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Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner, and I am the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. Are you really good at something and you’re thinking about teaching other people how to do it and maybe building a business around teaching instead of doing it? Well, today’s guest is a guy who’s a fantastic salesperson, who was able to reach people who others couldn’t even get in the door with. And he decided to start teaching it. I invited him here to talk about how he made the transition, and to learn what he learned along the way about building up his new business. Bryan Kreuzberger is the founder of breakthroughe- mail.com which teaches you how to get a meeting with cold e-mail. Bryan, welcome.
Bryan: Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here.
Andrew: You know what. I pay attention in the video when I do the intro, and I thought I saw you wince. Did I screw up the intro somehow or make you feel uncomfortable with the way I was describing you?
Bryan: No, not at all.
Andrew: Oh, all right. Maybe it’s just the fact that you have dueling Andrew videos here because I got . . .
Bryan: Honestly, I’m trying to figure out should I look at the camera or should I look at you or should I look at myself?
Andrew: Oh, you know the cool thing to do is, here’s the trick that works. Whether you’re doing in an interview or maybe you’re just Skype talking with someone. Click away from Skype so that little window with me in it pops out. And then move that little window underneath the camera. That way when you’re looking at my little video in the little window, it’ll seem like you’re looking the audience in the eye. So my video should be right underneath the camera.
Bryan: Yeah, yeah. Okay. How’s that?
Andrew: That looks good.
Bryan: All right, good.
Andrew: All right. I told you before the interview that I like to ask people about money and you said something that surprised me. You said, I’m fine talking about money. You actually have to learn how to do it.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: So, first question is, what kind of revenue can you make, or what kind of revenue are you making through breakthroughemail where you’re teaching this stuff?
Bryan: Yeah. Our company, right now, I’ve had the company, I started about a year and a half ago. We’re just under $2,000,000 annually.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: Yeah, I think money is an interesting subject. We’re all in business, and it took me a lot of years to actually get comfortable talking numbers or talking money. As a seller, there’s always a point in the conversation where you kind of have to ask the person, can they afford to work with you. And I always tried to disguise it. It’s like $50,000. It’s called 50K, or you know, 50. But definitely talking money, that’s why we’re here.
Andrew: How do you ask the question, can you afford to pay for my services without insulting a person?
Bryan: What’s your budget?
Andrew: Oh, okay.
Bryan: What’s your budget or do you have a budget is telling you if there’s any kind of motivation to buy too.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: Do they have a preconceived idea to buy if it’s independent, if it’s an incoming lead or if you’re doing outreach to them. But they’re most likely going to say, no. Most everything I’ve ever sold in the start-up tech world, no one ever had a budget for it. So then they’ll say, we don’t have a budget. It depends how much it costs. They’ll turn the question around. And then I’ll use something called the bucket technique.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: Which this is one of those magic phrases, or essentially, I’m actually looking at the Statue of Liberty right now. I’m in New York City. So if my eye wanders, I’m looking at my view. Essentially what you do, say I have a $50,000 product . . .
Andrew: Yup.
Bryan: . . . and I’m talking to somebody not sure if they have the money to pay for my $50,000 product. And I’ll do, it could be $25 grand, it could be $75, it could be $250. It really varies, depending on the client. But $50 is kind of like my sweet spot. So what I would do is I would say, typically our clients fit in one of three buckets, $50,000, $150,000 and $500,000.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: Do any of those numbers speak to you?
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: And before I can even finish and say $500,000, they have now stopped me. They’re like, no, there’s no way we can spend that money. Maybe we can spend $75,000.
Andrew: So you’re intentionally going way high . . .
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: . . . so they will stop you at the right number?
Bryan: Yeah. I want to go about ten times what I think . . .
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: . . . that the deal might be worth. Now the better I got, the more experience I had, I actually found that sometimes I would have some bias. I’d say, oh, well, they definitely can only spend $75, $100 grand, and they’d come in at $200, $250. I’m going to propose a $100,000 idea and just in the one phrase, I can double, triple the deal size. This is a great way to disqualify people. They’d say, oh, you know, maybe we can scrape together $25 grand. So rather than going on the process of doing a proposal or whatever you’re going to do in your tech company or your product in your sales cycle, you want to find out in that first meeting do they have any money.
Andrew: I see. By the way, are you clicking your pen as we’re talking? I’m hearing some kind of click.
Bryan: Yeah, actually I am.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: I’m ready to draw if you need me to.
Andrew: Oh, no. It sounded like you were clicking one of those clicking pens where the ballpoint pen comes out the bottom. But maybe it’s a mic issue.
Bryan: How does it sound now?
Andrew: Sounds good. I’ll keep an eye on it and an ear. Alright. What were you exactly selling before you launched breakthroughemail that you needed to qualify people and you needed them to have such a big budget?
Bryan: Before breakthroughemail, I was working for a company called voodoovox. We had voice audio ads on telephone calls. It was a venture- backed company. I think we raised $12,000,000. This was mobile marketing, pre-iPhones. We would put audio ads into calling card calls. The budgets for agencies like Bank of America, Western Union, McDonald’s, Home Depot, Absolut Vodka, all these major companies. They’d range anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 for an initial deal.
Andrew: Wow.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: So you had to get in the door and close a sale with someone who can spend that kind of money.
Bryan: Yeah. I’m in my 20s. We always had great products. We started out. We’ve got this great new idea. It hasn’t been tested. Don’t have any customers. Need to go out in the market. I’m 25 years old. I’m 22 or however old I am. I don’t know the decision makers. I don’t know the CMO of McDonalds. I don’t hang out with these guys. I can’t get a referral to them. My company doesn’t know them, but I’m charged with going out generating a meeting, getting the sale and getting the client. It’s a brutal process if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Andrew: So what do you do with that?
Bryan: Do with what?
Andrew: If you don’t even know how to get in the door, how did you get in the door? I see here from my notes on your pre-interview conversation with Jeremy Weiss . . .
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: . . . that you sold McDonalds.
Bryan: [??].
Andrew: How big a deal did you get with McDonalds?
Bryan: I think McDonalds was like $150 grand.
Andrew: $150 grand.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: So how did you get a company that you didn’t know their CMO, you didn’t know how to get in the door, how’d you make it happen? Tell me the story behind that if you could.
Bryan: Any time you’re going to approach a new company, you have to understand what motivates the people. So I could cold call them and I could interrupt their day. Maybe they’re at their desk or maybe not. I leave a voice mail and follow up a week later. Essentially, just bug them. It’s not a great way to start off the conversation. I found that cold calling just wasn’t very efficient. Maybe 5% of people would respond to my cold calls or would be there. So I would e-mail them.
But when you’re going to approach any type of new organization, rather than just getting a meeting, because if I pick McDonalds, for example, there’s about 500 people at McDonalds that work in marketing that I could meet with. There’s a mobile guy. There’s a social guy.
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: There’s a local guy. There’s international. There’s Hispanic. There’s media marketing.
Andrew: So you don’t even know who to call, let alone how to get in to them, what do you do?
Bryan: So what you have to do is you have to look at all your past clients and say, “Who is the end decision maker?
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: Who is the guy? There are lots of people who can say no to you. They’ll meet with you and at the end of the meeting, you say, what does your decision making process look like? Alright. That is just a magic question. What does your decision making process look like? I mean, you can’t change those words. They’ll say, well, what do you mean? Then you say, well, like who else is involved? Do you need a contract? What are all the stages? What they’ll say is, well, I have to take this to my boss. That’s the last thing you want, because now you’re empowering somebody to go represent you, sell for you . . .
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: . . . to the person above them. What you need to do is you actually need to target on your e-mail outreach the person above them. The decision maker . . .
Andrew: Right. Uh-huh.
Bryan: . . . whoever that person is. Now you have no leverage when you go into a large organization. So for me, I was talking to the brand manager or the VP of Marketing. Those are the decision makers. If I’m at the agency level, like with Madmen in New York City . . .
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: . . . everyone else is calling on all the agencies, but they have to take it to the client, or this is a new deal. What you need to do is you actually need to go a couple of levels above the decision maker. Actually, I have an image here. You interviewed Neville a few weeks ago. We were actually working on this. Alright. Do you see that?
Andrew: I see it. Yeah, let me see if I can read it. At the top, we see customers. At the bottom, I see interview. Intern, excuse me. Intern on the bottom. All the way up, C-level to customers.
Bryan: So there are always different levels, right? So say I’m trying to get to the director level which is still a great meeting.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: This person is authorized to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Now rather than just write him or a bunch of other people kind of at his level, I’ll go above to the vice-president and then the CMO or even CEO.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: I’ll write multiple people and now I’ll have leverage. And all I’m asking is who is the appropriate person is for me to meet. What happens is they’ll just delegate it. As long as I have a really compelling e-mail and a really compelling message to whoever I’m writing, they’ll delegate it down to somebody else. Because if you’re a CMO or C-level, or VP of anything, you’re not doing what you’re doing because you’re really good at your job. Part of it is you’re good at your job because you’re able to delegate.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: So you want to go not to the guy who you’re going to end up selling, you want to go to the guy above him so then you get an introduction from him to the right person.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: Gotcha.
Bryan: But it’s typically two levels above . . .
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: . . . where you normally are.
Andrew: And then you just send a cold e-mail out?
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: [??]
Andrew: And how effective was it to go to someone who is a few levels above the person you needed to sell to at McDonalds, and send them a cold e-mail out of the blue about something that I’m guessing they’re not used to buying, which is ads in phone calls.
Bryan: Yeah. Yeah. No one’s ever done it or heard of it. But I meet with nine out of ten companies.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: So anytime I target a company, I’m going to actually have a response and meeting 90% of them.
Andrew: Okay. 90%.
Bryan: 90%.
Andrew: That’s some e-mail.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: What do you say in e-mail that gets people to even open it, let alone respond like that?
Bryan: People think the subject line of an e-mail is really important. The subject line isn’t very important, because now you can actually see the first sentence almost into the second sentence in your auto-populate.
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: You need to be really clear, tell them what the entire purpose of the e-mail is in that first sentence.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: And also be really clear with what your call to action is. I’m writing in hopes of finding the appropriate person who handles marketing. In that pursuit, I also wrote to Bob Smith, Jane Summers and Heidi Fasadi.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: If it makes sense to talk to me now (?).
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: I’m telling them I wrote the other people so there’s inherent leverage. It also shows that I did my homework as far as who’s in the organization. I could spend six months trying to navigate McDonald’s and who is the decision maker? Or who are the people I should be talking to. There’s so many nuances that any Fortune 500, or even a company with 100 people in it, and you have to navigate all those levels. Rather than trying to figure it out, do a bunch of research, or have somebody do the research, why don’t I just ask the people who work there who manage those people to point me in the right direction.
Andrew: So you’re not trying to make the sale. You’re not trying to get a meeting. You’re just saying, who is the right person? And I’ve also talked to these other people who you’re familiar with because you’ve probably had lunch with them, seen them on your way into the building, saw them at the picnics. That’s the kind of thing you’re doing.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Referencing people they know and asking for an introduction.
Bryan: Yeah. All you’re asking for is a referral.
Andrew: A referral. That’s it.
Bryan: A referral to the appropriate person. What you put in your e-mail pitch, I call this the deep sea fishing technique. Have you ever been deep sea fishing?
Andrew: Hmm-mm.
Bryan: Have you ever been fishing?
Andrew: Yeah, as a kid.
Bryan: Okay. So when you go fishing like in a stream or a lake, you have like one fishing pole, one line in the water.
Andrew: Yup.
Bryan: So in your e-mail pitch, this is the second paragraph, you actually need to have four to six lines in the water. When I say a line in the water, like deep sea fishing, you have, like, ten, twelve lines in the water that means you can catch more fish.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: Right. You have a higher probability at the boat catching fish. You may not catch the fish. So with four to six sentences, I want to make sure that I cover what the VP cares about, what the CMO cares about, what the manager cares about, and/or the different facets of . . . [SS] . . .
Andrew: In one e-mail, you’re appealing to all of these people and you’re e- mailing all of that at once.
Bryan: There’s a lot of thought that goes into these e-mails. If you Google cold e-mail. Right. You’ll see what people recommend. They’re, like, flatter the person. Tell them you noticed something. I noticed something. That’s a very common website thing . . .
Andrew: Yup.
Bryan: . . . because they can actually see something on the website. Now if you have some sort of technology where you can’t see that . . .
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: . . . there’s an inherent problem with that because they may or may not care about whatever, like, you’re coming out with your big idea, and if it falls flat, you’re done. Maybe they’re interested but most likely you don’t know enough about them. So I’ll have five to six different concepts that we’ll develop in the e-mail pitch, and we’ll also tailor it to the person we’re writing in the company.
Andrew: I want to continue with your story, but let me just understand one more thing about this. It is one e-mail, cc to or with multiple people on the to line?
Bryan: The best bet is for people just to go to breakthroughe-mail.com. And there’s . . .
Andrew: Uh-huh.
Bryan: . . . an e-mail template. It’s like seven pages. I walk through every step of the process. There’s nine steps. But you don’t cc anybody. If you cc everybody, it’s just too easy for them to respond and somebody to say, hey, we’re not interested. Because if you tailor it correctly, like, I wrote Best Buy, and this is one of the first times that I actually saw this . . .
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: . . . really working. And I’m in the bar. I’m in New York City with my buddies, and I had sent out an e-mail earlier that day. And I look in my phone, and I’m kind of like drinking. I’m looking at my phone. I’m going, like, wow, Best Buy wrote me back. And I’m, like, reading the e-mail, Bryan, thanks so much for writing. We see that there are multiple areas where we might be able to use your services. We have a team marketing meeting every week. We’d love it if you could come in and present. I’m looking at the e-mail, there’s seven people cc’d on this e-mail. I had written a couple of the people and I had something like a $35,000 deal within about 35 days.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: I ended up going out to Minneapolis meeting with the company, but it was all off of one e-mail. Go ahead.
Andrew: No, I’m going to come back to more ideas about how to get people to respond to e-mail.
Bryan: Okay.
Andrew: Let’s continue with your story. You’re working at this company, Voodoovox.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: You’re making good sales.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Was this the business where you were doing $20 or $40,000 a month?
Bryan: I was up to $100,000. I was making . . . [SS] . . .
Andrew: $100,000 a month.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: What about, that’s not take-home, that’s gross sales, right?
Bryan: No, that’s my take-home.
Andrew: That’s your, $100,000 a . . .
Bryan: That’s my gross income.
Andrew: How . . .
Bryan: I was making, it started at $20 to $40, and then it was more like $30 to $50 thousand a month.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: My highest earning month was $100,000. I was doing 80% of the sales, and we had five routes.
Andrew: So why leave? Why go and start your own thing?
Bryan: Well, did you start your own thing?
Andrew: I did start my own thing from an early age. Yes.
Bryan: You know, I don’t know if I really believed in the product. I kind of looked at it and I said, all right, I’m making great money. Right. But after a certain point, it’s just a number in your bank account. So you just make more money, make more money, and then what? Right. So I was asking myself that question, and frankly, I just got bored with the whole thing. I mean it wasn’t challenging.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: So I resigned and then I tried to figure stuff out for about a year. I read and I made all this money. So now I just have a new set of problems, I need to learn how to invest. I don’t want to lose this money, I want to invest this money
Andrew: Sorry, to interrupt but why not do it while you were working at this company and bringing in good money? The reason I ask is because I know when I talk to people in my audience, over and over, they ask this question. Many of them are working as developers at good companies, earning good money and they are thinking that maybe they should launch their businesses on the side. Why didn’t you do that?
Bryan: Well, I did at the very end. What I did was I set up a couple partnerships between a couple companies, and I was making a commission. So this is pre-iPhone, app environment and we were doing a lot of ringtone and horoscopes. So I set up a couple deals and I’d read the “Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss. So I set up a couple deals and I was making a dollar every time somebody did a transaction, downloaded these applications.
Andrew: You were an affiliate?
Bryan: I was an affiliate but it was happening about 1,000 times a day.
Andrew: And you were getting traffic how?
Bryan: I would do partnership deals, like joint ventures between two companies. I took a product that I knew would work on an advertising network, I’d bring them the deal and would take a small commission.
Andrew: I see. So this whole year you’re studying, is this whole ringtone business continuing?
Bryan: Right now no, but for that year.
Andrew: For that year it was?
Bryan: Yes, for 18 months. It probably took me 15 hours of work to set up that deal because I knew the players. There was a ramp up period, and then it would be about three hours a week of maintenance and checking stuff out.
Andrew: Who was the partner with that was sending so much traffic continuously that allowed you to generate money to work only a few hours a week?
Bryan: Probably not going to share that today, but good question.
Andrew: So at the end of the year, what do you decide that you’re going to do?
Bryan: I was at a conference, again. Tim Ferriss had an event called Open the Kimono. I was a big reader. I’ve read 600 books on sales, negotiations, psychology and persuasion. I decided I was going to write a book. So I went to this conference and he basically detailed everything that you need to do to make your book a bestseller. When I looked at everything that he did to make his books bestsellers, I said to myself, I’m going to sell a 10$ product and make two to three dollars off each one in a crowed environment, and I don’t consider myself a writer. It just sounded like torture. To be a bestseller to me at the time was more of an ego play than a real reason to write a book.
Andrew: So the Kimono is Open and you said you want no part of that?
Bryan: Yes, Ethan Pagan [SP] was there along with Brendan Bushard {SP] and Jeff Walker. I’d never been exposed to informational marketing. These guys were talking about everything that they’re doing. I know a lot of other sellers and people that I’ve talked to, and they don’t read. They aren’t interested in reading, they find it boring. So why kill myself to write, market and sell a book to people that don’t want it. So that when I created a course on everything I’ve ever learned in these books.
Andrew: The thing that made you decide to create a course was when you realized you knew something no one else did? You heard someone in the audience say they don’t know how to get their foot in the door, and the response that you heard made you decide to do this?
Bryan: Yes, that was a real motivator.
Andrew: What was the response that motivated you?
Bryan: They said they wanted to meet with a publisher, and wanted to know how to set up interviews with important people. They were told to work their network and fake it until they make it. I really respected the guys that were up there but it got me thinking with everything else that they had said, but that was just the normal, boring, not actionable advice.
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: And my other issue with books is always it’s a lot of theory. I want it to give me the blueprint, give me the process, give me what to say, how to do it, and all of the steps. I don’t need to know that I need to dress well and believe in myself.
Andrew: And when you heard this vanilla answer you said, this is just awful…
Bryan: …Yeah I said this is…
Andrew: …I could do better. And now I know how I don’t want to do. The medium I don’t want is books. I’ll create courses the way that these guys, Eben Pagan, Jeff Walker, and Brendon Burchard did.
Bryan: Yeah. It happens a little bit more organically than, like instantly this just happens. Essentially what I did was I just went over. I found the person. There were a couple of people, and they were talking about it, and it’s like hey do you want to learn how to do it. I can actually explain this. This is an issue that I had. But the real motivator in why I’m doing what I’m doing, you know, entrepreneurs are out there taking risks on their business. They have this idea. They take a risk to start a business and create something and go out and find customers.
Now, the issue that a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they’re a developer, they’re some sort of technology person or finance person or whatever, or they have some great idea. But they haven’t a clue on how to sit down with somebody, influence them in a meeting, find out if the deal is going to get done, and get the deal done.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: Or, they don’t have a clue on how to get into these large organizations or even small organizations. If I can be the one that can help them get there and create what they want to create in their business which ultimately is moving the world forward. They have a better way to do something.
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: But they just don’t have the skills because they haven’t spent years and years studying it.
Andrew: So, Jeremy asked you what’s the first step that you took, and you said, I started a Facebook group. Why is that the first step?
Bryan: It’s not necessarily the first step I’d recommend for people, right, but if you’re going to…
Andrew: …Yeah…
Bryan: …create an informational marketing content type business, if you’re going to teach people how to do something you want to scale, then you need to learn how to teach it. What I found when I started talking to people just kind of given. The other thing that happened is that they said that you have to give your best stuff away for free. I had not shared this cold e-mail template. I’d shared it with my brother, because he was having trouble getting his foot in the door. But I hadn’t shared this with anybody. I just started sharing it with people. And what I found is that knowing it and teaching it are two totally different things.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: Because I didn’t have a lot of the issues, or I wasn’t approaching a problem like the sellers, the CEO’s, are right now.
Andrew: But the idea was to get a Facebook group of people who are going to learn from you, teach them so that you can get practice teaching, and then sell them something or find other people who are going to learn?
Bryan: So I would just teach anyone I could find. The Facebook group was a way. We’d created a Facebook group after this conference, so I just kind of raised my hand and said, hey do you want to learn how to. I called it the magic e-mail at that point.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: Now I call it a cold e-mail, because that’s how the customers would describe it, and I just did a webinar. I got on webinar, created a presentation on how to do it, and then just shared it. The first guy I taught was a doctor and he lived in France. Sorry, he lived in Austria. He wanted to reach these pharma companies in Germany and also in, I think, Denmark. He wrote this e-mail. We worked on a few different drafts. His first e-mail he had translated into German. He wrote me back the next day. He had to meet with the CEO. He was overjoyed. He forwarded the e-mail. I couldn’t read it because it was in German, but at that point I knew I was on to something.
Andrew: And you found him through this Open Kimono Event that Tim Ferriss put on?
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: I see. So, Tim just let you and I guess other people promote one thing. You promoted your webinar and maybe your Facebook group, and that’s how you started teach first.
Bryan: Well, the concept of the event was asks and gives. An ask is a request that you have of somebody else or of the network, and a give is if you have a skill, or some sort of insight, or any tickets to an event, or all kinds of stuff. People gave away free flights. We created a community, so that was a give.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: There was no like product at that point. It was just, “Let me teach you guys how to do it if you want to learn how to do this.”
Andrew: I see. Alright. And what did you learn about teaching because you told us that it was tough to teach at first?
Bryan: It wasn’t like the way that I thought about it. It wasn’t the way that the students were CEOs.
Andrew: What do you mean?
Bryan: For people to learn they have to be motivated. To learn the material it has be in a way where it’s based on kind of where they’re at and their knowledge. And I’d always have to put in their terms based on what people wanted to learn.
An example was they didn’t know how to find an e-mail address.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: Right? So the next question was how do I find an e-mail address. It was like, well, what do you mean you don’t know how to find an e-mail address. Well, okay, I have this whole process that had to be distilled, and I was a programmer in college. I went to the University of Arizona, and I was a MIS major. I learn enough about programming to know that I don’t want to do it.
Andrew: But you learned how to find e-mail addresses through programming?
Bryan: No. What I learned is if-then statements.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: If this happens, then do this. If this happens, then do this. And that’s how I approached my entire selling process. If they say this, then do this. From the first step, which is picking the company you want to target, why you want to target it because that’s a really important step to getting the contract.
Andrew: So what is the process for getting an e-mail address? What do you tell someone who doesn’t even know that first step?
Bryan: I recommend Jigsaw.com. It’s a great service. We can actually give this away to the group. We looked every Fortune 1000 e-mail address, and we found the e-mail formats.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: And then we figured out, what are the most common e-mail formats. So it’s like 70 percent of all e-mails are first name, last name, the company e-mail address or it’s with no dot. That is the second most common. No dot is the most common, and I think the fourth most common is like an underscore between. They account for 70 percent, so you can go to Jigsaw, find the name for free. The VP of whatever, the CEO of whatever, you’ll find their name and then you can either go to like PR news releases to find out what their format is. Go to our website and find out what the company is, or you could subscribe and pay for it. I think it’s like a dollar or two dollars.
Andrew: Subscribe to Jigsaw and Jigsaw gives you their contact information.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah. Is Jigsaw positive? They give credits to people who upload their contacts with names and e-mail addresses, and that’s how they get data in. And if you have credits, you can use those to buy e-mail addresses and contact information, or you could just pay cash if you want to do that. Right?
Bryan: Yes. You can trade your contacts, and I have a virtual system. The Philippians do that. For most companies, say advertising, thelist.com. There’s also an advertising database, and those are two subscription services. Egrabber is another service you can use. Any kind of industry, if you’re a lawyer, a screenwriter. Typically, there’s some sort of data provider that has contact information for that vertical specific. When I was out there selling, I would actually subscribe to those services because they saved me time.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: You can’t get it for free.
Andrew: You take the name of the person and then you look around online so you can find some e-mail address at the company, and you use that as the structure for creating your e-mail address.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: Okay. Alright. So that’s the kind of stuff that you needed to learn, the things that you just took for granted were easy assumptions, these people didn’t understand it, and you had to figure it out. How do you learn what they don’t know?
Bryan: I just ask them. I’m very involved in the actual digital training. We have a weekly coaching call. It’s called the 50K Club where I just take every question from the sellers, and we just wok their deals, right? We may have a question that I haven’t seen, or they’ll e-mail me like, “Hey, I’ve got this question. I got this response.” Or “This happened in a meeting. What do I do? I write it down and.
So I’m creating a database of every potential question that people have. There are fundamental errors that people make, and that are just accepted. Like, doing a presentation in an initial meeting, or doing a demo in an initial meeting, I would never do that because I don’t know what you care about. If I’m trying to sell you something, why would I tell you everything that I do without know what it is that you care about?
Andrew: I see. So the first meeting is just to see what I care about, to understand me. The second one is to present a solution based on what I told you my needs are.
Brian: Yeah, what you care about. And the stuff that people miss, is that they miss, actually qualifying you. Do you have money? Are you the decision maker? What we’ll do is we’ll model… Because these are kind of multi- stage complex sales, right? It’s not just like… Most of the sales books or sales techniques, they assume all this other stuff. You are the decision maker, you are the guy, and there’s really no one else involved.
What I have to do is I’m managing three to five to ten people who are involved in this. It could be an IT director, it could be a marketing person, it could be finance people, it could be legal, it could be procurement. And each on has their own agenda. So I need to understand all the people involved and I need to understand what their decision making process is. Once I’ve presented my solution, my widget, my price, my everything, there’s no reason for them to follow up with me. There’s no reason for them to stay in. They have everything that they need, they’re the prize.
Andrew: So Bryan. This is an issue that you can solve for people quickly because you’ve seen it so much. Do you ever get to a place where people are paying you for solutions and you just don’t know the answer to their problem, you don’t know how to solve their issue. What do you do in that case? Especially when it’s on a webinar and everyone who has paid for your service is watching to see how you do.
Bryan: There’s one question that I don’t have an answer for. Honestly. And that was actually a big concern of mine. Like, listen, there are so many people out there selling. Who am I to say that I’ve got the best new way to do it? And it’s really not re-creating the wheel, it’s just taking everything that has worked in the past, testing what actually works, and then creating a process around that. So, the key to answering that question is you have to ask questions to understand what really is their motivation and what really is happening. One of the mistakes people make is they assume… Or they’ll put words into their mouths of the person that they’re talking about, and…
Andrew: Early on, you were talking to the wrong customers at breakthrough e- mail. How did you realize that?
Bryan: So we’re a brand new startup. Like, here’s millions of dollars, go test the model. And, you really don’t know what the customer… You can assume…
Andrew: Did you say millions of dollars, go test the model?
Bryan: Yeah, like we had Venture money.
Andrew: Oh, you’re talking about your previous company add [sp?] Voodoo Box.
Bryan: Oh, OK. Were you talking about Breakthrough or were you talking about, uh…
Andrew: Breakthroughemail. As I understand it, you were starting to talk to people but many of them just didn’t have a big enough pan [sp?], like you were at Yanik’s [sp?] conference, you met a client, had a bunch of money and things were going well, and he wasn’t the right customer for you.
Bryan: Right, so it wasn’t Yanik it was people on Yanik’s list, right? He did a promotion, I met Yanik and just started explaining everything I knew. And he actually created his whole system so he didn’t have to cold call. He hated cold calling. And he was looking for, he was kind of an introvert at the time, and looking for customers without actually having to sell cold- call. So he had this whole [??], I explained it and he’s like oh we’ve got to share this. We shared it, but a lot of the people who have an internet marketing business, they’re not at the stage where they need high valley [sp?] partnerships.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: Right? So if you have something at $50,000 or more, or maybe $20,000 or more, cold e-mailing makes sense. If you have something, let’s say, under that, and you have to find customers, you’re better off doing some sort of partnership where they can promote it, a joint venture.
Andrew: I see. So cold e-mails that lead to cold calls, and the whole process if the sale value is too small, it just doesn’t make sense.
Bryan: Right, it’s just not worth your time. There are better ways, like, I wouldn’t cold e-mail a company to sell a $2,000 online training.
Andrew: OK.
Bryan: Maybe I could find somebody in the Philippines to do it, and the conversions would work. So I can pay them $4.00 an hour and I know however many e-mails that they send. But when you’re cold e-mailing somebody, you don’t know if they have a pain or an issue before you write them. You’ve never met them, so you just don’t know. And you . . . [SS] . . .
Andrew: I see. I see. Okay. And so by talking to people who are saying no to your product, you’re starting to realize who the right people were.
Bryan: The right people were people who have already developed the product . . .
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: . . . and are now in market trying to find customers unless you’re trying to find customers . . .
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: . . . it’s a nice thing to learn. I mean it’s a great skill to learn. You know, how to influence people how to sell. But, it’s not . . .
Andrew: It’s nice to have it’s not urgent.
Bryan: Yeah. I mean if you’re not . . . [SS] . . .
Andrew: What were you selling breakthroughemail for? What was the price for the course?
Bryan: It’s $2,000. There’s a, there’s a . . .
Andrew: $2,000 to go through the whole course.
Bryan: Yeah, there’s a $500 cold e-mailing version, but the whole course is $2,000.
Andrew: Okay. Before we even get to the way you were selling it, how did you know what format the course should take? Should it be videos that are put online? Should it be webinars on a weekly basis or something else? Where did you learn how to set it up so that whatever you know you can teach to people in a repeatable way?
Bryan: I just bought a few courses from people . . .
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: . . . that I respected and just modeled what they’d done.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: So I really . . .
Andrew: Who did you learn from that was the most helpful?
Bryan: You know, I really like Rami Zaki.
Andrew: Uh-huh.
Bryan: I think that he’s just a really bright guy in the way he approaches it. So my assistant actually met with a consultant out here in New York who does that kind of thing. So we sketched out the whole thing, came up with a concept.
Andrew: Who’s the consultant?
Bryan: I can’t remember his name. I could tell you later on. I have a couple of copywriters, a couple of assistants, marketing people. You know what I found was that I could go out and learn all this stuff, but I just have a new set of problems. I have to learn a whole other business, or I can hire people who already know it. [??]
Andrew: So you watched a few people’s course and you saw how are they delivering it?
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: The best one of them was Ramit Sethi. I guess you’re talking about his Earn $1,000 on the Side program?
Bryan: Yeah. He has an earn 1K. He also has another finding your dream job.
Andrew: [??]
Bryan: There’s a lot of people that search how to cold e-mail for a job.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: Right. They’re selling themselves. It’s just a different environment. Same process. I’ve actually helped people cold e-mail for jobs, especially that new grad. But the problem new grads have, and I’m getting off topic, is they don’t know what’s available, and they don’t know what they want.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: It’s hard to help somebody if they don’t know what they want.
Andrew: How did you find the right consultants to help you create your course?
Bryan: I’m constantly doing that. Let’s stick to the referrals.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: So . . .
Andrew: So you’re just asking someone who has a course, hey, who helped you put it together? Who do I hire to do this for me?
Bryan: Yeah, like who, even more specific like I need a great copywriter.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: I need somebody who knows Infusionsoft. I need somebody who knows iMember360 or website development or whatever it is.
Andrew: Gotcha.
Bryan: What do you use? I mean, you just . . .
Andrew: What was . . .
Bryan: Go ahead.
Andrew: What was the hardest person to find? Copywriter, Infusionsoft expert, someone to do the whole course?
Bryan: The copywriter’s tough.
Andrew: Copywriter’s tough.
Bryan: Yeah, because it has to mirror how you communicate, and finding somebody who knows the technical as well as the writing but can be a good voice and provide great input. It’s a tricky nuance to find that person.
Andrew: Who’d you hire?
Bryan: Jason Leister.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: And he’s out of Sedona, Arizona. I think it’s like Leister Marketing Group. L-E-I-S-T-E-R. But he’s a great guy.
Andrew: I’m on your site right now, breakthroughe-mail.com. I won’t hit play, but you’re on camera. How did you learn to be on camera . . .
Bryan: [laughs]
Andrew: . . . and to communicate your sales message in a useful way?
Bryan: You know that’s something that I definitely haven’t perfected. There are lots of things that I can work on. I’m more focused on listening to the customers, really understanding what it is. I haven’t really been marketing the product very much. I’m really more focused on the people that go through the program.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: Making sure that they’re successful.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: Making sure that I understand their issues and they get the answers that they need. And that they get the win.
Andrew: So there’s no consulting company. There’s no one who taught you how to do that on-camera stuff?
Bryan: Do you have anybody you recommend?
Andrew: No, I don’t. The reason that I’m asking is you can get someone who’s a good copywriter to pick up on your voice and to basically channel you in a persuasive way, but once you’re on camera it is just you. Like right now it’s just you and me. There’s nobody who can whisper into your ear anything that would help. It just wouldn’t make sense.
Bryan: You have to understand. I’ve met with 3,500 people. Fifty-year-old grey haired guys that meet with thousands of reps and vendors. I’ve definitely had my understanding people asking questions…
Andrew: I understand when you met with that many people, you mean for sales calls.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: I see. So you’ve gotten to learn how to present your ideas through in-person sales meetings.
Bryan: They aren’t my ideas. No one cares about my ideas in the sales process. It’s about me understanding you, and what you care about, what your issues are, having permission to ask all those questions. You’re more like a therapist or a doctor. If you go into the doctor, what’s one of the first things the doctor says to you?
Andrew: “What hurts?”
Bryan: “What seems to be the problem?”
Andrew: “What seems to be the problem?” Yeah.
Bryan: Right. “What hurts” is more leading. It’s assuming that something hurts. “What seems to be the problem?” He keeps it really open-ended. “How long has it really been a problem?”
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: Because they want to get an understanding. What have you tried to solve it? They want to get an understanding, and it’s the same thing. If you want to go to a therapist and they say, “Andrew, what seems to be the problem?” “Oh well, you know, I’m kind of in a funk. Not feeling that good. My energy level’s not so good.” “Oh, you know, tell me more.” “Oh, well, I really don’t like my job. My girlfriend just left me.” “What else?” “Well, I’m in debt. I haven’t talked to my parents in two years.” You’re peeling back the layers of the core issues. No one’s going to give you the core responses right away.
Andrew: I see. Okay. Let me continue here. The other thing I notice that you do is you constantly look for partnerships. Most people would put the site online, maybe do a blog, hope that someone would come to the site, read the blog and end up buying their course. You got a partnership with Yanik where he was going to promote your stuff. How did you get him to promote your stuff when you were new to this space? When you didn’t have this experience of blogging for years, sending Yanik traffic, sending [SP] Remi traffic, et cetera. How did you just come on and get these people to promote your stuff?
Bryan: This is always the issue. New product. How do I partner? How do I motivate somebody to do what I want to do.
Andrew: Right. Yes.
Bryan: How am I here on this interview?
Andrew: [laughs] Right.
Bryan: How am I here on this interview?
Andrew: I’m going to look and tell you in a moment. While you answer that I’ll look and do a search through my e-mail and tell you the exact process we took here at Mixergy to get you on.
Bryan: It was an e-mail. The short answer is it was an e-mail. It was a referral. Somebody I was talking to knew Yanik. I asked for a referral. He referred me. Yanik said, “Hey, I’ll meet with you for fifteen minutes.” Then it turned into an hour and a half. Then it turned into a half day down in Washington D.C. where we sat down. I could go and reach out to smaller tier affiliates and people and do small deals, or I could just go for it. The key is really just understanding what the other person cares about or getting smart really quick on what you think they might care about.
Andrew: And so what do you think Yanik cared about?
Bryan: Yanik really cares about his [?] lists and his people, and if he can provide value in a different perspective. Something actionable that people can take something away from. That’s what motivates him. He also doesn’t like to cold call. He doesn’t like to do it, and so he’s learning too.
Andrew: He also wants to know that he’s going to make enough money if he’s going to e-mail you out and he’s going to…
Bryan: It’s really not his motivation. That’s what everyone says…
Andrew: …but it’s not that.
Bryan: No.
Andrew: He doesn’t sit down and say, “You know what, if I’m going to be e- mailing this guy’s audience I at least get $50- to $100,000.”
Bryan: No. That was never the conversation. And I met with Eben Pagan. Same thing with him. These guys aren’t doing it because of the click-through rate and CPA. What is the open rate? What does this all have to work out, dollars and cents? They genuinely care about their audience. If something is of really high value and high integrity they’ll do it for free.
Andrew: It’s Sungho Yoo of Skillshare. He and I’d been e-mailing. I said no to something that he asked for. Then he said, hey you know Andrew I think I can help you in a different way. Then he introduced me to you.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Did you ask him for the introduction?
Bryan: Yeah. I did.
Andrew: You did. Okay.
Bryan: Yeah, so at the end of the conversation it’s a way to get a referral. Say there isn’t a deal to be had. Or you’re talking to somebody and at the end of the conversation you side bar it and say, Andrew, based on what you know about me can you think of anyone it might make sense for me to talk to.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: And I’m so glad…
Andrew: …And what was your motivation for getting that with him, getting that introduction?…
Bryan: …The intro? You know, somebody had…
Andrew: …What’s a motivation of being on Mixergy?
Bryan: I had done a Rise to the Top Interview with David Siteman Garland. Somebody at Mixergy, I think it was Jeff, had e-mailed me after. He was like, hey great interview. So, it was kind of on my radar, like what is Mixergy, and it sounds like it’s a great community. I thought, man, there’s got to be a lot of people there that have the issues that they’re trying to get clients and trying to get customers.
Andrew: Sounds like Jeff was probably in our audience, a big fan, who maybe suggested it.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: When you were on David’s interview, how many customers did you get from that?
Bryan: David’s was one of the first interviews that I’d done. He was a referral. I met him at Yanik’s Underground Seminar. I had no idea who the guy was. But he’s a great interviewer, a really fun guy. We just walked through the process. What happened was we did the interview, and a couple of weeks later I was the number one search for cold e-mail on Google.
Andrew: I see, and so that’s the benefit. It’s not so much…
Bryan: …Yeah…
Andrew: …a direct customer that comes in but, yes, I’ve found that too…
Bryan: …So people find me, I’d say a third of my clients are international – Italy, Ukraine, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa, South America, all over the place. That’s the benefit providing that good content. People will search, spend time, and reach out to you.
Andrew: Alright. You also had some issues. It sounds like everything is easy. But, you had some issues, including you told Jeremy the night before you were on the phone with him. Was this the night before? You were up…
Bryan: …Yeah…
Andrew: …until 2:00 a.m. You had a call with a guy in Israel early morning…
Bryan: …yeah.
Andrew: What happened?
Bryan: So, I have a one year old.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: And he was sick. We were in the doctor’s office. I had 50 people in the last group go through the training. It’s like a month long training. What I did was I said, I’ll give everyone a one on one consulting coaching call. I had 40 hours of coaching calls that week. So, I just started getting up earlier and earlier. Part of it is my motivation to really understand how people are doing in the program, and ask questions. The other part of it is I want them to be successful. So, I had three hours of sleep.
Andrew: You’re getting up at 5:30 a.m. on many days. That’s how you’re doing it. Is that a mistake? It sounds a little crazy to talk to all of these people on coaching calls for one hour each.
Bryan: I think that it’s definitely exhausting.
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: So, what do you think? Do you think it’s a mistake?
Andrew: I think early on you have to do that, because that’s how you really get at things that people are never going to tell you in an e-mail, never going to fill out in a form, and you might hear something in the background that they don’t even know it is…
Bryan: …Right…
Andrew: …Like maybe you’re trying to deal with some guy who has sales issues, but you hear him and his wife get into arguments in the background on the phone call. And you realize, okay this guy’s under a lot of pressure, and it’s not just about him not being able to do this stuff I’m teaching him. He just needs to find a way to deal with his wife.
Bryan: Are those your issues?
Andrew: I don’t have that. That’s one issue I don’t have.
Bryan: Okay, got it. Yeah, it’s a stage of the business, and I’m okay with it.
Andrew: That’s what I figured.
Bryan: Right now, because I may actually write a book one day, it’s more important to make sure that the content, because we’re kind of going into an evergreen model, and I really want it to essentially kick ass.
Andrew: And I think you do have to talk to your customers at that stage. By the way I didn’t have that exact situation, but I’ll tell you a situation that I did have.
Bryan: Okay.
Andrew: Early on when I was trying to figure out what to do next there was this guy who was a coach who said he wanted to have lunch with me. He wanted to find out about the internet, and I was curious about what he was up to with his self-improvement coaching. We get to the restaurant, we sit down and suddenly, this woman, angry, opens the door, runs over, starts yelling at him, you want to teach this stuff and how dare you hang up on me. And she’s just ripping into him.
Bryan: Okay.
Andrew: And I started to really understand a lot about what’s going on in his life with that.
Bryan: [laughs] So what was going on in his life?
Andrew: What was going on in his life is that, I think I jumped to conclusions. I think what happened was . . .
Bryan: See this. Okay. Whatever you’re going to say . . .
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: . . . is like a story that you’re creating about him.
Andrew: Totally. And you know what, because of that story, I just didn’t trust anyone who was in any kind of self-help business for a long time because I thought, they’re all like this guy.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: I just didn’t discover that they all have these crazy lives where they didn’t figure anything out, and they’re just trying to lie to everyone else about how they figured it all out and try to sell this solution to everyone else. But they don’t even know it themselves.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: So that’s the story I made up, and that’s the story I attributed to everyone. And if I hadn’t gotten over it, I wouldn’t even be able to sit and focus on your story here because all I’d be thinking is, this guy doesn’t know how to sell. He’s just trying to lie like this guy who had lunch with me.
Bryan: It’s all bull****.
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: [laughs]
Andrew: You ever go through that?
Bryan: Yeah, I think in informational marketing . . .
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: . . . or informational content, it is really hard to figure out who’s who, like who should I actually follow. Whose content is really good. Who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. It seems like there’s an explosion. I’d say in the first year where you’re just trying to figure out how do you create, package and market this type of product? Do you follow Jeff Walker or do you follow Ernie Poshard?[SP] Do you follow Emit Suffee?[SP] Who do you actually pay attention to?
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: There’s so much noise out there.
Andrew: It stinks for me as an interviewer because if I interview someone and I give him a lot of credibility, or treat them like he’s got everything figured out, but others in the industry who are listening know that he’s got nothing figured out, I ruin my credibility. A month ago or so, I had lunch with someone else who’s well-known in this space. He comes across as someone who has everything figured out. He is teaching people how to really live their lives.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: And I think his pants were held together with a safety pin.
Bryan: Hmm. Okay. So he’s a big guy.
Andrew: Not the biggest guy. You wouldn’t be shocked if I told you this. But there are people who are looking at his ads, who are buying his stuff, or looking to him to lead them.
Bryan: Okay. Yeah, he’s a great marketer.
Andrew: He’s an okay marketer. I think there are a lot of people who are just willing to fall for stuff.
Bryan: Okay.
Andrew: Now because of the work that I do, I don’t think it’s in my best interests to call me out. I don’t think it’s in my interest to have him on and to confront him even though I could do it.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: I think it’s just best for me to know it, and not have the guy on and not treat him like he’s got everything figured out.
Bryan: Ultimately, it’s not about me and it’s not about you. It’s about the person who’s here with us listening to this right now. Been participating and what are they going to get out of this whole interview. That’s where my mind’s always at. What’s in it for the person . . .
Andrew: Yes.
Bryan: . . . who’s spending time with us? And how can we provide value? And if they get some value, and if they see value, or they go out and go to breakthroughe-mail.com and download the template. Once somebody sends an e- mail and gets a response and gets a meeting, they’re hooked. Right, it’s like . . .
Andrew: So you just want to just get them some document in their hand that going to teach them something and get them a clear result. And then they want to buy the rest.
Bryan: I want to provide something that’s easy for them to do. You know, there’s no fear of rejection, that they can actually get some sort of result, or some sort of value. If there’s something that we say today that moves their life forward or they’re entertained. However it is. That’s been my goal.
Andrew: You said, when I asked you how to make this a win for you said, hey, let’s give people this cold e-mail template and introduce them to the course. Of course, I could do that by telling them to go to breakthroughe- mail.com.
Bryan: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Then you said something else. You said you can also give them my promotion e-mail.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: I was just going to say, all right, then Bryan’s e-mail address is Bryan, B-R-Y-A-N@breakthroughemail.com. But in the back of my head, I thought, what is this promotional e-mail. Should I ask him privately? Is it okay for me to ask him publicly?
Bryan: [laughs]
Andrew: And then I thought, I’m looking at you now. I feel like you’re okay with me asking you publicly.
Bryan: Yeah, so Bryan . . .
Andrew: What is a promotional e-mail?
Bryan: Yes, so Bryan is spelled B-R-Y-A-N . . .
Andrew: Yes. Is that . . .
Bryan: @breakthrough, breakthroughemail. You said B- . . .
Andrew: Oh, I . . .
Bryan: That’s all right. . . . So . . . [SS] . . .
Andrew: . . . [SS] . . . the way I said it.
Bryan: Bryan with a y. Uh . . .
Andrew: Let me say that again just so the transcribers can get it right. B- R-Y-A-N@breakthroughemail.com. So what is a promotional e-mail? I want to learn about that.
Bryan: I will send e-mails out in an e-mail newsletter where I’ll go through a template, or I’ll go through the bucket technique or whatever, and market the products when they’re available to that e-mail address. You know I have a gmail address. I have an AppMe address. I have a . . .
Andrew: But does that e-mail address go to you or when I e-mail that . . .
Bryan: It goes right to me.
Andrew: And you still get that?
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: But you want to separate the e-mails that you get from people who are interested in buying from the e-mail that you might get from a current customer or your wife?
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: I see. Okay. I thought maybe there was some . . .
Bryan: My wife is on the VIP list . . .
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: . . . on my iPhone. But what happened is now that I’ve been out there teaching people how to do this, they’ll go through the free course or the course or whatever. And they’ll e-mail me, like, hey, what do you think? And I don’t have the time in the day to respond to everybody’s questions. They all have great valid questions, but I’m now kind of taking myself out of the responding to everyone’s questions.
Andrew: So what do you do about that? When someone e-mails you an idea and says, what do you think?
Bryan: So there isn’t a lot of thought that they put into their question. Honestly, they don’t have a specific question. Right. They want me to do a bunch of work . . .
Andrew: Yes.
Bryan: . . . to look at their e-mail. And really, I can’t cover it in an e- mail response because I’ll have more questions.
Andrew: Yeah.
Bryan: Because whatever they wrote is probably going to be a pretty parallel picture to their question. Right.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: Hey, what do you think? And then they essentially copied and pasted part of the e-mail and then their e-mail pitch was, frankly, not very effective or very appealing to the receiver. So I can’t respond. Now I have a course. My whole issue with doing consulting, or one-on-one, is that I don’t want to repeat the same information over and over and over, like you’re an actor in a play. Just doing the same thing over every . . .
Andrew: Yes.
Bryan: And I created something that scaled. So I created the system and I can also charge a lot less, and people can consume it whenever they want.
Andrew: But if someone says, hey, I’ve got this [??] and blah, blah, blah and it might as well be blah, blah, blah when they’re writing that much. And then they say, what do you think? If you say, go buy my course that comes across as jerky.
Bryan: Right.
Andrew: So how do you lead them to something where you’re selling the solution in a much more useful way without insulting them?
Bryan: So we actually wrote an e-mail, spent a couple of hours to essentially say what I just said to you in an e-mail, where, I’d like to respond to everybody. And I think people get it, that people are busy.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Bryan: Right. If you don’t get that, you shouldn’t be cold e-mailing executives. [laughs] You’re going to have a really tough time by going to executives who are just as busy as me. And that’s the mindset you need to have when you’re writing somebody. So if somebody has something to say and a really specific question, or can create some kind of opportunity for me, those are the e-mails that you respond to.
Andrew: Okay.
Bryan: I respond to everything, or I’ll have my assistant respond. And then just let them know what’s available. I go through the course, and there’s a sequence that they need to go through for them to get the results.
Andrew: So if someone e-mails you and asks this question, you have a pre- written response that you send out. One that doesn’t insult them, but also tells them about the program that you’re selling.
Bryan: Yeah. If they have a specific question like, hey, do I cc someone in this e-mail. I’ll say no. Don’t cc them. Write them individually.
Andrew: Gotcha.
Bryan: I respond to those questions, and then I’ll potentially let them know about what else is available. I have three types of clients. One, they’re like a seller. The reason I dropped the price from $2,000 to $500 was because sales reps were out there buying it for themselves. And they’re the ones that have the issue. Two grand was a lot for them to spend.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: Even though you sell a couple of hundred thousand dollar deals, their commission checks could pay for it. So I had the digital course. Then I do consulting. I work with four or five clients a year. And I also do have the doneforyouservices where they’ll say, here are the 50 accounts that I want meetings with and our team will do it for them.
Andrew: And, you guys will write the e-mails?
Bryan: Yeah. So, I’ll have to go in, meet with them, it’s typically like a two day process and then we’ll you know once I understand their environment, you know, once I understand their business we’ll generate and we’ll typically like 5 or 6 e-mails depending on like the different targets that they have.
Andrew: You know, we’re so going over time but there’s so much that I didn’t cover. I’m going to ask one other, about one other section here. I didn’t cover, I don’t even want to say make it, I don’t want to say it ’cause I don’t want it to sound like a teaser. But, there’s so frickin’ much that I didn’t cover here. Maybe we can do two other sections quickly. The first is, you were making 10 times, 10 times your parents made and you didn’t react the way I would react, which is call my dad every time and go, “Hey dad, I made 10 times as much as you sucker.” And then hang up.
Bryan: So, I think you need some therapy on you know the relationship that you have what your dad.
Andrew: You know what actually all kidding aside you know what I did when I got those big, big checks we’re talking about lots of zeros. I would fax them to my dad.
Bryan: Okay.
Andrew: He was using a fax machine at the time. And then I cop-, I scanned them and e-mailed them to him. And then I realized, woo, this is a little bit too much. So I stopped. But, years later…
Bryan: What’s the biggest check you’ve ever received? Like single check?
Andrew: Uh, I don’t know. I probably have it. It’s in the millions but low millions.
Bryan: Wow, that’s great.
Andrew: Yeah. I still have it somewhere and thankfully I showed off to someone else who I worked with and she kept a copy of it so years later when I wanted it for personal like confidence, I was able to e-mail her and she got it to me.
Bryan: It wasn’t a wire transfer?
Andrew: Uh, no for various reasons it was not.
Bryan: Yeah, I met with a VC in New York years ago and he’s was like, you know, “My favorite words are you know what are your wire transfer instructions.”
Andrew: ? write keep I love you to yourself tell me what are your wire transfer instructions.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Actually, I should also say ’cause every time I talk about money I always feel like I feel vulnerable. So, I have to do what I’ve noticed other people say when their feeling vulnerable about money. To say, it’s was just all revenue, it’s not profits, obviously that went to the company, it didn’t go into my pocket, yada, yada, yada.
Bryan: OK. Thanks for that.
Andrew: So, you make 10 times as much as your parents and what do you do?
Bryan: I feel guilty, honestly. My dad’s a landscaper. My ma, it’s actually my dad’s birthday today.
Andrew: K.
Bryan: He did die I think two years ago, but…
Andrew: Sorry to hear that.
Bryan: So, I acknowledge my dad, “Happy Birthday Dad.” And, my mom’s a teacher and I grew up in northern California. And you know I was making a lot more money but I was the same guy. Like I was the same guy trying to figure out all these things representing a company, doing the same thing, it just it all starts clicking together at the time. So, I would go in, do my work, do the things I knew how to do, except they all just worked together well. And, I believed in what it was that I was doing. And, I believed that it would churn. And it did. And then when it churned, it’s like, “Oh my gosh. Like can’t believe this is happening.” I can’t believe it’s actually working.
Andrew: Yes.
Bryan: You know, and then I felt really guilty. So, I you know I got like, I helped my parents out with stuff, we went to Hawaii, I took my dad to the US Open, you know, we went to a big San Francisco Giants baseball fans. We went to those games. And, I started a scholarship at my high school. I started giving money to the people I worked with to…
Andrew: To get rid of the guilt you started giving your money away?
Bryan: Yeah. So, and what happened was I actually starting getting more money in the churn. So, once I could like remove myself from all the emotion, like money is just a currency right. So, if I keep providing more value and you know take all the emotion out of it of like what I’m supposed to make or what I should make or what I shouldn’t make because once you start earning money it can change things. But it’s, I mean, that dollar bill actually doesn’t say or do anything. It’s what’s going on in your head with regard to the money.
Andrew: And so at first it was sabotaging you?
Bryan: Totally.
Andrew: You did. And, when making a lot of money makes you feel guilty and you sabotage yourself what do you do?
Bryan: I mean, for me I just I had to give it away.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: Some of it, some of it, not all of it.
Andrew: So, and then, that’s how you deal with sab-, that’s self-sabotage giving it away?
Bryan: So, if I’m dealing with self-sabotage. Have you ever taken landmark education?
Andrew: No, I’ve got to. I’m really curious about it.
Bryan: So, landmark’s awesome. But, there’s an exercise in landmark that you’ll do, they call it a loss of power exercise. And, what you’ll say is, “What am I pretending about this situation?” I’ll ask myself, “What am I pretending?” I’ll say, “What am I hiding?” Digging down another layer, what am I pretending about the money? What am I hiding about it? What I was hiding is that I felt really guilty. I shouldn’t be making as much money as I was making.
Andrew: I see.
Bryan: I shouldn’t be making this much money, I’m in my 20s. I’m making more than anybody in my company. I shouldn’t be doing this. What’s the impact on me? What’s the impact on the others? You want to know what the cost is for you and what the cost is for other people. I think the final question is … [??] what’s a new possibility. For me it would be I can’t miss a sales call. I need to do what I know I need to do. That’s something I’d recommend now. Frankly, you just need to go to Landmark Education and take the class.
Andrew: I am curious about it. I was just reading a book about Warner Erhard. The guy who created the program that was a precursor to Landmark. Just got really curious about what it was he created that so many people got excited about.
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Now I’m going to take Landmark. All right, that is an interview for him. Hopefully, Warner will do an interview with me some day. Until then, I’m going to focus on you and tell the audience that they should check Breakthroughe-mail.com. If they do … I don’t even think they have to hit play on that video, which is right on the top. They can watch that video and decide for themselves whether you’re good on camera or not.
Bryan: [laughs ] That was one of my earliest interviews. Don’t judge me based on that old video. We haven’t changed it.
Andrew: Right.
Bryan: Just enter your e-mail info, hit enter, and then you’ll get the template right away.
Andrew: Email template that they can copy and paste and use right away?
Bryan: Yeah.
Andrew: The e-mail address is brian@breakthroughemail.com. I would suggest that if someone wants to … I would love one person to e-mail Brian and say, “What do you think of this?” Don’t even need a body on that e-mail and let’s get a copy of that response that he sends people. Who were just …
[laughter]
Bryan: Who would tell them their ideas excessively long and then ask him for his feedback. So, please bryan@breakthroughemail.com or go to Breakthroughemail.com. Bryan, thank you so much for doing this interview. Thank you all for being a part of it.
Bryan: Thanks for inviting me. I hope this is helpful for people.
Andrew: I hope so to, they’ll tell us in the comments.
Bryan: [??] Very good.
Andrew: Cool, see you guys in the comments, I guess.
