here’s what you have to do. Usually this will not be published on here.

Andrew: Why do you want someone who’s that clear about their pricing? Don’t you want people who are undiscovered, who haven’t sold a lot of ads yet, so that you can come in with the cheaper price to not have to compete against other buyers?

Ilya: Well, it depends. What you’ll actually find is that a lot of these publishers that maybe haven’t sold ads before, or have only gone through certain ad networks or only dealt with brands have very, very unreasonable expectations of what they’re traffic is worth, and how much you should pay, and how the process works.

And so, there’s kind of a middle ground, sweet spot where a publisher has maybe sold a few ads directly, can run things smoothly, can give you a fair deal. But at the same doesn’t have a bit ad sales team, doesn’t have a big rate card that they give to agencies and big brands. You want someone like this, where they at least are interested in accepting advertising. And here’s what’s funny . . .

Andrew: They say our ads vary if they have a rate cards.

Ilya: Yeah, over here it says vary. And the reason for this is that a lot of the time agencies or big brands will demand some kind of media kit, and this can be good for you. This is kind of a warning sign for me, almost actually, because they will tell you that our audience is a very premium audience, which maybe a good fit for you. So something of this age range, this income, maybe that’s really lucrative to brands. So you want to watch out for that.

On the other hand, 71% of their traffic is existing business owners and 29% are aspirational business owners. That might be a really good fit for you. So, this is something that I always look for that might give you really good data, especially qualitative survey data like this, where you can sort of match it up to your own audience. And you can look at traffic quality, and see, OK, this audience is the exact audience I want. I want people who are small-time entrepreneurs who are starting out, who want to grow their business. I want people who visit the site a certain amount of times. But again, you have to be cautious. You have to be cautious with their metrics. They may be somewhat skewed.

Andrew: Yeah, Comcast had different numbers than they have over here.

Ilya: So, it’s not perfect. It may be right, but it’s in their interests to make these numbers look as good as possible. If you notice this really interesting, actually, they break out the number of page views per visit. And remember, you want a low number of page views per visit. The number of page views per visit is normally very, very high on forums, because you’re clicking through, you’re paging through these threads, and you may not be paying as much attention to the content of the page. You want people who spend a long time on the page, who have read through the article, and are looking for, OK, what am I going to do next? What’s my next step?

Well, maybe I want to learn more and click on this ad that’s highly related to this article. That’s why they break it out, so now when you negotiate a buy maybe you want it negotiated so you’re not advertising on the forums, you’re advertising on the articles that people are spending a long time on. This is a perfect example of the data that you want to collect before doing this buy-in on stuff like this right here.

Andrew: All right. We understand that stuff. What do we do now? You’re looking to see their prices.

Ilya: The prices are there and these prices are absurd. Basically these rates are exclusively for brands and for agencies that say, send us your media kit.

Andrew: Can you hit command plus on your keyboard so that we can see it a little bit better on our screens?

Ilya: Yeah, let me see that.

Andrew: Yeah, now let’s see the prices.

Ilya: I bet you’re not getting these kind of CPMs anywhere right here.

Andrew: $30 CPMs is what they have. Run of site $35.

Ilya: Yeah, exactly. So this is not for you. This should not be a baseline that you’re negotiating from. This is really for agencies that get paid a percent spend and so they want the high CPMs because they can go to their client and say, hey look, we’re putting your budget to work. We’re spending all this money and getting traffic.

By the way, if you read the fine print, we were talking about this before, newsletter based opportunities are available and that’s probably where you want to advertise. When negotiating these buys it’s kind of a balance. You don’t want to seem like you’re going to waste their time.

You want to seem legitimate and credible, but you don’t want to come off as someone who’s willing to spend a ton of money testing, you’re just going to throw down this crazy CPM for run-of-site traffic. You want to kind of start off at a much lower number. The way to reduce CPM prices, usually the way to get these prices down is buying anything. Unfortunately, you have to buy in bulk and then you get the bulk discount.

You say OK, well I know that you’re having trouble selling all your inventory. Let’s do some kind of sponsorship for a monthly deal and this is kind of the example of the sponsorships they offer where you’ll probably be paying much less than this once it actually comes down to it.

You’ll actually probably be getting a lot cheaper traffic overall advertising on this site than whatever the brands are paying. Basically what you want to do is create some sense of certainty for the advertiser. The reason that direct media buys are so much more effective than going through ad networks and the reason they’re so much better for the advertiser is that is creates certainty and stability and predictability.

If you’re going through AdSense you could get slapped by Google, you could get Smartpriced, a big advertiser could decide they don’t like you anymore and blacklist your site, Google could ban you, the ad network could decide to place your site in a different category that pays less.

Day by day, all of the time, all of this stuff can change so much, versus doing a direct buy where you come to a site and say we’ll sponsor you for a month or 3 months if it’s doing well and you’re guaranteed this income. That is really appealing to a lot of these publishers and they’re going to be willing to take a lower rate as long as it’s a stable payout.

That’s why they have all of these sponsorship opportunities here. You can even see the difference between a monthly sponsorship and a 3-month sponsorship is pretty significant and you can negotiate that down quite a bit more I imagine.

What they’re trying to do here, as in any good negotiation, is they’re trying to anchor you to these prices. They’re trying to say, OK, our traffic is worth $30 CPM, but you’re a nice guy, how about we give you $25 CPM?

Andrew: And now $25 doesn’t seem so high, they could pay $30.

Ilya: Exactly. What you want to say is, I know how much this traffic to me is worth. I know what my CPA target is. I know what I’m looking for. Let’s start with $5 CPM and test if it does well, so what you want to say is, ‘Let’s test this for like a week or two weeks, where maybe it won’t cost that much.’ and you could see, even here, this is actually a pretty reasonable minimum budget. You could probably get it down to 500 bucks even or maybe even 200 bucks and you say, ‘OK. Let’s just test it for a week.’ and what you want to start with is an anchor. You don’t want to start with this where you ask them, ‘How much do you want?’ You want to start with, ‘How much are you getting now? How much are you selling your cheapest inventory for right now?’ So, the magic word right there is the remnant inventory, meaning the inventory that remains.

That’s a good question. So, how much are you getting right now for your remnant inventory? Exactly. So, inventory that you’ve not sold, that’s the inventory that I want to buy. You don’t want to be competing for the brand premium inventory. You want the rest that’s on the same site, it is still a quality inventory, but it might not be exactly as targeted to these brands.

All right. So, what’s the next step? Now that we’ve figured out where to pitch our offer, how to figure out the pricing, where to contact the person, what’s next? Actually, before I ask what’s next, if the contact information is not on the website, how do you find the site’s email address? That depends. If you go through Who Is, you can almost always find some contact info there. In fact, you’re required by the Registry to keep updated contact info on your Who Is. I would argue though that, generally, if they don’t have an advertising page, if they don’t have their contact info anywhere on the site, which is honestly pretty rare, at the very least they’ll have a contact form or something usually, but if they don’t have that info then they probably don’t want to be contacted.

And you would stay away? You wouldn’t try? I would probably stay away, especially when there are so many of these traffic sources that do want to be contacted and that have a lot of inventory that’s unsold that you can buy and get a lot of traffic from. You want to basically start off going for the low hanging fruit. You want to optimize for advertisers that have decent traffic that’s relevant and that can decide quickly that you can do a deal quickly. You don’t want to go somewhere where they have these ridiculous CPMs and they won’t budge and you’re trying to go back and forth, negotiate. You want to basically send a few emails, do a buy and then move on to somewhere else because you want to be able to do this quickly and you want to be able to do it at scale.

So, this site will not send you a massive amount of traffic, but 10 or 20 or 50 sites just like this combined, will. In aggregate, this traffic will be much cheaper than the traffic you would get anywhere else and you’re not limited by search. Once you have these going and in place, the same rule of stability applies. This traffic can be incredibly stable. Once you find these golden targets that are working well, you could basically be running on there for months and you don’t have to worry about someone else coming in, like you would on search and outbidding you or getting slapped with a low-quality score or anything like that. Once you have these buys going, you’re pretty much set and you have passive income or passive traffic coming in consistently and so that’s what you want.

All right. What’s the next step? So that’s pretty much it. I would say the only other next step is, going back, if you have our spreadsheet and just filling all of this in and tracking the status and going through your analytics. There’s a tool called URL Builder that you can use very easily to set up your Google Analytics to track these buys or you could just set up your URL manually.

You just Google for the words Google URL Builder? Yeah, it’s kind of your URL, but if you search for Google Analytics URL Builder, you’ll find it. Basically, what this will do is, it will set up your tracking URLs, that’s going to be the destination URL for your ad. The way you fill out this tracking, and this is in addition to setting up goals in Google Analytics and tracking your conversions and all that, but the most important thing here, is tracking as much as possible. What you want is to basically fill in pretty much all of these fields, minus the keyword one.

So, right here what we would fill in is say, startupnation.com and maybe we’re getting on a CPM basis. So, we’re paying per 1,000 impressions and if we’re testing and say maybe this campaign is targeted toward start-ups and we’re testing different creatives. So, you always want to create different banners and different creatives. So, if we are testing a few of them, the most important thing that probably 90 percent of people don’t do and they miss out on a ton of money and conversions is to track everything. It’s kind of a pain, but you have to do it.

So, if you have four different ads that you’re testing on the site, you want to track each one. So, this one will be maybe 300 by 251, I’ll call that. And that’s the way you’re tagging the URL to say, ‘I used the 300 by 250 ad.’ The first one? Yeah. Now, the URL on the bottom? This is the URL that comes out and so that is the destination URL.

So instead of sending traffic to Mixergy.com, where people would buy, I would send them to that URL that you just created? Yes. That’s what I give the publisher when I buy the ad from him? Exactly, and that’s where you put in your ad survey and whatever. The reason you want to differentiate ads and track each one is because different ads with different copy, or even possibly appearing on different pages, could actually convert differently.

So, when you’re thinking of how to optimize a campaign, a really big mistake that a lot of novices make, is that they optimize for click-thru rate. They say, ‘OK. I’m going to test four of these different ads and I’m going to track the click-thru rate for all of them, but I’m going to focus on the most attention grabbing one. The one that gets the most clicks and that’s the one I’m going to use going forward.’ That’s a huge mistake because what you really want to focus on is traffic quality. What gets you the most qualified clicks? What gets you the most relevant traffic?

And so, if you’re testing different ads with different headlines, different copy on them, you want to make sure that you track every single one, all the way through your final and be able to say, ‘OK. List ad copy on this specific site, converts this well for me.’ If you track it down to that level and actually figure out the ads that convert the best, then you can see much better results and that’s how you get to the really big ROI, verses just focusing on clicks and ending up paying for a lot of clicks that might not be very high quality.

And you don’t have go to Google Analytics and enter the URL in? Google Analytics automatically reads that URL properly? It has the refers and all that, so you can run custom reports in Google Analytics and segment it however you want. You can see the specific pages that are sending you traffic, specific sites and then, you can also actually, the really interesting stuff, and I’m sure someone who is more of an analytics expert can speak more to this, but what I have tested before, pretty successfully, is optimizing not just for conversions, but for things like time-on-site in analytics, for example.

So, which media buys are going to be sending me people that are going to be spending a lot of time on my site, that are going to be spending time watching my videos, that I know are going to be coming back and be high-quality traffic. So, the main thing to always remember is that you’re interested in traffic quality and that’s why we do this whole painstaking research process, because we don’t want to just find sites that are about startups. We want sites that will actually send us really good, really high-quality traffic. If we traffic everything and find those, then that’s how we get successful media buys going.

We’re almost out of time, but there are two things that we promised people that we would get to, that I want to make sure that we’re going to get to. The first is, the email that you sent out. Let’s take a look at the template and we’ll give this template to anyone who is taking this course. Yes, there are a few templates I can show you. This is a very basic one. It says, ‘Hello. I came across your site. I represent Mixergy and we’re interested in advertising. We would like to buy ad space, both in the U.S. and internationally. We have this budget for this test or we can launch a campaign immediately. Please put me in touch with the right person to discuss this further. And there are a few points that I want to touch on in this email. The first one is this very important thing; it says, ‘We want to buy ad space from you directly.’

And that means we want to do a direct buy. We’re not going to waste your time. We’re not interested in going through ad networks. We’re not advertising through AdSense. We want to do a direct buy. So, that’s one thing. The other thing here is that I say that I want traffic both in the U.S. and internationally, and that’s very important, because a lot of the advertisers coming in will be U.S. consumer packaged goods brands that would want geo-target ads, not just to the U.S., but even maybe to a specific local market. And so, if you say that I’m interested in your traffic. I know it’s a good fit for my audience. I want to buy it both U.S. and international traffic, and even if you’re mostly interested in the U.S. traffic, you should still always say this, because that’ll open them up. They’ll respond. They’ll say, OK, well we have some U.S. traffic, and then we also have a ton of international traffic that we haven’t sold, that we’re very interested in selling.

The next thing is the budget thing. This is pretty important, and I’ve actually split tested different numbers, and this is the number that we’re expressed. Even if this isn’t my specific budget for this specific site, my budget could be $2,500 for the site, but you still say this, because that means that they can take me seriously. That means that they’re not going to have to deal with someone and go back and forth through negotiation with someone who’s going to say, OK, I have $50 that I want to spend.

Andrew: So, by saying I have a $25,000 budget for this test, you’re saying I’m worth dealing with. But what happens later on when you want to come back and say, I only want to do a $200 a week test?

Ilya: All you say is that is just that. I want to do a test.

Andrew: Before this test.

Ilya: Right.

Andrew: You’re saying, basically, $25,000, you’ve split tested it, gets their attention, and gets the right response. That’s just an opening comment . . .

Ilya: If you’re putting in a dollar and getting four dollars back, even if you start with $2,500, you would probably be happy to put in $25,000. So you say, we’re ready to spend this much. We want to see that this traffic is going to do well first. We want proof; we want data, and the other thing, we can launch a campaign immediately. So, we want to get going. We have this money that’s waiting for you. Let us give you this money, and let’s get going as quickly as possible.

And so, if you fire off, say, 20, 30, 50 of these emails, to highly relevant sites, you’ll get a whole bunch of responses. And then you can kind of triangulate. You could say, OK, well, 80% of the guys that responded to me said that they have this much traffic at a $5 CPM. So, the guys that are offering a $30 CPM you say, well, look all these other guys in your space have this ad rate. Your ad rate is not correct.

And so, you have a lot more leverage if you just send off a bunch of these and this is the email that I found gets the most responses. It’s sort of generic enough, especially with this part; it just says put me in touch with the right person. It’s generic enough to basically get across to small bloggers, to bigger sites that do ads sales. It has a high enough budget to get people interested. It shows that you’re willing to buy their traffic that’s unsold right now, especially international traffic.

And it’s a good fit for your audience, meaning that we’re a high-quality site. We’re going to provide value to your users, and it’s not going to be a spammy ad. It’s not going to be an ad that’s going to turn off your visitors from coming back to your site. And that’s something that a lot of publishers are very sensitive to, as I’m sure you know; especially if you say that I represent this site. I would actually probably say you can come . . .

Andrew: I see, by being very clear about the site it does help a lot. I get people who suspiciously say, I have a customer who wants to buy ads. And as I look at the email I’m thinking, I know what you want to do. You want to buy some kind of Viagra ad, with the right [??] text. All right, I want to save enough time to take a look at MixRank. Now, let’s bring up the website, and I’ll set this up this way. Tell me if I understand this right. People have been talking about you. I’ve been talking behind your back about this site. Here’s what we’ve gotten. It is this, you used to spy on other, well, not spy, but you used to check out where competitors were buying ads.

Where were people buying ads for the exact same thing that you were? And you’re figuring if they’re buying ads a lot, that means those sites are really effective. And so you said to yourself, huh, I bet I know this stuff. Some other affiliate marketers know this stuff. Let’s just systemize it and bring the rest of the world into our little quiet world that no one’s talking about and they don’t have to create crazy scripts. They don’t have to figure out the process on their own. They just go to one site; they type in their competitors’ website and boom. They know where they buy it. That’s the idea behind MixRank. We see where out competitors buy ads and then we go and buy those ads, too.

Ilya: Exactly. So basically, this whole process that I went through, I’ve done probably a hundred media buys; and every time I have to go through this long, arduous research process where I found this big list of publishers, but I wasn’t even sure if those are relevant, if those work. So what I realize is, well, I can just look at the big advertisers–the guys that have already spent a ton of money testing, and let’s see what works for them. Let’s see where they’re actively spending money every day and building campaigns. Let’s just advertise there. Here’s an example report for Coupons.com, going back to the coupon space ‘cuz I know there’s a lot of traffic there. Here are all of the text ads that they’re testing.

Andrew: So now, I can see the exact language that someone else in my space is using. Let’s take a look at the top of that screen there for a moment.

Ilya: Well, let’s actually look here. That’s even better. We can automatically identify what their highest performing ads are, what they’ve split tested, what’s actually taking off for right now, as this is.

Andrew: So, we see for example, in this case, free grocery coupons do well. But free coupons-print now does even better.

Ilya: Yeah.

Andrew: And that’s if we were going to do a coupon ad, that’s the way we want to write our ad.

Ilya: Exactly.

Andrew: That’s what we want to keep in mind.

Ilya: And the thing we’re looking at is that we’re looking at its position, that ad sense block, because if they have a good click through rate, or it’s highly relevant, they’re going to have a better position. And so, this ad’s average position is much better, and that’s why it’s taking off. And you can see that this is really good copy. It has a good call to action. It has a sense of immediacy and urgency.

And instead of me writing all these different headlines, and spending a ton of money testing to figure out what works, I would just basically look at what’s already working and do that. And the same thing for their banner ads. This is all the different banner ads that they’re tested. You could see exactly what design choices they’ve made.

Andrew: I don’t understand how this is possible. I don’t understand how this is right. I know that you’ve been vetted by good people, so it’s all good.

Ilya: I mean, it’s all publicly available information, so you could find all of this out there, right? You could go to those coupon sites and look manually. We’re basically just collecting it and aggregating it for you, and showing you, here’s exactly what’s working. We’re just collecting it, basically.

Andrew: So, if I was in the coupon space, and I wanted to know what kind of coupons to use to promote my site I’d say, look at this. General Mills . . .

Ilya: Yeah, they really test different foods to see which ones you like.

Andrew: Yeah, I don’t even have to test different foods. They tested it. I can see from this, cereal is worth my time to test. I can see in this that Pillsbury rolls are worth my time to test.

Ilya: And then one more piece of MixRank is this, which is probably the most valuable piece, which is the traffic sources. This is the exact publishers that they’re buying on traffic right now, effectively. Their ads have been appearing on for weeks straight; that they’re paying for traffic from every day and here’s what’s working for them. And you can see here the cereal [comps] right there. So, if I sell cereal, or if I’m selling coupons, that’s exactly where I would want to advertise. And so, you can just go and export a list of hundreds of these in seconds.

Andrew: And that is the Excel spreadsheet link right at the top. You don’t even have to create your own Excel spreadsheet to do this.

Ilya: There it is. So, that’s been the goal–to automate a lot of that media-buying process.

Andrew: So, this doesn’t take away the process that you just described to us right now?

Ilya: No, absolutely not. It’s far from comprehensive.

Andrew: But if you’re in this space, and you’ve got to see what your competitors are doing, you’ve got to see how your competitors are writing their ads.

Ilya: This is a good way to start, to get an overview of the market, and then you can go deeper and check out these sites manually, go find related sites on XMarks or Delicious or whatever. If you don’t know where to start you can go to a mix rink and see where to start and then go through the whole process that we discussed earlier to actually evaluate these sites and start negotiating buys and going through them.

Andrew: All right, let’s go to the top of the page and go back to the homepage. In fact let’s go back to MixRank.com.

Ilya: MixRank.com

Andrew: Do this guys, if you’re in the audience. First of all use everything in the session but the easiest thing that you can use, and this is in and out. This fits so perfectly with what we’re doing that we have to talk about it. We couldn’t have this conversation and leave out Google Analytics or leave out the software that serves up ads. We also can’t do this conversation and leave out MixRank. Can you bring up MixRank.com? Is it coming up on your screen because I don’t see it on mine? I just want to see the homepage.

Ilya: Oh, I see it.

Andrew: Oh, maybe things have frozen down. It froze. It froze at the perfect time. We’ll leave it up to the audience. Go to MixRank.com. Type in your competitor’s name. Just do it for fun. Just do it to see what others are up to and it’s going to blow your mind. Use everything that you’ve done here and let me, and let Ilya know what you guys have been able to do. We’ve love to hear your feedback. We’d love to hear your progress.

Ilya: We can also definitely put out my email. If anyone has any more questions about this or wants me to look at their specific case or anything I would be really happy to do this. I posted something on hacker news sometime ago where I offered to help anyone with their ad campaign and I had about 150 start ups email me and I got back to every single one of them with really useful, actionable advice for how to get more traffic. I love doing this stuff. I love helping start ups and learning about your campaigns and all that. Please email me, Ilya@mixrank.com, any time and I’ll be happy to help.

Andrew: Thank you. Thank you, Ilya, for walking us through all this. Thank you guys all for being a part of this course. Go use it, give us your feedback and of course contact Ilya and check out MixRank.com. Bye.

Master Class: Communicating Product Value
Taught by Joshua Porter of Bokardo.com

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Master Class: Communicating Product Value

Time to watch/listen: 84 minutes

 

 

About Joshua Porter

Josh’s blog

About Josh

Josh’s book, Designing for Social Web

HubSpot, the company that acquired Performable

Master Class Toolbox

Course Cheat Sheet

Slides to Josh’s talk on designing for social traction

Transcript

Download the transcript here

Andrew: This session is all about learning how to communicate your product’s value. It’s led by Josh Porter, co-founder of Performable, which was recently acquired by HubSpot, maker of inbound marketing software, as you can see up on your screen right now. HubSpot helps over 4,000 customers generate traffic and leads through their websites and convert more of those leads into customers.

I’m Andrew Warner. I’ll help lead the session. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, where proven founders, like Josh, teach.

Josh, do you have an example of what our audience will be able to do at the end of this session?

Josh: Oh sure, yeah. We’ll be talking about our methodology of communicating your vision through your website. We have a lot of friends in the start-up community; we’ve been in the start-up community, and one of the biggest challenges is communicating that big vision. We’ve had a lot of experience over the last couple of years doing that ourselves.

Here’s kind of my latest design, which is the new HubSpot homepage. We just launched this early this week. It’s been extremely, positively received. And people are saying, like, you’re communicating so much better now what your vision for the company is. So that’s what we’ll be talking toward today.

Andrew: You’re going to show people how to do that. Also, you guys did it at Performable. Do you want to bring up the Performable website real quick?

Josh: Sure.

Andrew: Within a short period of time, because you were able to communicate a clear product message and clear value for the product, you guys were able to do what? Can you talk about how many customers you got and maybe how quickly after you launched you sold?

Josh: Sure. Absolutely. In just under a year of selling our software, we had hundreds of enterprise customers. And we were going extremely quickly and that led to the acquisition by what’s the hottest company in the marketing space – HubSpot – so now we’re part of the HubSpot developer team and we’re aiming for really big things here.

Andrew: That’s just one of the pages that you guys had up at Performable. The site has actually been completely subsumed by HubSpot, so we weren’t able to show a live site. But what you did there was, you said, ‘This is what the product does, this is what the product is and this is what it does.’ What was the product? What was the clear vision there?

Josh: With Performable, we initially started off as a landing page tool, that you could do things like A/B testing your landing pages. That was a really interesting market, but as we were building up that tool we hit upon this bigger idea. And that was that marketers really needed analytics tools that they could use. So instead of looking at conversion of just a single landing page, they needed to look at a much longer window of conversion.

We talked about it in the terms of enterprise analytics that was centered on your customers and your customers’ history with your company. Essentially what Performable does (it’s now called a HubSpot enterprise, so Performable became the enterprise product in HubSpot), it essentially allows you to create a profile of every single person who visits your website or one of your marketing channels.

That profile grows richer over time, so you can see when people visited your website; you can see when people submitted a support ticket on a third-party support software. You can see when people purchase something in third party payment software as well as see things like when someone tweeted about you on Twitter.

Andrew: Right.

Josh: We were really kind of doing for analytics for professional marketers what Facebook did for social networking, right? It put the profile at the center of the universe of the person using the software.

And so, that kind of vision, that message, took us a long time to get to, as happens a lot with start-ups – you don’t immediately know how to communicate exactly what you have. So what I’m showing you now is a series of graphics that we designed. It actually took several months to do this because we were continually refining our message. We were doing things like, going out and talking to customers. We were doing things, going out and talking to marketers who had never heard of us, and continually pitching them and refining our pitch. What we ended up with . . .

Andrew: Let’s take look at that, and then I want to jump right into what the first step that our audience needs to take is, because I know that they’re eager to get to the same thing for their companies. Do you want to show us maybe, two slides here with maybe, a third just to give us a sense of how you transitioned?

Josh: We started off with the global vision that’s enterprise analytics centered on your customers not your website. That was something that really resonated with marketers. That was kind of the high level promise. The first step of the methodology that we were using, and this methodology I came up with over a few years, and the Performable team all worked together to really refine our vision, came into fruition in a series of panels.

This is the first panel. Here is the second panel, so another part. Once you’re able to look at people in a single profile, you can then start comparing people. Once you can start comparing people saying, ‘These people downloaded a white paper, but they haven’t bought your software.’ You can start to segment them, which is extremely powerful, which is what marketers do everyday. Once we started talking about segmenting people, based on real activity, we really got the attention of professional marketers.

As we were talking, as everyone in the Performable Company were talking to people, this kept coming up, and coming up, and coming up, so we started building it back into the website, and we just kept refining these graphics. Let me show you one more.

Andrew: Let’s see one more.

Josh: The ultimate answer or the ultimate conclusion of being able to segment people is that you can understand them over time. You can see where they are, in what we call usage life cycle. Most people that come to your website are kind of interested in what you’re doing. Maybe, they’re there to find out more, but not everyone’s ready to go immediately and sign up. One thing that we really learned in our messaging and in our sales process was that we really tried to design to get people to the next step.

You can see we have an option for a free trial in the top banner here. We have requested demo down at the bottom.

Andrew: Let’s put this up for a second. I just want to give people an understanding of where they can go at the end of this session at this point. Where they can go at the end of this session is, if they can explain their product properly and the value behind that product clearly, then they can build a product that hundreds of customers buy, in your case hundreds of enterprise customers buy.

Josh: Absolutely.

Andrew: And they get to build a business that gets bought by someone as reputable as HubSpot. There’s an example of what can be done. Let’s break this down in a way that they can understand what you were doing a little bit more granularly. So, the first step towards achieving the kind of success that you guys have achieved is what?

Josh: The first step as I alluded to, is finding your promise.

Andrew: Find your promise. What do you mean by find your promise?

Josh: So everyone, and we’ve learned this in the start-up world, that you lead with your problem, right? And the promise is actually how to solve that problem. The promise is, how can you communicate how someone’s life is going to be better, in the context of what you’re doing.

If we go back to this first page, we’re going to help you center your marketing on your customers and that resonated with marketers. The first step is finding your promise and for every company it’s gong to be different because they’re making a different promise.

Andrew: Let’s take a look at a few examples. Sometimes I learn better through seeing a bad example. Do you have a bad example of how a company was not communicating its promise clearly? Then we’ll get to examples of people who are doing it really well.

Josh: Here’s an example of a start-up I found on Killer Start-ups. I don’t want to pick on them too much, but this is a site that I believe is not communicating the vision of their product. I worked for several years as a consultant doing this with companies, and the big thing that I kept seeing was that companies, the founders of those start-ups, had this amazing vision that they could communicate one on one, right? They could tell you about it, and they could really make you feel like you wanted to go out and use it immediately. But then it never translated to the website or it never translated very well.

Here’s an example. I don’t think this is translating very well. If you come to this website, Quandu.com, the primary message you see, the first thing you see is this slice of orange around a glass. That graphic kind of grabs your attention: create, share, relax. That’s not telling you anything. It’s not really making a promise although I do like the promise of it being relaxed.

Andrew: Right.

Josh: But, it’s not making a real promise. The only thing that I would say is close is the smart event planner which gives you some idea of what the software might do, and being smart is good, of course, but there’s really no promise here that tells you what am I doing with this that’s going to make my life better.

Andrew: Like you said, we’re not here to point fingers. You said that even your own website and I know certainly mine, has had a challenge communicating promise. Do you have an example or do you have screen shots of HubSpot before and after the redesign to show us how it did or how it didn’t communicate its promise before and how it’s communicating its promise now?

Josh: Sure. This is a before shot what HubSpot looked a week or two ago. You’ll notice here that nothing is really standing out on the page all that well. There’s no kind of primary message here. And part of the reason of this is because there’s a gray background. The text is gray; there’s no high; there’s no real high contrast. The things that do stand out, however, are these free trial buttons, but that’s not really the initial promise that we’re talking about. We do have some text in the top part of the page. We found that people actually weren’t reading that very much.

Andrew: I’m looking at it right here and my eye, even though I’m in the course here with you trying to get as much value for myself as possible, I’m not reading that. You’re right, this doesn’t communicate a clear promise at all. And this is from a company that’s one of the most well funded, one of the most admired and one of the best sales based companies on-line right now. They weren’t communicating their promise well before. Let’s see the after, what you did. And frankly I think if they bought your company for nothing else, but this kind of transformation it was worth it. There it is. Now, you’re making a clear promise.

Josh: Here is the top of the redesigned home page. I’ll talk about the details of this going forward, but you can see just simply having a primary headline out there, all in one inbound and marketing software. That’s actually an implicit promise; it’s not even that explicit. But it tells you that this is for marketers, that this all in one aspect around that. What exactly does that mean? We don’t know yet. And also that it’s software.

So this, I would describe this as a descriptive headline that tells you, OK, this is what they offer. We now also have a video, and videos are of course really interesting pieces of content. That video really dives into the problem that HubSpot is solving, which the old site never really did if we go back and look. That text does say that it is an all in one marketing software platform. It wasn’t really repped that much, and there is some comment that we’re helping companies get leads, but that’s really it. There’s no more description. You can learn more, but it’s almost impossible to see that button, so we’ve made those things much more explicit.

Andrew: Let’s look at that, and this is just one attempt. We’re going to talk in a moment about testing different approaches. This is one version that you’re testing, right?

Josh: Yes, one of the things that we’re doing. We actually launched with a static headline as version one, and it’s something like this. It’s just a descriptive headline. But going forward we’re going to be testing, doing 80 testings, and you can do . . . One of the questions that we got at Performable as we were helping people do this sort of headline testing was what type of headline do I test? Like, is one type of headline better than another? What even are the types of headlines? One of the frameworks that we came up with over time was organizing different types of headlines and testing them against each other.

Andrew: Actually, let’s hold off on that. I want to just go through and continue talking about the idea of making your promise and finding your promise, and then we’ll talk about how you test later. You’ve got another visual for us from FreshBooks that gives us an example of how a company shows its promise. You guys are on the way to getting to this. This is focus on your work, not your paperwork. They are making a promise, here. Can you explain the promise that they’re making?

Josh: Sure. FreshBooks, painless billing. They make software that allows you to manage your billing with your clients, and this is a really great promise. Focus on your work and not your paperwork. Everyone knows that paperwork is a negative thing, right? You don’t even have to be a user of FreshBooks to know that paperwork is tedious, it’s long. We’re digitizing everything. This is just a really clever headline, and a lot of freelancers and small companies and larger companies now use Fresh Books.

Everywhere in the professional world you want to focus on your work, right? This is a really great promise that they’re making. Then they have the sub-headline, ‘the fastest way to track time, organize expenses, and invoice your clients.’ That gives you a little better idea of what the software does. And then, going down the page . . .

Andrew: And we’ll get down to the rest later; we’ll get to it in a moment here. For now, what I want to focus on is the promise, the main promise that you’re suggesting we make is exemplified right here in the FreshBooks headline, which is, ‘Focus on your work, not your paperwork.’ When I talked to Mike McDermott, the founder of FreshBooks, he said that one of the things that he knows about his clients is that they get bogged down in invoicing. They get bogged down in paperwork. They get bogged down in keeping track of time so they could bill, based on it.

They don’t get to the web design that they were hired to do, and that they wanted to do, and that they started their businesses in order to do on a daily basis. They don’t get into, in my case, the interviews and the courses that they produce because they spend a lot of time invoicing around them.

Their promise is, we’re going to get rid of that, those things that make you hate your life, and we’re going to let you focus on the thing that got you into this business in the first place, that made you take a risk and start your own company, or made you take a risk and go and create your own consulting side business, or go and work for the business that you’re working for now. That’s the promise that they’re making. There’s one other company, very admired, that you wanted to show us. You wanted to show us apple.com, and how they focus on a promise, too.

Josh: I think Apple has probably been the most consistent at finding your promise. They’re an amazing company at marketing. I think their current home page is actually an interesting example. They’re advertising OS X Lion, the new king of the desktop, and obviously that kind of promise is based on their cat-naming scheme and that sort of thing. This is an interesting promise.

I actually wonder if the people coming to this website, if that means a lot to them. Apple’s really great at making promises. Sometimes, the promises are very strong; sometimes, they’re not so strong. I would say this one isn’t quite as strong. What does it actually mean to be king of the desktop? Is that something that the consumers coming to their site are looking for? I don’t know, but in general Apple always makes big promises. The iPad, it was magical and revolutionary. The original iPod, 10,000 songs in your pocket, or 5,000 songs in your pocket, is an amazing promise, right? That really resonated with people.

Andrew: I see maybe, a clearer promise at the bottom of the page that you’re showing us, which says, ‘The new, faster Mac Book Air.’ A very clear promise, which is going to be a faster Mac Book Air. Let me ask you this, if the promise is so important that you’ve made it the first section of this course, and that’s one of the first things that you added to HubSpot’s Marketing, when you were acquired by them, how do we do it? How do we find our promise? How do I know if I’m creating a course and selling it online, how to find my promise if my audience right now is offering software needs to find the promise that they’re going to communicate to their audience. How do they do it? What’s the process of finding a promise?

Josh: Yes, that’s really the big question. Part of this is trial and error. As we talked about, it is really good to test these sorts of things.

Andrew: There are certain things you want us to look for, so we can test them, right? I think you want us to find a personal, an emotional . . . actually, I will let you say it. I don’t want to take the words out of your mouth.

Josh: As we test our headlines, it becomes apparent that certain headlines have some things in common. Those things that they have in common, they tend to be that the promise is personal. That it has to do with you personally and your work or the project that you are working on, or something that you are trying to do. It solves your personal problem. That is one part of it. Another part of it . . . actually, let me show you an example here.

Actually, let us dive into this. The thing we really want to do is identify what is most important. It has to be an immediate benefit. By immediate benefit we mean one that is not delayed down the line. The best example of a delayed benefit is like from the dieting industry, and that’s why diets never work because the benefits are always delayed – you have to do all this work right now, but you are not going to see results for a long time.

If we can make an immediate promise that something will be better immediately, today or tomorrow, that is a lot more powerful. Personal means that it has to do with you. Emotional is something that plays on your emotions; happiness and fear, anxiety, something that plays around in that area is really powerful.

Andrew: I see. All right. When we are thinking about how we make the promise, the promise needs to be something that is really important to the audience. In fact, not really important, the most important to the people we are targeting with our product. It has to offer an immediate benefit. It has to be personal, and it has to be emotional. You have got an example of how even TiVo, the company that we now see as the leading manufacturer of DVRs, they took some time getting to their message. Can you walk us through how they figured it out?

Josh: Yes, when you think about TiVo, when it first came out more than a decade ago, I thinik now, it was essentially something better than your VCR. I do not know honestly if these were actual promises that they were talking about in the boardroom at the time, but this is an exercise that I like to give that shows people the progression toward getting something with those three characteristics.

Andrew: Gotcha! OK.

Josh: The exercise is, you talk to folks and you say, ‘OK. Imagine you have the TiVo and your job is to communicate the vision of TiVo.’ The first thing we always talk about is well, it records shows better than a VCR. That is a good promise, and in fact, I am sure a bunch of people would have purchased a TiVo if that is all they knew about it, because some people were really frustrated with VCRs.

Andrew: By the way, I noticed that when we come out with new products, we often do that. We say, ‘What is in the market that is similar to ours, we are just going to do that better, or we’re going to do that but towards a different market. Maybe instead of being Air B and B, we are going to be Air B and B for cars. Instead of being Expedia, we are going to be Expedia for apartment rentals. That is what we tend to do, we tend to say, ‘What is out there?’ and ‘How do we compare ourselves against it?’ I can see that it is effective, but not as effective as what you are about to teach.

Josh: Exactly. It certainly is effective to people with some small segment of the market. Every message resonates with someone, but we can do a lot better than this. When we start diving into the benefits of the TiVo, we start talking about, will it automatically record shows for you, right? That is kind of magical! You do not have to put a tape in every time. Some VCRs did have timers, but they were incredibly hard to use. TiVo really smoothed that out. So, this is, once you get past ‘Better than a VCR,’ this is, ‘Oh, well this is what it does for you, it automatically records shows,’ and this is interesting, right?

If I thought a lot about this, I could apply it myself, “Well I could use it in this way. I could use it that way.’ It’s a slightly different promise. Again, it would have been marginally effective as well, but we could do a lot better than this as well. Here’s something that continues the idea that you can record your shows easily, but it also brings in this other element of paying. Skip commercials, right? Now we’re getting a little bit into emotion, a little bit into the personal, where we’re saying ‘You know those commercials that you hate, everyone hates? You can skip those now.’

Now, it’s becoming a really interesting promise here. Adding a little more detail, talking about what you can avoid. That’s actually an interesting way to attack promises; talking about what you can avoid, sometimes. It’s a really powerful way. Obviously, you want to do things like save time, but then you can get more specific and say, ‘You can skip commercials.’

With new printer software coming out, you don’t even need printer drivers, right? Everyone has plain old [sounds like] printer drivers, so we can do stuff like that. Focusing on things that you can get rid of or avoid is really powerful as well, but we can still do better. None of these are really . . . Some of these, they’re all true. Some have some aspects of emotional. personal and media, but never really all three. When you look at what TiVo finally came up with: ‘Never miss your favorite show again.’ This has a certain resonance because it hits all three of those notes.

What’s worse than missing your favorite show? There’s nothing really worse than that. I would point out that this is not, this promise that really resonates, does not talk about details. It doesn’t talk about actually skipping commercials. Although that’s powerful, this talks about your most favorite show in the world; you never have to miss it. You avoid all that pain, and so this is really powerful.

Andrew: Yeah.

Josh: It’s really immediate; my favorite show is on today. I don’t have to miss it, even if I’m out of town. It’s emotional because it’s our favorite, right? The one to two shows that we watch, we never have to miss that again. It’s personal; it’s my favorite show. This is a promise, and I would also add that your promise doesn’t have to be just a single headline.

In those graphics that I showed earlier from Performable, I’ll just go back there quickly. We had a second level headline that talked a little bit more in detail about that. It doesn’t have to just be a tagline or a headline, but it should have those three elements, being personal, emotional and a media.

Andrew: Can we show that first slide again because I think that really sums it up well.

Josh: Sure.

Andrew: And if we can have the TiVo example in our minds and look at this slide when we’re thinking about how to create our own product vision, or how to describe our product, I think with this in mind, we’ll be able to do it really well.

Josh: One other thing I would add, Andrew, is that most products have several valuable things. This is really a game of going through, with your team, all sorts of options, testing a lot of options, and then coming out the other end. Skipping commercials is a great feature, but that was an even better promise that they ended up with.

Andrew: I can see the TiVo example, and I’ve got this now as a guide for when I need to create and communicate my product’s value. Once we have it, you say that we need to carry it forward in our messaging. Keep it consistent, is what you say. Do you have an example of how a company does that?

Josh: Yeah. One thing that I think a lot of companies do is it’s almost like they feel like they only need to say something once. That’s actually not the case at all, because we know the value of repetition. We know that if you hear something over and over, even in slightly different ways, it really starts to drive home.

Let me show, actually I’m going to use another Apple example. I apologize a little bit for that. I know that Apple is often over used, but I think so many people are familiar with the iPad, that it makes sense to really talk about that marketing, because everyone is familiar with it.

One of the things that Apple does really well is they repeat this same idea over and over and over again. And this goes even for Steve Jobs, when he’s giving interviews he has these things that he says over and over and over again. That’s really important because those are the messages that people then tell their friends, right?

Andrew: I can see their clear, consistent message, ‘A better way to experience web, email, photos and video, hands down.’ And they then consistently get that message out, is what you’re trying to show us, right? This is the first release of the iPad.

Josh: I’m sorry, let me provide a little context. I’m using web.archive.org to show one of the original iPad marketing pages.

Andrew: Right.

Josh: Because Apple was releasing a first-time product, they had to convince people that this product was a better way to do something. And so, that was their primary message at that point. This headline says it, ‘The best way to experience the web, email, photos and videos, hands down.’ They are telling us something new, that there’s a better way than we’re currently using it, and then they consistently hit that point over and over and over again in their marketing.

I would point to this second-level headline, ‘ You can do things with these apps that you can’t do with any other device.’ This is a better way; then, in this section, talking about Safari. You can see web pages as they were meant to be seen, right? They’re hammering that same idea; this is the web that you know, but it’s better. And you can look at something in portrait and landscape, it’s better than your laptop. You can do things that are just slightly better. You can use your fingers to flick, right? They go into all these details that reinforce that primary promise of better than what you have now.

Andrew: What we’re seeing is, again, mail, photos, just like they said at the top. What they said is, to experience what’s already there. What they’re not then coming in with in the body is saying, oh, you can also create great pictures, and you can create great articles, and web pages, and great blog posts. No, they’re saying this is the best way to take it in, to experience it. And a lot of people actually put them down for it when they came out with this product. They kept saying, it’s not for creating, it’s for consuming.

In many ways what they were doing when they were criticizing the iPad, is enlarging and magnifying the message that Apple wanted out there, which is, ‘The best way to experience it.’ They just kept saying it over and over, the best way to experience it. What we would do internally is come up with a great headline and not carry it forward to the body. We would say, well, we already said that in the headline. Why should we keep repeating ourselves when people already read the headline?

And you’re telling us, no, you do need to repeat it. The rest of the page has to be in alignment with the headline with the big promise that you made, and it has to clarify its importance and prove the importance. We’ll talk later about what it has to do. For now, you just want us to know, be consistent. What about when the iPad II came out. How did they do that then? How did they take the message, explain it and then carry it forward?

Josh: When the iPad II came out, they had a different marketing problem, right? That different marketing problem was that they had this amazingly successful device that most everyone knows about. Now they’re trying to sell another version of it. They’re trying to sell it both to new people, who have never owned an iPad, as well as the people who also purchased an iPad originally.

Their primary focus now is not to educate you on why the iPad is better at web, photos and video. It’s their primary messaging now needs to be, why is the iPad better? Why is the iPad II better than iPad I? It’s a really different message that they needed to send. And so, this is a clever headline, ‘There’s more to it, and even less of it.’ They’re saying their improving on two different axes here. Then they talk about how they do that. So thinner and lighter, it’s got a faster chip, faster graphics, battery life, two cameras, right? So they’re pointing out all the sub-arguments that make that top argument true. So they’re carrying that message down the page consistently.

Andrew: More features in a smaller package, and that’s the message. And again, they’re not trying to say different. They’re not trying to say now you can create with it in this message on this page. And that’s what you’re suggesting we do again. You said in the beginning we use Apple as an example because people are familiar with it.

There’s another company that does messaging extremely well, Google. A competitor, of course, of Apple these days, more and more. Let’s see how they take a message, and not just make a promise, but carry that promise through. I’m not pointing fingers at people who make mistakes with this. I know that it’s a challenge for us, too. We want to come up with a great headline, and then say but in addition to this great big promise, we also want you to understand that we do these other 20 billion things.

It’s a problem we have at Mixergy, and it’s one that we need to learn from you to avoid. What’s the big promise that they’re doing here, that they’re making?

Josh: Google Chrome has been even as consistent as Steve Jobs is, or even more in one primary benefit of the Chrome browser. Everywhere you see anything about the Chrome browser, you see something about speed. Let me just show you how they’re doing that on this page. This is the primary download page for Google Chrome. Get a fast, free web browser. So the word fast is in the primary headline. The secondary headline is, Google Chrome runs websites and applications with lightning speed. They’re repeating the message. They’re repeating it in a different way. They’re adding more richness to the message, but it’s mostly the same message.

And then, in each one of these, they have a very minimal page, but in each one of these they start these, they’re not bulleted, but they’re kind of like bullets over here. Fast startup. Google Chrome launches in a snap. They’re using fast words here. Fast loading. Google Chrome loads web pages quickly. Fast search. Search the web right from the address bar. This page has fast on it one, two, three, four times. They have lightning speed, snap, quickly. They’re doing all of this messaging to get you to consistently drive home the message that this is the fastest browser out there. And I think they do as a consistent a job as anybody.

Andrew: You know what? I would have missed that completely. And you’re right, they keep it light, and they keep it consistent, consistent, consistent. Earlier in the program you were starting to tell us about how when you make a promise, the first one isn’t necessarily going to be the right promise. And that there are different ways of coming up with that promise. Let’s start talking about what we test. And this is like . . .

Josh: Sure.

Andrew: What are the different kinds of promises that we could be making?

Josh: Yeah, exactly. The Tivo exercise that I showed is something that I would recommend that all teams try, and that is essentially just coming up with different headlines. You can start with a headline and then kind of embellish it later. But start with a headline or a sentence, a statement that you think really kind of makes a big promise to your audience. And you just keep coming up with headlines. So you come up with them. At some point you’re going to kind of hit a wall, and you’re saying, ‘Well, I really don’t know how to come up with my next headline. I don’t kind of know what framework to use. I think I’ve come up with all the good headlines that I could possibly come up with.’

The first thing that we should keep in mind is, we want to be testing those headlines, but a way to get us producing more headlines consistently is to use a framework. Let me show you just an Excel spreadsheet that we’ve been using. Can you read that?

Andrew: Oh, yeah. This is great. Maybe just make it a little bit bigger. How about one more size up, if you can.

Josh: We’ll make it nice and big.

Andrew: That might have been too big. There, we can actually see it. Yes.

Josh: Here are just some headlines that I put together for the HubSpot home page. We’re going to be testing a bunch of these. We’re not currently A/B testing but we’re going to be starting that real soon. These are all headlines that make a promise, and they can make a promise explicitly or implicitly, but they should make that promise. Down the left-hand side you’ll see that I organized them, based on the kind of type of headline they are.

The first group is description-based. A description-based headline is simply that. It just describes what it is your product is. So for HubSpot, it’s all-in-one software for professional marketers, right? It’s not all that exciting, but it’s very descriptive. That’s what HubSpot does; variants on that in professional marketing software. The third one, all-in-one inbound marketing software adds that term in that marketing the Hub Spot is super well known for. That’s kind of our thing. These are all different variants, and they are all different description-based.

Once you start thinking in these categories, it’s easier to come up with them. I would recommend you try that. Let’s talk with some of these other ones because they’re interesting. Fear-based. A fear-based headline is a headline that zeros in on a fear of your audience and with the implicit promise that you’re going to get them over that fear. You’re going to solve that pain for them.

A lot of professional marketers feel like they’re spamming their customers. They’re sending a lot of e-mails, probably too many. Some of the e-mails might get unsubscribes, or people e-mailing them back and complaining. Some of the fear-based headlines we can use at HubSpot. Stop spamming people and start marketing to them, the only tool you’ll need for professional marketing. The first one is about the fear of spamming people.

The second one is this fear of this pain of using so many tools. People feel like I’m doing it wrong because they’re using too many marketing tools. That’s actually a subtle fear that we’ve discovered so we’re going to be testing that headline. The third one is on the same idea as spamming. Earn permission to talk to your customers. We’ve talked to marketers who feel like they don’t have permission to talk to their customers. They perhaps purchased a list from someone, an email list, and then they’re sending emails to that list. There’s a lot of fear in any audience around what you’re selling and your product. The key to that type of headline is to zero in on a couple of them and see if you can come up with a headline that really speaks to that.

Andrew: Fear-based list is very powerful because I do think a lot of marketers, they are afraid that they are spamming, and they almost kid about it, but at the same time they just don’t want to be in the space of giving people marketing that they don’t want. They want to be in the space of helping. I can see that being extremely powerful. Same with earn permission to talk to your customers is this feeling that your customers don’t really want to hear from you and you’re shoving stuff down at them.

Josh: Exactly.

Andrew: Fear-based and in all of our spaces, there’s something that our customers are afraid of. We need to bring that up and, you’re saying, make a promise that we can solve that problem for them. So, aspirational?

Josh: So, aspirational. Be a marketing hero with HubSpot. Take your marketing to the next level and then a little more subtle one for professional marketers only, that sort of thing. You’re essentially talking to marketers and saying, ‘We will elevate your game. You will become a better marketer which is what, presumably, you aspire to.’ Every marketer we’ve talked to certainly aspires to do better marketing. Aspirational is another really interesting category.

And then, the final one I’ll mention is just competitor-based. Competitor-based are often implicit so you might go after a category, a product category. For example, at HubSpot we have some marketing automation tools, so we might say something like, ‘Marketing automation that ‘s easy to use.’ It’s actually easy to use. There is a lot of marketing automation tools out there that are hard to use. They’re focused on really technical marketers who have to figure out some really difficult software.

If you’re in a market where there’s a lot of pain around one of your competitors, even though they might be doing well, it’s sometimes really effective to target that pain, even implicitly, and give that message to people coming to your site, saying, ‘We can help solve that pain we know you have.’

Just a couple other examples, stop using marketing. BlowWare. There’s a lot of marketing, BlowWare, out there with HubSpot or the implication of this one, just get started in minutes. Get up to speed quickly.

Here’s one where you might actually mention your competitor. We’re not a competitive sales force. In fact, they invested in us, but I use them as an example here. Fed up with sales force? HubSpot is marketing made simple. If your competitor is doing something, and has maybe complex software or a complex way to solve the problem that you handle simply, this is a way to attack them directly. And so, that’s an explicit example of going after a competitor, if they happen to be a competitor.

Andrew: That is very powerful. I’ve seen 37 Signals, of course, famously use that against Microsoft. They said . . . What was it? That project management software from Microsoft was bloated, and they kept attacking them in their marketing.

Josh: Oh, yeah.

Andrew: I think it was even called MS Project, but it was so bloated that I couldn’t understand it, and I felt like an idiot for not understanding it, and never said it out loud. And then, they brought it up, and I said, ‘Oh, wait a minute. Maybe it’s not me. I do feel OK. Maybe I’m not an idiot when it comes to software. Maybe it’s the software that’s an idiot when it comes to me.’

Josh: Exactly. Andrew, that’s a great point, because most people don’t know how much pain there is around that is so much of theirs. In your marketing, in your messaging, if you can really dial into that, you certainly engender that feeling of, wow, I’m not alone. There is a solution here. That’s something I’m going to explore further.

Andrew: Do you want to show a little bit, maybe of the A/B testing tools that you guys use at HubSpot to show us how we can test this? Of course, this session isn’t about A/B software, but I do want to see behind the scenes how you guys, some of the most experienced marketers out there, how you guys do it.

Josh: Sure, so let me show you.

Andrew: OK.

Josh: This is actually the Performable software. We haven’t quite rebranded it yet. This is now the HubSpot enterprise landing page tool. What I’m going to do is I’m going to actually import an existing page out there. Let’s go with Mixergy.com. Oh OK. There seems to be a . . .

Andrew: Oh, because of the way that we do it. Try going to Mixergy.com/homepage. What we’re doing is we’re doing our own little testing language.

Josh: That’s right. I forgot about that.

Andrew: I forgot about that, but I’m learning from doing these courses the importance of testing language, learning the importance of testing and messaging. And also, recognizing that it’s really not that hard. It actually becomes like a video game. We set up a baseline number, and then we just internally try to beat that number with little experiments. We just keep A/B testing. We keep trying new ideas and see what works. Let’s see if this comes up.

Josh: What’s maybe the biggest thing you’ve seen so far, do you think?

Andrew: The biggest change?

Josh: Yeah.

Andrew: Let’s see. Stupid things that really I didn’t know mattered. Like, there’s a shield on many of our landing pages now that says, ‘We won’t spam with that shield.’ That raises our conversion rates by like 20% when people have to give their email address. That blows my mind because the shield is completely made up. We make it up ourselves. The line about, ‘We don’t spam,’ is obviously something that we do internally. We’re saying we don’t spam. If we’re spammers, lying is easier than spamming.

Anyway, just saying we don’t spam adds credibility. Little things like that just blow my mind. I never would have thought that they would have any impact. What you did was just put the URL of an existing landing page, in this case not Mixergy because we’re doing too much stuff on our site right now.

Josh: Yeah, it depends on . . . it’s probably a Javascript issue. Not a big deal. Let’s say we wanted to come in here and test this link here. We’re going to create, we’re going to say, like, we’re going to call that the Learn More link. We have try it for free, which is a really interesting call to action, but we also want to test this Learn More area to take a quick tour. So, let’s do that. We’ve created an editable [inaudible 50:17]. Maybe, we want to . . . what our users are saying. Let’s just test the one. That’s fine.

Andrew: By the way, if you were to pick two different regions, would Performable test them both separately, would it create just two tests? One with the original and the other with the other two elements changed together? Or would it create multiple tests where the main – is it multi-variant or A/B testing?

Josh: It’s A/B testing. It’s not multi-variant. It’s A/B testing, which is generally simpler for people to pick up on and use. What we did was we actually pulled in the FreshBooks page here, and we actually created right in the head of the document – I know I’m showing code – we created a section that is now a variable that we can test called the Learn More section. I’m going to create a new page from this template, and we’ll call it FreshBooks Past. We want to do A/B testing. Now, in our template we have all that content that doesn’t change, so that’s the FreshBooks home page, but then we also have that little bit of content that we do want to change.

Why don’t we leave in the default text which is Take a Quick Tour? We’ll just save this page quickly. We want to create another version of the page which is variation B. All I’m going to do is clone this page, single click, we now have variation B which was cloned from A. We also have the default text in here. Let’s change that to Learn More. We’ll save that, and we can preview it right here, OK? You can see variation B is now saying Learn More and variation A is Take a Quick Tour. In 30 seconds or so, we’ve created both versions, and now you can test each one against each other.

Let me just show you the screen that you get after that. We now have variation A and variation B in the FreshBooks test. Let’s go ahead and publish both of these pages. The pages are now published, and you can see over here this is where the stats will start lining up. So, visits, unique visitors and conversions. It will show you how many people have visited the page, how many people have converted on that page, and the conversion number.

Andrew: I’m sure there are people who are sitting here who are saying, are you guys promoting Performable as a whole? Is the only reason you’re signing us up for these courses is so that you can get us to buy Performable? We don’t care. Whatever software you’re happy with, use. I happen to have tried Performable from the very beginning, and I’ve been watching the evolution of the software, and I love what you guys have done with it. I think as anyone can see it’s easy to use and I recommend it.

If you absolutely don’t like it and are bothered that we showed you one instead of showing you every single software out there in the market and walked you through it all, you can use whatever others you want, and of course you can test them on your own. But the main idea here, Josh, is you want them to think of different messaging and to test the messaging and to see what kind of crazy discoveries pop up. What can they learn about their audience’s reception? Just like I didn’t know that a shield would increase conversions. They may not understand that a fear-based headline or fear-based messaging might resonate more with their audience than maybe, one that just describes the benefits. Or maybe they have an audience where benefits are more effective than a fear-based message.

The goal is to understand there’s a framework for coming up with your message and to test that message and to see what works. Now, we come up with the main message, we understand that we want to carry it through to the rest of the site, we understand that we want to test it. The next thing that you and I want to talk about is how to deliver the details of the message. Once we know what headline resonates, once we know that we need to carry it forward, there are places, there are ways we can communicate that message. One of them is features and benefits; we explained that. Can you give us an example of someone who does features and benefits well?

Josh: Yes.

Andrew: I think you cued up Evernote for that.

Josh: This is Evernote. Before I dug into this page, let me just say a little bit about features and benefits. Everybody’s familiar with features and benefits. Anybody who’s ever created a product website is familiar with features and benefits. We all know that features and benefits are the primary way that we talk about the different things, different functionality that our product has, that set our product apart from other products, right?

Some of the advice that you’ll hear about features and benefits is that you shouldn’t focus on features, you should focus on benefits because people really buy for the benefits. One thing that I’ve learned is that’s not always the case. It’s usually the case, but there are segments of people who purchase on features. For example, I’ve met a lot of folks in the enterprise space who go shopping based on features. They go into a website, and they will write down all their features and report back. There’s an assumption that they understand the benefits, and that’s why they’re shopping on features.

Just a word of caution at the beginning, it’s usually best to combine features and benefits into one and always have features and always have benefits. I think Evernote is a good example of that. Here’s a page, their Learn More page, it’s a pretty typical features page; take notes anywhere, remember things you like, plan your next trip, save favorite web pages, work with friends and colleagues, and keep everything in sync. They’re really pushing on the benefits here. The overall message of Evernote is remember everything. Again, they’re staying consistent with their primary promise, but now they’re getting into the details.

What does remember things you like actually mean? Well, they’ve gone into detail. They have a graphic of someone taking a picture of a wine label with their iPhone in an Evernote application, and they give a textual description as well. Keep a notebook of all your recipes and tag them by cuisine or ingredient, you can easily pull it up next time you are at the market. I don’t know how many people I’ve talked to that talk about this specific example, when talking about Evernote. Yeah, I use it to remember wine labels.

For some reason, Evernote realized early on that this was one of those details that just get replicated over and over and over again by people and people really like that idea. That’s kind of a high class problem right, to remember the type of wine you drank, but Evernote uses that in all their marketing as this really kind of delicious detail that really gets people to remember Evernote.

The second step of this methodology is to dive down and deliver those details that we’re talking about. You want to get these kind of memorable details. You want to really spell them out, so plan your next trip, scan receipts or snap a photo of your receipts with your phone. When tax time comes around, easily search the text inside the images.

They are actually talking about a couple of different things, right? They’re talking about several different features in here. You can snap a photo using the Evernote iPhone app. You can search your things, and you can actually search text inside of images. They have optical character recognition or something like that.

They’re talking about in some cases, very advanced features in terms of their overall promise keeping with the idea that you can remember everything, but also using a real world example of planning your next trip. Evernote does a really, really good job of diving into those details, while keeping the overall promise in mind.

Andrew: I can see that and as you said earlier, you want to keep the message consistent. I love Evernote. I’m a premium member. I pay them I think monthly or annually. One of my favorite features is the scanning feature, where I get to scan lots of documents in. That’s not on this page, that’s not part of the core message that they’re communicating here. The message here is: Take note and remember everything, so they’re showing take notes at school, take notes of web pages, take notes of wine bottles.

Features and benefits; screenshot is another way that you want us to think about communicating our overall message. Once we find that big product value, we want to communicate it in screenshots. I think you told me earlier that Mint does a great job of doing that.

Josh: Mint’s actually interesting. Mint has, what I think, are both good and bad examples of screenshots. I’ll show you, kind of, how they use them.

Andrew: I’m sorry, they have what? I was clearing my throat and missed that word.

Josh: I think in some cases, they use screenshots very well, and in some cases not so well, so I was just going to talk through those. Here on the home page, you see this screenshot here, this doesn’t have enough detail at this point to give you any real sense of the application. It’s failing on that account; however, it is showing you that you use it on a computer. It does communicate that you need this software here, and if you can see my cursor, this is what I’m looking at. It doesn’t show you enough detail to give you any real sense of what’s on the screen.

Andrew: OK.

Josh: The number one thing that designers and product folks do when making screenshots is to keep them too small and not show enough detail. In this case, you can’t see any real detail. You can see a pie graph, but that’s about it. Make your screenshots big; a really, really easy rule.

Here’s another one here. We’re seeing that there are some green graphs on here, some horizontal bar graphs, but we’re not actually seeing any real detail of that. This message would be so much better communicated with a large screenshot and annotations around it, really describing what’s going on. Saying, if you’re tracking your paycheck income, you’re ahead for this month; if you’re tracking your entertainment budget, you’re behind for this month. Saying those obvious things in relation to a screenshot is extremely powerful, and really drives home the point for people.

On Mint’s ‘How It Works’ page, they have a really cool way of showing that blown-up information. You see right here, on the right in the screenshot, they have a screenshot that’s again, in the context of a screen, so you do understand that this is in the software that I’m running on a laptop, but it’s way too small to see any detail. They’ve created this magnifying circle, which really does show the detail. I have my cash accounts, my credit card accounts, my loan accounts, my investments, and the text of that supporting is to see all your accounts in one place. This technique, this kind of magnifying-glass technique, is a great way to show that detail when, in this case, you don’t have the entire page to show a screenshot, or when the target that you want to show is actually relatively small, this is a great way to embellish screenshots.

Andrew: Those are three different ways to deliver details and to continue the overall product value that you’re communicating, to continue communicating in. We talked about features and benefits is the first, screenshot number two. I’m looking down here at my notes. The final one is actually principles of testimonials. Excuse me, I just realized that we didn’t do the third one: principles of testimonials is the last one you wanted to talk about. Let’s take a look at maybe FreshBooks, who does that.
Josh: I’m actually going to go back to FreshBooks for this. FreshBooks has done some really good stuff around testimonials. Actually, let me jump over to Chrome; my video is broken on my Safari browser. The first thing they do, FreshBooks, they have testimonies from news services. They say ‘FreshBooks is the best,’ ‘Incredible user-friendly, refreshing and straightforward’. That’s some really powerful social proof of these trusted names, PC Magazine, Forbes and CNET. They also have right here a video of one of their customers, named Tyler Rooney, who talks about their software. I’ll give you just some of it.

Andrew: I think when you move the mouse, the pause button disappears, but we get the point.

Josh: I had a nice, kind of informal interview with him. Then, we skip over some features and benefits here. Features and benefits are kind of like the blocking and tackling of the product and design world, product page design. They have this great section, what our users are saying. So Tina Roth Eisenberg, swissmiss.com. Extremely popular blogger and twitterer, she’s right there, right at the top. They have this great call that FreshBooks not only makes me look professional, it saves me a huge amount of time.

So they’re doing several things with this, obviously using her real name, a nice picture of her, a decent sized picture. It’s not stock photography. These people are not made up. It should go without saying that making up testimonials, fabricating them or writing them for someone, people sniff that out amazingly well. I’ve seen it happen where someone said, I don’t believe that testimonial, and it turned out to be fake.

Then it talks, this testimonial is a really good one, it talks about being a designer, I used to waste time making sure my invoices looked good. That is really attacking this pain that designers have. They spend all this time doing invoicing, which is one of the first points you made about FreshBooks that FreshBooks can really solve. A couple of other things they do is they bold the most important part of the testimonial, which is a really good thing to do. It helps people zero right in. Real pictures, real names, known names of known people is really powerful.

Calling out the most important part of the testimonial in bold is helpful, but also keeping it in the context of the entire quote is also really nice. Also, when choosing your testimonials, you’ll want to choose ones that will allow people to self-select and say that person’s like me, right? In this one Tina says, ‘Well being a designer, thank God for FreshBooks.’ That’s exactly what FreshBooks wants to communicate to other designers.

A big part of testimonials is having a couple different ones that people can self-identify with and say that person’s like me, let me see what they said, that sort of thing. So a couple of pretty straightforward things, but I’ve seen testimonials go bad really quickly because too many people on the team get involved. The best way is to just keep them natural, keep them authentic and look for the type of people who others can self-identify with.

Andrew: Now, I can sum up the three ways to deliver the details by saying, the first is features and benefits, the second is screenshot, and the final is testimonials, and you showed three. Theses are just three of, these aren’t the only three, they’re three strong ones, and you’ve just shown how to use them well.

Finally, we’ve come up with the product message. We’ve carried it through, we’ve tested it, we’ve used all these elements to explain it. The final thing you want to remind us to do is to have that clear call to action. Before you show the two examples that you want to show us of the different kinds of calls to action, can you scroll to the top of this page? It will be interesting to see how FreshBooks does it.

Josh: The interesting thing, Andrew, FreshBooks has a lot of calls to action. They’re really an interesting case.

Andrew: Yeah.

Josh: So you can see they have in the top right-hand corner, try it for free for 30 days, which is the same call to action they have not too far away down here in what I would call the primary content section here. But even as you scroll the page, they repeat those same options. You can take a tour or try it free for 30 days. And they repeat those down the page several times. Here’s another time, try it for free for 30 days.

Back on the topic of consistency or repetition, FreshBooks is doing this several times down their home page in slightly different ways, but it’s the same thing over again, and it also leads to the point that you probably should have a primary call to action, which we can see up here, try it for free for 30 days. That’s their primary call to action. That’s the one that gets the most attention.

But they also have a secondary call to action, which is take a quick tour. Take the tour, kind of a feature tour, that’s a popular one and what this is doing, is this is allowing people who visit the sight to essentially make the decision that’s best for their next step. Not everyone is going to be ready to try it for free for 30 days, no matter how many green buttons FreshBooks puts on the page because not everyone has found out enough of what they need to know in order to make a decision to start a trial.

It’s always good to think about the different levels of calls to action that you want. Yes, you can go for the one, the primary one is try it for free, but you also want those secondary ones where people can dig deeper, and go down into all those details that we talked about delivering via testimonials, and screen shots, and allow people to dig as deep as they want.

I’ve been in a lot of discussions, with a lot of people building product sites, and sometimes they’re a little afraid to do that, because they say this is our primary call to action, this is what we want, let’s get them there quickly, let’s kind of short cut this. You really can’t short cut it, because people move at their own pace. One of the worst things that a marketer or sales person knows, and seasoned sales people talk about this a lot is that you need to give someone the correct next step. You can’t push them too fast. If the next correct step is to learn a little more, then that’s the right step for them.

Andrew: There are, as you’ve said, consumer facing product call to action, as you’ve said to me in private in preparation for this course, and enterprise facing products and they handle calls to action differently, consumer versus enterprise. How about we look at a consumer facing product to see their call to action and then we’ll talk about what an enterprise facing product call to action looks like in comparison.

Josh: It’s not quite as black-and-white as just consumer and enterprise, but enterprise customers tend to want different things than B2C customers. The difference is that when you’re doing B2C, when you’re selling to your customer, they are probably the same person who will use your product. When you’re selling to enterprise customers or B2B, when you’re selling to businesses, it’s very often not the case that the person who purchases your products is the person who uses your product.

It’s very good to keep that in mind when you’re designing product sites, because you’re the customer if you’re dealing with a B2B site, the customer is different from the user. Because of that, the information you will need needs to be targeted, too. You should probably provide information for both, the person who’s purchasing as well as the person who will be using your software. Let me see.

Andrew: Let’s take a look at the Flip Board consumer facing.

Josh: Consumer facing is just, give it to me now, give me a free trial. I want to test it out. I’m the person who is going to be using this, so I want to test it out, right? Flip Board is a great example because there’s basically nothing here. It’s a really kind of simple, beautiful design, Flip Board logo, a picture of Flip Board, and then just minimal text. This is your Flip Board social magazine now with more to enjoy.

They’re getting into that messaging of we’re a little bit better than we used to be. They’re messaging to their return visitors a little, free download, right? This is extremely simple, extremely straightforward. And for companies like SaaS companies who are selling to consumers, who are doing the B2C thing where their customer is their user, free trials are really the way to go because those people often want to trial it.

When you’re doing B2B and selling to perhaps an executive who will then give that software to other folks in the organization to use, I’m not saying that’s the ideal way of doing it, but that’s often the case. Then, they’re going to need more information than just a free trial. Many executives will not do free trials at all. One, because they’re simply not going to use it, and two, they don’t have time.

I’ve found in my design career, as I’ve done more and more design for enterprise customers, the level of collateral, the level of description necessary, the level of information you provide, can get even deeper and deeper. You can do things like case studies which are really deep dives into how someone is using your product. Those things really become important when you’re dealing with B2B customers because those people are making a decision on behalf of others. They’re going to read. They’re going to do deep research. They’re going to maybe even feature compare, that sort of thing. .

Andrew: Can we take a look at that? Let’s see an example as you’re describing this. We just saw Flip Board as consumer facing product with a call to action. I think you were going to show us quick base as the example.

Josh: Quick Base is an interesting one. Into Quick Base, it’s a database and it’s quickly customized by business teams. Actually, let me show one more, so we’ll go to Omniture.com. They’re in the analytic space. And you can see Omniture, they’re a very expensive piece of software, first of all. And they provide no free trial. You can’t even get a free trial until you talk to a sales person, until you talk to a whole bunch of people. They’re targeting someone extremely different from Quick Base. So I would say Omniture is a typical enterprise product.
Andrew: I see, yeah. This is a great example of what you were saying. A free trial wouldn’t be enough for an executive because they may not even know what to do with it.

Josh: Exactly. If you have any experience with Omniture, it’s an extremely difficult process getting it set up. It takes weeks and weeks to get it set up, so a free trial doesn’t even make sense. It just doesn’t even make sense.

Andrew: What’s their call to action? Download now, they’re saying. Their call of action is to get you to try what?

Josh: Download now, you can go . . .

Andrew: It looks like it’s a research paper that they’re getting you to try first and that leads you . . .
Josh: Well, webinar and guides, so webinars, research papers, white papers, that sort of thing. What Adobe is doing here is completely removing the idea of using the software. They’re saying we’re going to show you content that communicates the value of the software instead.

Now, let’s go back to Quick Base. We’ve looked at two extremes. We’ve looked at super simple site Flip Board, which is just download it, right? We’re not going to tell you much about it at all, just download it. And we’ve looked at Omniture which is you can’t try this, we’re going to just throw more content at you. Those are kind of the two extremes.

Quick Base is interesting because it’s focused on business teams, but there’s a sign up now, so it’s kind of in the middle somewhere. Sign up for a free 30 day free trial, no cost, no obligations, no worries, so it’s kind of a blend of the two. I would actually point out that they’re also getting into the kind of B2B type of information here. You can take a tour, you can do a webinar. You can do those sorts of things. Start a free database trial.

My experience with sites like this is that the people who do sign up aren’t necessarily your best customers, because they’re people, ‘I just came here. I want to use it myself’ whereas a lot of the customers in this case are, again, not going to be the actual users.

Andrew: Can I suggest this, Josh? The person who designed this page and this communication, the whole product value communication, should take this course, because I don’t understand what the product is. I don’t see a clear statement about the value of product. I don’t see it carried forward. I see at the top, Intuit Quick Base. Well, of course, I know I’m now in Intuit Quick Base, because it’s now listed twice on the page, and I typed it into the address bar.

Josh: Exactly.

Andrew: Tell me the big benefit is for me, or help me understand it, using some of the concepts that you showed us here today.

Josh: Exactly.

Andrew: And the first is, you told us, find your promise. What’s the promise that Intuit is making, and more importantly, since we’re not in Intuit’s business, we should ask this of ourselves. First, we need to ask, what’s the promise that we’re making.

The second thing you said is, keep your message consistent throughout the page and throughout your presentation. You even used the example of how Steve Jobs, when he’s talking to reporters, will keep his message consistent.

Test, test, test, test, test. And of course, we showed Performable because it’s one of the leading, if not the leading system for performance marketing or for testing marketing.

We talk about delivering details. You gave three different ways of doing that. Talk about features and benefits, show screen shots, testimonials. And you gave lots of great examples from FreshBooks, how they use testimonials as well.

Finally, a clear call to action. And the call to action depends on the product and the customer that you’re servicing. Consumers, you want to give them quick trials. You want to get them in your product as fast as possible. With enterprise, since the end user is probably not making the decision, you might want to get them into a webinar first so they can see it. You might want to give them a downloaded product, so they can read it on their own.

Josh, let’s take a look, one last time, at your website, your new website. How does it feel to be part of a different company?

Josh: It actually feels great. HubSpot is a really fun place to work. We have 280 people here or something like that. Almost all of us are in the same place. You can see all parts of the company and what everyone is really cranking on. So, it’s great. Everyone likes working here. We’ve won awards the past three or four years for the best place to work in Boston.

Andrew: Well, congratulations on creating a great product, that then was bought out by a phenomenal start-up with, I don’t remember how many, tens of million dollars of investment in the business.

But more importantly, the number of customers that you guys have and the way that you’re marketing to those customers. You guys are the leaders in inbound marketing. Your founder’s on that shot. You practically invented the concept of inbound marketing.

Thanks for coming here and teaching us how you communicate a product’s value. I’m looking forward, more than anything else, to our audience using Josh Porter’s ideas and sending me the results of them. Thank you all for watching and being a part of this course. Josh, thanks for doing it.

Josh: Thanks so much, Andrew. It was great fun.

 

Master Class: Raising Capital
Taught by Oren Klaff of IntersectionCapital.com

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Master Class: Raising Capital

Time to watch/listen: 110 minutes


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Transcript

Andrew: This is a session on pitching. Our courses are all led by doers, which is why we invited Oren Klaff to lead this course. Oren is a director of capital markets at Intersectional Capital. In his previous five years in the securities market, Oren has supervised and assisted in the placement of over 400 million dollars of investor capital. Oren has also recently written a book called “Pitch Anything” which you can see up on your screen right now. I’ll help lead the session. I’m Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy, where doers teach. Oren, do you have an example of what our audience will be able to do at the end of this session?

Oren: Sure, I certainly do. I’m like a lot of people here who started out in early stage technology. Raising kind of Series A capital with the aspirations to grow a company and sell it, and do it multiple times. When you know this methodology, what is great is that you can not only raise money for early stage companies, which is a very, very specific skill set, but I had a guy come to me in 2006 and said “Hey, I’m doing something in a totally different market, can you raise capital?” and I’ll show you that. I jumped in, and I’ll take you over here to Geyser Holdings, it’s something I knew absolutely nothing about, and the scary thing is that I might not know that much about it still today, but I raised the money.

Andrew: You know, let’s move that over on the side of the screen so that we can see it clearly

Oren: Yeah.

Andrew: I want the audience to be able to see the site that you’re showing us. Slide it over to the left. There you go.

Oren: So here you go. I mean literally, one of the running jokes is that I don’t know that much about real estate, but I jumped right in using these same methods, and raised a couple hundred million dollars for these kinds of deals. Today I’m doing technology up on Sandhill Road, and doing the same kind of stuff that I know, but the ability to hop to a different kind of business development, or raising capital, is amazing because if your sector gets soft, or your deal doesn’t work, it’s the method that allows you to do any kind of raising of capital. This is proof.

If you talk to me you’ll see; I’m a technology-oriented guy, and that’s the space that I live in, but the ability to move into a different sector and help someone out, raise a lot of money and a lot of deals? I know we want to get started, but this, if I click on it? This is a macadamia nut orchard, alright? I’ve probably never even been on a farm, but to hop into a deal, understand its dynamics, and raise capital for it in an instant, is what Pitch Method allows you to do, and is really about.

Andrew: I see, alright. Well that, you know what, that is exciting. I kind of felt, also, that when it comes to pitching, it’s just knowing the people to whom you’re pitching, building the relationships over time, and what gets you to close the deal is that you’ve just been there. They’re almost rooting for you, that you’ve built those relationships with them. You’re saying no, it’s about the method that you walk into the deal with, not necessarily about the lifelong connections that you’ve built with them and the deep understanding of the industry. You could have all of those but not have all the pitch tactics and nothing will happen for you, whereas if you walk in with the pitch tactics, the rest will fall into place.

Oren: Here’s one thing I’ll say to follow up on that.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Oren: When I end up meeting a billionaire, hundred-millionaire who has read my book for one reason or another, or read a segment of it, or we just talk, and I know several billionaires and I know lots of venture capitalists, but when I end up meeting a very, very experienced guy, what he’ll say is “Oh, I know all this stuff, and this is what I do. You just wrote it down.” Exactly!

What we’re doing here is what guys who have created enormous wealth, or who deal in these markets every single day are saying, “This is what I do!” and I think that’s awesome. Now, in some ways I wrote this for myself, because this is all from my notes, but now you guys have the ability to perform at the same level as the guy who’s been doing this for 20 years and is incredibly successful. You know, I talked to Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm, for example, and he read the chapter one in the book. He probably is a $400 million net worth guy, and he says “Oh, you know, I know all this stuff, this is what I do. I just didn’t write it down the way you did. And I’ve heard that several times, and I think so now, this is the play book. The guys really know what they are doing. You can get up to their level like.

Andrew: That doesn’t sound to me like a criticism. That sounds to me like a complement. If you’re saying, ‘Hey, this is what I know, this is what I have been doing’, then, of course, that’s great. That proves it works.

Oren: I love hearing it.

Andrew: Now that means you need it.

Oren: Validating, yeah.

Andrew: So, I want to be able to do that. And of course want the people taking this course be able to do that.

What’s the first step? What do we need to do to get started?

Oren: So, let me see.

I think the first thing is really to understand the structure, of the social interaction that happen when you come together with an investor.

It is not the first time you watch a football game. The first time you watch a football game, or you have somebody come from another country and you watch them experience the football game, they think it’s brownie in motion, that everything just happens randomly, no rhyme or reason or what. But you know from having watched hundreds of football games, that there is a structure. there is a first quarter, a second quarter, so if you watched the last two minutes of a football game, it’s very, very different from the first two minutes. First two minutes is kind of orienting, you feeling each other out, you getting your momentum going, and your blood flowing, you’re trying to execute some stuff and you’re feeling out the other team. The last two minutes you’re trying to win the game.

So, social interaction and games have a structure. So the first thing that you’ll have to do, we’re going to deliver that here, is understand what’s the structure of a capital raise. All right?

So, to me until you can recognize how the game unfolds and where you are in it and what the next set of moves are, you really are a little bit brownie in motion in yourself.

You’re trying really hard, but the investor or the other team you are up against, is going to be much more proficient at getting the better deal. So you got to know where you are in the structure of the social interaction and the race.

Andrew: So what is the structure that we need to understand?

Oren: So let me hop over. I’ve got a slide, prepared for that.

So move this over this part of the screen. This is part of a presentation that I gave to Google, last week. And if anybody is interested in getting this presentation, or these other materials, can email this address down at the bottom right at Pitchanything.net.

So you go down here. So this is the broad structure of, and we’re going to get into the details when we run through it quickly. So this initial red area here, is what I called the pricing, talked about this in the last review. Pricing is the structure, the first part of the deal. Whether you’re first meeting the investor, before you meet the investor, physical or phone meeting it’s structurally the first part that you have to do.

Andrew: I’m going to ask you in a moment to explain what pricing is, but I want to get a top view, and then of course later on, we’ll go into details here.

So, the first step is us pricing.

What’s the second?

Oren: The second part of the structure is you got to deliver your pitch right?

And there’s a structure to deliver a pitch but that big black area, is that you got to deliver in about 20 minutes, the essence of what you are pitching or presenting.

And the final part of that second structure is, getting to the some kind of hook point. Like that’s an objective.

So, price, pitch, objective is the hook point.

I don’t think, it’s not confusing what the hook point is, it’s kind of self describing. But that point in the presentation when people stop assuming, they know what you have, or that they heard it all before, and really become interested. There’s lots of signals, they might lean in, they might start asking real connected questions, sometimes they’ll just ask you a personal detail. How do you pronounce your last name? Something that shows a real caring. Where did you go to school? You know I’ve had that before from venture capitalists. I’ll call that a hook point, right.

Andrew: Why is where did you go to school a hook point? What does it indicate to us about the person who we’re pitching?

Oren: When you get these kind of personal interests along with leaning forward, it shows that they are connected and interested and want to learn some of the color and some of the nuance. When they indicate they’re interested in learning some of the nuance, and they’re not just on autopilot. So the autopilot questions we all know.

Well how did you get to the market size? You know, I would not call that a hook point question. Or well, can Google or Microsoft, can they do this very easily? Those are very generic, asleep at the wheel kind of questions, but when they go around that to find something interesting and add some color and nuance to their understanding, I think you’re there.

Andrew: I see. OK. It’s almost like they’re demonstrating affection for you and what you just pitched them instead of just listening to you.

Oren: It’s an acknowledgement, and so when you have deliberate enough value, right, and enough interest in sucking them in to your world and what you’re about, and if you’re looking for this hook point, you’ll experience it.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: You know, that’s very, very palatable.

Andrew: What about that blue area, what’s that?

Oren: The blue area is what I call calibration. So all of this is gain, but you cannot just gain indefinitely. It’s exhausting. It’s intense because your managing half minute by half minute, minute by minute, pieces of the social interaction. When you reach the hook point, we talked about this last time, you can relax a little bit. You don’t have to play the game. You can just kind of interface as human beings, and spend the time calibrating. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit more.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: But that’s essential, but that doesn’t go on indefinitely. If you take that too long, then things can fall apart. So structurally after this little period of calibration, then you’ve got to start pushing back because you’ve earned the right.

Andrew: Push back on them.

Oren: This is where prizing really comes into effect.

Andrew: OK. Let’s talk about what prizing is. Can you give people an understanding of what prizing is? I know we’ve done an interview about this and you explained it there in the book, Pitch Anything You Did, but for anyone who is not caught up, what does prizing mean.

Oren: Very simply. Capital, or money, or the investor is a commodity. They are not the prize to be won. I am the prize. Capital, you have got to win me. As I said before, there’s 100,000 sources of start-up capital within 500 miles of you right now. I don’t know if you’re in Kentucky, then maybe not, but if you’re somewhere on the Pacific Coast of the United States, there’s 100,000 sources of start-up capital. There’s 20,000 sources of maybe later stage ‘B’ capital. There’s 1,000 sources of private equity or later stage capital. Capital is a commodity. It’s like rice or oil. It’s more of a commodity. There’s very few good deals. There’s very few great entrepreneurs. There’s nobody like you, Andrew. There’s nobody like me. I’m the prize. The capital has got to chase me.

Andrew: I see. It’s not you chasing them like they’re some sort of prize you have to work to earn, you’re turning it around to say, I’m the prize. You guys have to win me over. I’m the person who’s special here. And actually after your interview, people who’ve listened to us who said, hey I’m not really in the market for raising money, but I am in the market for a job, took that attitude out to look for jobs and they said the same thing in their head. It’s not this job that is the prize. There’s tons of jobs out there, literally millions of them, and millions of people doing them, but no the prize is me. There’s only one person like me who has this knowledge, who has this life and passion for my industry. You have to win me over. And once they adjusted their attitude like that, they said that everything else fell into place, even through they remember anything else that you said at the time of your interview. That one thing alone did it all.

Oren: And I got some great emails of your audience on prizing that were very innovative. And this is one reason that I’m doing these interviews is that I want this material to develop and innovate and move forward from even where I’ve taken it, right? And so, that’s a lot of my motivation and I’m starting to see some original stuff from the audience that is even moving this material forward and that’s real exciting. It’s not arrogance, prizing is not arrogance. It’s an absolute belief in the qualities that you have in your value in the market.

I am not chasing capital, capital is available anywhere. Capital has got to chase me. It’s got at least want to be in my deal, all right? I’m not going to beg you to come into my deal. So at this point here, we say qualify back. If you prized upfront correctly, you’ve pitched well, you’ve calibrated, then you’ve earned the right to say, so listen. There are any number of sources of capital, as you know, right.

We’re here for a good reason, we had this introduction, we had a good time today, seems like there’s good chemistry, but I really want to hear from you, how you would behave if you were an investor in this deal. Why we should take your capital over another source of capital and what value you’re going to add to the deal?

So let me tell you something that happened last week. We were sitting in a venture due diligence session and they brought in an outside analyst that was just being extremely detail oriented, just trying to kill us and every last little detail and really starting to become a run away train. Just focusing on details, trying to negotiate every little nuance. And then I stepped in and said “Ya know,” let’s just call her Susan, “Susan, I’m just wondering, beyond all these questions, how do you add value to this deal. I mean, these questions are great but what’s your value add overall. Assuming we get past all of this and we do well.”

I’m telling you right now, she went off for 15 minutes justifying herself. I mean it was a dead stop of this analysis frame and it worked perfect. So when you see the material with the method working perfectly like that, taking an analyst and just immediately causing her to back up and immediately start justifying herself for a long time, you see it working perfectly.

Andrew: I see, so what you’re saying is in the beginning you set yourself up as a prize. In the end when you’re qualifying back, you ask them why they earned the right to win this prize.

Oren: Right, yes, exactly.

Andrew: So now we understand the overview of what you’re about to teach here. Let’s take it to the first step. What is that next step after you have this understanding? What’s the first step in getting ready to pitch?

Oren: Well I think we can pause here for a second because I think we’re talking about prize frame. We’re going to be talking a lot about framing, frames, frame control. In fact, one of the Google slides, in fact, the first Google slide is about frame control. So I prepared a little presentation on frame control that we should probably run into now, all right? Work for you?

Andrew: Sure, absolutely.

Oren: OK, so let me find this baby.

Andrew: Is this the video you that you were planning on showing us?

Oren: Yeah, this is the video. [pause]

Andrew: Let’s bring it up on the screen here.

Oren: Why is this video here?

Andrew: Can you shrink it up a little bit so it takes over just the right portion of the screen?

Oren: Yup.

Andrew: Maybe a little bit more.

Oren: How’s it look there?

Andrew: Looks good. Of course these sessions are all done with you sharing your screen. So it’s a 5 minute video you’re going to be playing?

Oren: It’s a 5 minute video I mean, this is very important, I think now is the time.

Andrew: OK, how about this. Try raising the volume, I think we should be able to hear it through the speakers on your computer. And one more thing before you hit play on that, turn your Skype to ‘do not disturb’. Just go all the way to the top of your screen to that green bubble at the top with the check-mark, click on that and let’s select the red with the cross through it, “Do not Disturb”. So now we’re focused on this, hit play with volume full on and let’s see if we can pick it up this way.

Oren: OK

[Recording]: Imagine for a moment there is some kind of powerful energy field that surrounds all of us.

Andrew: A little louder

[Recording]: From the depths of our sub-conscious. This invisible defense shield is genetically designed to protect our conscious minds from sudden intrusion by ideas and perspectives that are not our own. We all have to have some kind of defense mechanism. When this energy field is overwhelmed it collapses, and our mental defenses fail. When that happens, we become subject to another person’s ideas, desires and commands, and then that person can impose his will upon us. Look, I don’t know. No one really knows if there are human energy fields or not, but for me, and I think for you as well, it’s the best way to think about the mental structures that shape the way we see the world. I call these frames, and that’s what we’re here to talk about today; the power of frames, framing, deframing, and reframing.

Let’s just kind of get into it and find a metaphor for frames. Imagine looking at the world through a window frame that you hold in your hand. As you move the frame around, the sounds and images you encounter are interpreted by your brain in ways that are consistent with how you think, your intelligence, your values, your ethics, all that stuff. This is your point of view. Your frame is your point of view, but another person can look through the exact same frame. Through his frame, what he sees may differ by a lot. The common label people call this is perspective. I perceive and interpret things differently than you do, lots of times, when we’re looking at the same thing.

Why does this matter? There are millions of people in the business world, and each brings his own frame to every social encounter. Here’s the essence of it: when two or more people come together to communicate in a business setting, their frames square off, then come into contact, but not in a cooperative or friendly way. Frames are extremely competitive. Remember they’re rooted in survival instincts, and each frame seeks to sustain dominance. When frames come together, the first thing they do is collide. This isn’t a friendly competition, it’s a death match. Frames don’t merge, they don’t blend, and they don’t intermingle. When they collide, the stronger frame absorbs the weaker. This is the essence of it: when your frame and another frame come together, and I’ll say it again, they collide, and the stronger frame absorbs the weaker. Only one frame will dominate after the exchange, and the other frame will be subordinate to the winner.

This is what happens below the surface of every business meeting you attend, every sales call you make, and every person-to-person business communication you have. The moment your frame makes contact of the frame of the person you’re calling on or the person you’re meeting with, they clash, battle, and grapple for dominance. If your frame wins, you will enjoy frame control, where your ideas are accepted, followed by others; but if your frame loses, you will be at the mercy of the other person, your customer, whoever you’re trying to do a deal with, and your success will then depend only on their charity. You will not have frame control.

Understanding how to harness and apply the power of frames is the most important thing you will ever learn. I think one of the most important things we cover, I mean I literally know what page it’s on, it’s on page 24 of the book, and goes onto page 25; literally own the frame, win the game. It’s that simple. If I was to do a quick review on frames and frame control, a frame is the instrument you use to package your power, authority, strength and status. Everyone uses frames whether they realize it or not, and every social encounter brings frames together. Frames don’t exist in the same place and the same time for very long; they crash into each other and one or the other gains control. Only one frame survives, the others break and are absorbed. Stronger frames always absorb weaker frames.

Finally, the winning frame governs every social interaction for the period of the interaction. When it does that, it’s said to have frame control.

Andrew: OK. I see what you mean. That is even more powerful than reading the pages in the book.

Oren: Yeah, yeah. I mean I watched it ten times myself. You know, I think that’s great that this material is not something that you learn once like algebra and then it’s packed away. It’s live, and you come back to it over and over again. But, anyway, let’s push forward understanding that in every social interaction you come together, there are multiple perspectives, and the dominant perspective will overtake all the other ones. You will either be absorbed in someone else’s perspective, or you will absorb them into yours, but it always calibrates it. You cannot have human interaction with

and understanding is fundamental to be able to raise money.

It’s not about controlling people by any stretch of the imagination, but if you cannot bring the other person or people into your perspective, then it’s very unlikely that you’re going to be able to strongly frame your deal and make it desirable to have them want it. So, these are the fundamentals here that you’ve got to get your arms around to move onto the practicals.

Andrew: All right. Now, what’s the next step?

Oren: All right. So, I think once you understand that there’s a structure and what frames are and you’ve got a prize. Maybe, we’ll run through here quickly. Go back to the presentation.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: Can you find it?

Andrew: Are we at this point how, ready to start, well, preparing for the negotiation?

Oren: We are not necessarily starting to prepare. What I want to do is pre-frame or give a sense of where we’re going, all right?

Andrew: Let’s get that slide up properly on the screen so people can see it.

Oren: Good for you?

Andrew: It’s coming in on my screen. It should be OK. Yep, there it is.

Oren: OK. Great. So, now this is the

structure. You can still see the prizes there are in red, the pitch is in black, the calibration period is in blue, and then the qualifying

, all right?

start happening here. What we’re going to do is, in a minute, prepare our material to move through this structure. So, I’m going to cover this here briefly, and then we’re going over

Andrew: I’m losing the connection a little bit. Can you shut off… Actually, I think we’re OK. Let’s give it a moment to catch up, and we’re good. So, what we’re doing here is preparing what material? What do you mean?

Oren:

there is

introduce

You’ve got to communicate in the language of the capital markets. That’s part of the preparation. So, you view your capital raising in three segments. One is what we’re talking about right now. It’s preparation. Two is process, and three is execution. This slide we’re looking at is execution when you get to the meeting what you’re going to do.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: But you’ve got to bring something to that meeting.

Andrew: I see. OK. You mean that the actual physical product, the book that we’re bringing in to show them, the deal book.

Oren: The deal book, the pitch deck.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: Maybe, we’ll pull up an example of a pitch deck which will guide the exact way you are going to pitch the deal. So, I’m going to do that now.

We were working for some guys who were raising capital to, of all things, build protective ecosystems in Peru. I jumped on this deal because it’s something I care about, and if you can imagine, it was just… I’ve got to be fair to them. It wasn’t organized, because it’s an ecological kind of project, in traditional capital markets sense. We went in here, and you’ll see that the first thing we do is, we capture what the Big Idea is. I’ll have to read this to you. This slide probably took the longest of any part of the deck to build out.

When we start out with investors, we really want to have this ability to capture the Big Idea. This is not your product. This is a huge disconnect that I see people have. They say “OK, our product is-” That is not the point to start this, it sets no context. What we like to do is say “Here’s the big idea: save humanity. You have to tackle some really nasty problems. You already know about them; climate change, clean energy, species loss. To us, the problem of species loss stands out. Why? Because it’s irreversible.” That, to me, is one of the best capturings of the Big Idea that we’ve ever done. You see the difference between saying “Well, here’s our solution, here’s what we’re trying to do,” and setting the context in the Big Idea. Maybe, to give an example of the [??] Andrew, so you can start to pattern-make, and see two of them in a row, alright?

This is one that I developed for venture capital group. Here’s their Big Idea in 199 words: “The U.S. Angel market provides most of the seed-stage funding in the United States. It has an estimated long-term annual return of 27%, but there’s a problem in the market. The way most Angel Investors evaluate deals tend to screen out the huge home runs known as Black Swans, and in this market, Black Swans are what drive returns. We take a dramatically different approach to the market.” That sets the establishing shot that you have when you open up a movie. It sets the context for you then to come in and talk about your product and your solution.

Andrew: I’ve heard of the approach of showing the big problem and explaining why we’re the big solution for it; you’ve got a step before that, and you’re saying in this case, the U.S. Angel market. You’re talking a much bigger part, a much bigger picture first, and then you’re going to the problem, and then you’re going to why you’re the solution. The slide you have up on your screen right now, you’re saying “To save humanity you have to tackle some really nasty problems, and you already know about them.” You’re talking about big issues, then the big problem that you’re dealing with, and then the solution that you’re offering. Why?

Oren: Let me follow the progression and I’ll explain. Here we move from the Big Idea; I’ll come back to this project summary, this is really important, but I’ll come back to it. Then you go from the Big Idea into The Problem. Now please, I’m asking people, because I see pitches come to me all the time; don’t editorialize. You have to box it up, you have to be objective. The problem here, I throw in a little bit of intrigue. You want to talk about framing, this is an intrigue frame; “The problem: it’s not what you think.” Then we discuss, in very clear terms, we don’t mention our solution.

This is one of the biggest things; I find entrepreneurs, or even business executives, can’t focus on The Problem for more than five seconds without talking about their solution. I think it’s incredibly healthy to just talk about The Problem objectively. Without editorializing, and without interjecting how you have solved it. “The problem: it’s not what you think.” Because people think they kind of know what you’re addressing, so if you can address it this way it’s very powerful.

Then, instead of saying “Here’s our solution,” what I love to do, is say “Here’s a generic solution. Here’s how, starting from a blank piece of paper, you could and should and would and might address this problem.” And actually, several people are addressing it. It’s important to admit that. “Some ways to address the market that we’re in are X and Y and Z, and in fact a couple of people are doing L, M, N, O, P.” Then you have the opportunity to go, “Here’s our model. Here’s our specific solution and how we are addressing the problem.” And I think that sets you up to say, “We’ve made some strategic choices that the other guys have not, and we may be up [??] because there’s multiple ways that you can address any problem, but we think, and it’s proving out that we’ve chosen the right way to address this problem.” Focus on the problem. Introduce the fact that there are potential solutions, and mention generic solutions, and then come in and in essence save the day with your solution.

Andrew: I see. OK.

Oren: OK. So, we’re talking about now preparing to go in and give the material of the pitch. And this is the big idea, the problem, the generic solution, and your solution. All right. Now, I can’t tell you exactly where to put this because it varies. The project summary to me is so incredibly important. This is just exactly where you are in the stage of project that you’re in. OK. It’s exactly where you are. So the saddest thing in the world to me is when you see somebody go through a 30, 45 minute, hour pitch and they go, “Well are you profitable? How many people do you have? What are your revenues?” This should be addressed in the first few minutes, and there’s a very particular reason I say that. You’ve got to say, “Hey, look. We are a late to early stage Series A. We’re doing it at a Series A even though we’ve raised $6 million to date. I personally have $250,000 in the project. We have 15 employees. We’ve launched our first product 6 months ago, since then we’ve signed up 600 customers. Our monthly revenues are approximately 300,000.

We have revenue visibility all the way out to third-quarter of this year, beyond that we don’t have really clear optics. We’re located in Los Angeles, California. We’re in the video-streaming sector, and we project a break-even pending a $2 million raise within the next 45 days about 8 months out. All right.” So, what is that? That allows the investor to orient himself to the deal. So, a lot of guys going out for the first or second or third time for money or they don’t go out for capital all the time, they think a guy or a fund with lots of capital is an investor. But the truth is investors, especially today, are very specific about the stage and the risk that they want to invest in. So, really they are Early Series A, Mid-Series A, Late Series A, and then there’s mid-stage. There’s early mid-stage, mid mid-stage, late mid stage. Then there’s early late stage, and late stage is a monstrous segment. Late stage investors don’t view a deal the same way as an early.

Andrew: So, wouldn’t we know this going into the room and know whether they’re the right fit for us or not when we walk in?

Oren: Hardly ever. Hardly ever. People create meetings and say, “Let’s sit down for 30 minutes and get to know each other, and let’s take a look at your deal.” There’s tremendous value to investors to having deal flow, knowing what’s out there in the market, talking to people. And the thing is, when we’re investors, companies usually aren’t able to articulate what stage they’re in. So, we take the meeting, and we hear it. But if you want to save yourself huge amounts of time, understand what stage you’re in. Because it’s all risk-reward. So some funds, I think we may have talked about this before, want to get a 12% reward for the capital. They don’t want much risk. Over here, there’s maybe an early stage venture guy, you promise him 12% returns, he’s going, “What am I going to do with that. I promised my investors 25%. If you hit your 12%, I’ll be negative 15% returns. Just if I pay out my investors.” So, there is this broad range of risk-reward that investors want, and you’ve got to try and help them understand where you are in your deal.

Andrew: Oh, I see, so early on you’re giving them that information, and then you’re letting them go, you’re going with the rest of the pitch.

Oren: Because otherwise, the whole time they’re trying to understand are you profitable, what your revenues are, how many customers there are, and piece together the picture. You don’t have their attention on the important parts of your deal if they’re trying to piece together exactly what you are. I mean, if we go over here, I don’t know if I can pull it up in 10 seconds but in essence, every deal we do, we orient the investor with this deal summary. What stage is this deal in? That’s critical. What stage is the deal in, the big idea, the problem, the generic solution, and then our solution. That’s going to take between 8 and 11 minutes to get through.

Andrew: OK. Alright, what’s the next step?

Oren: Let me see where we are. In terms of preparing yourself to give this presentation, maybe we’ll go back through and flip through this N.C.I. deck.

Andrew: Now when you say N.C.I. deck, this is one of the decks that you pitch to raise money on behalf of N.C.I.

Oren: That’s correct.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: OK, so we go through this. The problem: not what you think. The solution: do more faster and cheaper, the generic solution. The N.C.I. model, in essence. Here’s our solution, and how we do it, right? For me, then, I like to- there’s any number of things, but you’ve got to then introduce your product with detail, clarify terms that are confusing, so here in this particular deal they were throwing around this word “biodiversity”, right? And everybody thought they knew what it meant. I said “Hmm, let’s define it for people, because I think people that are in this space are embarrassed to ask ‘How do you define biodiversity.'” Then we try to give the pro forma, which is so important. Of course, everybody gives a pro forma, but I want to pause here, because I think you said “What’s the next step?” For me, the next step is to give the investors what I call the six-sided box. Something they can actually invest in, alright? A lot of pitches go all the way through. They’ll give the pro forma, the projections, they’ll say hey we need 500 thousand, 5 million, 10 million, whatever it is, but they haven’t given a complete picture. If we go to my notes here, to me the six-sided box is not just an investable idea. It has an overview of the management; the track record of the team in this business; what the competitive landscape is, who the competitors are; if there’s any risk mitigation or downside protection; the pro forma; what the upside is; what skin in the game the management has, you know, what they’ve invested; the sources and uses, what’s the capital going to be used for? Is the cap table, or the investors that are in it to date, is it a clean cap table, is it a clean deal so far? So what the valuation is, and then the other stuff that we talked about.

You’ve got to give the investors all the things they need to make a decision. Sources and use is incredibly important. Where is this capital going to go to? Is any of it going to go right back out the door? That’s a huge concern. If you give all the obvious sides, in essence, the metaphor I use is: can I as an investor, put my money in this box, and it doesn’t fall out immediately, as I walk on to my next location? Give the investors everything they need to make an investment decision, alright? Beyond our specific solution, how it works, the description of the product; it’s everything the investor needs to invest.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: OK? Make sense?

Andrew: Mm-hmm. I’ve got a question here from someone in the live audience who is asking, “What you just guided us through; is this both the document that you want us to hand an investor, and the way that you want us to explain that document and our thought process when we present it, when we pitch?”

Oren: That’s correct.

Andrew: OK. Exact one we pitch.

Oren: That is absolutely correct. Most of the pitches I go into, I don’t do power point. We have this document and I said this before, what I love is this person to person dynamic. And when everybody is looking away from you at a projected screen and I know this is the classic way of doing it. But most of the capital raising we have done, has been without a projected deck, been off of these kind of deal books.

Andrew: I have one of these beautiful looking deal book. You hand it to each potential investor and you walk them through it.

Oren: We walk them through it, we talk person to person. And sometimes they seen it ahead of time, but as you can see there is so much to go through here, that they take the time to read through it, to go through the notes, and they brought questions to it and it all kind of circulates. But this, I come up with a new thing that say, ‘Hey, this is like Sea World. Have you been to Sea World? You go into an exhibit, you enjoy the exhibit, you walk out, you have to buy something, then you’re right there at the food, you eat the food, you get a drink. And then you’re on a little bit of a walk way, you don’t have a self choice, it’s like the matrix, you don’t have free will. You’re just being guided from the exhibit, to buying something to eating something, to whatever and it’s all over, you’re kicked out the door and you drive home.’, we’re trying a little of that Sea World experience.

Rather than everybody coming in together and say, ‘Well, this is what we have, what do you think?’.

Andrew: I see it, when you pitch people you take them through that guided tour the same way.

Oren: Absolutely.

Andrew: Well, I got a note here to ask you about how you introduce yourself?

Tell me how you want us to introduce ourselves?

Oren: I think we have the notes, because there’s the way that we talked about, but I mean just I don’t have the notes, but I know exactly what I want people to do.

I don’t want them to ramble on about where they went to school. How they went to the trading group at JP Morgan, then they came out worked for MP3.com for two years. Right? There’s not enough time and everybody have a freaking great resume, I mean it’s amazing. The number of people that went to Yale, Harvard, you know Stanford, UCLA, I mean it’s unbelievable.

I need to know things you have done and build and accomplished.

I got my degree at Stanford, spent some time orienting myself to technology in a couple of different companies. At MP3.com, I build the music locker, which was for all the media exposure I had, it was a success and it worked.

Settings you have done and build, not an entire download of your resume. People’s brains kind of averages out everything you tell them, about yourself. So if you tell them a decent thing, a good thing, and a great thing, they will average it out, you be above average right?

Orient to where you came from and tell them one truly great thing about yourself that you build and executed on. Right? And that’s enough.

That’s how I like people to introduce themselves to me.

Andrew: OK. All right. Where you want to go next? What’s next thing that we need to teach people?

Oren: OK. It’s pretty clear to me, I just want to summarize where we’re at, so you’re going to come in, in terms of the preparing for the pitch. You’re going to be prepared, without editorial. Talk about where you are, where it is in the deal summary. And then you’re going to give the big idea, problem, the generic solution, your solution. How it works, demo the product, talk about the pro forma and then all the deal points that created excited box that makes something that can actually be invested, Right?

So those are all the things that you’re going to prepare to present. And how to introduce yourself, very cleanly and succinctly. All right?

So that is in essence your presentation. The next thing that I want to talk about is process. So, I’m going to go back and get this stuff.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: Right. What this material will allow you to do is run an investment banking like process, even if you’re raising fifty thousand dollars to just get yourself up. So, $50,000 to $50 million. It’s the same process. This is incredibly important, you’ve got to run your process in three stages. Stage one, you circle up a bunch of potential investors, and you season them a little bit. The first one that goes, “Oh I love this, let’s meet, let’s do this.” You don’t just lock with him, you season a bunch. Three, four, five, seven, nine potentials, simultaneously. This is hard because your inclination is the second Oren goes, “You know I really like this deal, me and you we’re going to do this, let’s put together some kind of loose terms sheet, but we’re 100 percent in, let’s go off and do this.” You don’t just lock up with Oren because he’s going to get you away from your other potential investors at this stage. So, you circle up a bunch of investors in stage one, you push them all onto the edge and you see which ones you can mature into stage two. So stage is kind of like a verbal. All right.

So, you want to see how many you can get into stage two with a verbal confirmation. We like you. We’d like to make a deal. We have the capability to move forward. We function well in this space. We’re credible. Let’s talk about doing something. At that point the pressure now is going to increase to pick one investor and run off with him. You’ve got to hold the discipline. And this is what investment banks will do for you. You’re not going to get an investment bank because most people are trying to raise fifty thousand, five hundred thousand, even five million. It’s not a big enough deal to even have an investment bank, but you’ve go to run the same process. So at stage two you’ve got to get four to five guys all the way up.

Andrew: You know what, I’m sorry Oren, we don’t have a visual for this, but I think very visually. Do you mind brining up Text Edit on your screen and just like type out the three stages as you talk about them. There’s something about seeing it up on your screen as you describe something that really helps them stick in my head. Oh, there you go. You even have Microsoft Word, that’s even better.

Oren: Here’s how we’re going to do this.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: OK. I know exactly what we need to do. So, let’s see.

Andrew: What are you bringing up? Are you bringing up the document you created before?

Oren: I’m bringing up this one.

Andrew: OK. Even better, good. I like to have visuals for this as much as possible because we think visually, and well, we think with our ears and our eyes and we take in information well when it’s a combination of the two, and I’m just talking now as you bring it up on your screen.

Oren: And I may actually have a graphic for this, so let me see.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: OK.

Andrew: All right. If you guys are listening on MP3, we are bringing it up on his screen, on Oren’s screen right now. It looks like he’s actually brining it up in Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator. You’re drawing this here with us.

Oren: Yeah. I’m drawing it here in design, so. These are the three stages. In stage one, you’ve got to have a multitude of investors, OK, or candidates.

Andrew: I see. And so you’re bringing up on your screen a bunch of circles, each one representing all the prospects, as many candidates, as many prospects as possible.

Oren: Exactly. So here . . .

Andrew: Do you do all the, the books that you show us, you don’t do them yourself right? You’ve got someone in the company it looks like.

Oren: We got someone. But you’ve got to get this illustration and design, if I have the skill you can put these stuff in on the fly.

Because if every time you need to make a change, you need to go back to some kind of designer, it’s very painful.

Andrew: I see that makes sense.

Oren: So now, this is really your stage one.

Now you got to be able to bring a couple over into stage two.

Now you got to start stacking them up towards this edge. Things are really good that we did that. You see that?

Andrew: You want to bring them closer and closer to the deal.

Oren: You’ve got to bring them closer and closer to then moving into stage three.

You got to get three of these guys across.

Andrew: Why three? Three, is that a specific number, or I’m being too literal?

Oren: Yeah. If you don’t have three, you’re going to get re-traded.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: OK. Now. If this point right here is a point of bad deal.

This line?

What you got to do is then trying to get one of these guys across the line, as an investor.

If you do not have this, here. What I’ve just circled in red.

If you do not have this. That I have just circled in red. You’re going to get re-traded.

All right. So essentially what that means….if you don’t know what re-traded means, you’re either going to learn it here from me or you’re going to learn it on your own and you’re not going to like it.

Andrew: What does re-traded mean?

Oren: Re-traded means investor locks you up in a non-solicited period, for an exclusive period. And at that time, what happens is the other investor fall back, because you’re not talking, because you have entered an exclusive period.

Now, you’re just out here alone with one investor. And he’ll start grinding on you for terms. Grinding, I mean if you watch USC, this is the ground and pound. Boom, boom, boom.

And you have, because you’re in an exclusive period, it’s only bad for you.

Exclusive periods are terrible. If you do not have options to push back on, so the investor says, ‘Hey, I want three times preferred liquidation preference and a full, none delusion, full ratchety, none dilution’, for example.

If you don’t have the ability to say, ‘Hey no one else is asking for that.’ Then they’re going to get it. And especially since early stage company tend to timeout on the runway. You’re burning cash, and they’re just, it’s a game of attrition, they’re burning out your time, until you have to take their deal.

All right, Let’s just talk backup, process. You got to line up all these guys, at the first stage.

In the second stage, you got to mature bunch of them into the second stage.

You got to have enough there then to move into the third stage. So then, you can move forward one investor.

A lot, mature them, a few move them into a term sheet. Get three who you negotiating term sheet to and try to get them into a close.

And then get one final, this right here if you want to sum up what investment banks do. This is the process.

They don’t just meet, one investor here, and these guy you can see them moving. This is the color here. Investment banks did not just meet one investor and try to drag them all the way out here, that does not work.

You’ve got to mature people through this process.

Andrew: I see. What you’re saying earlier is have the discipline at stage 2, to not say ‘yes’ to someone who feels exciting, who felt like you wanted to do business with.

You’re saying, have the discipline to take them to the 3rd step and then to have three people make it towards the end, so that you have a choice and not one person is grinding you.

Oren: Exactly. If he’s grinding on you and we’ve all experienced it and if you don’t have somebody else to turn to, just say, “Hey, I don’t like that guy’s deal.” If you can’t say no to somebody who is grinding on you because you’re afraid to lose the deal, then you’re going to have to concede currents. This process, to the degree you stray from it, you will lose value, you will raise less money, and it will take you longer. To the degree you stick to this process, you will raise money faster, it will be easier on you, and really this is important because capital raising is very, very time-consuming. It’s so intensive. So, the faster you can raise money and get back to work, the better your company will be. Stick to this investment banking process.

Andrew: OK. So, I see here in the notes that the next step here for us to talk about is the process of pitching the different phases. Do you want to follow up with that?

Oren: I think that’s exactly what we should do.

Andrew: OK. Let’s talk then about, now we’re going into the phases of pitching.

Oren: We’ve seen this slide before. You see that OK there Andrew?

Andrew: Let’s give it a moment to come up on my screen. Yes I do see it. Right here.

Oren: So, now before we go down this road, I’m going to show the pitch deck one more time. All right, for a reason. Here’s a good example. Here’s a pitch deck that we did. These are all the pieces that describe the business. The big idea, the problem, generic solution, the solution, pro forma, our revenues, upside, downside, forces and uses, capital stack, amount raising, employees, location, investment rationale, all that stuff that you need to know to invest. So, we have that and now we’re going to be pushing it through this pitch structure which is what the book is about.

Andrew: This is the structure, the phases that we go through when we’re talking to someone in person and we’re pitching them, and getting them to close with us. True?

Oren: This is where you exert frame control. It is where you use your intrigue frames. Where you will beat back analyst frames that are coming at you. Where you will beat back power frames that are coming at you. Where you will use the prize frame. You will use tension, novelty and intrigue frames and push-pull, and you’ll calibrate, and you will prize, and qualify, and do all those things. So, let’s talk through this.

Andrew: OK. Let’s start it off. Can we start off phase one and go through each phase step-by-step?

Oren: Yeah.

Andrew: OK. What is phase one?

Oren: OK. Phase one is prizing. All right. “I’m glad we could be here today and spend some time with you. We have about 20 minutes to pitch the big idea and get you understanding what we do, why we do it, why it’s important, the big idea. After that, we’ll have a little bit of time to do some back-and-forth and answer some questions. We have to run to another meeting. We have about an hour here today to get through this.”

Andrew: OK.

Oren: “Again, we’re really glad that we could take the time, with our busy schedule, to come show you this deal and hear a little bit about you as investors.” That is classic prizing. It’s not arrogance. Don’t confuse the two. It is prizing. So, most of the time the investors will say, “Hey, thanks for coming. Let us tell you a little bit about our firm.” “Stop, why don’t we tell you about our deal. What we have. And you guys have done a lot of stuff. Why do you tell us what you’ve done in context of our deal and who we are.”

Andrew: Ah, I see.

Oren: Right there. Right there. This is my meeting. It’s my agenda. We’re going to go through the things I want to go through. We’re going to do it at my pace. You guys are going to need to tell me a little bit about yourselves in context of myself when I tell you to.

Andrew: And all that is implied. You’re not . . .

Oren: Yeah.

You’re just saying, “You guys have done a lot of stuff. Why don’t I tell you about our deal so that you can tell me what you’ve done in a context of how it fits in with the way we might do business together.

So now, they’re going to try to please you with their biography by showing you how their biography helps lives up to this presentation that you’ve just made and accommodate the world you’re planning to create.

Oren: I’m giving you the sub-communication. Do not copy these words exactly. You get thrown out on your ass.

What’s interesting is this, I can say this. I will go to the meeting and I can say these stuff, because I have the right twinkle in my eyes, I’ve said it enough. I mean your lips have to kind of learn the karate in saying these stuff. You need to learn the muscle movement, right?

So I’m saying giving you the sub-communication, the literal intent. You better find the words to make it work. When you become masterful at this, the words don’t matter. If you project the intent, you can say anything. You can become a master of this, you can say just the way, you can say, ‘This is my meeting, we’re going to do it on my agenda, I’m timing it, when I say go, you go, when I say stop, you stop. And my watch decides what happens and this takes’.

Andrew: Speaking of by the way, one of the things you said earlier on, when you introduced the presentation, as you would introduce it to investors, you said, ‘We have an hour here together’, or you gave some amount of time.

Tell me about the time limit, why do you specifically limit the time, right from the start? Instead of saying this will go as long as it takes.

Oren: Yeah. Establishing a time constraint is very powerful. The number one thing it does, is it communicates that you are not needy, that you have options. In essence you gave out the phone call early, before it can run it’s whole distance. You’re leaving the meeting while there is still time available to be there, it signals that you’re busy, you’re not needy, that you’re able to time manage, it is very alpha behavior.

You, A, that you control the agenda, B, it signals that you’re not needy.

So what happens is, a lot of times, somebody comes in there to pitch us, I sit on the intake committee of a hedge fund. And when someone comes in, if we let them stay three hours, they will stay three hours. If we let them stay four hours, to talk about their deal, they will stay four hours. It communicates to us that, they don’t have anything else to do, they don’t have other options, they don’t know how to succinctly pitch their deal.

If you go to the highest level of investment banking. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Black Rock, big private equity groups, they pitch deals amongst themselves in the language of capital markets in 20 minutes. Some times in 3 minutes.

It’s not the size, the size of the deal doesn’t need more time to pitch. The ability to pitch a deal in 20 minutes is paramount to succeeding in this world.

Andrew: Let that time limit go right in.

Everything you’re saying about the process of pitching investors, in my mind, in my experience and in our conversations and reading the book, tells me it applies to any pitching.

Pitch anything is the name of the book.

OK. So you’ve introduced that. You’re introducing pricing through that, through what you’ve just said?

There’s one thing I see here, around your chart, before pricing, it says market forces a big idea, do we talk about that before we price?

Oren: I think they can be, some junior people doing this need to say something, just to get their blood flow. So sometimes guys walk in they start crashing right away, it comes off, weird.

So I put that there, so you can kind of say, ‘Hey, here’s the big idea. There are three major problems that humanity is facing. But here’s the one that we think is paramount, because it’s irreversible’. Right, the big idea. And then you can come and say, ‘For me, there’s three things driving this market, it could be, for instance, climate change is measurable and no serious scientist across the world, denies it is a climate change have an impact over all. It’s progressing faster than ever has and based on human forces … Second, our ecosystems are disappearing because of encroaching development. So not only is climate change moving, but the amount of space open to the ecosystems is changing.

Andrew: I see. You’re basically saying, if it comes off as a little weird to walk in as the prize when you’re new at this, first start talking about the big ideas that we can all agree on that would get everyone excited and set the stage for the pitch, and then go into pricing and continue with the process. I see how that would work.

Oren: The full force driving this market. A, whatever it is, climate change and scientists recognize it. Two, humanity encroaching on bio-diverse systems, and three, the lack of funding to save these systems. The funds are becoming less and less because of the global economic crisis. So these forces are pushing on our market and that’s what causing change, but also opportunity. And so, you can start off and then go into what I said earlier is that I’m glad that I could spend some time with you today to show you our project. All right.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: So that’s how you can start off with the good idea and the market forces that are changing to create the opportunity. What we were talking about before, a huge amount of the brain is dedicated to visual interpretation. You even said, hey it works better for me if I can visualize it. And so when you paint movement, the human mind can understand what’s happening. There’s forces affecting a market, creating an opportunity. Give a sense of movement, right. Then we kind of go into pricing. All right. You’ll notice here if I move the mouse, you’re demonstrated high value. This is really important. I’ve developed this metaphor of a value byte. And I imagine Andrew, you and I meet each other and a pipe pops up between us. Through which value flows, through which value flows, right. The next thing I see myself doing is shoving as much value as possible your way, through that pipe, value, value, value, value.

Andrew: How do you do that in a meeting? How do you demonstrate value in a meeting that could last as you said, 20 minutes? Three minutes?

Oren: Provide insight. You add value by showing people things they don’t already know and cannot easily intuit. People come to meetings to meet new people, learn about interesting ideas, go to places they haven’t seen before, see bright, colorful, interesting ideas, and different things they don’t know about. Nobody goes to a meeting to have their assumptions confirmed. I guess they do, but that’s not an inciting meeting. Provide insight. Almost like an analyst report on a space. Do not cover the ridiculously obvious. So the huge way to add value is to first of all be a person that appears to have, not appears, but has broad connections, interesting know-how, in control of an exciting deal. That’s the kind of person that I want to know. That adds value. Somebody who is a strong pitchman. Somebody who is able to bring a deal to the table and pitch it concisely and clearly in 20 minutes.

So those are all values adds, but then providing insight–things you don’t already know, assessment, interpretation, understanding, know-how, interesting things. We’re kind of used to in our society this reciprocal relationship. I tell you something interesting Andrew, you go wow, that’s really interesting, and you tell me something interesting, we reciprocate. That’s not how these meetings go. These guys just sit there and stare at you like stone garden gnomes, like statues. So if you’re expecting this reciprocal relationship off the bat, you know you’re going to say a funny little joke and people are going to chuckle and then add some comment, and it’s going to be this back and forth, very rare.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: Add value, insight, yourself as an interesting person. At some point, they’ll go, wow I got a lot of value. This is awesome. And then they’ll jump in and that’s the sense of the hook point, right. Right?

Andrew: OK.

Oren: Demonstrate high value. You’re a high value individual-

Andrew: Teach them, give them insight, demonstrate value in that conversation.

Oren: Yes.

Andrew: OK, what’s next?

Oren: Then you’ve got this attention clock ticking. 20 minutes, I believe that’s what you get. Now we’ve far exceeded 20 minutes here, right? We have a few minutes let, but that’s because we’re interested in learning this material and people might be revisiting, motivated, but in a pitch meeting where people have things to do, 20 minutes is what you’ve got.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: You’ve got a ticking time clock. Whenever you feel attention waning, you’re going to launch into creating tension, pushing back on people a little bit, and introducing novelty.

Andrew: How do you do that? Can you give me an example of tension and novelty, how to apply it?

Oren: Yeah. In the book we go over it very clearly, and I think we did it before. You may say “Hey, as I’m talking to you guys, and understanding what you do and the companies that you’ve worked with before, I’m not sure that we’d get along well together.” That creates tension, alright? Not something [??] going over your head, letting [??], that’s awkward and weird, alright? It’s got to be personal. It can’t be an insult. Insults do create tension and they do work, but they backfire as well.

Andrew: OK, so don’t say “This could go over your head,” or “This part is a little bit tough for most people,” just say “I’m not sure that this is going to work out for us.”

Oren: Hell no, don’t say something like “Hey, this is over your head.” You could say “Hey, you know, I’m not sure we could work well together. You guys are super smart, and we are very focused on business development, so we could come to a time where you want us to over-focus on products, and we just want to go get customers, and that could be a conflict, and I’m wondering about that.” Then you can kind of pause. That will create the tension, and people will snap to attention.

Andrew: Then do I continue with my pitch, or do I let them explain why they’re the right fit?

Oren: No, then I think you have to resolve it. If it’s that aggressive, if you create that much tension, you kind of want to resolve it a little bit. That creates these tension loops; get them paying attention, get it resolved. Get them paying attention, get it resolved. You might say, “But on the other hand, having some guys who are so focused on projects and engineering, combined with our business development skills? Man, our super powers might just explode our customers’ minds! So maybe that’s a good thing!”

Andrew: I see.

Oren: You want to resolve it at some point; you create the tension, and then resolve it.

Andrew: I see. I could see how this would work with partnerships too. In discussions over partnerships and whether you should combine your people and work together on a project. Create tension, resolve that tension. Right there, you would do that.

Oren: Right there.

Andrew: Oren, do you and your guys write this stuff down ahead of time, potential tension points that you can use with the people to whom you’re pitching?

Oren: I’ve been doing this for so long that they just come to me.

Andrew: Do you advise the people who are listening, do you advise me, if I go on, to write down what could be a potential? What’s that?

Oren: For years I carried little yellow notes, or index cards, and literally, I would just pull them out. People would be like what are you doing? I would just have my prepared notes on index cards. You can absolutely do that.

Andrew: I see, so if you were working with people who were product guys, you would think about that on the way over. You’d say “These guys are product guys so I can create some tension; if I bring that fact up, boom, I’ve got that.” I see, so you do plan ahead. What about novelty? How do we plan ahead and introduce novelty?

Oren: Novelty for sure. What you’ve got to do is introduce something that’s surprising, and that they haven’t seen before.

Andrew: Something that’s surprising and that they haven’t seen before.

Oren: Novel. What I see that most companies do is, they fire their best and final shot first, they don’t save anything. Save some stuff for when either attention is waning, or you really want to get some attention on a point. You can introduce something that is novel and interesting. For example, in a deal that I’m working on now, it’s a genetic testing company. They’ve actually tested a couple hundred of the Biggest Losers, and that’s very interesting, because most of us have seen that on TV, and they know about it, and it’s kind of “Oh!” That is a great point of novelty. If you just put in your pitch stat up front, hey, it’s just lost up front, and you can’t use it as a novel point. Another thing they’re doing is working with Pepsico to test a lot of athletes. You can kind of match up your genetic profile to Kobe Bryant’s genetic profile and see how close you are to which athlete. That’s a very, very intriguing, novel idea. We don’t waste it in the deck or up front or in the part where-

Andrew: Let’s give the camera a moment here to catch up.

Oren: Sure.

Andrew: Oren, why wouldn’t you wait? Why wouldn’t you just put it in the PowerPoint slide and make sure that even if they don’t pay attention to you, that they’ve got it on that deck that you give them on a USB stick or that you email to them afterwards. Why save it and just talk about it?

Oren: Because of its usefulness to grab attention; its usefulness to grab attention.

Andrew: Alright.

Oren: If you hold those things that you have, it’s kind of a jack-in-the-box. It pops out, gets people’s attention, reorients them to you, to the excitement of your deal, and to the things that you have. That’s tension, novelty, and the next thing you hear, while you’re giving your presentation, you’re doing these things, entry pings as well. You’re alluding to things that are interesting that will be discussed later.

Andrew: Do you have an example of that?

Oren: Sure.

Andrew: By the way, while- are you bringing up another slide?

Oren: No, no, no. I’m just, yeah. I’m just going to talk you through it. An example of an entry ping would be when, early in this deal, we’ve met with an investor who was a well-known billionaire, and he said “Actually guys, I want to get through this material, and then we’ll cover all of this.” What the well-known billionaire said about the deal is intriguing. Now, if you say what he said right away, that’s novelty. If you don’t finish it, and leave it ’til later, it’s an intrigue ping.

Andrew: Ah, interesting.

Oren: Everybody wants to know what the billionaire said about this deal when he saw it.

Andrew: Gotcha, I see. Again, you would prepare these ahead of time.

Oren: Absolutely.

Andrew: You would intentionally say “We pitched this, we talked about this to-” and you give the name of the well-known billionaire, “-and he said something very interesting.” How do you, what’s the excuse? What’s the reason for not finishing the sentence right there? Why are you waiting to answer it later?

Oren: It creates intrigue, this is the intrigue ping.

Andrew: I understand that, but when you’re presenting it, how do you phrase it in a way that doesn’t feel like an awkward half-sentence?

Oren: Oh, I see, I see, right, right. You know, all this stuff, here’s a new term: all this stuff needs to fit into a narrative arc. In the same way that you have a movie; if the movie doesn’t hang together, in a narrative, it confuses you. I can’t tell you exactly the how and the why. We can maybe do some sessions and solve this, but it’s got to tie into your narrative arc, alright? And that’s how you choose when and where to launch these intrigue pings.

Andrew: OK, so you’re thinking about where the presentation is going, but make sure, as you’re going there, that you almost tease an upcoming point.

Oren: You’re teasing an upcoming point, or you’re just teasing the audience in general. You’re flashing something and then you’re taking it away. They’re going “Well what was that?” For example, when I’m at Google, when I started it out, I started here, and when I flipped through, just pausing a few seconds on each side, those guys at Google are very interested in this technical kind of stuff. When you go there, and you’re using the restroom? They have code up on the door. Instead of the sports page you’re staring at code. This stuff really intrigues those guys. So I go through it pretty quickly like this. That, in essence, it sets an intrigue hook as well.

Andrew: I see. Just kind of going through your notes, with them looking over your shoulder, almost as if you’re making a mistake by going through your PowerPoint slide with the audience looking. That intrigues them and that makes them want to say, ‘What was that crock-brain slide?’ and then they have to sit and wait to see it.

Oren: Exactly

Andrew: You know, Oren, I have to tell you, again, as I’m listening to this I’m feeling like I should have done that here with these sessions. Every time I get an outline, I always get an outline, we have a course producer here David Saint who does these sessions for us. I know exactly where you’re going. I should come up with intrigue things in these sessions where I should say, ‘Yeah, and that relates to the crock-brain which of course we’re going to talk about later.’

I introduced that to my wife the other week. She pitched at her company, just using that crock-brain understanding and she closed the deal within one session, a deal that everyone else in her company couldn’t do it. But I know you’ve got a point that you’re going towards, we’ll come back to that later.

I should have done that actually in a shorter period, in a few sentences not as long as it took me to say it but I see intrigue pings everywhere I’m now starting to see.

Oren: Yes. Intrigue. The best people in the world at this is Yahoo! If you go to Yahoo! and write down…for example, “World Famous Hockey Player Smashes Previous Record” but there’s something you didn’t know. If you go to Yahoo! and they have about 38 little vignettes. They’re the best in the world at that. I’m doing this now. I’m just writing down every single one that I think is interesting in a giant notebook. They are the best in the world at intrigue pings. Check out Yahoo’s vignettes.

Andrew: Should we go onto calibration?

Oren: We talked about calibration earlier. The bottom of this arrow, it should say, ‘Hook point’ but we lost it.

Andrew: That’s where it would say ‘hook point’ right there at the end of that pitch session is where we know whether we have the hook point or not because they are telling us. This isn’t us telling them, this in them telling indication to us that they love us enough that they want to do business and they love us enough to take interest in some of our background and ask the right questions. Am I understanding that right?

Oren: Yes. That’s right. So now they start leaning in and they are started to add value to the conversation, pushing value back through that value pipe because they feel they have gotten…it’s a human condition, ‘Wow. I got a lot, let me now start to give.’ Some people can resist it longer than others but there is always that point where they go, ‘Wow. I have received so much value here it’s almost embarrassing. It’s time for me to jump in and get in the conversation.’

That’s the point of calibration. There’s almost nothing you could do wrong there; it’s just you and the guys talking about the deal and there’s some back and forth. You’re never going to calibrate until you’ve reached the hook point.

Andrew: OK

Oren: Now, calibration might last a minute. It might last five minutes. You’ll know when it’s starting to wane. Right? So don’t let it time out on you. At that point that you feel like the calibration period is over now you start to push and pull, the very disorienting…

Andrew: Can you just catch us up? I know we talked about calibration earlier but can you remind us what we talked about?

Oren: Oh, sure.

Andrew: Actually, to be honest, I don’t remember us talking about calibration in this session.

Oren: Calibration is almost a non-subject. It is that point in the deal where it is naturally flowing. You might call it flow. It always happens. Guys are pitching in, ‘Hey, we could take this to our partners, we have another investor that would be interested in this. How did you guys solve this problem? One of our engineers looked at this and we never really figured out why you guys chose this solution. How long have you been working on this? There’s a very interesting way to introduce this product? Why did this customer sign up for such a big deal?’

It’s really the newfound friends finding that high of a newfound relationship and really the momentum of it is happening.

Andrew: I see it. That point they’re pitching ideas to you for what you could do, they’re taking, it’s almost like it’s their presentation now, it’s almost like it’s their deal.

Oren: That is absolutely a wonderful way to characterize it. They’re jumping in and saying, ‘Hey, we could do this. We could do that. What if this happened? We could introduce this to these people. How does this work?’ You’ve built that excitement at least for the moment to participate. It’s participation, right? You don’t have to do anything at that point. You just let it unfold. That will unfold for some period of time. Then it’s time to kind of get into the making of the deal, right?

Andrew: OK. And then you were starting to say push-pull and I interrupted. What does push-pull mean?

Oren: I think what most people do during this calibration [??]. We really like you guys, we’ve got to do this deal together, we’re willing to give on these points if you guys will come in quickly. There’s this real sucking up, a tendency to suck up. Because hey we’ve found some of you that like us, we need this capital, let’s suck up, right.

Andrew: I see, you’re right. At that point when things are flowing I want them to love me and I feel like it’s time for us to close the deal and so I accommodate them. And you’re saying don’t at that point, bend over backwards for them. Instead push-pull and at that point, you mean?

Oren: Instead of saying, this is wonderful, we really like you guys, get back to reality. Like how are we going to do this with you guys? So the push away is then the qualifying. Before we carried away, because we really like a lot of your ideas and you seem smart about this stuff, but what kind of investors are you? You have great ideas but what happens when we run into a speed bump? How do you behave when things get difficult? What kind of other deals like us have you done? Do you love me? It’s the process right. Tell me about yourself. What kind of investor are you?

Andrew: I see. You’re asking them questions now to qualify themselves back to you. Instead of saying, oh this would be a great deal. I’ve always loved you, I’ve read your blog or I read about you in Business Week, or whatever it is that you want to feel like, hey you guys should be loving me. I deserve this praise and the collaboration that we built up in the calibration section. You’re saying, no, now have them qualify themselves back. Now that they love it, have them explain why you should love them back.

Oren: Yes.

Andrew: Interesting. OK. I see that the live audience is loving this. I’m watching here the chats guys. I can’t get to all your questions as you’re asking them, but I’m seeing your feedback as it’s coming in. OK.

Oren: OK. So you’ve got to do that. And if you’ve done everything else I’ve described up to that well, the way I’ve described it here, they will respond to that. They might take up too much time, right, explaining who they are, what they’ve done, and in essence, validating themselves. So the sub-communication is here, I’m not going to validate you. You might be in Business Week. You might be Fred Wilson. You might be here at Two Embarcadero, but none of that means anything to me. I can’t monetize that. What I need is a great investor that I can look in the eye, I need a human being. Not a Business Week article, not a great blogger, not someone with a reputation, not somebody who lives on what they’ve done in the past. I need to know who you are today and how you behave, and how we’re going to potentially work together.

Andrew: OK.

Oren: I need you to tell me that. All right, and then this push-pull can go back and forth, and you can have a lot of fun with it. The sub-communication is, this is not a lock-up for you. You’ve got to fight for this deal. If you want this, fight for it. All right. This is an ‘A’ quality deal. I can march this up to any of 25 Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Phoenix investors, high-net-worth, Rancho Santa Fe guys, whatever it is. I can take this deal out as a clean deal. The market is frothy. I will raise capital. What I’m interested to hear about is, are we going to do something together. And in order to do that I need to know who you are, how you behave, what your money brings with it, and what’s beneficial about you guys. That’s the sub-communication.

Andrew: OK. Before we finish this particular slide, and I know that there’s something about the Tao of Steve that you wanted to bring up, that was a great movie. I did talk about the crock brain a moment ago. I alluded to one of the slides there. If at any point in this presentation up until now, someone says, let’s go over the numbers, or let’s make sure that financials are in place, or somehow brings in more the analytic brain, what do you do? How do you feel about talking about that right now?

Oren: Do we want to kind of go over the crock brain?

Andrew: I don’t see it as a separate section here within our notes, and I know that we don’t have a goal of talking about it, but since I eluded to it earlier and since it does come up through the presentation, I think maybe if we brought up that one slide and just explained to people what the Croc Brain was and how we should respond to it, would be useful.

Oren: I’ll go through this very simply. The human brain evolved in three distinct sections. First there was the reptilian, crocodile brain, which focused on survival; eating, breathing, killing, mating all right. [??] the mid-brain understood social structures; what a parent meant versus a teacher, versus a cop, versus an employee, versus somebody we don’t know, versus a three year-old, versus a nine year-old, versus an old person. The mid-brain was very social and understand complex social relationships. Then finally the neocortex: linguistic, mathematical, problem solving, but cold.

When we develop our ideas, they come from the neocortex is where we pitch from. This is where our ideas and everything, our problem solving, our solutions and everything form there and are pitched from the neocortex. But when we pitch from the neocortex, it is not received by the other person’s neocortex. It’s received by their crocodile brain, which is only focused on survival. So, you’re pitching from a smart, linguistic, capable, mathematical, insanely problem solving, oriented part of the human mind to something that only cares about survival.

When the crocodile brain firsts encounters you or your idea or your project, literally it thinks should I eat it? Should I kill it? Should I mate with it? Beyond that it wants to see things simply, fast, concrete, summarized without grey area or nuance. If you’re pitching your idea from the neocortex, with lots of detail, nuance, grey areas, complexity and multi-moving complex parts, it will not pass a crocodile brain to get to the other person’s neocortex, which is where you want to process. That’s why things have to be summarized, clearly, cleanly, simply.

Andrew: I see.

Oren: This is far beyond a metaphor. This is how the human mind works. Let’s tie this back to your question on the analyst frame.

Andrew: Right.

Oren: We talk back here, so, does that make sense the context of why we start with the big idea, the moving markets [??], we establish croc, which we really don’t get into our deal, the specifics of the deal until this last third of the pitch. Because if we start with the complexity, the analysis, the problem solving, the linguistics and the math it does not feel safe to the brain of the person across the table from us. It starts to reject our notions, lose interest, summarize on its own, make assumptions, and really defend its own neocortex from looking at your deal. All right so, that’s within a couple minutes or less how this crocodile brain plays into this structure.

Andrew: So you’re saying, even in a multimillion dollar deal, where there are high stakes involved, where there are people who are coming into consider the deal are super smart, they are making their decision to listen to you or not, to do the deal or not, to take it from the next step within this conversation or not from the primitive brain that wants to hunt, that wants to eat, that wants to mate. Unless you satisfy that brain, the processing and analytical brain won’t be ready for you.

I remember from the book itself, if someone starts to go into the numbers in too much detail and takes you off of your path, what you say to them is, ‘Our time is very limited. I’ve got all the information for you in the book that I’ll be handing you and of course, I’ll be available to you afterwards, but while we still have this time together I want to make sure that you understand the big picture, the big idea, the big vision, and the way that we’ll work together.’ That’s the way you bring them right back to their crocodile brain where they feel more comfortable being and where they naturally want to be satisfied and where they naturally want to be satisfied in that meeting.

Oren: That’s 100% correct. That is what I call the analyst frame. When you see the analyst frame coming at you, right, when the other person’s neo-cortex is coming at you full speed, we identify that as the analyst frame. And the way to deal with it is to say, just as you said, hey, we would not be here if we didn’t have the projections–if we didn’t have our patent filing, if we didn’t have our engineering code; if we didn’t have this product up and running on the cloud server and have our architecture that is modern and capable. That’s all in this diligence package. When we get to diligence you’ll see it’s all there. And you know what, if you want to blow out on diligence, no problem. But for the moment, let’s do the do-able, which is to focus on who you are an investors, the product, and the deal we have and who we are as entrepreneurs or management. And, that’s what we can do there in this hour, and we’ll get to diligence at the right time. So I don’t want to off put your questions, but do we have our patent filing? We do.

Andrew: By the way, Doug [??] has read your book and in the audience watching us. He’s saying the concept of the [crock] brain and how it digests information while you’re communicating is just brilliantly simple and useful. Thanks for summarizing it for us here.

But I did, Oren, take you off track, here. You were starting to tell us about time constraint and the deal. I’ll let you take back control. Time constraint and the deal. What do we need to understand about that at this point?

Oren: If you started this off well, you put a time constraint up front; you put a time constraint in terms of the meeting.

Andrew: Right. You said, ‘Start off the meeting by saying we only have an hour together.” Or however much time together, and in that time we’ll be . . . and then you keep going.

Oren: And by the way, it’s super productive, and you guys are going back and forth, things are happening and you’re pushing forward. You’re not just going to get up and freakin’ get up and leave, right? Time constraint is not a . . . the police don’t monitor it. They’re not going to come in there and rescue you. [inaudible] When things are happening you’re going to stay. At this point I think you want a time constraint the whole deal, and say, hey, look, we’re releasing, we’re doing this [??] over the next three weeks. We’re going to find our lead investor.

So, I think, to give you a sense of timing, let’s get familiar with ourselves this week, do some due diligence next week, and if we are going to go to a term sheet to set expectations, that’s going to happen by the 21st. Right? Because on the 21st we’re taking term sheets. That is to give the strong sense that the investors can’t take as much time as they want while the deal just sits around. And by the way, if you pitch well, that is a signal. That is a signal that the deal’s going to be off the table; you’ll raise money and you can . . .

Andrew: You mean if they ask you about the time constraint, then it’s a signal?

Oren: No, I’m saying that if you pitch well, the three market forces, the big idea, the prize, tension, novelty, you industry paint. You pitch within 20 minutes. You know, you run this calibration period, but then you push full and make them qualify fact. Like, those are all incredibly strong signal of a time constraint. Sometimes you don’t even need to say it. They’ll say to you, ‘I know you guys are going to raise money here, shortly. We have to make a decision.’ And a lot of times you’re going to turn the sheet just quick, because they know these guys can raise money; they’re going to do it.

Andrew: I see. OK. And I did say earlier, and I don’t know if I should have mentioned this, but the Dow of Steve somehow fits in here. I see it in the notes. Do you want to show it on the screen now?

Oren: I’m not sure I have the Dow of Steve.

Andrew: You know what, I thought I saw something in your eyes as I mentioned it. I’ve got the URL here. Do you want to type it into a browser window, or should we just include it for the audience after the session so they can click on it?

Oren: I think we included it after the session.

Andrew: OK. Fair enough.

Oren: It’s very nice material. Let’s have people go through it. And by the way, the Dow of Steve is a movie, and if you have not watched it, I insist.

Andrew: It’s a movie on relationships. Why are you recommending it to people who want to put together partnerships or raise money from investors?

Oren: Well, I think Steve, in the movie, is a guy who is slothful, doesn’t try very hard, is overweight, doesn’t dress well, and you assume that he’s never going to kind of get a girl. But he’s got girls swarming around him, because he’s kind of invented this Dow, this philosophy. We’ll show you the philosophy in the follow-up material, but it works in the movie so wonderfully that he does attract women to himself through this counterintuitive philosophy, and I think it’s wonderful.

Andrew, what I think I would like to finish up with is just a wrapping statement. I think today is a new dawn.

They are not the kings on high. They are not controlling every deal. We do not have to supplicate to them. They cannot lock us up, retrade us at the last minute and take advantage of their position with capital.

Capital is a commodity. I want to put investors on notice everywhere. Capital is a commodity. You can get it here and there and everywhere. And if you don’t behave, the guys who pitch anything, which is a growing community, are going to move on and take that capital at a better valuation and faster with better terms and less liquidation preferences. I feel it.

It’s a rising dawn of the entrepreneur, the executive and the deal maker, and we’re not going to ride around like little clowns on tiny little bicycles with red squeaky noses and suspenders and perform and hope that the investor will bestow money on us at that point where he feels that his scepter is going to come down and touch us on the head. That day is over. It is a new dawn.

What I would ask of the people who are enjoying this material is to join this community. You buy the book; I make a dollar. That’s not my motivation. My motivation is as this community grows and strengthens and we innovate on this material and we are able to frame control investors everywhere. Now, these investors do this every single day. That’s why they’re so good at it.

But we ourselves as entrepreneurs go out for capital every so often, but when we do go out, we’re going to have a method, and investors, they’re not that good. When you use this method, they fall into it. I experience it all the time. You will frame control investors, if you do it this way. They do not know how to defend against this. It works. That’s what I’d like to finish with.

Andrew: I’m seeing a lot of excitement here from the audience as you were saying that. Absolutely, and already people who have gone through this in the past, who have actually read the book or saw the interview that you and I did on Mixergy have emailed you with improvements on this process, with feedback on how they’ve used it. I’ve seen it because you showed me a screenshot of your inbox stuffed with responses, and I’ve seen some of the ways that people have used this.

I urge everyone who goes through this to find a way to reach Oren and to let him know. Oren, I know there’s a growing community of people who are using the ‘pitch anything’ system, to pitch anything beyond investments, beyond raised money. Where can they connect with each other? How can they talk to you? What do you recommend they do?

Oren:

You need to email me for a couple of reasons. I will personally email back every email. There’s not going to be tens of thousands. I’ll make the time. We’ll get back to you. It’s not going to be forever, but the next two weeks you email me, I’ll get back to you with more material

I’ll take the time to personally respond. This, in essence, is the kernel. The first thousand people that we have, this is the kernel of

in terms of frame control and investment.

This is going to blow me away, and that’s what I want. I want to be learning from you guys. So, email me and become part of the kernel. Let’s do it as a community. Let’s help each other raise money from investors who don’t know this stuff and aren’t going to take the time to learn it. We’re going in there, and we’re going to be taking tons of value for ourselves. We’re the prize. We deserve it.

Andrew: I love it. The website, if you want to connect, is pitchanything.net, and I hope you all go out and try this and email Oren. Thank you all for watching. Focus on the results.

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