Episode 9: Acres of Diamonds

And listening to all this stuff and Tony Robbins was speaking in Robert Kiyosaki and then there were these little you know breakout sessions and this guy was talking about internet marketing and how you was making you know $8000 – $9000 a month selling e-books. And I was like Wow. And I had also at the time I was a big. And this is holy going to date me but I’m like I was a big tape cassette person in the car right. Like when I would be commuting for work and stuff. I was always putting something into my head most of the time it was motivational or business or you know and I was listening to this. It was actually this is actually a CD program. So it was a little bit more recent but it was a Mark Victor Hansen one of the chicken soup guys had done this mega speaking empire because I was a speech major for a while in college. So it’s really fun that I do podcasting now too because it’s like it’s transcended but I was listening to this mega speaking empire CD set. Right? And there was this other internet marketer and he was talking about internet marketing and you know affiliate marketing and all of these things and I thought this is this is the way to go this is totally the way to go. And I just knew there was something in it and I was not a tech person. Jackie and I mean I would always consider myself somewhat smart like I can figure this out but I just I was committed to making it work. Long story shorter and I jumped into this and I really thought I was going to be an information marketer which I am.

But you know I thought I was going to write a few e-books and make millions at all that you get into this and you go and there’s a little bit more to learn here so you know my company today like what we do. So I am shifting out of the client work. I still have some clients I don’t have a portfolio on the site. It’s all referrals if I choose to do client work. And so a lot of people say well how do you monetize the site. I mean I do coaching. I have another podcast well I’ve got two, the WordPress chick and I’ve had sponsorship on there. But I do coaching we do Web sites we’ve done podcast production for people. I am going I’m shifting a little bit back to courses in teaching and training and then a recurring model which is actually going to be a physical newsletter that comes in the mail and there’s a whole reason behind that. So it’s evolving right now more than anything I’m focusing on my audience, the brand and just simplicity. I just want simple systems in place.

I mean it totally it blew up my business and let me explain that because it was you know initially it was I was completely detached from the outcome of what it did and what it was going to do. And while I’m sure there was probably more data I didn’t go looking for it – it was really something I did for myself and it was content so I knew there’s value in it – within like three months iTunes was one of my top three traffic sources which blew me away. The relationships there’s this sort of there’s the tangible side of podcasting and there’s the intangible right so the tangible is traffic. I’ve gotten coaching clients, I’ve gotten website clients I’ve gotten you know joint venture opportunities, the relationships piece of it where the on one hand that’s tangible. On the other hand that pays off for you can’t really measure you and I mean it pays off in terms of how long those relationships last or what comes out of it. But the podcast I have said it before I’ll say it again is absolutely the best thing I’ve done for my business.

But if people get that or what I’m saying resonates with them it’s you know and I don’t want to put it in I don’t mean this coldly but it’s like that’s a warm lead. Like that’s a connection right there. Like it floors me when I think about the fact that people will take me for a walk. Right. And they’re just out on a walk just listening to me for an hour it’s like it’s an intimate relationship in a way that you form to somebody and so and it’s something I don’t take lightly. So I have stepped into a lot of things that I thought were uncomfortable initially were sharing something personal that maybe I thought I was never going to share this. I only share if it’s of value. You know like if I learn something the hard way or if I’ve launched something or done something or something turned out to be you know a really great outcome for something that I’ve done. So it’s like I share the Good, the Bad, the Ugly all of it in a way that I hope somebody else can benefit from that experience. But yeah you know I just write those out and I don’t know it just flows.

And so I sort of found that I had built up a lot of traffic to those tutorials and I thought of them and Genesis came out you know I stepped into this WordPress Genesis for beginners. I did like four week webinar classes then I did a PDF and then I did an updated for 2.00 which you know the theme settings haven’t changed that much but so I kind of stepped into that and that was really that’s my space. And so I had to own it that well not everybody who uses WordPress. wants a developer teaching them how to do something or they want to know how to use this tool to make money with their business. And you know over I don’t know it’s probably going to last couple of years. The more I’ve really stepped into marketing because I am not saying I got backlash but it’s like I just I don’t like the negativity and the fact that there’s a hashtag #WPDrama is ridiculous to me you know and I always look at it this way and maybe this is really a simplistic way to say it but I’m like you know people who are making money doing something they love it’s like you really don’t have time to go get nasty with people. You just do your thing. You just we don’t all have to do in like the same things. It’s ridiculous to me and there when I see because you can have somebody who knows how to market and write copy and they’ve got a crappy product. But who’s going to you know be laughing all the way to the bank.

And I’m not saying that that means you go sell crappy products that’s not the message there. But the point is all of it’s relevant. Right? And so I’m actually getting ready to change that theme on my site. And I have switched I used to do this WordPress happiness made easy – it doesn’t make much sense it’s not very clear. And so now it’s a place where WordPress and marketing collide because that’s sort of my happy space. I like creating content I love creating content. I like creating courses I like showing people how to. You need a list. You need to build a list you need an audience you need to connect to them you need to engage them and you need to sell to them. I don’t care how perfect your code is or how fast your site is. If you’re not building a list of subscribers because that’s an asset then you’re not really in business. You need every single business offers leads and sales. I don’t care what market you’re in or what you do. And so I had to kind of say where do I want to fit into this. I still love some of the techie stuff. I still like showing how to use things but you know I like to create as well and I just I never wanted to be a coder or developer or you know my gifts to the world to me or not to be behind the scenes and I’m not saying I have to be on stage but I want to create I don’t want to be a pair of hands creating someone else’s business because that’s how it feels to me. I’m not saying it is.

But that’s how it feels because I have things that I want to create and put out there that answer any of your questions I’m like I think I’ve talked in circles.

Any person out there that does work that maybe does WordPress websites that they’ve got you know client work at the end of the day if you simply share the things you’re doing like I’m all about leverage. So here’s an example. I started doing these daily emails. I subscribed to a guy named Ben Settle and I wish to God I got a commission because I pimp him every where. And because I I’m going to back up a little bit. I hired a Facebook ad agency at the beginning of this year kind of ended to 2015 and Jason Hornung it was fantastic. I was doing this kind of higher ticket higher price done for you podcasting service because I believe in the power of podcasting. There’s so many ways to leverage it. And it was great at the same time it’s still service it’s just people view me more as a consultant because I’ve got a team that does a lot of the tech stuff. But anyways so I thought OK I’m going to drive this with Facebook ads. It was a big investment. I got the money back in the ads. But the beauty of working with them is that I step back Jason really. Jason Hornung I think I said that so he great guy but I really stepped back and started looking at copywriting a like basic fundamentals of direct response marketing. Like what works. Content, you know, good copywriting email marketing. Those those basic things whether it’s you know maybe it’s postcards or whatever because that stuff still works too. But so I started kind of going backwards and mastering these fundamentals. And like I’ve gotten a little bit obsessed with it where it’s looking at the strategies that work as opposed to tactics right.

Like I had Todd Brown on the show and he’s in a big internet marketer and stuff. And he’s the same thing it’s like he said I don’t read you know how to do Twitter conversations or this or that it’s like no no no it doesn’t matter what platform use if you know how to write good headlines. You can use any platform if you know how to you know tell a story that appeals to those pain points and persuasion tactics. And it’s not me it’s manipulative. It’s human psychology and so I got so much of an education and working with Jason as well as understanding Facebook advertising and stuff. But like Jackie I don’t want to I don’t want to focus every day on my ads converting on this. I would rather go create content. Right. I’d rather do that. And so like with this e-mail thing with Ben, fast forward, I probably subscribed to his site for a good year before I bought from him. And he has a monthly print newsletter subscription which is where John I got the idea. It’s $97. It’s called e-mail players. He sends one e-mail a day. It’s a story style e-mail with a link and I watched how he did this. I just I just paid attention to it and I felt like and I thought what resonates with me is what resonates with me. And that I subscribe to email players and you know and then I saw Ryan Lee and other big Internet marketers going around a long time kind of does the same thing. Because my goal is simplicity.

I’m like you know what I think funnels are good but I don’t want to do 52 funnels and up cells and down cells in this way and that way it’s like you’re going to start hurt in my head like I just I don’t want to do that. I want to have a few things that I do consistently that I do well and then I grow and I started doing the daily e-mail maybe two months ago and I called it my almost daily e-mail. I think the most I’ve hit like I hit eight or nine days it hasn’t gone out today because I had a dentist appointment this morning. But it’s got to go out. But the point is what I do with these daily e-mails is again it’s a it’s a subject and a storyline that takes a person through this path and then it’s one link. You know I’ve seen these newsletters where it’s like here’s what happened this week and here’s my podcast and here’s my post. I used to do those low click through rates low engagement these I’m not kidding you Jackie let’s say e-mail five days in one week I get two or three responses to separately from different people than what I do is I take these posts and I mean I take the e-mails and I create posts on my site and then I share them socially some leveraging. I’m all about leveraging content. I have gotten my engagement rates have gone up my affiliate income has gone because I’m redoing some products and offers. But it’s like everything has increased for me by doing this.

My writing is getting faster I’m understanding copy better and so I feel like this is one of those things we’ve heard before but it’s these small consistent actions that you do over and over and over again. And so for me like it it’s just sort of like open my eyes to a lot of other things in terms of like OK will like even take exercise. Well what if you just walk for 30 minutes a day or what if you just drink two more glasses of water. It’s those little things and it’s it’s made a huge difference. I feel like I went 12 ways sideways on that but you know the whole the whole marketing piece where people get stuck I kid you not. The best way is simply to share like talk about why you wanted to start the podcast. You can do a whole post series Jackie and why you wanted to do this. And and the fact that you had a conversation yesterday here’s a great example I one of my e-mails. That was a post that got a lot of connection engagement. A friend is in a private Facebook group for a course that she purchased from a female internet marketer on webinars. OK. And somebody wrote in this Facebook group and they were like here’s some free pain points for all your internet marketers for your next sales copy. And she kind of ranted. I’m tired of investing in courses to find out I need to buy 12 pieces of software. I’m tired of spending all day at my computer doing this I’m tired of this and had a real frustration point. I’m tired of working every day all day for 10 weeks and having nothing to offer anybody, you know.

And so she was just sharing this with me and I’m like this is going to be really good email tomorrow and I try to even think where I linked back to it. I think I’m linked back to an old podcast episode of my own. But the point was I simply had a conversation with people in the email and the subject line was would you give your business more than 10 weeks to succeed because on one hand I feel her pain. Right. We’ve all been there where you get frustrated and it’s like you buy something that’s like oh now I have to go get lead pages and convertkit and all these other things. I’m not recommending either of those. One way or the other but. And if it if you’ve not been in this a long time you don’t know why I can use this or I can use this or I can use this or I can do this and that. And so I totally get that frustration. On the other hand where off line do you think that you’re going to start a business and 10 weeks be profitable you know. So it’s a different space. You have to you have to put in the time and energy. And I hate the whole do the work right. I mean I think that’s ridiculous. We all know businesses work. We all have to put in our time and energy. Some things are going to be easy some things can be hard but I am anti-hustle like there is a balance to life.

You know some days if I get inspired to do something I can work crazy hours like five or six days and then crash and then I’m like I unplug for three but that’s my own process. You know not everybody is going to do that. And I think you know life has to be lived. I refuse to skip a family birthday or I refuse to say no to breakfast or lunch with a friend that’s why I do this right. I refuse to not take a nap if I hit a wall in the afternoon I’m like. Stop telling me to hustle.

So even if if you are doing WordPress sites and maybe you’re you know you do everything in Beaver Builder or whatever the case is cases share the client story every single client could be a content like a case study part one part two part three whatever just the project what it’s about when you’re talking about and and maybe some frustrations that the client had. Here’s an example I’ve got somebody that I sent a proposal to months ago and they’ve come back like they still haven’t done anything but I think they’re ready and they’re like well you know we love the sites you sent. Can we see some more work. We want something really original but at the end it’s like yeah absolutely. Keep in mind that what I’ve sent you is what the client requested. Right. And not just that but to be able to have this conversation with someone saying your site needs to look good absolutely but it needs to convert if it’s not user friendly if it’s not converting it it’s not going to use subscribers and customers then it doesn’t matter how pretty it is because sometimes those really out of the box let’s be different isn’t user friendly and usability and functionality is key. Right? And so that is all a post if I want to you know I’m saying so it’s sharing those stories. I had another person today that I have sort of like this little small outsourcing company that I developed accidentally and I started building a team and I started doing coaching and then a lot of the coaching clients were like well hey I want to so it just sort of I fell into it anyways. It’s not something I’m like growing or marketing or anything.

Somebody has been with me for a few years and you know she reached out and it was done on a retainer basis because I had to build a plan for expenses and salaries and all that. And I’m not just doing it out of the good of my heart. It needs to be profitable to me too. Right? So this person has been using the team. I don’t know three years or something and you know can I switch to hourly from the retainer. And she has asked me because you know you know I’ve paid this much and haven’t. And I said yeah that’s totally fine because for me like I’m seriously thinking let’s just close it down early next year. Just all keep a designer and developer for myself. And I said yeah that’s fine. So then she requested well you know can I get a credit for some of the hours not used. And my initial response so I didn’t say anything and she said did you get the email and I said I did I’m thinking about it. So then I get another e-mail that says well here’s some food for thought I spent this much I did it. And I was like well now you’re getting nothing because first of all your lack of business isn’t my responsibility. You know that would be like me going to the gym and saying I haven’t been here in three months so can I get the next three months free like. That’s nonsense. And so you better believe that’s going to show up as an e-mail in a post.

And it was an amazing experience. I learned the value of charging more. I learned to that’s when I started getting to Facebook advertising a few years ago. I learned a lot. I would you know I was hanging around people that were that could make six figures on a webinar. And I’m not saying that that’s the end all be all. Like for me it was like I kind of went to the extreme of how all of this I had these great adventures we traveled and then I’ve come back to what works for me. And so that’s where with John and I with this other podcast it’s we’re rebranded it. That’s a whole long story. It was Freedom Papers it’s going to Hustle Free podcast.

I’m like I can’t work harder.

Long story short there was a farmer and it was like you know a farmer in like Persia or something and he had heard there was diamonds to be mined. And so he starts mining and he had a very profitable successful farm at the time. So he leaves his farm to go mine diamonds mined diamonds and then a long story short he spends all of his time and energy as farm miles apart and he loses money and lo and behold there were quote unquote acres of diamonds on his own farm. He just didn’t mind where he was right. We have a tendency to look out. So the moral is don’t look outside of yourself necessarily. And so when people start looking at their businesses that’s right I say what is it you’re sitting on. What is it you already do you know if you have if you are in client services put together a 10 step process for whatever and you don’t have to get into listicles necessarily. You know I’m just throwing stuff out there. But here’s a great example.

Everything in this is going to sound esoteric. How can you quantify this but everything I do that makes me happiest brings me the biggest ROI. And let me tell you like the podcast right. So much has come from this that that has blown my mind. I talk a lot about look at I fell in love with Genesis and figured out how to use it just as a user. And it was profitable or like Thrive when I found the Thrive Content builder and there are a lot of people at home and it’s you know it’s hard to use whatever but it was the first visual builder I came across a couple of years ago and all I could see was the opportunity to buy a plugin once and not have to do monthly recurring for landing pages which at the time I had Lead Pages on, I got click funnels and all these things and I thought this is amazing. And I just share things I am excited about. Do you know how much swag I get Jackie from something like Co-Schedule. I got a whole Co-Schedule thing because I friggin love it. I need to do like an epic post on them. And so when I share something that has made my life easier is fun or makes me happy. Like it’s an it’s a natural progression and then it’s profitable for me. Like Thrive is easily my highest affiliate every month because I love to create content and so then I thought OK. So here’s a great example of mining Acres of Diamonds.

I get great comments on Thrive. I also use Beaver Builder. I did a whole Thrive Content Builder and Beaver Builder why I used both. And it just it blows me away so I’ll talk about what I use when how I use it. That is it. I simply share the journey. And I thought OK so this content. Here’s the crazy thing is in doing these daily emails posting more and then I’ve gotten very good, not good – but diligent about sharing my stuff consistently thank you co-schedule. And so I’m getting a lot more traffic my bounce rate dropped like 30 percent because I’m telling more stories it’s not just throwing like WordPress tips that people and and I’m not negating that. But all of a sudden like who wants to just be another aggregated tip site. Right. And so an Acre of Diamond for me is Thrive. They have this suite of products. There are a ton of people use it so I thought OK I’m going to do it 30 days of Thrive. Right. And that’s a big a big goal because I mean publishing a piece of content every day for Thrive so it means I have to batch it but I’m willing to invest the time and energy. Now like I’ll have to go back and do like five or six ahead of time five or six ahead of time. But if I do that do you know the long term payoff of those posts are going to be because I’ll make sure they’re optimized but they will have affiliate links.

Absolutely and that I you know affiliate marketing is one of those things to me where you know I look at the fact that Pat Flynn and I both started our businesses the same air and Pat makes what 60 grand a month or something off a Bluehost. Not that I would recommend them necessarily but doing how to install a WordPress site and I dug my heels in. Oh. Everybody else has done that. I don’t want to do that. Well it’s a WordPress chick doesn’t have how to set up and install WordPress…

So again step back those fundamentals and it all worked out. I actually have interviewed Gabe Mays from GoDaddy and they’ve partnered with Beaver builder their new WordPress on-boarding for a beginner. They’re focused on being a part of the community. They’ve improved. I’m not getting paid to say this I have improved their whole WordPress manage hosting all that stuff. The point is it’s like I’m sitting here like my site is Acres of Diamonds like I get good traffic. How can I listen to people better? And so it’s having those conversations and you don’t know until you throw something out there you know like you have to simply start testing it. But look at where have you gotten the most traction. Where have you gotten comments where have you gotten the most shares. That’s where you start going. Here’s a great example.

The other one is Co-Schedule which I just adore that tool. So you go in and look at your most shared post, your most reshared content and the other than somebody that is spamming me all over Twitter with one of my posts they just keep creating new Twitter accounts because I think I listed one of their apps or something in a top five picks. But as I did a post beginning of 2015. I’m paraphrasing I was like you know the plug ins I’m using for 2015 or something. The WordPress plugins and holy moly that thing just went still to this day get shares. Should I have done it for 2016? Probably, but I thought why would I do it again? There’s not a whole lot changed so that I was thinking I’m just going to tell you this is my brain process how I was able to leverage this into like three different ways.

So then I said OK well I don’t want to redo that post. What if I did like my business stack and said it like a dev stack or marketing stack right every single tool I use in my business and we’re talking like 47 tools. It’s going to be an epic post right but I’m going to put it into a PDF that if somebody wants to just download it they’re going to have to opt in to get it. So there was that so that I took that because I remember sitting there was like a Monday and I was like OK I’m stuck What am I going to do my e-mail on and I started thinking about being stuck. And that’s when I then went to look at my data and I said oh this post. So that’s how that whole thing happened. So then from that my e-mail was the subject line was. Q The kid from a Christmas story. Have you seen that movie.

So there’s all these opportunities. So I did that. I was like OK I had this post and it was called content formatting plugins that will surprise and delight you. I started really diving into headlines and and trust me I’ll write like six headlines and the headline analyzer or the free one from co-schedule and then I’ll go optimize it and then I use something else to A/B test them. But so I thought OK and I can share this. Holy moly. I got like 20 shares in 24 hours, from a post I wrote in December of 2015 and then somebody on Facebook said I love all the content you’re sharing and I took a screenshot of that. So then that was the next day’s email. Do you see what I mean? So all I’m doing is growing I’m just putting time and energy into my business and I’m sharing what I’m doing. That is it. It’s really not rocket science. And we think that it needs to be all this big stuff. But you know like seriously you could have a whole series Jackie on you know Rethink.fm. First of all it’s an awesome name. Where did you come up with the name and why did you do it? You know what made you decide to pick the theme you did or why. Why have you chosen the guests you’ve talked to. You know there’s all these different ways to share it. And you just it resonates with people sorry. I’m really on a roll right now.

Well they’ll put out a product and then it’s gone in like six months and good luck with support. Which is a bummer because there are some good products, some good plugins and tools and web apps that come out of there but there’s so but the guys that do that it’s like they push to the next launch instead of growing and building something right. So when I find companies like Beaver builder and Thrive or whatever and they just keep getting better. Thrive just as a side note. They’re doing their whole 2.0 is going to get a whole new UI. So I’m really excited about that. But what I love about them also is that their conversion specialists are right so their blog even if you subscribe to the blog and I have all their plugins they also have this headline optimizer where you literally just can drop in a couple of extra headlines you know update the post and they will split test for you and you can pick the winner and inevitably not my original is the one that wins out. Go figure. But but so that content piece and I’m so sorry if I interrupted you but the like in sharing that because I do agree with you and it was when I saw that there’s stuff converts. So I know that if I just come from a place of here’s what I use why I use it and how I did. I spent a few weeks on this post for Thrive, it was the ultimate guide to thrive Content builder. I did four videos. I did a written post and then I did a content upgrade that I did a PTF. It was almost 30 pages on each of the different elements. So it was time consuming. Absolutely. But I did screen shots and I said so this is the countdown timer and this is when you would use it. I mean I couldn’t put in every style because it would have been like 300 pages. But but the point is so then I said hey you know there’s just a little content upgrade. And so now I’m building a list of people who are interested in thrive products. I know that right. And it’s so I will constantly reschedule that post and co-schedule. And it always gets me traffic.