From Fake Personas to Real Cash and Clients - Bobby Stocks - FHR #311

Why Dave Decided to talk to Bobby Stocks:

Have you created a successful advertising agency AND created a fake persona that helped you attain the aforementioned agency? Well Bobby sure has. Bobby Stocks is revolutionary in his tactics of marketing not only for his clients but also consistently for his own business. All these tactics and strategies allow him to live his dream of stretching out along the beaches of Puerto Rico with his wonderful wife. Go ahead and press play to listen in on this great conversation and as always, follow those dreams you’ve always had.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

(1:31) How Bobby made DonoHue

(6:20) Casting and Retrieving Authority

(7:48) Get Other People to Play Your Proof Drum

(9:58) Use Your Spotlight on the Right Stage

(15:08) Getting People to See Your Proof as Much as You Do

(17:16) Do the Unusually Impossible From the Unusual Tactics

(19:20) Just See What Sticks on the Wall and Go From There

(20:38) Bobby and His Niches

(23:11) Transparent Vulnerability

Quotable Moments:

(8:33) “I call them ‘not in the money lane’ right? No one knows about them. You know they’re kind of waiting for the spotlight to hit them.”

(13:56) “What do you want people to know you as? What do you want to be known for? And it’s really important, keep it simple, then from there you can start getting more complicated.”

(18:59) “Because you know, in marketing, we all want this cookie cutter thing that’s going to work everywhere. In reality, you just get lucky with this thing that works here and works there but most times it’s some small variation or crazy tweak that’s actually going to get you the results

(28:30) “I will step into my role which I’m best at, that is strategy and looking at how we can differently position things, and that’s it. And, I’m fine with that

Other Tidbits:

The only rule about  DonoHue is that you must talk about DonoHue

People never see your stuff as much as you are

Always remember, you don’t need to find your main niche your first go around

Your team needs to be a family. Like any family there’s going to be bickering and that’s OKAY

Important Episode Links:

https://bobbystocks.comhttps://www.facebook.com/bobby.stocks.18 https://www.instagram.com/bobby_stocks_/ FunnelHackingLive.com FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

[00:00] Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Everybody, welcome back.

[00:18] Hold on your radio. This is going to be a ride of your life. Now you're gonna. Have so much fun. Listen, this podcast can give you some backstory before I introduce who I'm bringing on. So for those of you guys are coming to funnel hacking live, you probably have heard that we've had these, these cultures, tee shirts. We've had people going out trying to create and build basically meaning if you have your own little culture that is going to be at funnel hacking live. We want to make sure that we created a t shirt for you that is for that. And so we had all these things go on and, and you know, different people. A lot of the people you are kind of in our normal culture you've heard about. And then literally out of the blue, this donahue character just blows up. I'm like, what the heck is daunting?

[00:58] I don't even know this person is and it doesn't blow up. This is one of those things where the, the people are so passionate about who they're supporting them like we have got. I've got to figure this out. So trying to figure all this out. I want to introduce you to donahue who actually his body stocks, who has a business strategists, seven figure, eight figure business owner blowing things up all around the world, lives in Puerto Rico with his wife, Rachel on the beach, smoking cigars, having the time of his life, but has this crazy passionate following. So with all that said, welcome to the show bobby, and let's kind of dive in and talk about this whole story.

[01:32] Awesome. Yeah, it's great to be here. And I always love talking to um, so just to like open up the curtains behind the wizard of Oz. So a donahue is A. Donna uses social social experiment. So in 2011, uh, I trolled my local town of meet me and my buddy and we came up with a business opportunity called the donahue job site. And we named the opportunity off of a funeral home that's called the donahue, and we took some pictures of us inside, like heavy machinery and we kind of positioned it like we had bought a plot of land that we reminding for pay dirt. So what happened was over a couple of months of us talking about how great this opportunity was and how excited we were about it, people started to message me and they want to, to invest in it. It was just a hilarious thing.

[02:33] We, we, you know, it was a joke. So anyway, fast. Let's go back. Last year I had one of my small masterminds in Vegas and one of our attendees was from the town that I grew up in, which is Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. It's a suburb right outside of Philadelphia. And he brought up donahue. He say, you know, he's like, do you remember donahue? And I'm like, oh my God. I started laughing about it and I said, you know what, let's try this again. But in the Internet marketing space, so that was march of last year that we did that. And um, so, so really what we did was we took the power of a mascot a or this like a symbol, you know, you can say add or something like that. And um, then we also stacked on top of it status and social proof, right? So by creating a small inner circle of two other people that knew about donahue and we said, let's, let's talk about donahue.

[03:38] So, so the only rule of donahue is his talk about, Donnie was just sort of talking about it, you know, like he was this guru Internet Marketing Guru and because of, of social status, it created it, it started spreading really easily, right? So when we, when we post a lot of proof in a lot of like our students or our clients or even our own funnels that we run, it's all about proof these days, the more proof you can show, the safer it is for somebody to make a decision, right? And it goes to the lizard brain and you know, I'm just so they're going to die if they buy this. So by constantly posting about how great donahue is his, his greatness, his smartness, you know, and I always envisioned donahue is like the Dos equis guy, you know, I like put that in my head when we were doing it or like, yeah, he's like, he's like the mentor of the DOS equis guy.

[04:33] And um, so anyway, people started reaching out to us, what is this donahue, you know, how do I learn more about donahue? And how it started spreading. It was by using status. So I would say, you know, I'm not really supposed to tell anybody about donahue, but I'll let you in on it. Do you promise not to tell anybody? Right. So now I create the separation and they would say, I promise, I promise. And I would say it's a complete joke. Here's donahue, this is what it is, which then would then have them inside the tribe, right? And then they would look for opportunities to create the gap and status. So as soon as I posted about donahue, everybody else would jump in on it and they'd say, Don, who's the greatest? Because everybody wants to be inside the tribe. So that's how it spread. I mean, it got to the point where like I had Jason Horning and all types of people reaching out to me, wanting to know with don, he was, and you know, I pulled the same thing. Well, you shouldn't tell anybody.

[05:38] So where we started to bring the mascot as, as, as, um, a little cuff here as the, um, as the status grew up donahue. I then said, how can I pull authority from the mascot? So like one thing that I sort of learned throughout this and we see this, um, you know, you see this in just regular mascots, right? If you were at a baseball game and um, you know, nobody's embarrassed to get a picture with the mascot of the baseball team. Everybody's excited to do it right? But you can't self promote the same way a mascot consult promote itself because you threatened other people's status. And then this guy. So what I realized was I could self promote onto donahue so I could cast self promotion onto donahue and then I could start to actually transfer the authority back loans myself. So the way I did that was I just looked at religion, right? So I said I'm the pope, I have access to donahue. Donahue says. So that's kind of like, you know, there's, there's a lot to it that we did and it worked. Um, but yeah, that's kind of the synopsis of, of what Donahue is. It's just a really, really hilarious, um, example of how positioning status and proof and you know, constantly talking about proof results in a big way and marketing that it's a human beings can not withstanding, um, they can only withstand for a certain period of time. And then curiosity, opportunity and all of that just takes over.

[07:35] No, I just want to kind of get out as we were talking about this here is, is for. I want you to, as you were listening to understand the power of proof, the power of La social culture. We talk a lot about culture all the time, but then also that transfer of authority is so critical and I think that in marketing, obviously it can be used for good and for bad. And I'm not gonna that's not what this podcast is about. It's not, that's not the issue. I want you to learn from it. I want to understand it. Um, I was, had a conversation with a very large player, a big influencer, and he was talking about Bob Hope, who knew years ago, Bob hope basically woke up every morning just saying, well, I just want to make sure somebody is talking about Bob hope today. Don't make sure somebody is talking about Bob.

[08:19] I've got to keep that name out there on an ongoing basis. And so his whole thing was how do I, how do I make sure that people are still talking about me without doing what you said, and that is without beating my own drum, without know, I'm the greatest. I'm the greatest habit. It's not a Muhammad Ali type of approach as much as it is that that proof is fascinating. How if you can get enough proof to back it up, and again I was looking through, I mean stories of your success in the mortgage industry, in the real estate industry and the fitness industry with coaches and with landscape. I mean all that. You have so much proof that it's easy to use that. And so I wanted to kind of find out how do you some, some people are going to be listening to going know Dave, I'm just kinda

[08:56] getting started. I don't have proof. How do I get proof? Then the other is going to go, well I have proof but I've never done a real good job of I'm afraid either asking the testimonials or to use that proof. So if you don't mind bobby talking about both those two things. So I mean this is the game changer was for me was the exact situation I see a lot of people are in. So um, we've raced back to temecula here, but we were interviewing one another. One of our students lives in Lemon Grove, California, and he has the kind of the cookie cutter story of a lot of, through so many marketers out there that are talented that, you know, they have a few clients or they have a few products that they got really great results with, but they're what I call, they're not in the money lane, right?

[09:45] Nobody knows about them, you know, they're kind of waiting for the spotlight, the hip. Then when's it going to be my turn. And you know, life is always a paradox, right? It's like you have to pull the spotlight onto you. Um, so because the spotlight is always on the star rating stars through a lot of work to make sure that spotlight is on them. So like when I started to really pick up steam, I'd been nice cheese. My first facebook ad, I think I ran in 2012, 2013. And you know, when I really started to get attention was when I started to point out all my proof and I only had a few clients. I was, I was the master of all, it was doing everything, not the master of all right. You know, I was doing the sales, I was doing the recruiting or retention, I was doing the finances, I was doing it all.

[10:44] Um, so it was really hard to gain momentum. But once I really started posting proof and I would say for anybody who's like, well, how do I do it? It's not necessarily like there's so many different ways that we could, we can spread out or like we could take a testimonial video and turn it into a blog and put it on youtube and turn it into an advertorial and it's too easy to get caught up in all the things that we could do. So what I did was, uh, I was doing pretty well, like 10 k a month in and I finally had this moment where basically my wife was tired of hearing me talk about how like big I was going to go to this agency and I was never posting any kind of proof. Every once in awhile I would post something. Let's say today I generated, you know, I had a really great day, I would post maybe today, but then you wouldn't hear from me again.

[11:38] Um, so in December of 2016, I just committed to hosting 30 days of proof. So everyday I would post another version of proof. Now if you're on here and you're like, Hey, I have one client, right? You can create 30 versions of that, right? You can break down the process, know you can take screenshots of the landing page, the ad, what's working. And it's really, it goes back to like what, what I saw with donahue, right? Oldies is, is your excitement and you're posting your confidence and you know, uh, December 2016, no, I was doing anywhere between five or 10 k, that whole, you know, the half of that year and because I started posting proof consistent January 2017 to $30,000, right? And I'd never done less than that. Um, and it's just continually doing that. Like, like you said, if you see my feet, I just continually post proof.

[12:45] Sometimes I will post proof from six months ago and I'll just reposition it again, like, you know, if this is weird, so I just collect as much proof as possible and it brings in quality people so it creates this like compounding effect, um, you know, and so we've been able to like just based off of that, we were able to scale really, really hard, you know, now we're doing like half a million dollar months and even with like, it just keeps compounding and compounding, but I've seen just the posting approved and being really committed to putting the least one thing out like every day or every other day that just pure results. Um, you know, so luke, we came from and he's grown in the last eight months from struggling to make three or five to, you know, this month I think he surpassed 50 k in revenue, just an agency model.

[13:39] He's not doing any kind of coaching or consulting or anything like that and it's just because his marketplace, when they think of, they think approve. Right. And it's like the Donald trump effect, you know, just one sip. Like what do you want people to know, you know, you asked, you know, Dan Kennedy kind of talked about some stuff like that, you know, what do you want to be known as, when you want to be known for and it's really important, you know, keep it simple and then from there you can start getting more complicated in how you're spreading it out and you know, do stuff like announce making a documentary. But I have, you know, I have the resources to do it and I have tons and tons of proof, but just a little sliver of what you have can make it work and even if it's your own results, you know, you just need to really know good marketing really exaggerates it. Promat a car. It's like a, a good play. There's a lot of drama and entertainment in it. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think it was funny, I was reading through your page know body docs.com and just you're about, you're an amazing writer by the way anyone's been here. And uh, you know, in college your big thing was creative and

[14:52] that was like that all. I was good at, but it's cool to see if that was the only one good thing you've been able to take that one good thing to apply to your marketing as well and I think it's fascinating for me. I think I want. I want to make sure people that you guys are listening to understand that, that the importance of getting that proof out there on a regular basis. People aren't. People aren't seeing as much of your stuff as you are and you've got to make sure you're talking about it on a regular basis. We've seen the same thing happen as far as click funnels. For us, one of the main things has been telling the story of our our two Comma Club award. Winning stories have been one of the biggest things that have blown us up because now we've got people using those plaques as their ads on facebook and I've got to figure award winners and and it's been a fascinating thing for us is we've looked at marketing is when we first started, it was all about what Russell did before clickfunnels.

[15:42] It was tell you about this funnel I created before clickfunnels basically, and then once we got into it as well, let me show you some of the stuff that we've been doing and now for us, our greatest success comes by telling the success stories of our customers and our clients and even more so if we go one level deeper and that is the success stories of our customer successes, meaning whether it's brandon, Kailyn, pullen and lady boss, and we're talking about their, their customer success and all they're having or we're talking about tomorrow, any beginning. One of our, you know, the poster child children that had been used as far as click funnels or ads. Now it's more about their customers and what they're doing and the impact that they're having. And I think it's real important when you first started from a proof standpoint, you may only literally have your own funnel and that's okay and I think it's important that you use it. So I appreciate. I really do appreciate you. You mentioned that.

[16:31] Yeah. It's kind of the rock and the hard place. I had a mentor that I paint a lot of money as a mindset guy and I was kind of stuck. I was stuck in that spot, right? Because, you know, if you, if you have a couple of clients you have proofing, you're not posting it. Um, it's, it's really like, it's a confidence issue or, and the competence is you usually land somewhere in, you know, uh, do I have the ability or the skills to, you know, get my clients results and that it's actually a really good place to come from. Right. We know there's plenty of people out there that they're not concerned about. Right? And it's easy for them to go out. So it's a really positive place, but it can also be, you know, an Achilles heel. Um, so I was talking to this mentor and he said, I said, well, I don't know if I can get them the same results and I would always have some reasons why, or it's a different area or I don't know, are afraid.

[17:32] And you know, he, he went over a couple of simple things that are true, right? One of which is that, uh, if you want to, if you want to achieve great things, you commit to achieving them and you figure it out how to do them along the way. Right? The guy that ran a minute mile, sandy cook or the four minute mile, so he couldn't do it, right? He did it the next year. Seven hundred, 800 people. Don't, you know, the Wright brothers, mathematically they said that, uh, air travel wasn't possible. The Wright brothers in it way. So if you're in a place of where you think it's possible, I know that it is possible, um, and that it may feel impossible and you just gotta you just gotTa go and be committed to doing it. So the other thing was he said, he said, I hear that, um, you know, I hear that you're afraid you're not going to get them results.

[18:23] So let's just play this out. So if you, if they were to hire you and you didn't get them results, what would you do? And I said, you know, I, I would do whatever I could to try to figure out how to get them results. And he said, okay, so can you make that your commitment? And he kinda like, it shifted for me there because what I realized was when I talked to a prospect, my commitment was about that I'm going to do whatever I can to get you results. What that's gonna look like, I don't know. Right? Because in marketing, you know, we all want this cookie cutter thing that's going to work everywhere. And the reality is that like you get lucky and sometimes it worked here at there, worked with this industry, but most times it's some variation or crazy tweak. It's actually going to get you the really good results.

[19:17] But if you're, if you're committed to getting them results and that you're willing to do whatever it takes to get them results, likely human beings have a really good eye, a knack at somehow magically coming up with a solution to fix that problem. And I could tell you like all the niches that I've cracked and all the followup, all of it, it's always some random thing that, you know, pardon my French. It's kind of like I'm a professional throw shit against the wall Kinda guy and something sticks. And then everybody you know, throws you a ticker tape parade stuffs, you know. And I mean that's the reality. You know, you like we like to market it like you have some, some magical ball on some back room. It tells me what to do. But the reality is is I got some fundamental stuff, you know, when we throw stuff against the wall and you end up making a lot of money.

[20:12] I love it. I totally agree. Kelly, I know you've mentioned a little bit in a ton of different industries. I see it on your website and everything else. You kind of folks in different ones as you're coaching your clients. And thank you made mention as far as luke, he's kind of known as this guy in this industry. Do you find as an agency that is easier to be basically someone who's involved in a whole bunch of different industries or just to pick one industry? What's, what's your feeling on that? Yeah, so I think it's best start out. Um, so I, I had cracked a lot of different niches before I really started scaling and mortgage was actually like my least favorite. But the prospect flow, is there anything like the data flow is there. So I got really committed to like I want to grow the agency.

[21:00] My zone of genius is in the lead generation. It's not in talking to the clients, it's not in the delivery necessarily. Um, you know, I can, I can, I like to figure out hat how to appeal a bag of 50 pound status, but then I'm done and I want somebody else to do that. So, so once I, once I realized like, okay, there is, there is a need in this market and I'm going to put aside whether I am passionate about the market or not and I'm going to scale it. So, you know, that's what worked for me. And then once that got scaled, I could start to move into other industries. So I mean rule of thumb for us is we try to, we try to stick and scaling and industry in six month intervals, but like if somebody brand new, what I've seen work really well is pick like three industries that have, that are used the exact same systems.

[21:57] So I know whichever one responds on the BW side, meaning like there is a real interest of that. They're looking to get more business, then just go to town on that and then come knock down the other ones later on. I'm usually, you know, you just asked somebody where's your money coming from? And it's usually coming from one niche or you know, they're getting better prospect leads from one than the other. Um, you know, I think too many people put too much emphasis in the beginning on nailing out a particular niche if you don't have any rules

[22:32] data. Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. Yeah, it's been one of the things I've seen, especially when you're just getting started, it's like you just have to have a success. Just go, go make something happen, make something stick, and then go, okay, this one's going to work for me here. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's. We have some guys in, we'll pick five and they just blast cold emails out. Whichever ones starts responding the most were like, this one's good to go now let's now let's get more serious and let's start building out the assets and stuff like that. Awesome. One last topic I want to cover with you before we bounce off here and that is you are amazing at being transparent and in today's social media and everything else, there's so many facades on instagram or wherever else it might be, but you're not ashamed of your past. You're not ashamed of of what's happened. Everything else. You were actually use that in your marketing and say, it's because of where I've been that I can't help you. It's. I wanted to have you addressed the importance of transparency as an agency owner, how you've used it, what works and what doesn't and when it's too much.

[23:41] Yeah. I mean, everybody's story's different. You know, mine was basically, I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for, you know, the recovery community. So in, in 2005 I our 2008, I got sober at the age of 25 and that's one of my entrepreneurial spirit started to come back alive. And then, you know, I just have a long road of, you know, transformational information and man is workshops and therapy and you name it every book. And that's when I first started learning marketing somehow through my Tony Robbins a obsession or found like Chet Holmes. And I was like, this is interesting. Um, but from a growth standpoint, you know, you don't hear a lot of people talk about it on the front end because everybody loves to buy tactics. But the reality is it's like if you're not doing inner work, it's really hard to grow an agency to a big, big love.

[24:54] You know, we have like 25 people that are on our team and our c team has been together for going on my third year and the type of things that we do in order to do that, like that's why I'm so open about my past, like if it wasn't for me being a drug addict, a convicted felon and just really having a miserable life for so long and then basically, you know, my stories. I had a white light experience and I haven't had a drink or drug in 11 years so it will be on February 15th. Graduations by the way. Super impressive. Well, like I said, a white light experience, like I do not believe that it was of my own doing, you know, I experienced something and heard and saw some stuff that is beyond my understanding. Um, and it was just moved to me.

[25:43] I felt like I woke up at a different body and in a new experience, but you know, I was also a child when I woke up at that point I had to relearn how to deal with life and what's important, but all that stuff. It's like, you know, our, our, our, our team is like a family and we have discussions with family, you know, we have what we call clearance, where if I have a problem with another team member, we had a safe space where we step in front of each other and I said, this is what my problem is and this is how it's making me feel and this is what my judgment is of when they do that and we, you know, if it's the only way to grow massively and had everybody so committed to growing the agency because it's their, it's their baby.

[26:27] Right. I really appreciate your mentioning that, bobby, because I, I see a lot of people who start off as a solo preneur and then as your agency starts to grow and we're doing the same thing inside of clickfunnels where we have our own internal agency and now we've talked about American librarian roll up to yet as far as the waffle and all that. Basically ability to scale a matrix and all that kind of stuff. And I've seen it, uh, as you mentioned, your own c level team. We're in the same situation, you know, clickfunnels is going on four and a half years. We had the same people from the beginning and it's interesting to me to see. I literally have this conversation with Russell just the other day and that was it. We did 100 million last year, but for us to do 250 to $500 million, who do I have to become a lead that because the person who I was to get here will never get me to where I need to go.

[27:12] And so I think as you mentioned there, that transformation, wherever you are in your business, you have to always be doing that type of stuff to grow to that next level. You know, we call it the dialogue. We use stuff from a therapist called Harville Hendrix, which is called Imago dialogue, which is really a relationship. So you know, a marital relationship process, but we use it in the business sense and yet it unlocks everything. So we just had our team meeting and Tahoe, you know, for our c level and we had some fun snowboarding, snowmobiling and all that. But you know, the result of that meeting was that I stepped down as leader of our agency and the reason being is because after having a dialogue, I realized that my skill set, I'm an ids strategy, you know, front man, go, go, go, go, go. That, that's what was needed to get us, you know, to the level we are, you know, $5, million, six, that's what we need.

[28:13] Right? But now it's, it's not what we need. The last thing we need is another idea. Totally. So now we have somebody who's very operational minded, who's risk averse, who stepped in and you're in charge, you know, I will, I will step into my role what you're best at, which is strategy, looking at how we can different positional things. And that's it. And I'm fine with that because because of the dialogue and because everybody has that voice and everybody's looked at, as you know, how do they feel? How do they feel when, when, when one team member does that versus this, you know, I don't want to hurt everybody else in my business. I would not be where I am if it wasn't for them, you know, and everybody knows who they are. I talk about them. People try to take them away from me, offer more money. They don't leave because the way we have the dialogue because the culture we put together and that's what I mean. Ultimately. That's what makes business fun because you know, I've heard other people say, it's like when you start making a ton of money, it's great. Then you're like, that shine wears off.

[29:30] You can't ever get catch if that's the character that you want to stay fixated on. I so appreciate that. It's one of the things that who knows, whatever is gonna happen term at click funnels, but if it ever

[29:45] years down the road decide to do something seller beyond that core group will go do something else. I mean, it's just actually, it's just the that nucleus and whether it's here or someplace else, it'll still be fun. The beauty is that connection when you start to, you know what they're thinking, you become like this brain. Yeah. That's a great way of looking at it. Well, I appreciate your time at todd. I thank you so much for taking time. I know you're out. Literally traveling the building's huge documentary on again on proof and everything else that you guys have been doing. So thank you for jumping on. Any parting words you want to give to our audience or our listeners here? Um,

[30:25] I don't know, just, you know, I have a mission statement that I said it the other day when we were on TV, but some people messaged me about it and I think it's a good one. It's like my mission statement, I think a lot of entrepreneurs will fit into this, is that I'm committed to living fearless so that other people can live fearless, right? And if you think about the community that click funnels is, and you know, these other communities, you know, we're all looking to those who broken through, right? So you got to share your successes or breakthroughs even to breakthroughs because, you know, the sun doesn't shine without the dark, right? All my breakthroughs came off the back of seemingly the worst situations, you know. So, um, you know, share your share your b list. People can have the courage. You did the same thing. Love it. We're gonna leave on those words, body. Thank you so much. I love having you on. It's awesome day. Thanks.

[31:26] Hey, well, thank you so much for taking the time to listen. I can tell you the things I love more than anything else. Aside from listening to podcasts, reading books, one of my favorite books was the very first book that Russel wrote, it's called Dotcom secrets. It's the underground playbook for growing your company online. So if you've already got a business or an idea and you got something you want to get going right away, go ahead and check it out. And we literally give you the book for free. You just pay the seven 95 shipping and handling. Just go to Dotcom secrets.com and we'll go ahead, we'll ship you out the book. You just pay 79 five shipping and handling and the book will be on its way to you. Thanks again so much for listening. And remember, you're just one funnel away.