Andrew: I hate to admit it, but I got so carried away with my conversation, the one you’re about to hear, that I forgot to mention my sponsor. So I’ll just say it real quickly.
If you’re looking for someone to host your website, go to HostGator.com/Mixergy. You’re going to get 30% off, and you’re going to get unlimited bandwidth, full tools for launching your site, all the stuff you see on your screen. But let me tell you about something that you may not know. Check out this contact information right here. Right there on their contact page is a phone number for tech support. A lot of businesses will give you phone numbers up the wazoo when it comes time to signing you up, but as soon as you have a problem or a question, they disappear. Not HostGator. HostGator will keep your site running right, give you all the tools you need to keep launching and building and growing your business, and if you have trouble, there’s a real human being to be there and help you and support you out.
So if you’re going to sign up for HostGator, I recommend you go to HostGator.com/Mixergy where you’ll get 30% off–HostGator.com/Mixergy.
All right. Here’s the interview.
Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. Today, we are going to be making some jazz. I pride myself on all the research I do and being prepared by knowing every single thing, but I don’t think I know every single thing about today’s guest. Why don’t we start off with going directly into the questions, and I’ll introduce my guest Ryan Levesque. Ryan, good to have you on here.
Ryan: Andrew, it’s my pleasure and I’m really excited to be here.
Andrew: Ryan, in the last 24 hours, how many email subscribers have you generated for all the companies you’re working with?
Ryan: Across the 23 different markets that we’re in, we generated just over 52,000 email subscribers across all markets.
Andrew: That means 52,000 emails were typed into a form by someone who invited that company to email them on a regular basis and to market to them.
Ryan: I remember the days when my entire email list was 52,000 people. I remember the days when my entire email list was 52 people. The numbers that we generate now, I almost have to pinch myself. When you add it up on an annual basis, it’s just under, I think, 19 million people per year.
Andrew: 19 million people who are added if we do the math on that. But let’s talk about money. What kind of revenue are you doing?
Ryan: So our business model is one where we predominately take a royalty on the gross sales that we generate across all these different markets. So we’ll end the year somewhere around $5 million this year, which we’re really happy about.
Andrew: How about last year, 2014?
Ryan: This is for 2015.
Andrew: Yeah. Give me 2014. When we talk about what’s coming up for this year, it’s a guess and we never know where we’re going to be. Give me something that’s solid. Where were you 2014?
Ryan: So this was a big growth year for us.
Andrew: I can see.
Ryan: So, I can say…
Andrew: You want to do the first five months of this year?
Ryan: The first five months of this year, we’re on pace to do $5 million this year.
Andrew: $5 million? And we’re halfway through the fifth month right now.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: $5 million? And that’s your commission on what you’re generating for other people?
Ryan: That is our commission. That’s also a combination of some of the other things that we do. So we offer training. We offer a masterminds. We have a number of different programs where we both teach the methodology that we implement as well as take a royalty on our methodology that we use. So, that’s across everything and that’s before expenses. I have a team of 25 people. We have marketing expenses. So, we have a nice margin in our business. I’m not going to say exactly what it is because I don’t want to attract too much competition to what we’re doing. But let’s just say that we’re pretty happy where we are right now.
Andrew: All right. Ryan Levesque is the founder of RL & Associates, which is a publishing and training company. They’re responsible for launching and publishing dozens of products, like products on tennis instruction, dog training, dentistry. What you do, Ryan, is you both own some of these properties directly and, for a cut of sales, you will run other people’s projects too.
Ryan: That’s a big part of what we do. Now what we’ve started to do with the release of our book, which we’re really excited about–the book is “Ask” and I know we’ll talk about it–out of nowhere became the number one bestselling book in the country. It’s been the number one bestselling business book in the country ever since it released just a few weeks ago, which we’re really excited about. We’re on lists along with some of my heroes, like Malcolm Gladwell and I’m very excited about this.
So our business has transitioned in a way that we want to get this formula in as many people’s hands as possible. I’ll talk about some of the reasons why we made that decision.
Andrew: “Ask” is your formula for turning strangers into customers by asking and understanding what they want.
Ryan: Exactly. So the way I like to say it in just a single sound bite is it’s all about asking the right questions at the right time to the right people to find out what it is that people really want to buy, not what they think they want, not what they say they want, but what they really want to buy and what they want to buy from you specifically. That requires a degree of intention and a degree of a process in order to do that right.
Andrew: All right. Let me understand the process and also understand how you built the business.
Ryan: Sure.
Andrew: Before we started, we agreed that we would walk through how this process works by using one of your sites as an example. RocketMemory.com, that’s a site where you teach people how to improve their memory, right?
Ryan: Yes. That business exists today. It’s one of our already niche businesses. The reason why we went into this business is, interestingly enough, prior to doing what we do now, my academic background is actually in neuroscience. I studied neuroscience at the Ivy League level. At one point, I thought that I was going to go off and become a doctor, become a neurologist, become a neuroscientist. I realized that there’s a difference between guys like you and me–you’re probably smarter than I am–but there’s a difference between smart and really smart and I wasn’t quite smart enough to take that path. I was still really interested in the brain, still really interested in memory. So when I transitioned to the world that I’m in now, it was a market I was really fascinated in, just teaching people how to improve their memory and doing it in an ethical, authentic way with real techniques and systems that actually work.
Andrew: Okay. So when I look at this, what I see is a long form sales letter with a small call to action where I can get, if I click a link, the 10-Day Rapid Memory System, right? But that’s an untrained eye. Walk me through his process and help me understand how Ask is being used here.
Ryan: Absolutely. So, first of all, if you’re on the homepage, you’re probably not going to see it. That’s not a page that we would necessarily send traffic to. So, to go, you would probably have to go to one of our landing pages. I don’t know the best way to do that. If you want me to give you a specific URL, we can put it in.
Andrew: If you remember it, go ahead. I’ll type it in and anyone else can go on there.
Ryan: I think if you go to RocketMemory.com and you go to LP…
Andrew: LP-Kit-00.
Ryan: Yeah. Let me see if that’s the right one. Let’s go to the one with video because it’s a good example. Okay. So, here’s a good example. Now, there are a couple implementations on this and there are variations on this thing.
Andrew: We’re talking about the page I just gave you that I mentioned, LP-Kit-00?
Ryan: Correct. That’s what I’m on right now. So what you should see is a header with the brand. You should see the phone number and you should see a video with a call to action button and some credibility media logos on the right hand side as well as some testimonials and more copy below that. So just make sure everyone is in the right place. So, this is a great example of a landing page.
Now, in the Ask formula, there are really four main pillars, what I call the main pillars of the Ask formula. One of the pillars isn’t something that you’re going to be able to see on this page. It’s what happens before this page is created. The first step in the Ask formula is something that I called the Deep Dive Survey. Now, this survey is all about asking a series of open-ended questions to determine what is the pain point that really exists in your market.
So, in this market, I thought I knew this market because I have the background that I have. I helped people at university improve their memory by teaching memory techniques. I did a lot of this. So I thought I knew the market. But that’s a common mistake that a lot of business owners make. I’ve made it myself more than once. I’ve learned my lesson.
So the Deep Dive Survey is all about asking questions around people’s challenges that they have in the market. So what you don’t see here, a precursor to this site was a site that we had called Total Memory Improvement. TotalMemoryImprovement.com was a site that we completely built as a way to gather research. So, we sent traffic to a page on that site that asked, “When it comes to improving your memory, what’s the single biggest challenge or struggle or frustration that you’re having right now? Please be as detailed as possible.”
And Andrew, when you ask questions like that, it’s a great indicator to know what’s the level of passion and pain in the market. So, for example, if you ask a question like that and you get really short answers, chances are it’s not a problem that people are really struggling with.
Andrew: Okay.
Ryan: If you get long, passionate, detailed answers, if you get answers with certain indications of buying indications–so words like buy, purchase, spend, money, things like that–it’s a great indication that not only is it a problem people want to solve, but they’re willing to spend money.
Andrew: So, if I understand you right, what you’re saying to me is you’d have a site up with a set of questions. The questions were open-ended and you would monitor the responses that they gave you for length and keywords. Based on that, you would take them to step number two. But step number one is listening for those problems and the severity of the problems.
Ryan: Right. And that comes before even entering the market. That’s like the pre-market entry stage. So, that’s the stage where you’re deciding, “Do we even want to get into this market or is there not enough pain, is there not enough interest?”
Andrew: Oh, I see. Before you even build the product, what you’re doing is you’re testing to see if people even care about this. And how are you getting traffic to the site where you’re testing?
Ryan: Right. So, in this particular case, there are a couple of ways you can do it. In this particular example, we sent cold traffic–so, we’re sending Yahoo, Bing traffic, we’re sending Google AdWords traffic.
Andrew: You’re buying ads and sending it to that site.
Ryan: We’re buying ads and sending it to that site. Exactly. So, there are other questions that we’re asking as well. I talk about this in the book. So, for example, a great question to ask is, “What’s your phone number?” here’s the reason why. I want you to imagine for a moment that you will filling out a form online and it asks for your phone number. If it’s something that you don’t really care about, are you going to give your phone number? Probably not. You’re going to give a 555-number if it’s required. You’re going to give a fake phone number.
But if it’s your doctor and your doctor says, “I’m going to call you with your medical results, what’s the best number to reach you at?” You’re not only going to give your phone number, you’re going to give your spouse’s phone number, your cellphone number. You’re going to give every possible way to reach you. So, it’s another great indicator, whether someone really cares about this problem that you’re intending on solving.
Andrew: The other point is investigating. You haven’t even gotten to your MVP yet.
Ryan: Exactly. This is before that. Phone is also a great thing to–I actually recommend that you actually get on the phone with people as well. Like, for example, let me tell you one of the great benefits of getting on the phone and doing the survey is the copy in your marketing writes itself.
So, if we look at this page right here–and I’ll give you some very specific examples–if you look at the subhead, in the second column, the middle column directly below the video in the second bottom half of the page, there is a phrase that says, “Even if you’re a chronic name forgetter or the poster child for poor memory,” those terms came straight out of survey takers’ mouths. They came straight out of the survey. I wish I could take credit for that copy because it’s brilliant and it’s pure gold. It’s the natural consumer language.
So, when you go through his process, not only are you identifying the pain points, you’re actually extracting that natural consumer language that makes your copy so compelling to the point that the response people have when they go through your stuff is, “Oh my gosh, it’s like you can read my mind,” and that’s when you know you’re on to something.
Andrew: And these are from phone calls you’re getting that kind of information and from the survey response that you get when you sent cold traffic form Bing and Yahoo.
Ryan: Exactly, a combination of both places. Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. Step number one, we want to see is there a market and how severe is this for the market and we’re looking for words that they use to describe the pain, right?
Ryan: Correct.
Andrew: Okay. What’s step number two?
Ryan: The next step–once you’ve done this and there’s a process to this and it’s probably a little bit more involved–I’m happy to go into as much depth as possible. It’s one of these things that’s sometimes easier to actually see than to hear someone explain it. But the basic premise is this. Once you’ve done this Deep Dive Survey–and this is one of the key secrets to their process–you want to pay attention to the categories of responses that you’re getting.
Now, you want to focus on a few different dimensions. One of the biggest mistakes that people make–people tell me, they say, “Hey Ryan, I’ve used surveys before. I’m not generating 52,000 email subscribers per day. I’m not generating $100 million in online sales. What am I doing wrong?”
So one of the mistakes that people make is they focus on the frequency of response instead of the depth of the response. So what that means is what you want to do is you want to rank the open-ended survey response that you get and focus on the top 20 percent. People who leave short responses, even if it comes in high frequency, even if people say, “Why do you want to improve your memory?” “To get smarter.”
Even if you get 1,000 responses that say, “To get smarter,” if they’re all short, terse, concise responses like that, chances are none of those people are buyers. So, it’s the fallacy, it’s the myth of the FAQ. People have this tendency to think, “Well, everybody is asking this question, so I should focus on it.” You want to ignore those response’s, focus on the longest ones.
Then, you want to focus on the different categories that you see. What are the trends? I call these buckets. What are the buckets that you’re seeing emerge in the market? So, I’ll give you an example in the RocketMemory business. What we ended up seeing is that there are three predominant buckets that exist in this market. I’ll describe them as follows.
So the first bucket is what I call continuing students. So, these are people that have continuously gone through school. They haven’t taken a break. So they’re in grad school. They might be in law school, medical school and they have not taken a break. They’re in a certain mindset. That’s the first bucket of people who want to improve their memory, typically because they have a state exam, a bar exam, something like that.
The second category are what I call seniors concerned about mental decline. So, these are people, often men, who are over the age of 65 who are concerned about mental decline. Something has happened in their life where they’re worried, “Is my mind starting to slip?” That’s the impetus. That’s the thing that brings them to the computer to start searching for, “How do I improve my memory?”
Then there’s this interesting group in between. That’s the most fascinating to me. These are people who are specifically returning students. These are people who have been out of an academic environment for a period of years and they’re going back to school. They’re going back to University of Phoenix. They’re going back to some sort to certification program. They’re in the classroom for the first time in years and they’re struggling. They’re saying, “I don’t’ remember how to take a test.” And each of these buckets of people have very different needs and desires.
There are interesting sub-buckets as well. One of the most fascinating ones to me are people who are studying for the ministry. These are people who want to memorize biblical scripture because they have a calling to the ministry. So we actually have a course that’s all about how to memorize biblical scripture, specifically to address that very specific sub-bucket. You think, “Are there really that many people the warrant a product around that specific topic?” And the answer is yes.
So that’s that next step, to identify these different buckets. What’s so powerful about this, Andrew, is in this world where everybody, so many businesses try to be a one-size-fits-all answer. When you take the time to diagnose and prescribe, it’s amazing the type of response that can be.
Andrew: How many different buckets are we starting off with? I can see that you have someone who’s young and a continuous student who’s trying to memorize bible verses or someone who’s older and trying to go back to school and caring about bible verses and all these other combinations.
Ryan: Right. So, there are a couple of variations on how complex you want to get with this. So, if this is the first time that you’re executing the Ask formula as it’s taught in the book, what I recommend is this–you want to be able to reach 80 percent of your market in three to five buckets. Here’s the reason why. If you try to capture the entire market, there’s always going to be this long tail of outliers that you’re not going to be able to satisfy.
So, for example, in our market, we have people who suffer from what’s called TBI, traumatic brain injury, which is a condition where people suffer from memory loss related to some sort of traumatic brain injury to their head. That’s not a bucket. That’s not a group of people we’re going to satisfy, even though these are people who are passionate. They have tremendous problems in life. That’s a medical solution. That’s not something we’re equipped to help. That’s a perfect example of a bucket that we ignore because it’s too small.
Andrew: Okay.
Ryan: So three to five buckets is kind of the sweet spot. You capture the benefits of personalization and customization, but it’s also realistic. It’s not too much. If you bite off more than you can chew, than there’s a risk of the project becoming overwhelming and never getting off the ground. It can become an albatross if you’re not careful.
Andrew: Okay. So you’re saying we understand how deep the pain is and what the pain is. We’re creating three to five buckets based on the deepest pain. We’re recording eh words that people use. I’m guessing then what that means is where most businesses would start off by creating one mailing list, you’re saying create three to four different mailing lists, one for each of these different needs and each of these different buckets, right?
Ryan: That’s a great point. So what you’re describing, there are kind of two different paths that you can take. So, the first thing is someone lands on your website for the first time and you take them through a quiz or a survey that asks these questions. What we’re talking about is the most basic. The RocketMemory example is great. It’s the most basic implementation of this. I can talk about a more advanced implementation where things get very interesting.
Andrew: Let’s stick with the basic. By the way, your video and audio are not in sync for some reason and we hung up in the middle of this conversation and came back and it didn’t fix it. Do you want to try zooming out or just go to natural zoom on your camera? Maybe that’s the difference.
Ryan: Let’s try that.
Andrew: Even though you were looking way better this way than you did before. I’ll let you know as soon as I see the zoom change. What camera are you using for this?
Ryan: I’m using a Logitech.
Andrew: Now I saw the zoom. Weird.
Ryan: It’s on a delay. I can actually see the delay.
Andrew: Is there any way to just go native or are you stuck with using the Logitech software. You know, while we’re talking, my eyes are going all over the screen, Ryan. One of the things I’m noticing is when I fill out your first survey, you ask me things like, “What’s my age?” You ask me if I’m a student, etc. I hit submit. Then I’m taken to a video. Once the video stops, I have to click, “I agree,” and click the button that says continue.
Once I do that, I’m taken to another video. And again, I have to wait until the video stops again and then you ask me three questions. “What’s the reason for wanting to improve my memory? Why is that important to you? How will improving my memory change my life?” And then after I hit that, then I’m guessing I get another video. Why not just say, “Hey, I got on the mailing list. Let’s just go into email and be done with this?”
Ryan: That’s a great point. So this gets into this concept that I talk about called micro-commitments. So this is a variation on an interesting implementation that works extremely well. So what we’ve found is–and I’ve dug deep into my background in neuroscience and psychology and it kind of led me to this hypothesis I wanted to test, which is that when people are online, often times we’re asking people to take a step that’s so large that the brain actually perceives that step as a threat.
So an example that would be extreme that we’d all recognize is imagine landing on a scammy-looking site for the first time and the first question that they ask is, “What’s your social security number so we can find out if you’ve won the prize?” You’re going to get away from that site immediately, right? What happens when we ask someone for their name and email too fast, sometimes it elicits that warning bell, the fight or flight response in an area of the brain known as the amygdala, which is in the limbic system.
I did some research and I looked to the studies around, “Is there a way to hack that, to offset that?” And the answer is yes, there is. It has to do with this concept of micro-commitments. The way it works is this. If you’re able to shrink the step that you’re asking someone to take to be so small that it doesn’t fire off that fight or flight response, you can literally fly underneath the radar. You don’t create that anxiety that you unknowingly create when you ask someone to take a step that’s too big.
Andrew: But Ryan, it looks like you’re asking for more than that. Most sites will ask for an email address. You’re asking for an email address and also a first name and also my age and also if I’m a student. That would trigger my fight or flight reflexes. Frankly, I’ll be honest with you, I lied on some of this stuff because I wasn’t sure who you guys were and why would I put my age on a website when I don’t know where it’s going.
Ryan: Right. You bring up a really good point. I’m glad you brought it up. If you go back to the initial page that we’re looking at–I’m sorry I’m not looking at the camera because I’m looking at the actual site.
Andrew: That’s okay.
Ryan: If you go to LP-Kit-00, on the left hand side, you’re going to see a little slide out, a little thing that pops out that says, “Want customized tips?”
Andrew: Yes.
Ryan: If you click on that, this is a more accurate representation of what I would consider to be the most recent, up to date evolution of the Ask process.
Andrew: I see. And in this case, you’re not asking for my email address right away. You’re asking me a question that I might be willing to answer, “Which is which of the following best describes you–I notice my memory has gotten worse with age; I’m a student less than 30 years old; I’m a returning student going back to school; I’m looking to improve memory for other reasons.”
So here what you’re doing is before you even ask me for an email address, you’re asking me all kinds of questions that allow you to understand who I am. I answered one. You asked me a follow-up question about my age. I answered that. You asked me a follow up question asking whether I’m a man or a woman. I say I’m a man in this case. And now I see my first name and email address and that’s what you’re going for.
Ryan: Right. Exactly. So these multiple choice questions are far less threatening than, “Andrew, what’s your name? Your email? By the way, what’s your social security number and can I have your home phone number so I can call you at dinner?”
Andrew: So if I instead of asking for an email address were asking a question that’s like, “How long have you been in business, I might be more likely to get the email address later on.”
Ryan: Right.
Andrew: Okay.
Ryan: So what we’re looking at here, this is great. What we’re looking at is really a snapshot in time. When this page that we’re looking at right now is created, this represented my absolute best thinking. This business was created in 2009. The page that we’re looking at now is really a snapshot in time, probably around 2012.
So since then, with all the testing that we’ve done, what we’ve found, what’s really exciting is that the key that I like to start with is what I call a softball question. So a softball question is an easy to answer question that is almost impossible to get wrong. So the perfect one that I like to ask, if it’s relevant is, “Tell me, are you a man or a woman?” The reason why I’m asking this is because, particularly in health markets it’s very relevant, men and women have different biology and the recommendation I might give you will be different depending on what your gender is.
So it’s a question that unless someone’s being smart, everybody knows the answer to that question. You don’t even have to think about it. It’s so fast and easy to answer. So I like to start with the softball question to kind of grease the wheels and start that action-taking momentum.
Andrew: Okay. You know what? I’m going to actually just buy the book right now. I didn’t realize the book had come out. I knew that you were coming out with it at some time this year. I was prepared to announce that you were going to come out with it at some point in the future. Now I find out that I missed the launch date. The book is called “Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy.”
All right. So you asked that. But let’s go back to the other thing that I said, which is after I gave you my email address, I saw a video that then asked me to answer a question and then another and another.
Ryan: Right. So that’s a perfect example of that micro-commitment process in action on the post-opt in step. So really what we’re doing there is I’m trying to gauge how interested is this person in what it is that we’re going to give them. If someone bails early on, they’re probably not very interested in solving this problem.
So, therefore, I’m probably going to–to use the analogy–I’m going to let up on the gas in terms of marketing to that person because they’re not super interested. So if someone bails early, maybe they’ll be on a sequence where they’re getting one email every couple of days. If someone goes all the way through, they’ve taken it all the way to the end, well, I might have an offer right then and there for them to actually purchase. They’re going to get more emails more often because they’re raised their hand and they’ve said, “Listen, I’m willing to jump through a few hoops to get access to this.”
At the same time, I’m actually using the information that people are answering in those questions to refine the marketing. So this is one of the things I talk about. It’s all about refining as you go along. It’s very iterative. It’s very much like lean marketing if you think of the lean startup concept. So by asking people, “Why do you want to improve your memory?” answering that question, I have this massive database of thousands and thousands of responses of people who are saying why they want to improve their memory. Periodically, I look at that data over time to see have things changed. Has anything in the marketplace happened that I wasn’t aware of before?
So, for example, maybe Dr. Oz or years ago it would have been Oprah, something mainstream has happened that’s oriented people’s minds to something that’s new. Maybe there’s a new discovery, a new drug, something like that. Well, this is a quick and easy way for me to know if I get a large number of responses that say, “Oh, I saw this program on Dr. Oz about the importance of blank…”
Andrew: Got it. Then it’s something you can use.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: None of this seems to work unless you’re willing to spend money on advertising, right? You need a lot of traffic for the buckets to make sense. For most people, they can’t even get 100 people a week onto their mailing list. Now you’re telling them to divide it up into maybe even five buckets. That’s just too much.
Ryan: It’s a great question. I’m glad you brought it up. I talked about this in the book. It’s, “What if I don’t have a budget and what if I don’t have an existing email list to run this Deep Dive Survey to?” So, the fastest, the easy button to get all the data that you need to determine what the buckets are is to send your deep dive survey to an email list, to do an email blast to a large list. Well, most people might not have a large email list to send this to. What do you do?
This is a great opportunity to approach someone in the market that you’re intending on entering or that you’ve already decided to enter and throw a proposition out there and say, “Hey, listen, here’s what I’m trying to do. I’m thinking about building a product around X, Y and Z topic and I’d like to do a survey to gather intelligence before I do this.”
“Here’s what I’d like to do. I’m going to go through this pretty involved survey analysis process. I’m happy to share the results with you. Now, if it turns out that there is a market for this and I create a product, I’m even happy to share a percentage of the profits with you after building that product. Would you be open to going down this path?” Of course it’s going to take more than one approach, more than one business to approach to do this. That is the no money down–
Andrew: Did you have one of your students do this, partner up with someone else and, “I’m going to study your audience and if there’s a business from it, then I’ll build it and I’ll give you a share?”
Ryan: Exactly.
Andrew: You have? What student has done this?
Ryan: It’s not necessarily–there are people that are doing this in our Mastermind right now. That’s the approach. If you don’t want to spend money on paid advertising–I’ve had people proposition me and I’ve accepted. People have said, “Hey, I want to do this on this topic. Are you open to this?” And I’ve said yes. So, I’ve been on both sides.
Andrew: That seems like a pretty big ask to ask. I get why you would say yes to that because it’s your audience and you want to help them out and they’re customers and you want to prove to them that this works, but if someone came to me, I don’t think I would do that. So who’s done this and how far did they get?
Ryan: We’ve had, I’m thinking, at least three or four students that I can think of specifically who have gone down this path. So I’ve got a couple that come to mind. I’ll give one specific example. So one student in our 1,000-person Mastermind that comes to mind that did this in the health space. An advocate in fitness, he’s a fitness instructor, doesn’t have a large list. He basically someone propositioned someone who has a massive list and said, “I’m thinking about creating a muscle building training course on this topic. Would you be open to taking this approach, to doing this approach?” And the answer was yes.
Andrew: Alright. So what we have is the Deep Dive Survey, number one, that’s the preparation, right?
Ryan: Yes.
Andrew: I’ve got your book in front of me so now I’m finally a little more prepared. Next, we persuade. That’s where we do the prospect self-discovery landing page. That’s what we talked about where you ask them some softball questions and then you ratchet it up until you understand enough about them to–
Ryan: It’s about persuading them to take the survey. One of the things I talked about in the book and we haven’t really touched on this yet, people hate surveys. Surveys have a stigma. When you’re positioning this to your market, you’re not even talking about it like it’s a survey. You’re talking about it like–people like taking quizzes.
There’s a great infographic, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, Andrew, that BuzzFeed put out in 2014 where they looked at the best performing three-word headlines or phrases in terms of the most viral content that they’ve shared. Are you familiar with the infographic that I’m talking about?
Andrew: Yes, of course.
Ryan: Yeah, so the three words that were head and shoulders above everything else were, “character,” “are,” “you.” And of course they’re referring to all those quizzes that we’ve seen that’s, “What Harry Potter character are you?” “What Marvel Avengers character are you?” People love discovering something about themselves.
So I’ll give you a few examples from the markets that we’re in where we take this approach. One of our successful markets, we have a concept called weight loss type. So we send traffic to an Ask formula-designed process around weight loss type where people find out, “What weight loss type are you?”
If you’re struggling to lose weight and you haven’t had the results that you’d like, it might be because the approach you’re taking isn’t the right fit for your type–by the way, there are four weight loss types. There’s type A, type G, type I and type C. Take the quiz to find out which type are you as well as a customized action plan based on your type.
Now, anybody listening to this right now who is thinking about losing weight, you are curious to know what type you are. I bet you might even be a little curious to find out what type you are. We have a proven methodology. It’s based on science and it’s all doctor-based and it’s real that identifies what this is.
Andrew: Okay. So first we’ve got the Deep Dive. Then we do the self-discovery landing page. Then we have micro-commitments bucket survey. That’s where you’re starting to get–what is the micro-commitments bucket survey? That’s step number three.
Ryan: The micro-commitment bucket survey in a nutshell is a series of multiple choice questions that identify what bucket someone falls into, which typically culminates in an opt-in step. So rather than straightaway asking someone what’s your name and email, you start by asking these multiple choice which are the micro-commitments that are geared to put people into one of several buckets. That’s the diagnosed step in your diagnose and prescribe.
Andrew: All right. Then we’ve got the prescribe, which is the next one, the post-survey sales prescription.
Ryan: Right. That’s after they’ve taken the survey. You typically, in a typical implementation of this, as we’re sending people either to one or several products that we’re recommending or if we have one product that we intend on selling, it will be several variations on sales messages for that one product. So we might reposition a single product five different ways to speak to the benefits and features that are most relevant to someone in that particular bucket.
Andrew: I see. And we sell right away at that point based on what we’ve learned about them.
Ryan: Right. Oftentimes it’s a seamless transition between education and selling. So usually it’s we’re playing doctor. The doctor analogy, I think, is most relevant. You go to the doctor and you say, “Doc, my leg hurts. I don’t know what it is.” Doc asks a series of questions, “Is it a dull pain or a sharp pain? Is it your upper leg or lower leg?” That’s the micro-commitment bucket survey.
At the end of it, he says, “I think I know what is wrong. Do me a favor, fill out this form and I’ll come right back and I’ll tell you what my recommendation is.” You fill out the form, which is the email opt-in. He comes back I the room and he says, “Based on everything that you’ve told me, the answers that you’ve given to these questions, what I think is wrong with your leg is this.”
That’s where there’s that education piece, where you’re actually educating the person on what the results of their quiz mean. So you’re telling me what bucket they fall into and what that means for them, then you seamlessly transition to, “Now, here’s what I recommend you do about it,” which is the product recommendation.
Andrew: Okay. So that means after people have done all this, before they even start getting emails, you are selling to them.
Ryan: Correct.
Andrew: Okay. And then the next step after that is an up sell.
Ryan: Correct.
Andrew: How are you feeling this interview is going, by the way? Because our audio and video are out of sync, I can’t tell what it’s looking like to you when I interrupt you until like five seconds later. I feel like as an interviewer, part of my job is to ask the right questions and the other part is to interrupt sometimes.
Ryan: Totally. I think it’s going fine.
Andrew: Be open. I feel something’s up. Give me your analysis here.
Ryan: It is a little bit distracting with the video, for sure.
Andrew: Oh, so you’re noticing the video out of sync too.
Ryan: Yours is out of sync. Mine is out of sync. We’re both on a delay. So, I can’t even look at your face.
Andrew: Right. It’s very distracting.
Ryan: I get it. You can’t even look at me. I just want to keep running with it. My only thought is that your AV team will be able to sync up the audio with the video. I don’t know why it’s doing this. It’s extremely bizarre. I’m on a lightning fast internet connection. I have a 300 megabyte download speed and about a 50-60 megabyte upload speed.
Andrew: Yeah. It’s weird when stuff like this happens. All right. Well, at least the content is okay. I just want to make sure that when I’m stepping on your lines, you’re not pissed.
Ryan: I’m not pissed at all. How do you feel?
Andrew: I feel like there’s a nuance to interrupting. Part of the nuance is paying attention to what it looks like when I do that.
Ryan: Well, we’ve got two options. We can finish it.
Andrew: No, we’re going through with it. Unless it’s too much for you, I’m good with it. I feel like the content is good. Frankly, for me, I don’t care if you kick me every question. As long as the answers are useful and the information is helpful, I’m proud of it.
Ryan: Awesome. I think this is helpful. I’m bringing my A-game So I think we’re good.
Andrew: All right. So then the upsell sequence–talk to me a little bit about that. What do we sell?
Ryan: Right. So there are kind of three basic frameworks that I like to use in an upsell framework. Upsells are tricky because upsells are necessary in most funnels that I construct in order for the funnel to make sense economically. If there were no upsells in place, we would lose too much money on the front end that we couldn’t even advertise. So it’s tricky.
At the same time, you don’t want to anger your customers or alienate your customers by feeling like you’re going for a money grab. It also can’t feel like the first thing that they bought, that you’re trying to sell them the same thing. Then the reaction is, “Wait, didn’t I just buy a solution to that? Now you’re telling me that’s not adequate?”
So there are a couple of very subtle nuance constructions that I like to use. My favorite one by far, which is the most advanced but it’s also, in my opinion, the most powerful, is by basically planting the seed, future pacing a program that doesn’t yet exist. So the example that I give in the book, which is one of our funnels that works very well is imagine for a moment that you sell a course on how to negotiate a higher salary. I think you’ve had some past guests that actually have products in that space.
So how to negotiate a higher salary–so your course delivers. What’s going to happen? Well, what’s going to happen is if you negotiate a higher salary successfully, it’s going to create this new problem that you don’t realize you have, which is this windfall of cash. If you’re not careful, that cash could be spent not wisely. You could flush that money down the toilet.
So if you want to get ahead in life, it’s really about putting money away, putting money away for your retirement and investing. There’s no better time to invest money then when you have this sudden windfall. You have to be prepared. You have to have a plan ahead of time because otherwise you’re going to spend this money on a trip to Disney World or something like that. You’re not going to put it away. That’s why our companion course, a course on how to invest your higher salary is a great fit.
Andrew: I see.
Ryan: So that’s a great example of future pacing a problem, a good problem that people don’t yet have.
Andrew: All right. Let’s look back at the table of contents here. That’s what I’ve been using and clicking through. I love Kindle books because I get to have them right away.
Ryan: I’ve got the real thing in front of me here. I need to make sure I know my own book. So I’ve got the table of contents in front of me as well.
Andrew: Hey, you know something, I’ve actually had guests on who actually did not know their own books. And I get it because maybe it’s been a while since they wrote it, but I’ve had to give home the outline of where I’m going with the interview because they don’t’ remember what they wrote in the book. Meanwhile, our audio and video just caught up with each other. So I won’t even be able to have my editor edit everything back because it’s just kind of going in and out of sync.
Ryan: I don’t know what to say.
Andrew: I don’t think we need to say anything except to acknowledge it. I just want the audience to know we know. I know. It’s there. But as long as the content is okay, I’m continuing with it. All right. So now we’ve got profit and pivot.
Ryan: Correct. So pivot, there are two steps to that. So one of the things I like to talk about, some of the most valuable data in your market is around people who don’t buy. I have this tongue in cheek survey that I like to use. I call it the Do You Hate Me? survey. The reason why it’s called that is there is an email subject like that I like to use, which is, “Do You Hate me?” Well, that’s if you’re in a market where you like to be a little bit more tame, you can also say, “Did I Say Something Wrong?” “Was It Something I Said?” something along those lines.
Basically, the premise is this, you want to ask people who didn’t buy, “Tell me, why didn’t you invest? Why didn’t you buy this program? Just be honest. You won’t hurt my feelings, I just want to know.” That gives you this channel for iterative feedback. That tells you what are you missing in your marketing, what holes did you not fill, what objections did you not do a good job of overcoming.
And then with that information, you’re going to get two categories of data. One category is what I call tweaks. These are things you can do in your marketing to tweak your approach. Then you’re going to have another category which is people want to do something with you They like you. They like what you’re about but the offer that you made just wasn’t the right fit. For those people, you want to give them a choose your own adventure next step.
You acknowledge and you say, “Listen, I know this wasn’t for everybody, so we’ve got a couple options. We can go in three different directions. Which of the following is most appealing to you, A, B, or C?” And you can give them the option to click one of the links in the email that will add them to the next choose your own adventure sequence.
Andrew: I see. And this whole sequence that we’ve been talking about I’ve assumed happens on the web. You’re saying that it could happen there or it could also happen via email.
Ryan: Everything that we talked about right now–so there’s the same visit sale experience. So if someone goes all the way through, they land on your landing page, take the micro-commitment bucket survey, they opt in, they see that post-survey sales prescription, they buy the product you’re selling, they go through your one-click upsell process, they buy everything that you’re selling–that all happened on the same visit sale.
Now, for people who don’t buy right away, you have an email sequence that we use to try to capture the sale. Not everybody’s ready to purchase right away. So you kind of nudge them along the way. So that happens over a period of about two weeks, culminating in this pivot survey, which is, “All right, we tried everything, this wasn’t a fit, so where would you like to go next?” So they’re pivoting in one of several directions.
Andrew: Okay. So we’ve actually been using that, “Do You Hate Me?” email because April Dykman here on the Mixergy team has gone through your course. She put it in there. I’ve been loving the feedback I get from it. People actually hit reply and they respond. Here’s one from Tonya, “Hey, Andrew, no way. I do not hate you. Quite the contrary, I’m a fan of yours. I think the email just slipped through and I never noticed it.”
Here’s another one, “Honestly, Andrew, I don’t want to take out my credit card and put it in. I’m too lazy.” “I purchased it in email this morning. Since I haven’t received a confirmation email and wanted to check to see if it went through and see if it went back.” So that’s a customer service person that we responded to.
Let’s look at the next one, “Do you hate me? No reason, really, just mad hectic workday. Every day at the moment has been mad and hectic, and I don’t have time to sign up at the moment. It does not have anything to do with the price, just the effort. I just realized the effort I put into his email is about the same as signing up, but I appreciate the effort to gather insight from your users. I’ll probably sign up at a later point.”
Let’s read one last one from David. “Is this really you? I appreciate you taking the time to email me. I know you’re busy. Please don’t take my lack of correspondence personally. I’m sure you’re familiar with excessive inbox volumes. I simply haven’t have time to go through them,” and it keeps on going.
Here’s another one who’s a student. So I don’t see, actually, anything that we can act on here. They just haven’t had time to respond.
Ryan: Right. Sometimes that in and of itself is the nudge that people need. I’ve done Do You Hate Me? surveys where that’s been the theme, “I’ve been so busy. I feel really bad.” And you can use that and say, “Listen, I sent the survey out and a lot of people are really busy. So, I wanted to make this as easy as possible. Here’s what I’m going to do.” You can use that in your marketing if that happens to be the truth.
Sometimes, I’ve done this before, for example, we ran a marketing campaign once. I’m pretty sensitive to different religious groups. But there was one weekend when we ran this promotion. I completely overlooked that it fell on a certain religious group’s very holy holiday. People were completely unplugged.
I ran the Do You Hate Me? survey and it was like holy smokes, I couldn’t believe how many people responded and said, “Well, because of the holy holiday, we were unplugged. I was away with family. I would love to take advantage of this if you would find it in your heart to extend,” and we used that in our marketing and it ended up being very successful.
Andrew: I see. All right. Let’s get a sense of how you got here, as I said earlier. You’re a guy who used to work at AIG. You got burnt out. I completely understand why you’d get burned out at a job like that, especially now that I see what you’re about. Your wife points out something on Etsy. What does she point out?
Ryan: So this is 2008, didn’t know what market we wanted to get into. My wife was a crafter. She finds this site, which at the time was this obscure site called Etsy.com. Not only am I working the corporate world, I’m living in Shanghai. So I spent about five years working in Shanghai. She’s in Hong Kong studying for her PhD at Hong Kong University. We had this crazy bi-country marriage. We talked once a day on Skype.
We were thinking about how we want to start our business. This was when I was still working at a corporate job. She said, “Hey, Ryan, there’s a site online called Etsy. It’s like eBay for handmade goods. There is this jewelry that is selling like crazy.” She said, “Check it out.” She said, “Look at these people. They’re making like $1,000 a day selling jewelry made from Scrabble tiles.” I’m thinking, “Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. That’s exactly what I’m going to tell my parents. I’m leaving this nice, cushy, six-figure job, wearing a suit, have all these perks and I’m going to make jewelry from Scrabble tiles.” So, I dismissed it.
So we kind of put it on hold. And I didn’t want to get into this business where we were putting glue on Scrabble tiles and affixing balls and chains. That’s not what I wanted to do. But then she said, “Time out, look at these people. They’re not selling the jewelry. But what they are selling is tutorials on how to make the jewelry.” Now, these people aren’t making $1,000 a day, but they’re making like $400 a day.
Andrew: Where were they doing this?
Ryan: This was on Etsy.
Andrew: Oh, on Etsy they were selling how to make jewelry.
Ryan: How to make Scrabble tile jewelry tutorials. So we said, “All right, let’s buy it and see what it’s about.” And the tutorials were terrible. They were just abysmal. We said, we can build a better mousetrap. So that’s exactly what we did. I talk about the story in the book. It’s not all roses and rainbows. We had some struggles along the way.
In 2008, you’ll remember this, the world financial crisis hit and AIG was one of the companies that got hit. We had a little fledgling Scrabble title business that we were running from Shanghai in Hong Kong. I woke up one day and I stepped inside my office and the newspaper said, “AIG to File for Bankruptcy.” And I called my wife up and I said, “Honey, go to WSJ.com, check out the headline, see what it says.”
She says, “Oh my gosh, what does that mean?” And I said, “You know what? I don’t know and I’m not going to stick around to find out.” And I drafted up my resignation letter that day, walked into our China CEO’s office, dropped it on his desk and I said, “Listen, you’re not going to be thrilled to hear this, but I have to leave.”
And the reason I gave him, I gave him the excuse, “I have to be with my wife. We’ve been apart. We’re in two separate countries.” But the real answer, Andrew, was that was the kick in the butt I needed to say, “I’m going to give this thing a go. I’m going to try to make this business work.” And we did.
Andrew: And that’s what took off? But Scrabble jewelry ended up being a fad that disappeared, so revenues started to dwindle and you were looking for something else. How are we doing on time? Do you have a few more minutes?
Ryan: I’m perfectly fine on time.
Andrew: All right. I know we’re running a little bit late here. What was the fad-proof business that you discovered next?
Ryan: So we went into that market and I quit my job and I thought, “We’re going to build this fortune in jewelry tutorials, in Scrabble tile jewelry tutorials,” and like you said, the market crashed. We kind of had this moment where my wife and I looked at each other. We’re living on a $500 a month PhD stipend that my wife had as a history graduate student. She said, “Well, I’ll get a job.” So she got a job as a museum curator, which paid a whopping $36,000 a year in Brownsville, Texas.
So we left Hong Kong, donated everything that we owned except for two suitcases, moved back and I learned my lesson. I said, “I’m never going to go into a fad business ever again.” So we decided to go into what I consider to be the largest and the longest standing hobby market in America, which is gardening. Between gardening and reading, those are the two largest hobbies that exist.
Andrew: Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought that gardening would be number two to reading.
Ryan: Yeah. And I said, “You know, people are gardening ten years from now. People are going to be gardening 20 years from now. I feel pretty good about that bet.” So we had one car. I drove my wife. We had nothing. We had a tiny little apartment, a $500 a month apartment. We had a mattress on the floor, two lawn chairs. I drive my wife to the museum every single day, I’d come home and I’d bust my butt and work.
Living in very modest circumstances, we took that business from nothing to just under $25,000 a month within 18 months. That gave us the confidence for my wife to quit her job, and she started working in the business with me full time. Then we launched the memory business next. We moved to the Austin, Texas area from Brownsville, bought a house.
That’s when I was approached by the first business who said, “Hey, this approach is brilliant. Would you ever consider working with another business to implement this in a much larger way?” That led to that string of 23 different markets that we entered, one right after the other.
Andrew: What do you charge now to do that to another business?
Ryan: I’m not really doing much of it anymore, to be perfectly honest. It really has to be a special opportunity. At the end when I stopped, it was about $50,000 up front plus a $5,000 a month retainer plus 5% to 10% of gross sales with a minimum for a private client to work with me with $20,000 a month. So the retainer plus royalty within 6 months of royalty had to hit a $20,000 a month threshold. Anybody who didn’t reach that threshold, I’d move on.
Andrew: So when we talk about all these different markets that you’re in, at this point, it’s wholly owned products that you’re selling.
Ryan: The 23 different markets are a combination. So, the memory market is an example where we fully own that business. That’s 100 percent owned by my company and we own all the rights to that. In the other markets, I realize that my expertise, Andrew, I’m not great at building products. That’s not my expertise. That’s not my passion. But I’m really good at selling. I’m really good at positioning products, doing this Ask formula, coming up with the big idea that’s going to get people excited. So, rather than focus on owning products, I focused on licensing the funnels I’d create to large businesses in a way that paid us a royalty in exchange for that.
Andrew: What’s an example of a large business that pays you–well, actually now you’re not taking on any new ones–what’s the biggest, best known company that did this with you?
Ryan: Biggest, best known company… arguably Dish Network.
Andrew: Dish Network did this.
Ryan: The number two satellite TV company in the United States.
Andrew: I know them. All right. I’ve heard of them.
Ryan: Well, I assume that’s probably the best known. There are some others in there as well. There are a few that the terms of their agreement that prevent me from disclosing them.
Andrew: What percentage of your revenue comes from businesses and products that you own completely?
Ryan: Now it’s a lot larger because we’ve focused on expanding the training arm of our business. So, the book is the cornerstone. We actually have a flagship course that we sell that’s called Survey Funnel Formula, which teaches the methodology in detail. We have a mastermind group. We’re approaching 1,000 members who pay $100 a month. That is called Next Level Group Mastermind. Then we have a high level group of large business owners called Next Level Elite.
Andrew: What’s the Next Level Mastermind get? What is it, Next Level…?
Ryan: Next Level Group Mastermind.
Andrew: Group Mastermind. I know they get a Facebook group because I clicked over one of the links to your site and I got to see 838 people were in the group right now?
Ryan: Probably something like that.
Andrew: So they get the Facebook group. They also get a monthly phone call.
Ryan: They get a monthly Mastermind call with me. We bring in a weekly guest expert that teaches on all the topics related to this. So, you might be asking, “How do I drive traffic?” So, we bring in experts to teach on Bing, AdWords, Facebook advertising, LinkedIn advertising–
Andrew: In addition to the call with you? It’s two separate products.
Ryan: It’s all part of the same–correct. So, a monthly call with Ryan and a weekly call with an external expert, as well as the group itself. And access to all the archives. And then in addition to that, they also get access to our survey funnel software. This is the technology that drives what we do. So, this is the technology that enables that micro-commitment bucket survey, that enables the customization of questions, that puts people…
So, one of the things that we do, we didn’t even talk about those, is you capture all this data in your micro-commitment bucket survey. So, you find out, “Are you a man or a woman?” Well, the way we capture this is it gets appended to someone’s database record in your CRM. So, if you used AWeber, Infusionsoft–what do you guys use now?
Andrew: We use Infusionsoft and AWeber, but I prefer Infusionsoft
Ryan: Okay. So, if you were to combine Survey Funnel software with Infusionsoft, you find out someone is a man or a woman, that would be added as a custom field to their database record in Infusionsoft. Then when you start to write emails to people, you can do all sorts of things. Say you only want to send a broadcast to the men on your list, you can do that now. Say you want to mention someone’s gender in their email through a merge field. So, you might say something like, “Most of the men that I talk to that are also business owners struggle with one of the following problems…”
Andrew: All right. That’s a feature that’s kind of built into Infusionsoft. All you’re doing is taking the data from your software and putting ti into their record, kind of like what Gravity Forms does.
Ryan: Yeah. Exactly.
Andrew: But it’s your own software built specifically for this.
Ryan: Right. So Gravity Forms, the analogy I like to use is this software is designed specifically to implement the Ask formula. That’s the only thing it was designed to do. That’s something you asked what do members get in the Next Level Group Mastermind, they get access to this software for free, which otherwise would be a monthly subscription.
Andrew: I’m looking at a Business Insider article form earlier this year about–here’s the headline, “This entrepreneur walked away from Wall Street to build a $5 million working from home.” Do you remember when you hit your first $1 million?
Ryan: Yes. We’re in 2015 now. Gross, I think it was 2012 or 2013. I’m pretty sure it was 2012. That was the year we hit our first gross $1 million. And we did a bit over that.
Andrew: Do you remember the day when you first noticed that you did over $1 million in sales?
Ryan: I remember when we netted over $1 million in sales because that’s all I really care about.
Andrew: That’s when you saw it in the bank. What did that feel like?
Ryan: I’d much rather have a $5 million and take home $3 million than have a $50 million a year business and take home $3 million. So, it’s not what you make. It’s what you take home. That’s kind of my mantra.
Andrew: So, what was that day like?
Ryan: It’s funny. The horizon never–you never approach the horizon. I remember there was a time where $10,000 a month was what I wanted to make. I remember a time when I thought, “If we could just generate $25,000 a month in net income, what can you possibly want?” That’s it. I would just retire. I would never want anything more. That horizon just keeps pushing back.
I think for us, it was kind of a mini-celebration. My wife and I, I remember we looked at our QuickBooks account. She looked at it and she said, “We did it.” And the bottom line on our QuickBooks account was over $1 million. For me, that was cool. What’s not cool is the tax bill you have to pay to the IRS when you are in a fast growth mode. But it was a mini celebration. But again, for me, that’s not money that flows in my pockets. That’s money that we reinvest into the business. That’s money we’re putting down to grow what we’re doing to get the book in as many people’s hands as possible.
That’s more important to me. As you can see, this is what I wear every single day. People know this about me. I’ve got 35 of these Target-issued polo shirts. This cost either $9.95 or $14.95 depending if I bought it on sale or full price. You can see my office. Clearly I have very expensive artwork on my walls right now.
Andrew: I was wondering where you were recording from.
Ryan: Exactly. In my office right now.
Andrew: Do you have more than $1 million in the bank?
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: You do?
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: You have F-U money. You could have said, “Andrew, this connection is a little bad. Apparently, you didn’t get my book before we started. Shove off.”
Ryan: Yeah. But that’s not my style.
Andrew: Did you regret it when the connection started to get a little bit flaky. Did you say, “Why didn’t I just say that? I had that option. I don’t need this anymore.”
Ryan: No. There’s a story to tell here. There’s a story to tell here. I’m not very woo-woo. People who know me, I’m very logical about things. But I also believe that things like this happen for a reason and really this is what life is all about. Nothing happens according to script. It’s really about what happens, what variable are you going to–what audible are you going to call. What’s the variable going to be? I think this is a perfect example of that. You call that audible and you just keep going.
Andrew: How many people on your personal mailing list? Now that we’re friends, how many people can you reach?
Ryan: It’s over 50,000 on our marketing list, my personal marketing list. So followers of Ryan Levesque. We sold over 25,000 copies–I don’t even know the exact number now–but over 25,000 physical copies of the book to hit number one in the country on our launch week. So I don’t even know now how many we’re selling.
It’s the first time I’ve not self-published something. So when you’re working with a publisher and a distributor and a clearinghouse and all these other third parties, they know the numbers and you’re the last one to find out. So the number is going up. We’re hoping to reach some big numbers and go from there.
Andrew: All right. Congratulations on your success. Thank you so much for doing this interview. I usually like to refer to a website, but it seems like you don’t even need people to go to a specific website. Your ideal is that if they’re interested in this formula, they go to Amazon or their bookstore–actually, who’s going to a bookstore anymore? People in San Francisco do. I see bookstores all along Valencia Street. So if you’re going to a bookstore or Amazon, look for the book. It’s called “Ask.”
Ryan: Great.
Andrew: All right. Thank you so much for doing this interview.
Ryan: Thank you, Andrew. I super appreciate it.
Andrew: Thank you all for being a part of it. Bye everyone.
