Andrew: Three messages before we get started, first you might have noticed that many sites are using video, here it is on SnapEngage, right underneath the free trial button. You might have noticed they’re using video to increase conversions, here it is on Freelancer.com, well what do you do if you want to try video on your site but you don’t have production capabilities in house well you go to Revolution-Productions, that’s the company that created the two videos I showed you and many, many others as you can see on their portfolio site. Go to Reveloution-Productions.com, talk to them about having your custom video created.
Second if you need an online store who do you turn to? Well, of course you turn to Shopify. Well what happens when your friends need stores, the people at Shopify know that if you’re listening to Mixergy you’re the influencer that all your friends turn to when they have questions like what platform should they build their stores on, they are suggesting and I’m suggesting you refer them to Shopify as you take a look at all these beautiful examples of the kind of stores that your friends can create on Shopify, I think you’ll agree that they can have a beautiful store and you know with the Shopify platform they’ll have a platform that’s made to increase sales, Shopify.com.
Finally if you need a lawyer who do you turn to? Well of course I’m going to say Scott Edward Walker of Walker Corporate Law because I’ve been friends with him for years and he’s been sponsoring me for months and months but you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out what Jason Calacanis, Neil Patel and many other entrepreneurs who you trust, they all say the same thing. Scott Edward Walker of Walker Corporate Law is the lawyer you turn to especially if you’re a start up tech entrepreneur, Walker Corporate Law. Here’s your program.
Andrew: Hello everyone, it’s Andrew Warner; I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious up start. How does an injured jock with no start up experience build a multimillion dollar company? Joining me is Lewis Howes, who teaches businesses how to grow their companies with LinkedIn and webinars. He’s also the author of two books on LinkedIn, including “LinkedIn Master Strategies”, Lewis welcome.
Lewis: Thanks so much, Andrew.
Andrew: So do you feel comfortable revealing your revenue here?
Lewis: Sure, yes right now of this year we’ve done, I’d have to check, it’s roughly around $1.7 to $1.8 million in sales right now.
Andrew: $1.7, $1.8 million in sales, what exactly…
Lewis: Yes [??]…
Andrew: … are you selling?
Lewis: Mostly selling information so from my experience which is very limited, the best sell something is information because you can distribute it and ship it very quickly, instantly. Where if it’s a physical products it takes, it may take a couple of days if there’s a lot of extra costs associated with physical products so …
Andrew: What kind of information…
Lewis: … mostly [??]…
Andrew: … are you selling?
Lewis: Mostly, teaching small business owners how to generate more leads, traffic or sales through various online marketing strategies.
Andrew: OK. LinkedIn, webinar specifically, right?
Lewis: LinkedIn and webinar are the main two that have become my bread and butter but we’ve branched out to YouTube, Facebook, Twitters, blogging, all the other, all the other good stuff online, email marketing.
Andrew: And the actual product that a person receives is what?
Lewis: It’s an email or a log in basically a link so they can get a log in [??] to have access to a member’s area with the information. Usually it’s the training mix MP3, cleft notes, transcripts, check lists, things like that.
Andrew: What is it, they get check lists, transcripts … do them get videos and audios too?
Lewis: Videos and audios, yes.
Andrew: OK. Do they have a message board or anything else like that?
Lewis: We do a private Facebook group for people so they can communicate with individuals and we can answer questions, things like that. So…
Andrew: Private Facebook or that’s it and you use, and do membership site, and from what I hear…
Lewis: [??].
Andrew: Sorry?
Lewis: We use Wish Lists as our [??] site provider to post all the information [??] and it’s pretty simple.
Andrew: Really simple, I love Wish Lists, I use WishLists too. Very basic stuff, fair to say that all the software and hard … let’s not say hardware because who knows what kind of computer you’re on, that doesn’t really matter but … all the software involved is under $500 to set this thing up?
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: OK. And it costs from what I, from what one of my researchers said, $500 to sign up to a webinar course?
Lewis: The webinars are free so I get as many people on as I can but the course is, anywhere from a $100 to a $1,000.
Andrew: A hundred dollars to a thousand dollars and the webinars are free, that’s how you bring people in?
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: I meant the course on how to do webinars, you also teach people [??]…
Lewis: The webinar courses are $500, yes.
Andrew: That course is $500, OK. So here’s the thing, I’ve known you for a long time and you’ve done really well, you’ve been very generous with introductions. You introduced me to the founder of ESPN who agreed to do an interview but had all kinds of restrictions that I couldn’t meet and so we didn’t make it happen, but I really appreciate you making that introduction. But something happened. You and I bumped into each other at South by Southwest, at the last one, and suddenly I saw this big smile on your face.
I said, “Who are you doing?” You told me your revenue numbers. It’s kind of cool that people will share their revenue numbers with me. And I said, “What happened?” And you said, “Webinars.” I want to get into the specifics in this interview of where you started and how you progressed, but is it fair to say that… At what point did things turn? At what point did the hockey stick happen in your business?
Lewis: Yeah, so, it was three years ago when I really started doing this online marketing and trying to figure everything out. Four years ago, back in late 2007, I got injured playing football. I was playing arena football. And long story short, I had to have surgery, had to wear a full arm cast from here to here for six months sleeping on my sister’s couch. And during that time, I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have a college education yet. I hadn’t finished my degree. And I really didn’t get any experience in business during college. I just went to school to play sports and chase women, basically. That was my main goals.
But after, when I was injured, I was really left with a lot of time on my hands and I was almost completely desperate. I was like, “What am I going to do now?” And I was put in a position that I was very uncomfortable. I was helpless. I was broke. I didn’t have a place to live. So I was trying to figure out the fastest way I could generate an income, but also leave an impact in some way, and also do something I’m passionate about. I don’t want to just make money to make money. And a mentor of mine said, “You know, you should jump on LinkedIn. There are lots of people getting job opportunities, lots of people building their business.”
So, long story short, I spent about eight hours a day on LinkedIn for the next six months, built up a 35,000 person email list. I had no clue what I was doing with online marketing, affiliate marketing, or anything, creating products. I was clueless. A friend of mine, Joel Comm, who is a New York Times best-selling author, I met him at an event and I told him that I was a LinkedIn guy. I had written a book about LinkedIn. He calls me a couple of weeks later and explains, “You know, I’m doing this four week boot camp on social media and I’m bringing in four experts. I’ve got the expert on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. I don’t know anyone who talks about LinkedIn except for you.
So, I’d love to have you come on, and what I want you to do is, I want you to speak for 60 minutes about LinkedIn and give away some of your tips, your training. Just give it all away. And at the end, you need to create a product that you can sell and I’m going to take an affiliate commission, which will be 50%.” I said, “OK, cool.” I had no clue how to create a sales page, how to set up a shopping cart, how to collect payments. I didn’t know how to create a product. I didn’t even know what that meant. So I asked some friends. I got some great advice from some people who helped me out. Created, basically, a sales page that I could collect payments via PayPal. And I didn’t create a product. What I sold was a $150 3-hour training on LinkedIn, so a live three hour training or something like that.
And so, I gave this presentation over a webinar, and I was still very young at presenting, speaking in front of an audience. There was, like 700 people on or 500 people on or something like that. So, I was very nervous and shaky at first. About 15 or 20 minutes into the webinar I started to get into my groove because I was talking about the LinkedIn content and I knew the information like the back of my hand. At the end of the webinar, I was like, “Cool, that’s it guys. Hopefully, you enjoyed it. By the way, I’ve got this thing if you want to check it out. There’s some weird link you can go to and find the PayPal button on the page and download if you want to.” And Joel helped me pitch it more, but I was really just nervous about what I was supposed to do. I had no clue.
I had horrible looking PowerPoint slides, but at least I knew my content and the passion came through in my voice. And I remember, I was so nervous and sweaty. I had to take my shirt off because I was drenched. I was at my brother’s house and right after, I was too scared to close down the webinar because I thought I was going to break something. I really don’t know anything about the technical side of things. I checked my PayPal account and there was $6500 in there ten minutes after the webinar.
Now, as a guy who had never made any money, except for as a bouncer and a truck driver between summers, from professional football and college football, I was floored. I was freaking out. I was running around the house. I was playing with the dog. I was doing whatever I could to just get my excitement out. And it was at that moment when I realized I could do this every single day. I could do a 60-minute presentation on LinkedIn every day if I was going to make $6500. Granted I had to give half of that away, but over $3000 was still a lot for me for an hour’s work. So, at that moment I said, “This is what I’m going to do for as long as I can do it, just run webinars.”
Andrew: And essentially, Lewis, is that what you’ve been doing? You’ve been just repeating and improving that process over time?
Lewis: That’s a lot. I’ve done, the last two years, in over 500 live webinars, probably another 300 automated webinars. My business partner and I have just been tweaking and testing, optimizing the format for webinars, the structure, between different softwares. I’m a big fan of GoToWebinar; I use them religiously.
The process from the sign-up page to the copy, just optimizing everything by persuading people to sign up, to stay on long-run webinars, giving them more reasons to buy. It’s all I’ve been working on for the last couple years.
Andrew: Let me break down what happened so far. Actually, let me ask you this. I believe you and I talked maybe a year ago about you doing an interview here, and I believe, with apologies, that I said it didn’t make sense.
Do you remember that? I do.
Lewis: Right.
Andrew: It was over a year ago, and the reason I said no was because I didn’t feel that the business was big enough at the time. It must have been a year and a half, maybe two years ago. The second thing is, I said there is no business to be done in LinkedIn.
Now, here I am, a guy who’s talking to entrepreneurs all the time, and I keep allowing myself to be surprised by where the revenue is, because there’s revenue in business and markets that you never would have expected. I remember reading once in the Fortune 100 list, there’s a guy who made a billion dollars selling recycled tin.
I’m open to different things, and still, I didn’t recognize the value in LinkedIn. You’re a guy from nowhere. You saw LinkedIn, you saw what I, who should have been so smart, was too dopey to see. What was it about LinkedIn that made you say, this is where I’m going to establish my beachhead? This is where I’m going to get into business?
Lewis: That’s a good question. I think a lot of it had to do with timing.
I was a Facebook guy; I was possibly one of the first million people on Facebook. I’m not sure if I was or not, but I remember in college when it came out, when it was just for .edu email addresses, our college was announced and it was a big deal.
When I first got on LinkedIn, because my business mentor told me to check it out, I was confused, I had no clue what to [??]. I was so used to the Facebook structure and layout and format that I was like, I have no clue how to use this. I was very confused. It looked clunky to me at the time; this was [??] years ago.
But I had all the time in the world, and I spent the first month on there . . . I saw the success early on, just being able to reach out to big decision makers in the sports industry and get them to respond to me. I was just getting people to respond to me, get on a phone call, meet face to face, and I was like man, there’s something to LinkedIn.
Andrew: What were you trying to do with them on LinkedIn?
Lewis: At first, I was like, how can I get a job in the sports industry, or how can I reconnect with scouts and coaches? I thought I was going to get healed up and be able to come back and play, so I was reaching out to every scout and coach in the NFL and the Arena Football League to try to build those relationships.
That’s why my first thing I wanted to do is build this amazing network, scouts and coaches. Then, as each month continued on, I continued to wear the cast, I got more and more realistic that I wasn’t going to play again. I said you know what? I’ve built up this good sports network; why don’t I continue to grow and see if I can get a job in the industry, maybe work for a team or agency?
I pretty much got to the point where I could reach out to any major sports professional executive at any company and get them to at least respond with a yes or no or something. I became really good at optimizing how to reach out to people, and that’s kind of how it started.
Andrew: You also said that you had a 3,500 . . .
Lewis: 35,000.
Andrew: 35,000?
Lewis: Yes. 35,000.
Andrew: 35,000 people whose email addresses you had through LinkedIn because when you, as you showed us . . . you did a course on Mixergy that’s, got to tell you, one of the best courses. You were so free.
Even as people heard you tell your story of where you started out, I’m sure they must have said, ‘This is a guy who’s pro. This is a guy whose story we can listen to the way we might listen to a radio broadcast or a TV broadcast.’
So you did a course on this, and one of the things that you taught us was, if you friend or connect with someone on LinkedIn, you get their email address and you could export it into your own list. You showed us how you could stay in touch and export it.
How do you get to 35,000 when you’re just getting started, before you go to Joel Comm’s conference?
Lewis: Again, I had a lot of time. Eight hours a day, connecting one by one. I built up ten different groups, and a lot of these groups have over 10,000 members each. At the time, I was directing them all to different [??]. I was getting their email addresses a number of different ways; I was sending them my news letter to opt in.
I was getting a lot of people to opt in by building these communities, and I had all the time in the world to do it. I’m not saying it’s easy to replicate exactly what I’ve done. LinkedIn’s changed some things. That’s four years ago, but I was really able to leverage it at the right time to build something, but again I have no clue what to do with it. I just have this list for about a year, a year and half and I never sold them anything. I had no clue what I was doing.
Andrew: And this was before Joel’s [sounds like] conference?
Lewis: Before Joel, before I met Joel Tom [sounds like]. It was [??] conference. He was there, we met and I did the webinar after that, but it was after that, when I did this webinar with him and made this $6,500, I said, ‘You know what, I can sell them my LinkedIn services or training or something’ and if I can figure this online marketing world then I can really build a business from this, not just having some side money coming in but really build a business around the exact lifestyle I want to live.
Andrew: Let me take a step away from the narrative here for a moment and ask you a question I’ve been curious about. Why aren’t you resentful? Why haven’t you been resentful towards me? I turned you down for an interview, right? I didn’t see the value in all at what you were doing. This goes against the heart of what you are about and who you are as an entrepreneur and we’ve talked so many times since then and you’ve never shown even the slightest bit of resentment. You’ve always been back, very generous with me and very considerate. Why? How?
Lewis: That’s a good question. I think you’re too much of a like able guy for me to resent you. Even if you turn me down, but I’m a big believer in giving abundantly. I think in the last few years, the only think I could do when I first started out on LinkedIn. I didn’t have anything to give people. I didn’t have, you know, a business or anything really. The only thing I have is relationships. I was building up this great network and I had access to these great people and I could give my time. So I could listen to people and ask questions and I think that’s a very valuable asset to be able to give is your time to listen to people share their story.
I was never resentful because I knew that if I continued to give to you and continue to make introductions and just try to be your friend. Then even if you never interviewed me, it wouldn’t matter. It would always come back just by giving.
Andrew: I’m speechless here. I hope I will get a chance to give back. You really have been incredibly generous. OK. So back to the story. You did know to collect opt-ins, to not just get people to connect with you on LinkedIn, but to actually get them to come to a landing page and you understood email. What were you trying to do there before you even had a product to sell?
Lewis: You know, I started this sports marketing website because I was like, ‘I’ve got this great network of sports professionals.’ So let me get them on my newsletter. I’ll start mailing them once a week. I still never sent them anything. My goal was just to be able to communicate with them once a week and I was hosting a lot of networking events around the country. I did some outside the country and in the US as well. First two years I ran 20 different networking events with 300 to 500 people that would show up. So my initial goal was saying, ‘How can I give back to this audience of people that I’ve brought on my list?’
And I started promoting these live networking events and help them meet in person. LinkedIn’s great for networking online, but we all know the real value comes from when you meet people face to face. So set this as my goal. To get everyone to connect who are in my network and I did that early on. I was making a few thousand dollars every event, just from like the door fees and selling books and sponsorships, but it wasn’t really anything to write home about. I realized that if I can promote something and get this many people to show up to a live event, what would I be able to do if I could promote this and get them to a virtual webinar?
Andrew: See where you’re getting more people in there.
Lewis: Yeah.
Andrew: All right. What else do we have? Joel Comm’s Conference comes on. It’s an online conference.
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: You and a series of other people basically do webinars. At the end of your webinar you pitch. You pitch nervously is essentially a link to a PayPal order form where people pay and they get access to what they’re paying for, which is just a live conference with you?
Lewis: Yeah they don’t even get anything right then. Like the next week I delivered a three hour live training.
Andrew: And they all had to be there on time in order to see it?
Lewis: I recorded it so they got access to it if they couldn’t make it, but a lot of people there, yeah.
Andrew: OK. Now if you gave so much for free at that webinar. I’m assuming it was a free webinar, right, that Joel put together?
Lewis: Yeah.
Andrew: If you gave so much for free, how did you know what to give away for free and what to make available for paid customers only?
Lewis: You know, I was so clueless about what I was supposed to do. I just decided beforehand that there was other influential speakers, in social media, who were talking on the four week boot camp. The other three speakers, I was basically an unknown. I said, “I need to give the best content on all four of these presentations.” Because I really want to make a statement about my information. So I said I’m going to give away my best insights, my best tips, to blow the competition away so that everyone remembers my name, my presentation. I want them to email Joel and say, “That was the best presentation of the entire boot camp.” I wanted everyone to just reply to Joel and say, thanks for bringing Lewis on, you need to bring him back on for Rob, too.
That’s been my goal for everyone. To blow every person away that brings me on as a (??) artist to do that, because if I can make them the champion of their audience, the champion of their list, by over delivering content and giving them real actionable tips to give them results, then that’s going to make their audience love them more, open their e-mails more, buy more products. And if it results back to me being a part of that, then that’s a good thing and I added a value to that in this lecture of influential persons.
Andrew: You said that before you did the course on Mixer GT. You said Andrew I want to be the best course leader you’ve ever had.
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: I want to understand the mindset that goes into saying that, because I think for a lot of people to say that would add more, would make them feel more nervous, would make them feel more insecure. But for you it seemed to just say, I’m, you were making a statement that helped you. Tell me about the mindset that goes into this.
Lewis: I think a lot of people in business are weak-minded, to be honest. And I’d be the first to say that I’m very ignorant when it comes to business practices and principals. I’ve learned it all on my own over the last few years, I didn’t have any education on it. So I’m very ignorant when it comes to a lot of things. One thing I’m good at, a couple of things I am good at, is building relationships and getting people to take action. That’s what I’m good at and I know my content and I know my information. So presenting my information I feel 100% confident about.
There is no one in the world who knows more about LinkedIn for business than I do, and I can go head to head, debate on anyone with this topic at anytime, it doesn’t matter. I will beat them out and get more value. So one, I have the confidence because I know my information. But I also know what I’m weak at. I know that I’m extremely ignorant and weak at a number of things. So I bring other people in who can help with that.
The second part of the mindset is, just for me, the more I can give value to people, the more it’s going to benefit them.
Andrew: Doesn’t it make you nervous though. Doesn’t it make you say, holy crap, now if Andrew already knows this stuff because he took one of my Webinars. I’m going to have to look at him as we do the course here together and I’m going to look like a putz for having said that this is going to be the best one. Or what if my internet connection goes down, or if maybe I stumble or. You don’t think about that.
Lewis: I don’t know. If you don’t take any big risks.
Andrew: How do you get to that kind of mindset where you can actually stand up and call your shot and feel confident about it?
Lewis: Because if I’m not going big every time, then I’m just average like everyone else.
Andrew: Does that come from maybe your sports background? We’re talking about even, you’re saying to Joel Com, a guy who had to tell you to create a product. A guy who had to tell you about affiliate programs. A guy who had to say, I’m going to get you started and you’re saying to him, thanks for getting me started, now I’m going to be the best you ever saw. That comes from somewhere. There are people that have been in business, I’ve talked to entrepreneurs who have an incredible track record and after the interviews they’ll actually say to me, Andrew I still don’t know, I’m still unsure.
In fact, let me tell you this. I won’t say the guys name but I did an interview with an entrepreneur, he came across very confident, like really strong. And at the end of the interview my editor forgot to clip out what we said after the goodbye and he left in the section where the guy goes, how did I do, I’m not sure I did very well. I am always so nervous about these interviews. I’m sure he’s very confident in general but he still even has these expressions of insecurity. So where does yours come from? I want to give some of that to my audience, in addition to sharing your story. And we’ll go back to the narrative in a moment.
Lewis: You know, well, it probably comes from an early age. In third grade, if you want to hear the real story, not too many people know this. In third grade I was like six foot two, you know in third grade, 180 lbs, and really skinny, and huge ears, and really ugly duckling. And I was very insecure as a child when it came to friendships because everyone made fun of me, so I was always trying to get these friendships. And there was one day during recess on the gym at school, we have a class dodge ball game. So usually everyone goes out and they go on the jungle gym, or swings or whatever. They play by themselves, four square, tetherball. And I always thought I was a really good athlete, I was always…
We do a team thing, so we ended up doing a team game on the recess and the teacher picked two captains. So it was like two of the popular guys or whatever, right? And I remember thinking that I was like, of course I’m one of the best athletes in our class, of course I’m going to help the team win. And I thought they were going to pick me first. But they ended up going through all the other guys, and I was the last guy to be picked. I thought they were going to pick me, and then they went through all the girls in my class, picked all the girls, and I ended up being the last person picked from the entire class, boys and girls. I remember feeling so low at that moment. Again, in third grade, I was very dramatic, obviously, but I remember feeling so depressed and so low. I said after that moment, “I will never get picked last ever again, in any sporting event, ever in my life.”
Every day after that, I was at the gym until about 10 pm every night playing basketball, working out, and running. I did whatever I could to not get picked last. I do not know if that plays into anything, but I have always wanted to be the best in the world at what I do, and since that moment, through high school football, basketball, track and field to being a two-sport All-American playing professional football, I was just always very driven to be number one. It did not matter what it was; I just wanted to be number one.
Andrew: I see. Alright, I can see how that plays into it, and as you are doing better and better at sports, you are getting that positive reinforcement.
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: You realizing, “Hey, this attitude and this work ethic is giving me the results that I need. I will just keep at that.”
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: It keeps reinforcing it. Alright, one more thing. You mentioned a business partner. At what point did you get a business partner?
Lewis: I got a business partner shortly after the Joel Comm webinar. I was doing some of the webinars by myself. Actually, I had done a webinar with Joel, and then after that I was just kind of back creating this LinkedIn product, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to resell the product that I had created and things like that, so I was still kind of clueless as to what I was going to do.
A friend of mine, a local guy who was a Twitter expert–created a Twitter ebook and some courses, was just starting out about the same time I did. This was probably two months after, he said, “Why don’t we do a webinar together and try this out together? We will sell our ebooks together; we will package it for fifty or one hundred bucks; we will try to make five hundred dollars each or something; and we will try to get a bunch of people on. We both promoted this webinar–he had a list and I had a list–we both promoted it.
We ended up having 1300 people register for the webinar the night before, and he had a mentor at the time–kind of an online marketing coach at the time–and we told him we had 1300 people registered. The guy said, “You have that many people registered? Not many people in the world, for marketers online, can get that many people and just have a normal list.” He said, “You need to offer them something of higher value–of higher price point. You have a hundred-dollar price point right now. You need to offer them something that is a five-hundred dollar price point, at least, if not a thousand, because people are going to want to buy it.”
We were thinking, “We have no clue what we are going to do.” We basically pieced together in the last few hours a training course–a six-week boot camp–that we sold for five hundred dollars. We had a ninety-nine dollar option and a five hundred dollar option. It is a good thing we did, because we would have made a lot less money, but we ended up closing the webinar again–same type of story. We had a details page–I remember my business partner, Sean Larkin is his name. He was still [inaudible] while the webinar started. I was talking on the webinar. We had three slides with janky bullet points. We were going from slide to live training on the internet. He was on another computer next to me trying to figure out how to [inaudible].
Andrew: Trying to figure out how to do what? Sorry, the connection was going in and out.
Lewis: He was trying to set up the sales page and put in the PayPal code for getting a checkout and just getting the page ready. We still did not have the page ready. It was that unprepared. I remember freaking out. I am sweating. I am sure of this again, because I am already sweaty. He is over here freaking out. We are in this basement, like in a dungeon. It is in the dark, right? Water is dripping down because it just rained the night before. He is typing feverishly away, trying to get this thing set up–this page set up.
I am presenting and also saying, “Hey, Sean is here. We are going to give you guys great content.” We are ten minutes late. It is horrible. We are just messing up left and right, but we get into the groove and we give our content–over deliver it–we give so much great value. At the end we offer our two courses, the ninety-nine and the four ninety-nine, and we shut down the webinar. We check our email, or check the PayPal or whatever, and there was $12,500 in the bank account right after that, and we are screaming. We are jumping up and down hugging each other. He had a one-year-old at the time. I remember hearing his one-year-old start screaming because she had woken up from her nap.
It was craziness, but it was as if, again, at that moment, I was thinking, “Man, if I could just do $500 on my own, $12,500 with a partner, with us messing up the whole time and not even being prepared–what if we had our act together, and what if we really created a great system and learned this better?” so we started doing webinars every week after that. We said, “Let’s partner together and just start doing webinars together,” and eventually formed a company a few months later, and it has really taken off now. Last year, we did around half a million sales, and this year we have done 1.7 or 1.8, and our goal is to get 2.4 this year and then just continue to grow it.
Andrew: Wow. I want to understand more about this. You told me what did not work about
it, that you guys did not have the PayPal button ready to go for people to buy until some point during the session.
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: You told me how you only had three PowerPoint slides…
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: …And the web. You were shirtless, so I assume you did not even have video, the way that you do now.
Lewis: No, never video.
Andrew: Never video. What did work about it? Don’t just leave it at high-level, we had great content.
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: Be specific so that we understand the key elements that made it work, so if someone on the outside is just kind of cribbing off of you…
Lewis: Sure.
Andrew: … and saying, “I want to do something similar,” they will know what those key parts are that if they get those right everything else can go to pot.
Lewis: You know what I think really worked well was the fact that Sean and I had this banter. We were making jokes and we were laughing, kidding around, but we were also just engaging with as many individuals on the webinar as possible. [??] webinar you can see the people’s names on the right-hand side, and we were reaching out. We were asking questions. We were being honest. We were not trying to be too professional–button-up, tie–like this is a structure and a format. It was really more like relaxed conversation, perhaps. I am trying to make people feel as comfortable and entertaining as possible.
The goal of keeping people on a webinar for any amount of time, whether it is ten minutes or sixty minutes, is entertainment. You need to make it seem like they are watching a movie, commercial, TV show, or something, to keep them hooked, because it really is kind of a long commercial. It is like an infomercial in a sense–where you are giving them some tips, some
trainings, value, there are some testimonials–but you have to keep them engaged.
No matter when they come in–if they come in ten minutes prior to the webinar starting, right on time, thirty minutes late, because not everyone joins right away when they hear you introduction or your agenda– you have to assume, if someone comes on at any time, how are you going to hook them and entertain them to listen to the next sentence or wait for the next slide. We were just so engaged with each other and the audience, making people laugh. We would say jokes, and we would see comments of people saying, “Ha ha ha,” laughing out loud, basically, in the comments.
They were so interactive with us, but I think that banter and that relationship that we had really helped capture people. It is amazing why I believe this works because we would do a few webinars every week or every month, or whatever it was in the beginning, and I remember a year and a half later, a woman had bought our course–the same course that we had been selling and promoting for over a year and a half–and she emailed me saying, “Lewis, I was on your very first webinar, and I joined every single webinar you had ever since then, and I realized that every time I jumped on, I would take lots of notes and I would learn something new.
However, I knew it was basically the same presentation, you always added a new element and taught me something new, and I wasn’t ready to buy the first time. I wasn’t ready to buy the last fifteen times, but it was something you said specific in this one that made me think, ‘You know what, now is the right time for me to sign up for this training,’ and I signed up and bought.” To get someone to come back on all your webinars is really tough, especially if you talk about the same thing, so being entertaining alone I think helped more people want to come back and listen to more.
Andrew: Alright, I need to break this down so I fully understand this. If you saw my head down earlier, it is not because you lost me. It is because you actually had my interest excessively. I started to write down notes so I would not forget it. I want to understand–you said one of the key elements was being relaxed, and at the same time earlier you said you were sweating buckets. You had to take your shirt off.
Lewis: Yes.
Andrew: When you are under that kind of pressure, how do you come across as relaxed?
Lewis: I probably did not sound too relaxed the first few times, but I think cracking some jokes and having someone else next to me relieved the tension because we could kind of laugh, [??], small talk for a while, and kind of interact. It is not easy for me. I think it takes a lot of practice, to be honest, so just repetition and practice. Being prepared, you become much more relaxed. Now I know content back and forth. I can set up a webinar any time and do it and just get on with it, not back up so much.
After the first few, we said, “If we could opt-in just a little bit, we could make double or triple the amount of sales, if we just knew what we were doing, not just shadowing up. If we knew what we were doing, we could double or triple sales. We could make fifty grand a webinar,” so we studied religiously every webinar course. We hired people. We had mentors who had done webinars before, and I remember practicing. We would do run-throughs for days before a big webinar, where we would go through exactly each thing, “If this goes wrong, here is what we do,” so just like I would in a sports team, we would practice religiously every situation, every play. We would have every slide printed off, and I knew what I was going to say next. I knew what was coming three slides away, so we could see things.
I was so prepared, and this is what I am telling you. In football, I would visualize before a [??], we would walk the field and I would run through every play in my head as a wide receiver, I would walk through every scenario on either side of the field, in the red zone, at the 50 yard line, [??] in the red zone on our end, and I would run through what play they would [??]. And I would walk it through and also walk it through my head myself, catching it, tucking it, and running for a touchdown every single time. So, if I wasn’t scoring on every single play and imagining that, then it would never happen. I wouldn’t be able to believe it and make it happen. So I transferred that same type of mindset where I would visualize beforehand every play in my head and then reapplied that to the webinar model.
Andrew: One of the things that Tim Ferriss told me is that if he were doing interviews like I were he would anticipate and know how to handle every issue as it came up because the problems that come up in interviews come up frequently, you know? What I’m wondering for you is, how did you do that? What kind of things did you anticipate? What kind of things did you have an if-then solution for?
Lewis: You know, a lot of the things I didn’t know about was webinar software. There’s not one perfect webinar solution out there. That’s the first thing.
Andrew: Can we agree that the worst is WebEx?
Lewis: Probably, yeah.
Andrew: [??] WebEx charge is a ton. I don’t know how many thousands of dollars they have from me. I paid them only because I thought they were the number one. I’m going to go on a little rant here. I never rip into anyone, but WebEx deserves it. Thousands of dollars, I think to cancel I had to send them a fax. I had to figure out how to get a fax in the 21st century out to them. OK, you’re saying when you have an if-then scenario set up… stay away from WebEx guys, seriously.
Lewis: Right.
Andrew: You have an if-then scenario set up for them, what you do is you say, “If this software breaks down, what do we do?” So, give me an example of an if-then.
Lewis: One of the worst situations, you know, probably about six months after I did this webinar with Joel, I had figured out kind of the online and affiliate marketing game and I said, “Joel, I’d love for you to come on and I’d love to repay the favor, bring you on to share some of the content to some of my clients and sell one of your products [xx] affiliated”. We have, like 800 people on live and the webinar is starting and no one can hear Joel. I do this amazing introduction. I have written down this perfect intro, I blow Joel out of the water with this introduction. I’m like, “Go ahead and take it away, Joel”. And then crickets. I’m like, “Oh, shit”. You know?
Like, what do I do now? And this is when I was unprepared, right? I [??] the technology. And so, after this moment, basically for the next 10 minutes we were trying to get Joel on the phone to have him call in and we trying to have the phone into the mic, trying to do everything and we just realized we couldn’t get him on. No matter what happened, we couldn’t get him on for the next 15 minutes. So we said, “We apologize guys. We’re going to follow up via email and we’ll re-set up the webinar for another week”. And it did work, but I think making those mistakes early I learned, OK, now if the audio goes out, have a detailed plan of letting the people know before hand. If this happens, you’re going to call this number, you’re going to call in, we’re going to have it set up. We always get on early to check the audio, check the video settings. So there are a lot of things you can do to prepare now.
Andrew. Ah, I see. So you say to yourself, “Worst case, the phones are always going to work. We have a backup phone number always set up”. People in the audience know they can dial in or you know they can. And I guess what you could also do for the slides is, tell them on the web, “Go to whatever website to see the slides”.
Lewis: Right.
Andrew: Is that what you do?
Lewis: Yeah.
Andrew: I see. So that’s the kind of thinking that you have. OK, here’s what else I noted earlier. You say talking to the people in the webinar helped. That if you say, “Hey Steve Johnson” and “Hey Mary” and if you say someone’s name, they feel a connection. This is real, it’s in real time, we’re having a conversation. It makes them feel a little special.
Lewis: Yeah, 10 minutes before the webinar, I try to hop on at least 10 minutes, and there’s a few hundred people usually on early. And I’ll just reach out and say, “Hey everyone, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate each and every one of you coming on and taking the time out of your day. And I’d love for you to type in on the go-to webinar control panel. You’re going to type in where in the world you are right now so I can get a sense of where everyone is.” And when they type in [xx] or Sweden…
Andrew: When they type in, sorry, the connection here is bad. I’ve got to have a backup for that. Sorry when they type in…
Lewis: Sorry, when they type in their city, like “Dallas” or “I’m in L.A.” or wherever it may be. I’ll say, “Oh Sally, from L.A., thanks so much for coming on”. “James from Dallas, thanks so much for coming on”. I’ll just say some people’s names. Sometimes there’s a few hundred, so I can only say 20 or 30. But, I’ll say as many people’s names as I can in the first few minutes. And I’ll just reiterate how much I really appreciate them coming out. I try to talk to them like I would face-to-face. “I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come on. It means a lot and we’re going to promise you the best webinar of your life.” So I continue to promise them. “We’re going to over-deliver value. It’s going to be the best training you’ve ever received.” Because you’re only as good as your last game. That’s in the sports world. You’re only as good as your last game, so if you cannot top it, not good.
Andrew: Entertainment. You said you have to be entertaining. I have the timeline, I have you’re history, I don’t see anything in here that says ‘This is guy who has been trained to entertain.’ I see this as a guy 2004-2005 sports industry financial rep, I see a lot of PR and professional wide receiver 2007-2008. A lot of sports, but nothing about entertainment. Where do you learn how to entertain people? I still don’t know how to entertain people, I’ve given up on entertaining.
Lewis: I think I would say I was an athletic artist on the football field. I was creative in the sense that I was able to improvise on the field. Whenever I catch a ball it’s my time to improvise. There’s not just a straight line to the end zone. There are huge line backers and defensive backs trying to break your ribs, which happened to me twice, trying to take your head off, strip the ball. So how can you improvise if you can stand and make moves to really get to the end goal, the end zone? I think having that kind of format on a big stage playing in front of thousands of people, feeling comfortable and confident improvising has allowed be to translate that aspect as well. I wouldn’t say I’m great at entertaining either, but I think we learn how to inject entertainment into the slides.
So in the slides, early on, we try to add some humor. Whether we’re talking about something serious as when we are about to present the next slide and it’s a big funny comment or joke, or a funny picture of one of us, or whatever it may be, we try to add humor throughout the slides because as we keep people smiling, it breaks down their guard and their barriers and interest to buy your product. They just feel more connected to you on a human level and feel like you’re just a real person like them, like everyone else.
Andrew: I know comedians often will have a joke that they keep in their back pocket in case their suffering, that they know will do well. What’s one of yours?
Lewis: The most recent one, we have a YouTube webinar that we’ve been producing, a YouTube product as well, as so we’ll give 60 minutes of training on YouTube, marketing for business on how to get more views and traffic on YouTube and we published a guy named Tim Ferriss, who is the number one YouTube marketing expert in the world of business. In the introduction I choose him and he talks about YouTube: let’s diffuse the big elephant in the room with YouTube. Everyone thinks about viral videos, they think they have to be the Justin Biebers, or the ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ videos in order to get millions of views. Well, you don’t have to be like ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’. He’s got a big picture of ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ and then he says, but you do have to be like, ‘Lewis Bit My Finger’, and then he’s got a picture of me with my big head over the place of Charlie biting another kid’s finger, and so it’s just like a fun little image and a break-up of the concept to get people to laugh and be amused.
Andrew: I see.
Lewis: It’s fun like that, silly, lame, whatever, but it breaks the mindset.
Andrew: for the people listening to the MP3 or reading the transcript, the book ‘The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs’ is great. I thought it would be a novelty book but the book was so good I had to have the author in here to talk about it. He says that Steve Jobs every 10 minutes will break up his presentation with something like a video, or a special guest on stage. You do the same thing?
Lewis: Yes. I studied that book and I’ve applied all of those principles to my webinars. The more you can break it up, because if you just get on a rant for 30 minutes, people will start dropping off. You’ll see the numbers drop off when you go to a webinar. It shows you also the percentage of people who are on the screen or have moved off to something else. We will add a poll throughout the presentation. We’ll have people say Go to a poll right now. Click A, B, C, or D and vote for you answer,’ so we get instant feedback. We’ll play videos, we’ll ask questions, we’ll do a lot of different things. We’ll bring on people to come talk. We try and get as many people engaged throughout the entire presentation. 60 minutes is a long time to sit and just listen.
Andrew: I have asked you about the content. I didn’t ask you about the audience. I’m thinking the person that is listening to this program says, ‘Great. I see how he did well, but how did he find his first viewers for this webinar that then led into sales? How did he find his second?’ You said that you decided that you were going to do it every week. How did you find people every week? Let’s start with the first one that you did on your own apart from Joel.
Lewis: So, the first one I did on my own, I had this list of 35,000 that I built up and
, and what I did for the first couple of months that I was promoting. When Shawn came into the picture, we started promoting
done one like every couple of weeks to our list or every week to our list for like two months.
We started to realize as people started emailing us saying: is this the same content that you had in the last webinars? And we’re like, uh yeah, because you’ve already covered it all. Some people said this, and we probably just can’t promote the crap out of this every week or every day and expect the same people to come back on. Obviously, a lot did, but we can’t expect everyone.
So, what can we do to get new leads and new audience members? I said, you know what, I’ve heard of this called affiliate marketing and Joel email. Why don’t we reach out to other experts like Joel and see if they’ll bring us on to present, just like Joel did with me to talk about my LinkedIn content. Why don’t we see if we can find people to go network with, go find people at events. So, that’s what we did.
Again, one of the things I’m good at is building relationships, I feel like. And so, I was going to every event. I was connecting with people online. The thing I would do is just make introductions for people, and by doing that they would introduce me to other people who would bring me on a webinar. So, I asked Joel. I said, “Joel, do you know of anyone else who would love to have [??] contents to their audience? And so, he said, “I know a few people. Let me make some introductions.” He made a few introductions. And those people, I as making introductions back to them to bring on other experts, and it just kind of grew more there.
So, the more I delivered for people and made them the champion of their list, they were making introductions to every one of their friends who had bigger lists that would bring me on because no one still knew about LinkedIn really. We needed good, fresh content. So, that’s how it went.
Andrew: I see. Derek Halpern came on here to tell the story of how you did a webinar with him. He said something similar. So, the way it worked was he said: you create a webinar for his audience. He emails his audience and says, “Hey, I’ve got limited space because obviously if you go to a webinar it has limited space which we use the limited space, so you can’t get more than a thousand people, I think, in this thing.
Lewis: Right.
Andrew: If you want to sign up, go and sign up. He then came on with you, I think, to do the webinar.
Lewis: Yeah.
Andrew: And you pitched something and a ton of his people bought. I forget how many thousands of dollars you guys made. You split it 50-50. That’s it. All he had to do is email people and then be in there on the webinar.
Lewis: Send a couple of emails and show up, and then I’ll do the rest.
Andrew: I see. And that’s the idea, and that’s how you’re building this whole thing.
Lewis: Yeah. We make it as easy as possible for the affiliates or the people on the list to promote. So, if they have to think about the copywriter, if they have to set up the page for hosting the webinar and do those other things, then it’s less likely that they’re going to do it.
Also, I’ll set up the webinar for them. I’ll write the copy. I’ll do the emails. I just say, send this out at this time; send this one out at this time; and that’s all you need to do. And then show up. I’ll deliver for you and make your audience love you more than your mom does.
Andrew: [laughs] I love the confidence. What else? I want to make sure to get everything in here. Oh, let me ask you this. I won’t say who it is, but someone once said online, “Selling information is for people who can’t create real products, real software, real hardware.” So, they sell information. Here you are, banking our life on selling information. How do you respond to that issue internally?
Lewis: People are always going to want access to helpful and new information. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away. I’m basically like Phoenix University, a small Phoenix University. I create courses and online classes for people that want to learn something. Phoenix University, I don’t know how big of a business it is, but it’s huge. Think about every major university in the world. They’re all large companies, a massive university.
That’s basically what I do. I’m a small university, and I teach something specific. My goal has been to differentiate myself from a lot of the other marketers online who sell information, who some of them have a really bad rap. They sell $2,000, $10,000 products, information products and don’t really over deliver, and a lot of people feel kind of sick to their stomach after feeling buyer’s remorse.
So, our goal has been to offer ten to a hundred times the value for the price. I’ll over deliver on value and under deliver on price so that everyone feels great about the purchase, and they always come back and buy more. I don’t think, for me, we’ve been tweaking and testing. We’ve been doing stuff. We’ve been starting to build software as well, which we’ll be selling. I’m just continuing to adapt
new content and new information.
I think the goal is always be relevant. We’re coming out with new products and new courses instead of just one that we’re selling over and over. For me all I see is [??] so I’m going to keep doing it.
Andrew: Do you remember when you brought in the first million?
Lewis: Yeah.
Andrew: Tell me about that.
Lewis: I was pretty broke years ago, and I remember the feeling of desperation, on my sister’s couch and being less of a man by having to eat her macaroni and cheese every day. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that feeling, but I had that in college where I was always eating like crap but not having my own place and having to eat macaroni off of my sister every day or Reames or whatever it was, because I couldn’t afford my own food and place.
I remember feeling, I never want to feel this every again, and it happened for a number of months. I just kept remember saying, I never want to feel this way ever again. And I’ll do whatever it takes, ethically obviously, to not have this feeling.
Now, I’m talking about this and telling you this story, it reminds me a lot of third grade. I never wanted to feel that feeling ever again. Yeah, so I think when we finally hit our first million in sales, I remember feeling amazing. I remember feeling great, but I was, you know, I haven’t even scratched the surface.
The reason why we’d done our first million was because of a few things; one, it’s providing great value but two, it’s just being consistent. That’s really one of the things that I’ve done, just be consistent. I show up, and I do webinars. I create new courses. I network. I build relationships. I add value.
A lot of people, I think, will just do a couple of things and they’ll stop. They don’t have the same consistency or the willingness to be consistent. So, that’s what I’m trying to do now, just continue to be more consistent.
Andrew: And there was a time when your hockey stick just turned. You were actually never flat; you were dong well, but there was a period between, I guess, this year, so much better than last year, multiple times the revenue of last year. What happened? What changed?
Lewis: Yeah, last year around $500,000. I thought that was great. This is great, but I want to do much bigger this year. I remember we were lining up so much for the month of January this year, 2011. I remember we had a quarter of a million in sales in January, and we did a half a million in all of 2010. A number of things lined up where everything was in perfect timing. We were just converting everything around 40% of webinars. It was just ridiculous.
We had the right affiliate partners promoting, and it just started to click. I felt that in 2010 we were hustling and scrapping so much every day. We were still learning everything. I was still just educating myself on how to be a better presenter, teaching ourselves more new content, just figure it all out, trying to figure out email marketing. There was so much we were trying to learn together, and we were just trying to generate sales at the same time, deal with customer support. We just didn’t know about business.
I think through time and error and practice and just making a lot of mistakes for that year, year and a half, things started to click. It was early January when things started to click where things just became easier, like it wasn’t as hard to do everything. It was like, I understand how to do this; I understand how to do that. If a mistake occurred, we knew how to fix it as opposed to before, we were always in damage control mode, reaction mode.
Here, we were in proactive mode, right? We were like, let’s just take action. We know how to do our stuff now. Let’s get it rolling. Let’s take this bad boy and take it to the moon. So, that’s kind of the feeling of what happened.
Andrew: You’ve done a lot of traveling, too. Can you talk about some of the traveling that you’ve done?
Lewis: All I need is a laptop and Wi-Fi…
Andrew: Let’s look outside the window where you are right now.
Lewis: Wait until you see that.
Andrew: You guys see if you’re on video? Check out that freakin’ view. I identified it instantly because right down below your window as a teenager I used to drive into the city and look up at those apartments and look at the park in front of it. That’s Central Park there and say, “I’ve got to make it big one day. I’ve got to be able to have an apartment over there.” And here you are, you’re at a friend’s apartment. Who’s the friend?
Lewis: Timothy Sykes. He’s a millionaire blogger.
Andrew: Timothy Sykes has been here. He’s been a tremendous friend to me, and I dig his personality because he pisses my audience off and he needs and loves them so much. He calls his customers idiots here.
Lewis: Oh my God.
Andrew: We love that kind of openness.
Lewis: Wow, that’s funny.
Andrew: But, yeah, he’s fantastic. You’re staying at his place, so where have you traveled?
Lewis: I feel like I’ve been pretty fortunate to travel around the world. I’ve been to Australia, New Zealand. I’ve been to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Argentina is where we first met actually. I’ve been to Italy, I’ve been to London a number of times, Paris, I’ve been pretty much a lot of different places the last couple of years.
Andrew: Yeah, so cool to see you in Argentina.
Lewis: That was cool.
Andrew: Yeah.
Lewis: We actually bought you a t-shirt, remember that?
Andrew: One for me and one for my wife, with @OKL on her shirt and @AndrewWarner on my shirt. That’s what I mean, I mean like these little generous touches, where so many other people would say, what an idiot, you know, I got so much here, he doesn’t understand it, I’m never going to talk to him again.
Lewis: Right.
Andrew: So, I appreciate it, look, again, I can’t talk when I think of how that. What else, what else do I want to know here. Let’s suppose, actually no, when you travel, it’s kind of hard to work even if you don’t need a solid internet connection and here you are, you’re doing webinars. Webinars need a good connection.
Lewis: Yeah.
Andrew: They need a good phone so that you can do back up. How are you doing it? What’s the big challenge and how do you overcome it?
Lewis: I’m just playing before hand, where I go, staying in a hotel depends on whether they have a hardwire plug-in or if they have great Wi-Fi, and so, that’s pretty much the only thing really that I have to decide, it’s like I need to make sure that’s [??], that’s all I need and so I make my decision on where I go and sleep basically based on that. But I’m usually staying at a friend’s place and they have great Wi-Fi. I do not quiet room, Wi-Fi, I don’t even need my mic, I could do it just on my laptop. It’s a beautiful business model in my opinion because I could be anywhere I want at any time.
I knew four years ago, when I was playing football, that was the life that I wanted to have. I wanted to be able to train, work out, play in front of twenty thousand people on the weekends. That’s what I wanted to be able to do, and then have the rest of the day off, just do whatever, hang out with my friends. So, I’ve always known that I wanted to, any way that I’m going to make money I want to be able to have a lifestyle first and then build my business around my lifestyle, the exact way I want to live.
So, I knew afterwards, I was like, you know what, I don’t want to have a job for anyone, I just want to be able to travel if I want to, live anywhere I want to and do the exact things that I love throughout the day and then build around that. So right now, I’m Salsa dancing a few times a week, I’m doing profit almost every other day and I’m doing this new sport called handball because I’m trying to go for US International team in the next year.
Andrew: What’s the sport?
Lewis: It’s called Team Handball, it’s an Olympic sport.
Andrew: Team Handball is now an Olympic sport, and you want to go to the Olympics while you’re doing all this work?
Lewis: What’s that?
Andrew: When you, you’re training to go to the Olympics in this new sport while you are building your business?
Lewis: I’m training to make the US National Team and then in four years give myself an opportunity to go to the Pan-Am games, which if you win in the top two of the Pan-Am games, then you go to the Olympics, you’re country goes to the Olympics. So, I’m training for the next four years. This year is going to be too late; right now I’m in New York City because the number one team in Team Handball in the country is in New York City. They won the US National Championship last year. So, I’m here training with them, and a couple of guys on the US National Team are training as well, so I’m getting to train with the best in the US every week and work my way up to make the US National Team. It’s one of my goals was always to be an Olympian and to give myself the opportunity to try to get into the Olympics would be a great thing, so.
Andrew: Alright, we’re almost done. I’m going to ask you to do something that I’ve never asked anyone to do and I’ll ask it in a moment. But let me first ask you this, I’m about to say to people in my audience, guys, if you like this go to mixergy.com/premium. If you’re a premium member you can watch the full course that Lewis did on how to use LinkedIn to build your business and you said to people, Lewis, as they take this course with you they should do it on LinkedIn.
One guy, immediately, I think it was in hours of me hitting publish, sent me a screen shot to show, look I’m now the number one search result for he’s an accountant from a specific city, I forget the city, he didn’t give me permission to use his name so I won’t say it yet, but he goes, here’s a screen shot, I’m up number one while I’m taking the course, I haven’t even finished it.
Lewis: Right.
Andrew: So, my premium membership, many people in the audience are already members, they don’t even have to pay anything to go and watch you. People who aren’t premium members pay just a few bucks to go watch you.
Lewis: Right.
Andrew: You have a business where you’re teaching this stuff and selling it for hundreds of dollars, up to a thousand dollars you said earlier, doesn’t it make you go, that son of a bitch, Andrew, now no one has any reason to go and sign up for my stuff, not only did he turn me down a long time ago but now that he could use me to pump up his traffic by talking about my numbers and my financials, then he’s using me and he’s siphoning off my customers. Why isn’t that a concern? Take away that I’m a nice guy, I want to help the world out, working from a business point of view, speaking to entrepreneurs in the audience who are not going to accept the BS, rationally how does that make sense to you?
Lewis: You know, to be completely honest, I guess.
Andrew: Yeah.
Lewis: Being on Mixergy is good, it’s good for branding, it’s got a lot of great influential people who have been on there, so for me to be on there, it’s good for my brand. I know that it’ll drive some traffic back to my sites and I know that the people who want more information, cause we only talk for an hour and a half. In my course, I give a lot more deep [??] information [??] in the Mixergy training because we didn’t have enough time to go over it all. So I know that if they go back and watch my videos and sales page, and if they want more information they’ll come and buy eventually, because they’ll over-deliver.
And also I just have a mindset (and this may sound a little fluffy), but I have a mindset [??] thinking that there’s so many customers and potential clients out there that giving them some of my content is not going to take away from me generating more business, it’s only going to help for a number of reasons. So I’m not, like, I’m not in a scarcity mindset, thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got to hold all my content to myself and only promote it to my network.’ I’m more of an abundance mindset because I know there’s millions more people out there who can buy it.
Andrew: All right. Where’s the website, where do they go?
Lewis: They can go to LewisHowes.com, check out my website there. I’ve got a list of products on my store page, and if you want to check out the [??] stuff, go ahead. And there’s a lot of free . . .
Andrew: And it’s L-E-W-I-S-H-O-W-E-S. Not like house that you live in, but Howes as in H-O-W-E-S.
Lewis: Correct.
Andrew: That’s where they go see it. And of course, I think anyone who sees this – I get a lot of e-mails afterwards because I rarely allow people to promote anything. You know, this is all about you giving to the audience and helping them grow based on your experiences. So the few times someone does I’ll get e-mails from people saying, ‘Is this real, is this OK? Is he a good person?’
I’ll tell you right now, you don’t even have to e-mail me. I love Lewis! Lewis has been tremendously good to me. I’m extremely appreciative, and I know that if you go and take any one of his courses (including the one he did with me on Mixergy), you’ll see the guy knows his stuff! He’s good, he’s good!
Lewis: I actually recommend that if anyone wants to sign up – I recommend that they go sign up for the Mixergy course first because . . . .
Andrew: Look at that – look at what you’re doing! Guys, pick it for yourself. You can go over to his website. And I don’t know if this is right, but I feel like I have a certain journalistic integrity when I do these interviews, that I can not accept any revenue from anyone.
Some entrepreneurs have offered to give me revenue for doing the interviews for whatever it is that they do on the back-end. I don’t have any of that because I don’t want you to think I am only telling a story in a certain way because I have sale on the back-end; or I’m only picking guests because there’s a sale. Because if I took a commission off of you, I’d have more people on like you. And then, I can’t take a commission off of guys like Paul Graham, right? What am I going to do, take a commission off of every company that he funds as a result of this? He doesn’t need me, and so I’d go, ‘Oh, who needs to do interviews with Paul Graham?’
Lewis: Right.
Andrew: Of course, I do. And I’ve got to create a model that allows me to do it, in fact encourages me to have people on just because they’re good entrepreneurs. There’s nothing in it for me.
All right. I’ve said that. Here’s a thing that I’m going to ask you to do. Can you with your – you’re on Wi-Fi now?
Lewis: Yeah.
Andrew: Can you unplug your computer and just show us around Tim’s place? Is that inappropriate?
Lewis: Sure.
Andrew: And if there’s anything embarrassing about Tim’s place, I believe he would urge you to show it to the audience. And guys, if you’re just reading the transcript I’m sorry, go back and watch the video and flip to the end.
Lewis: I’m going to have to carry the mic around; hold on for a second. And I just moved in here a few days ago so it’s a little messy.
Andrew: It’s OK.
Lewis: I can’t blame him. I’ll just show you the outside really quick because this is a cool little view.
Andrew: And I see he doesn’t even have curtains on his place. He’s such a [??], he’s got a leather couch.
Lewis: No curtains!
Andrew: No curtains.
Lewis: All right. It’s a little loud out here but let’s see this.
Andrew: I’m like [??] me. Look at that!
Lewis: I’m like right by Columbus Circle; here’s the Trump Tower.
Andrew: Right on the corner.
Lewis: So Ivana up there with Mark Cuban and all those guys. I got the view; it’s not bad. Had enough?
Andrew: Not bad at all.
Lewis: It could be worse. And then I’m going to go back in.
Andrew: And of course that’s Fifth Avenue, east side of Central Park.
Lewis: Yeah, this is Central Park South.
Andrew: You’re Central Park South, you were pointing over to the east side a moment ago, right?
Lewis: Yeah, Fifth Avenue’s over there. And you know, he’s got a little office over here.
Andrew: Those are his computers, he just left them behind?
Lewis: Yeah, those are his. His little office space.
Andrew: Do you need a password in order to get in, or can you just show us what’s on his computer? All right, we’ll stay away from that!
Lewis: [laughs] I don’t know the password.
Andrew: I need to maintain my integrity. So he’s got a fireplace in this place in Manhattan.
Lewis: Yeah, there’s not too many places in New York City that have a fireplace. And then the rest, it’s pretty messy. Back here’s the room, a couple of bathrooms back here.
Andrew: Does he have curtains on – can you show us the view from the bedroom window? Is it inappropriate that I say that he’s not dating anyone right now as far as I know? Let’s see if he dates a girl, meets here somewhere in the city, brings her up, what does he show her?
Lewis: [??]
Andrew: I see, so he does have curtains.
Lewis: Messy bed; that’s my mess.
Andrew: Let’s see the view from his bedroom.
Lewis: Let’s see this really quick.
Andrew: I wonder what kind of girls Tim dates. But if he brings a girl home and he shows her his place . . .
Lewis: The view’s not as good here; it’s just more buildings but it’s not bad.
Andrew: Did I tell you that so many times I thought his story was inauthentic? I said, “Can it really be true?” Look at that. I’m ready to date Tim.
Lewis: [laughs]
Andrew: [?? [‚ĶAndrewWarner.com. So, I’ve got to tell you. A few times I said, “Is he just BSing on his site?” And I’ve talked to people privately. His numbers are good. And then, I said, “All right. His numbers are good. Maybe, he’s just an info-marketer who knows how to sell, who knows how to have an aggressive personality. And so, I talked to investors, including James Altucher who I trust. He’s a good guy.
Lewis: Tim’s a really good guy and he’s just like he is online when you watch him on any of his shows or his videos. He’s the exact same way in real time. He’s really in your face. He’s super‚Ķ
Andrew: Yeah, I know.
Lewis: Super genuine, too, just really modest. I’m sure you know him. I asked him, but I don’t know if I should be saying this, but I asked him, “Do you make more money selling what you teach or doing what you teach?” And he said that it’s about the same. He’s making a lot of money, also. He’s 9 to 5
on the computers right here trading stocks and
stocks. He’s doing that work all day long, and then at night he’s doing information setting. So, he’s working hard.
Andrew: I know. He and I were supposed to get together for lunch once, and he just blew me off so he could pull over to the side of the road and trade.
Lewis: Nice.
Andrew: But then, he was really nice. He took me out to a great place for dinner, paid for the whole thing. Usually, I’m the person who pays, so it’s nice when someone else does. All right. Thank you for showing me around this place.
Guys, let me just say this, too. You see that Lewis is really good at building relationships. Apart from going to his website and signing up, find a way to say thank you to him directly. Find a way to just connect with him. Maybe, when he has a great place in Manhattan, you guys will end up staying at his place, or maybe when he travels to your city, like when he came to my city in Argentina where I lived, you guys can meet up with him in person.
Lewis: Yeah.
Andrew: I appreciate you doing this interview.
Lewis: Thank you so much, Andrew.
Andrew: Thank you all for watching. Go use this and say hello to Lewis. Bye, everyone.
